MAKING MONEY实现收入
Oh yes, making money. You need to figure out how to do that.
对了，赚钱。你必须想个办法来实现收入。
The short version of this is that you have to get people to pay you more money than it costs you to deliver your good/service. For some reason, people always forget to take into account the part about how much it costs to deliver it.If you have a free product, don’t plan to grow by buying users. That’s really hard for ad-supported businesses. You need to make something people share with their friends.
简而言之，就是要让人们愿意为你的产品或者服务付出超过你的成本价钱。不知为啥人们总是忘记去考虑成本的事情。如果你弄了个免费的产品，那先别想着去烧钱买用户。对要靠广告实现收入的免费产品而言这太不划算了。你需要想个办法让人们成为你的水军。
If you have a paid product with less than a $1,000 customer lifetime value (LTV), you generally cannot afford sales. Experiment with different user acquisition methods like SEO/SEM, ads, mailings, etc., but try to repay your customer acquisition cost (CAC) in 3 months. If you have a paid product with more than a $1,000 LTV (net to you) you maybe can afford direct sales if your product is easy to sell. But unless your LTV is more like $5,000 or higher, it may not work. Try selling the product yourself first to learn what works. Hacking Sales is a useful book to read.
如果你有个非免费的产品，而它的“顾客终生价值”（每位购买者在未来可能为企业带来的收益总和）小于1000美金的话，你基本上是请不起销售队伍的。把各种获取用户的方法都试过来吧——搜索引擎优化、搜索引擎营销、打广告、发邮件等等，尽力把获取用户的开销在三个月内赚回来。如果你产品的顾客终生价值超过1000美金，那你说不定可以雇一批人帮你做销售（如果你的产品容易卖的话）。但除非顾客终生价值超过5000美金，不然你还是很有可能会入不敷出。你最好先自己做几次销售体验一下。《Hacking Sales》这本书很值得一读。
In any case, try to get to “ramen profitability”—i.e., make enough money so that the founders can live on ramen—as quickly as you can. When you get here, you control your own destiny and are no longer at the whims of investors and financial markets.
无论如何，尝试一下尽快达到“拉面盈利”，即赚到足够让创始人们能每天吃着拉面活下去的钱。等你达到这一步，那你至少能掌握自己的命运，而不再需要受投资人和金融市场波动的摆布了。
Watch your cash flow obsessively. Although it sounds unbelievable, we’ve seen founders run out of money without being aware it was happening a number of times (and read Paul Graham’s essay).
你需要仔细观察你的现金流。尽管听起来像是天方夜谭，但我们曾多次看到不少创业者钱花光了自己都还不知道。
FUNDRAISING寻求融资
Most startups raise money at some point.
大多数创业公司需要在某个节点进行融资。
You should raise money when you need it or when it’s available on good terms. Be careful not to lose your sense of frugality or to start solving problems by throwing money at them. Not having enough money can be bad, but having too much money is almost always bad.
你应该在你确实需要的时候去融资（或者在投资条款很不错的时候）。要小心不要因为有钱了就大手大脚地花，尝试用烧钱去解决一切问题。钱不够也许是件坏事，但钱太多基本上肯定是件坏事。
The secret to successfully raising money is to have a good company. All of the other stuff founders do to try to over-optimize the process probably only matters about 5% of the time. Investors are looking for companies that are going to be really successful whether or not they invest, but that can grow faster with outside capital. The “really successful” part is important—because investors’ returns are dominated by the big successes, if an investor believes you have a 100% chance of creating a $10 million company but almost no chance of building a larger company, he/she will still probably not invest even at a very low valuation. Always explain why you could be a huge success.
成功融资的秘诀很简单：建立一个优秀的公司。创始人费了老大劲去尝试优化的其它方面大概只起到5%左右的作用。投资人想找的是哪种无论他们是否投资都会非常成功，但得到外部资本注入以后会成长得更快的公司。注意，“非常成功”很重要，因为投资人的回报率很大程度上由投下去的最强的几个公司决定。如果你100%能做出一个1000万美金估值的公司但是100%不可能突破这个天花板，那么哪怕估值再低，投资人也许依然不会出手。所以时刻记住要画一张足够大的蓝图给他们看。
Investors are driven by the dual fears of missing the next Google, and fear of losing money on something that in retrospect looks obviously stupid. (For the best companies, they fear both at the same time.)**
投资人往往在害怕错过下一个谷歌和害怕把钱砸到一个荒唐的项目上这两种顾虑之间进退维谷。**（对于真正的好项目而言，这两种顾虑会同时存在。）
It is a bad idea to try to raise money when your company isn’t in good enough shape to attract capital. You will burn reputation and waste time.
在你的公司足够优秀之前，不要出门去融资，否则你会同时损失你的口碑和时间。
Don’t get demoralized if you struggle to raise money. Many of the best companies have struggled with this, because the best companies so often look bad at the beginning (and they nearly always look unfashionable.) When investors tell you no, believe the no but not the reason. And remember that anything but “yes” is a “no”—investors have a wonderful ability to say “no” in a way that sounds like “maybe yes”.
融不到钱也别灰心丧气。许多伟大的公司也经历过这种时刻，因为真正优秀的公司在早期往往很糟糕（而且几乎没人瞧得上他们）。当投资人拒绝你的时候，不要死缠烂打，但也不要相信他们所谓的“犀利点评”和“精彩分析”。还有，记住一条潜规则：如果投资人没有明确说出“yes”，那他们就是在说“no”——因为投资人有一项奇特的技能，就是以多种看起来像“yes”的方法来花式说“no”。别被蒙了。
It’s really important to have fundraising conversations in parallel—don’t go down a list of your favorite investors sequentially. The way to get investors to act is fear of other investors taking away their opportunity.
一定要以一种对等的地位去见投资人。不要把投资人按照“最喜欢到最不喜欢”列一张清单然后挨个去见（面对你喜欢的投资人你会处于有求于他的不利境地）。让投资人变得主动的最好办法就是让他担心你这个香饽饽会被别人抢走。
View fundraising as a necessary evil and something to get done as quickly as possible. Some founders fall in love with fundraising; this is always bad. It’s best to have just one founder do it so the company doesn’t grind to a halt.
你最好把融资看成是一块看起来恶心但不得不吃的肥肉，尽快吞下去吧。有的创始人会爱上融资的过程，这通常是件糟糕的事情。最好是有一位联合创始人专门负责搞这事，让其他人可以有时间将公司维持在正轨上。
Remember that most VCs don’t know much about most industries. Metrics are always the most convincing.
记住，对于大多数的行业，投资人只是一知半解。所以用数据指标说话是最有说服力的办法。
It’s beginning to change, but most investors (Y Combinator being a notable exception) unfortunately still require introductions from people you both know to take you seriously.
虽然这个局面正在改观，但不幸的是，如果没有认识的人引荐，大部分投资人（YC除外）都不太会把你当回事。
Insist on clean terms (complicated terms compound and get worse each round) but don’t over-optimize, especially on valuation. Valuation is something quantitative to compete on, and so founders love to compete for the highest valuation. But intermediate valuations don’t matter much.
注意要坚持一点：投资条款必须简单明了。复杂的条款会在后续融资里搞的你头越来越大。不过也不要每件事都去争，尤其是估值。估值这种量化的数字很容易引得创业者们相互攀比。但其实中早期的估值高低没啥大不了的。
The first check is the hardest to get, so focus your energies on getting that, which usually means focusing your attention on whoever loves you the most. Always have multiple plans, one of which is not raising anything, and be flexible depending on interest—if you can put more money to good use, and it’s available on reasonable terms, be open to taking it.
找到第一个愿意投你的人总是最难的，所以你要集中精力去搞定这件事（以及那个你觉得最喜欢你们产品的投资人）。不要把鸡蛋放在一个篮子里，永远要备有多个备选计划——其中一个就是不融资——你也可以依靠贷款嘛。如果放款条件很不错，那你何不乐得以比较开放的心态多搞点儿钱来花呢。
An important key to being good at pitching is to make your story as clear and easy to understand as possible. Of course, the most important key is to actually have a good company. There are lots of thoughts about what to include in a pitch, but at a minimum you need to have: mission, problem, product/service, business model, team, market and market growth rate, and financials.
跟投资人路演项目的时候很重要的一点，就是要把故事讲得尽可能简单易懂。当然啦，如果你的公司不够好那讲得再好也是白搭。关于路演当中要讲点儿啥有很多种说法，但至少你应该解释清楚你公司的使命、想解决的问题、你的产品或服务，商业模式、团队、整体市场及其成长率，再有就是你的财务指标。
Remember that the bar for each round of funding is much higher. If you got away with just being a compelling presenter for your seed round, don’t be surprised when it doesn’t work for your Series A.
后续融资的难度要求会一轮高过一轮。所以，就算你在种子天使阶段的路演非常成功，到了A轮也有可能被刷下去。做好心理准备。
Good investors really do add a lot of value. Bad investors detract a lot. Most investors fall in the middle and neither add nor detract. Investors that only invest a small amount usually don’t do anything for you (i.e., beware party rounds).
好的投资人是真的能在钱之外帮你很多忙，而糟糕的投资人只会添乱。大多数投资人都在二者之间。只投一点点钱的家伙们通常不会再帮做你什么更多的事情。（所以要小心那种没人领投、一大堆人每人出一点凑出笔钱的融资方式。）
Great board members are one of the best outside forcing functions for a company other than users, and outside forcing functions are worth more than most founders think. Be willing to accept a lower valuation to get a great board member who is willing to be very involved.
不像许多创业者想象的那样，其实来自外部的驱动力对公司而言也很重要。除了用户之外，优秀的董事会成员能够提供很多外部驱动。如果有个牛人愿意加入董事会，哪怕自降估值也要把他请过来。
I think this essay by Paul Graham is the best thing out there on fundraising. As a tactical point, you will usually need to be a Delaware C Corporation to raise institutional capital, so it’s best to just incorporate that way.
YC创始人Paul Graham写过一篇我觉得讲融资讲得最好的文章。最后说一个小贴士吧：方便融资起见，你最好在特拉华州注册一个C类公司。
CLOSING THOUGHT 结语
Remember that at least a thousand people have every great idea. One of them actually becomes successful. The difference comes down to execution. It’s a grind, and everyone wishes there were some other way to transform “idea” into “success”, but no one has figured it out yet.
记住至少有超过1000人拥有改变世界的伟大点子，但实际上其中只有1人最终成功。他们之间的区别就在于执行。整个过程是个苦差事，每个人都希望从创意到成功的道路上能有捷径，但是截至目前还没人发现。
So all you need is a great idea, a great team, a great product, and great execution. So easy! ;)
所以你需要的是一个伟大的创意，一个伟大的团队，一款伟大的产品，以及强有力的执行。就是这么简单！: )
Thanks to Paul Buchheit, Erica Carpenter, Brian Chesky, Adam D’Angelo, Paul Graham, Drew Houston, Justin Kan, Matt Krisiloff, Aaron Levie, Gabriel Leydon, Jessica Livingston, Dustin Moskovitz, David Rusenko and Colleen Taylor for contributing thoughts to this.
感谢Paul Buchheit、Erica Carpenter、Brian Chesky、Adam D’Angelo、Paul Graham、Drew Houston、Justin Kan、Matt Krisiloff、Aaron Levie、Gabriel Leydon、Jessica Livingston、Dustin Moskovitz、David Rusenko以及Colleen Taylor对本文做出的贡献。
