The Ronco Principle
Paul Graham uses angel investor Ron Conway as a paragon to argue that in a transparent and unpredictable startup world, being genuinely good is not just a moral choice but a winning strategy. Bad behavior gets exposed quickly, and rapid change makes it impossible to know whom to treat well; thus, only authentic benevolence can sustain long-term success. The principle extends beyond startups to any domain trending toward transparency and unpredictability.
No one, VC or angel, has invested in more of the top startups than Ron Conway. He knows what happened in every deal in the Valley, half the time because he arranged it.
And yet he's a super nice guy. In fact, nice is not the word. Ronco is good. I know of zero instances in which he has behaved badly. It's hard even to imagine.
无论是风投还是天使，没有人在顶尖创业公司的投资上超过 Ron Conway。硅谷每笔交易他都了如指掌，半数情况下还是他亲自撮合的。
而他却是一个超级和善的人。实际上，“和善”这个词并不准确。Ronco 是个好人。据我所知，他从未有过任何不良行为。这甚至难以想象。
When I first came to Silicon Valley I thought "How lucky that someone so powerful is so benevolent." But gradually I realized it wasn't luck. It was by being benevolent that Ronco became so powerful. All the deals he gets to invest in come to him through referrals. Google did. Facebook did. Twitter was a referral from Evan Williams himself. And the reason so many people refer deals to him is that he's proven himself to be a good guy.
初到硅谷时，我曾感叹：“如此强大的人竟这般仁慈，真是幸运。”但渐渐地我意识到，这并非运气。正是凭借仁慈，Ronco 才变得如此强大。他获得的每一笔投资机会都来自推荐。谷歌如此，Facebook 如此，Twitter 更是 Evan Williams 亲自推荐的。而这么多人愿意向他引荐项目，正是因为他已被证明是个好人。
Good does not mean being a pushover. I would not want to face an angry Ronco. But if Ron's angry at you, it's because you did something wrong. Ron is so old school he's Old Testament. He will smite you in his just wrath, but there's no malice in it.
好人不等于软柿子。我可不想面对愤怒的 Ronco。但若 Ron 对你发火，那一定是你做错了事。Ron 老派得像《旧约》中的人物。他会以正义的愤怒惩戒你，但其中毫无恶意。
In almost every domain there are advantages to seeming good. It makes people trust you. But actually being good is an expensive way to seem good. To an amoral person it might seem to be overkill.
In some fields it might be, but apparently not in the startup world. Though plenty of investors are jerks, there is a clear trend among them: the most successful investors are also the most upstanding.
几乎在每一个领域，做个貌似好人都有好处——能赢得他人信任。但真正做个好人，却是成本很高的装好方式。在缺乏道德感的人看来，这或许纯属过度投资。
在某些领域也许如此，但在创业界显然不是。尽管许多投资人行事卑劣，但他们中却有一个明显的趋势：最成功的投资人往往也最正直。
[1]It was not always this way. I would not feel confident saying that about investors twenty years ago.
What changed? The startup world became more transparent and more unpredictable. Both make it harder to seem good without actually being good.
It's obvious why transparency has that effect. When an investor maltreats a founder now, it gets out. Maybe not all the way to the press, but other founders hear about it, and that investor starts to lose deals.
[2]The effect of unpredictability is more subtle. It increases the work of being inconsistent. If you're going to be two-faced, you have to know who you should be nice to and who you can get away with being nasty to. In the startup world, things change so rapidly that you can't tell. The random college kid you talk to today might in a couple years be the CEO of the hottest startup in the Valley. If you can't tell who to be nice to, you have to be nice to everyone. And probably the only people who can manage that are the people who are genuinely good.
In a sufficiently connected and unpredictable world, you can't seem good without being good.
[1]过去并非一直如此。二十年前，我不敢这么说投资人。
是什么改变了？创业世界变得越发透明和不可预测。两者都让“不做好人却装好人”变得更加困难。
透明度的影响显而易见。如今投资人若苛待创始人，消息会立刻传开。也许不会传到媒体那里，但其他创始人会知道，于是该投资人开始错失交易。
[2]不可预测性的影响则更为微妙。它增加了表里不一的成本。如果你想两面三刀，就必须知道该对谁和善、可以对谁无礼。但在创业世界里，变化如此之快，你根本无法判断。今天与你交谈的那个普通大学生，几年后可能成为硅谷最热门创业公司的CEO。既然无法判断该对谁好，你就必须对每个人都好。而能做到这一点的，大概只有真正善良的人。
在一个足够连通且不可预测的世界里，你无法不做好人却装好人。
As often happens, Ron discovered how to be the investor of the future by accident. He didn't foresee the future of startup investing, realize it would pay to be upstanding, and force himself to behave that way. It would feel unnatural to him to behave any other way. He was already living in the future.
Fortunately that future is not limited to the startup world. The startup world is more transparent and unpredictable than most, but almost everywhere the trend is in that direction.
正如常发生的那样，Ron 偶然发现了成为未来投资人的秘诀。他并没有预见到创业投资的未来，意识到正直会有回报，然后强迫自己那样做。对他来说，任何其他方式都会感到不自然。他已经生活在未来之中。
幸运的是，那个未来并不局限于创业世界。创业世界比大多数领域更透明和不可预测，但几乎所有地方的趋势都在朝那个方向发展。