Idea Generttion
Idea Generation
The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The second most common question is if you have any ideas for their startup. 未来的创业者最常问的问题是如何为创业公司找到点子。第二个最常见的问题是你对他们的创业有什么想法。
But giving founders an idea almost always doesn’t work. Having ideas is among the most important qualities for a startup founder to have—you will need to generate lots of new ideas in the course of running a startup. 但给创始人一个想法几乎总是行不通的。有创意是创业者最重要的品质之一在创业的过程中，你需要产生很多新的创意。
YC once tried an experiment of funding seemingly good founders with no ideas. I think every company in this no-idea track failed. It turns out that good founders have lots of ideas about everything, so if you want to be a founder and can’t get an idea for a company, you should probably work on getting good at idea generation first. YC曾经尝试过一个实验，资助那些看似优秀却没有想法的创始人。我认为在这个毫无创意的轨道上，每家公司都失败了。事实证明，优秀的创始人对任何事情都有很多想法，所以如果你想成为一个创始人，却不能为一家公司想出一个想法，你可能应该首先努力在创意生成方面做得很好。
How do you do that? 你是怎么做到的？
It’s important to be in the right kind of environment, and around the right kind of people. You want to be around people who have a good feel for the future, will entertain improbable plans, are optimistic, are smart in a creative way, and have a very high idea flux. These sorts of people tend to think without the constraints most people have, not have a lot of filters, and not care too much what other people think. 生活在合适的环境中，和合适的人在一起是很重要的。 你希望身边的人对未来有很好的感觉，愿意接受不可能的计划，乐观，聪明，有创造性的方式，并有一个非常高的想法通量。这类人倾向于不受大多数人的限制而思考，没有太多的过滤器，也不太在乎别人怎么想。
The best ideas are fragile; most people don’t even start talking about them at all because they sound silly. Perhaps most of all, you want to be around people who don’t make you feel stupid for mentioning a bad idea, and who certainly never feel stupid for doing so themselves. 最好的主意也是脆弱的大多数人甚至根本不谈论它们，因为它们听起来很傻。 也许最重要的是，你希望身边的人不会因为提到一个坏主意而让你感到愚蠢，而且他们自己也不会因为这样做而感到愚蠢。
Stay away from people who are world-weary and belittle your ambitions. Unfortunately, this is most of the world. But they hold on to the past, and you want to live in the future. 远离那些厌世和轻视你野心的人。 不幸的是，这是世界上大部分地区。 但他们执着于过去，而你想活在未来。
You want to be able to project yourself 20 years into the future, and then think backwards from there. Trust yourself—20 years is a long time; it’s ok if your ideas about it seem pretty radical. 你希望能够把自己投射到20年后的未来，然后从那里倒着思考。 相信自己–20年是很长的一段时间;如果你的想法看起来很激进也没关系。
Another way to do this is to think about the most important tectonic shifts happening right now. How is the world changing in fundamental ways? Can you identify a leading edge of change and an opportunity that it unlocks? The mobile phone explosion from 2008-2012 is the most recent significant example of this—we are overdue for another! 另一种方法是思考当下正在发生的最重要的结构性转变。 界正在发生怎样的根本性变化？你能识别出变革的前沿和它所开启的机会吗？ 2008年至2012年的移动的爆炸式增长就是最近的一个显著例子我们早就应该有另一个了！
In such a tectonic shift, the world changes so fast that the big incumbents usually get beaten by fast-moving and focused startups. (By the way, it’s useful to get good at differentiating between real trends and fake trends. A key differentiator is if the new platform is used a lot by a small number of people, or used a little by a lot of people.) 在这样一个结构性的转变中，世界变化如此之快，以至于大公司通常会被快速发展和专注的初创公司击败。 (By顺便说一句，善于区分真实的趋势和虚假趋势是很有用的。一个关键的区别是，新平台是被少数人大量使用，还是被许多人少量使用。）
Any time you can think of something that is possible this year and wasn’t possible last year, you should pay attention. You may have the seed of a great startup idea. This is especially true if next year will be too late. 任何时候你能想到今年可能而去年不可能的事情，你都应该注意。 你可能已经有了一个伟大的创业想法的种子。 如果明年为时已晚，情况尤其如此。
When you can say “I am sure this is going to happen, I’m just not sure if we’ll be the ones to do it”, that’s a good sign. Uber was like this for me—after the first time I used it, it was clear we weren’t going to be calling cabs for that much longer, but I wasn’t sure that Uber was going to win the space. 当你可以说“我确信这会发生，我只是不确定我们是否会是做这件事的人”，这是一个好兆头。优步对我来说就是这样–在我第一次使用它之后，很明显我们不会再叫出租车了，但我不确定优步是否会赢得这个市场。
A good question to ask yourself early in the process of thinking about an idea is “could this be huge if it worked?” There are many good ideas in the world, but few of them have the inherent advantages that can make a startup massively successful. Most businesses don’t generate a valuable accumulating advantage as they scale. Think early about why an idea might have that property. It’s obvious for Facebook or Airbnb, but it often exists in more subtle ways. 在思考一个想法的早期，你可以问自己一个很好的问题：“如果它成功了，它会成为巨大的财富吗？” 世界上有很多好的想法，但很少有内在的优势，可以使一个创业公司获得巨大的成功。 大多数企业在扩大规模的过程中并没有产生有价值的累积优势。 尽早思考为什么一个想法可能具有这种属性。 这对Facebook或Airbnb来说是显而易见的，但它往往以更微妙的方式存在。
It’s also important to think about what you’re well-suited for. This is hard to do with pure introspection; ideally you can ask a mentor or some people you’ve worked with what you’re particularly good at. I’ve come to believe that founder/company fit is as important as product/market fit. 思考你适合做什么也很重要。 纯粹的内省很难做到这一点; 理想情况下，你可以问一位导师或一些与你共事过的人你特别擅长什么。 我开始相信，创始人/公司的契合度与产品/市场的契合度同样重要。
Finally, a good test for an idea is if you can articulate why most people think it’s a bad idea, but you understand what makes it good. 最后，对一个想法的一个很好的测试是，你是否能清楚地说明为什么大多数人认为它是一个坏主意，但你明白是什么使它好。
This is from my notes for a talk I gave at a YC event in China in 2018. Thanks to Eric Migicovsky for encouraging me to post it! 这是我2018年在YC中国的一次活动上的演讲笔记。感谢Eric Migicovsky鼓励我发布它！
I wrote it when I thought mostly about startups; now I think mostly about AI development. I am struck by how much of it applies, particularly paragraphs 5-9. 我写这本书的时候主要考虑的是初创企业; 现在我主要考虑人工智能的发展。 令我吃惊的是，其中有多少是适用的，特别是第5至9段。