What Kate Saw in Silicon Valley
Paul Graham's 2009 blog post records architect Kate Courteau's nine surprising observations after 9 months immersed in Y Combinator's startup world: how many startups fail, how much ideas change, how little money it takes, how scrappy founders are, how tech-saturated Silicon Valley is, how consistent speakers' advice is (launch fast, listen, iterate), how casual successful founders are, how important advice networks are, and how solitary the work is. The post contrasts startup culture with the 'normal' world and suggests it may be a leading indicator of future work.
August 2009Kate Courteau is the architect who designed Y Combinator's office. Recently we managed to recruit her to help us run YC when she's not busy with architectural projects. Though she'd heard a lot about YC since the beginning, the last 9 months have been a total immersion.
2009年8月，凯特·考特尼是设计Y Combinator办公室的建筑师。最近我们成功说服她，在不忙建筑项目时来协助运营YC。虽然她从YC创立之初就听闻不少，但过去九个月的经历让她彻底沉浸其中。
I've been around the startup world for so long that it seems normal to me, so I was curious to hear what had surprised her most about it. This was her list:
- How many startups fail.
Kate knew in principle that startups were very risky, but she was surprised to see how constant the threat of failure was — not just for the minnows, but even for the famous startups whose founders came to speak at YC dinners.
我在创业圈待得太久，以至于觉得一切都很平常，所以我很想听听她最感到惊讶的地方。以下是她的清单：
- 有多少初创企业会失败。
凯特理论上知道创业风险很大，但她惊讶地发现失败威胁如此持续不断——不仅对小公司，甚至对那些创始人在YC晚宴上演讲的知名创业公司也是如此。
- How much startups' ideas change.
As usual, by Demo Day about half the startups were doing something significantly different than they started with. We encourage that. Starting a startup is like science in that you have to follow the truth wherever it leads. In the rest of the world, people don't start things till they're sure what they want to do, and once started they tend to continue on their initial path even if it's mistaken.
- 创业点子变化之大。
一如既往，到了演示日，大约一半的初创公司所做的与最初计划已大不相同。我们鼓励这一点。创业就像科学，你必须追随真相，无论它通向何方。在世界上其他地方，人们要等到确定想做什么才开始，一旦启动，即使方向错误也往往沿着初始路径继续。
- How little money it can take to start a startup.
In Kate's world, everything is still physical and expensive. You can barely renovate a bathroom for the cost of starting a startup.
- 启动一家初创公司所需资金之少。
在凯特的世界里，一切都是实体且昂贵的。装修一个卫生间的钱就差不多够创办一家初创公司了。
- How scrappy founders are.
That was her actual word. I agree with her, but till she mentioned this it never occurred to me how little this quality is appreciated in most of the rest of the world. It wouldn't be a compliment in most organizations to call someone scrappy.
What does it mean, exactly? It's basically the diminutive form of belligerent. Someone who's scrappy manages to be both threatening and undignified at the same time. Which seems to me exactly what one would want to be, in any kind of work. If you're not threatening, you're probably not doing anything new, and dignity is merely a sort of plaque.
- 创始人是多么“拼”。
她原话就是这个词。我同意她，但在她提到之前，我从没想过这种品质在世界上大多数地方是多么不被欣赏。在多数组织里，说一个人“拼”可不是恭维。
这到底是什么意思？它基本上是“好斗”的小称形式。一个“拼”的人同时显得有威胁性又不体面。在我看来，这正是任何工作中都该有的状态。如果你不具威胁性，你可能没做什么新东西；而尊严不过是一块牌匾。
- How tech-saturated Silicon Valley is.
"It seems like everybody here is in the industry." That isn't literally true, but there is a qualitative difference between Silicon Valley and other places. You tend to keep your voice down, because there's a good chance the person at the next table would know some of the people you're talking about. I never felt that in Boston. The good news is, there's also a good chance the person at the next table could help you in some way.
- 硅谷技术饱和程度之高。
“感觉这里每个人都在这个行业。”这话并非字面正确，但硅谷和其他地方确实有本质区别。你说话会压低声音，因为邻桌的人很可能认识你谈论的人。我在波士顿从未有过这种感觉。好消息是，邻桌的人也很可能以某种方式帮助你。
- That the speakers at YC were so consistent in their advice.
Actually, I've noticed this too. I always worry the speakers will put us in an embarrassing position by contradicting what we tell the startups, but it happens surprisingly rarely.
When I asked her what specific things she remembered speakers always saying, she mentioned: that the way to succeed was to launch something fast, listen to users, and then iterate; that startups required resilience because they were always an emotional rollercoaster; and that most VCs were sheep.
I've been impressed by how consistently the speakers advocate launching fast and iterating. That was contrarian advice 10 years ago, but it's clearly now the established practice.
- YC演讲者的建议如此一致。
其实我也注意到了。我总是担心演讲者会与我们给创业公司的建议相矛盾，让我们难堪，但这种情况极少发生。
当我问她记得演讲者常说的具体内容时，她提到：成功之道是快速发布、倾听用户、然后迭代；创业需要韧性，因为它总是情绪过山车；以及大多数VC都是绵羊。
演讲者们如此一致地推崇快速发布和迭代，这让我印象深刻。十年前这是反主流的建议，但现在显然已成为既定做法。
- How casual successful startup founders are.
Most of the famous founders in Silicon Valley are people you'd overlook on the street. It's not merely that they don't dress up. They don't project any kind of aura of power either. "They're not trying to impress anyone."
Interestingly, while Kate said that she could never pick out successful founders, she could recognize VCs, both by the way they dressed and the way they carried themselves.
- 成功创业者的随意程度。
硅谷大多数知名创始人是那种你在街上会忽略的人。他们不仅不打扮，也不散发任何权力光环。“他们不想给任何人留下印象。”
有趣的是，凯特说她永远无法挑出成功的创始人，却能认出VC——无论是从穿着还是举止。
- How important it is for founders to have people to ask for advice.
(I swear I didn't prompt this one.) Without advice "they'd just be sort of lost." Fortunately, there are a lot of people to help them. There's a strong tradition within YC of helping other YC-funded startups. But we didn't invent that idea: it's just a slightly more concentrated form of existing Valley culture.
- 创始人有可以请教的人多么重要。
（我发誓我没引导这个问题。）没有建议，“他们会有些迷失。”幸运的是有很多人帮助他们。YC内部有很强的传统，帮助其他YC投资的创业公司。但这个想法并非我们发明：它只是现有硅谷文化的一种更集中形式。
- What a solitary task startups are.
Architects are constantly interacting face to face with other people, whereas doing a technology startup, at least, tends to require long stretches of uninterrupted time to work. "You could do it in a box."
- 创业是多么孤独的任务。
建筑师经常与人面对面互动，而做技术创业至少需要长时间不间断的工作。“你可以在一个盒子里完成。”
By inverting this list, we can get a portrait of the "normal" world. It's populated by people who talk a lot with one another as they work slowly but harmoniously on conservative, expensive projects whose destinations are decided in advance, and who carefully adjust their manner to reflect their position in the hierarchy.
That's also a fairly accurate description of the past. So startup culture may not merely be different in the way you'd expect any subculture to be, but a leading indicator.
把这个清单倒过来，我们可以得到“正常”世界的画像。那里的人们在工作时相互交谈甚多，缓慢但和谐地推进保守、昂贵的项目，目的地预先决定，并小心调整举止以反映层级地位。
这也是对过去的相当准确的描述。因此，创业文化可能不仅仅是任何亚文化都会有的那种不同，而是一个先行指标。