Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy
The economic situation is apparently so grim that some experts fear we may be in for a stretch as bad as the mid seventies.
经济形势显然如此严峻，以至于一些专家担心我们可能会经历与七十年代中期一样糟糕的时期。
When Microsoft and Apple were founded.
当微软和苹果成立时。
As those examples suggest, a recession may not be such a bad time to start a startup. I’m not claiming it’s a particularly good time either. The truth is more boring: the state of the economy doesn’t matter much either way.
正如这些例子所示，经济衰退并不一定是创业的坏时机。我并不是说这是一个特别好的时机。事实上更加无聊：经济状况无论如何都不太重要。
If we’ve learned one thing from funding so many startups, it’s that they succeed or fail based on the qualities of the founders. The economy has some effect, certainly, but as a predictor of success it’s rounding error compared to the founders.
如果我们从资助如此多的初创企业中学到了一件事，那就是它们的成功或失败取决于创始人的素质。经济当然会有一定影响，但与创始人相比，它在预测成功方面只是一个舍入误差。
Which means that what matters is who you are, not when you do it. If you’re the right sort of person, you’ll win even in a bad economy. And if you’re not, a good economy won’t save you.
这意味着重要的是你是谁，而不是你何时做。如果你是合适的人，即使在糟糕的经济环境下，你也能获胜。而如果你不是，好的经济也无法拯救你。
Someone who thinks “I better not start a startup now, because the economy is so bad” is making the same mistake as the people who thought during the Bubble “all I have to do is start a startup, and I’ll be rich.”
那些认为“现在经济不好，我最好不要创办一家初创公司”的人，犯了和那些在泡沫时期认为“我只需要创办一家初创公司，我就会变得富有”的人一样的错误。
So if you want to improve your chances, you should think far more about who you can recruit as a cofounder than the state of the economy. And if you’re worried about threats to the survival of your company, don’t look for them in the news. Look in the mirror.
所以，如果你想提高成功的机会，你应该更多地考虑你可以招募谁作为联合创始人，而不是经济状况。如果你担心公司的生存威胁，不要在新闻中寻找，而是看看镜子里的自己。
But for any given team of founders, would it not pay to wait till the economy is better before taking the leap?
但对于任何一组创始人来说，在经济好转之前等待再决定是否跳槽是否更划算呢？
If you’re starting a restaurant, maybe, but not if you’re working on technology. Technology progresses more or less independently of the stock market. So for any given idea, the payoff for acting fast in a bad economy will be higher than for waiting.
如果你要开一家餐馆，或许是这样，但如果你从事科技行业，就不是这样了。科技的进步与股市的走势基本上是独立的。因此，对于任何一个想法来说，在经济不好的时候迅速行动的回报将会比等待更高。
Microsoft’s first product was a Basic interpreter for the Altair. That was exactly what the world needed in 1975, but if Gates and Allen had decided to wait a few years, it would have been too late.
微软的第一个产品是为Altair开发的Basic解释器。那正是1975年世界所需要的，但如果盖茨和艾伦决定再等几年，就为时已晚了。
Of course, the idea you have now won’t be the last you have. There are always new ideas. But if you have a specific idea you want to act on, act now.
当然，你现在拥有的想法不会是你最后的想法。总是会有新的想法出现。但是如果你有一个特定的想法想要付诸行动，那就立即行动吧。
That doesn’t mean you can ignore the economy. Both customers and investors will be feeling pinched. It’s not necessarily a problem if customers feel pinched: you may even be able to benefit from it, by making things that save money. Startups often make things cheaper, so in that respect they’re better positioned to prosper in a recession than big companies.
这并不意味着你可以忽视经济。顾客和投资者都会感到紧缩。如果顾客感到紧缩，并不一定是个问题：你甚至可以从中受益，通过制造节省开支的产品。初创公司通常会提供更便宜的产品，所以在这方面，它们比大公司更有可能在经济衰退中蓬勃发展。
Investors are more of a problem. Startups generally need to raise some amount of external funding, and investors tend to be less willing to invest in bad times. They shouldn’t be. Everyone knows you’re supposed to buy when times are bad and sell when times are good.
投资者是一个更大的问题。初创企业通常需要筹集一定数量的外部资金，而投资者往往不愿意在困难时期投资。他们不应该这样。每个人都知道在困难时期应该买入，在好时期应该卖出。
But of course what makes investing so counterintuitive is that in equity markets, good times are defined as everyone thinking it’s time to buy. You have to be a contrarian to be correct, and by definition only a minority of investors can be.
但当然，投资之所以如此违反直觉，是因为在股票市场上，好时机被定义为每个人都认为是买入时机。你必须成为一个逆势者才能正确，而根据定义，只有少数投资者能够做到这一点。
So just as investors in 1999 were tripping over one another trying to buy into lousy startups, investors in 2009 will presumably be reluctant to invest even in good ones.
所以，就像1999年的投资者争相购买糟糕的初创公司一样，2009年的投资者可能会不愿意投资即使是好的公司。
You’ll have to adapt to this. But that’s nothing new: startups always have to adapt to the whims of investors. Ask any founder in any economy if they’d describe investors as fickle, and watch the face they make.
你必须适应这个。但这并不新鲜：初创公司总是不得不适应投资者的喜好。问问任何一个经济体中的创始人，他们是否会形容投资者善变，看看他们的表情。
Last year you had to be prepared to explain how your startup was viral. Next year you’ll have to explain how it’s recession-proof.
去年你必须准备好解释你的创业公司如何迅速传播。明年你将需要解释它如何抗击经济衰退。
(Those are both good things to be. The mistake investors make is not the criteria they use but that they always tend to focus on one to the exclusion of the rest.)
这两个都是好的事情。投资者犯的错误不在于他们使用的标准，而在于他们总是倾向于将注意力集中在其中一个方面，而忽视其他方面。
Fortunately the way to make a startup recession-proof is to do exactly what you should do anyway: run it as cheaply as possible. For years I’ve been telling founders that the surest route to success is to be the cockroaches of the corporate world.
幸运的是，使初创公司免受经济衰退影响的方法正是你本应该做的：尽可能地以低成本运营。多年来，我一直告诉创始人们，成功的最可靠途径就是成为企业界的蟑螂。
The immediate cause of death in a startup is always running out of money. So the cheaper your company is to operate, the harder it is to kill. And fortunately it has gotten very cheap to run a startup. A recession will if anything make it cheaper still.
创业公司破产的直接原因始终是资金耗尽。因此，公司的运营成本越低，就越难被击败。幸运的是，现在创业的成本已经变得非常低廉。如果有经济衰退，情况可能会更加便宜。
If nuclear winter really is here, it may be safer to be a cockroach even than to keep your job. Customers may drop off individually if they can no longer afford you, but you’re not going to lose them all at once; markets don’t “reduce headcount.”
如果真的出现了核冬天，做一只蟑螂可能比保住工作更安全。如果顾客无法再支付你的费用，他们可能会一个个离开，但你不会一下子失去所有顾客；市场不会“减少人数”。
What if you quit your job to start a startup that fails, and you can’t find another? That could be a problem if you work in sales or marketing. In those fields it can take months to find a new job in a bad economy. But hackers seem to be more liquid.
如果你辞掉工作去创办一家失败的创业公司，然后找不到其他工作怎么办？如果你从事销售或市场营销工作，这可能会成为一个问题。在这些领域，要在经济不景气的情况下找到新工作可能需要几个月的时间。但是黑客似乎更具流动性。
Good hackers can always get some kind of job. It might not be your dream job, but you’re not going to starve.
优秀的黑客总能找到一些工作。可能不是你梦寐以求的工作，但你不会挨饿。
Another advantage of bad times is that there’s less competition. Technology trains leave the station at regular intervals. If everyone else is cowering in a corner, you may have a whole car to yourself.
坏时光的另一个好处是竞争变少了。科技列车定期发车。如果其他人都躲在角落里，你可能会独享一整节车厢。
You’re an investor too. As a founder, you’re buying stock with work: the reason Larry and Sergey are so rich is not so much that they’ve done work worth tens of billions of dollars, but that they were the first investors in Google.
你也是一位投资者。作为创始人，你用工作来购买股票：拉里和谢尔盖之所以如此富有，并不是因为他们创造了价值数百亿美元的工作，而是因为他们是谷歌的第一批投资者。
And like any investor you should buy when times are bad.
就像任何投资者一样，当时机不好的时候你应该买入。
Were you nodding in agreement, thinking “stupid investors” a few paragraphs ago when I was talking about how investors are reluctant to put money into startups in bad markets, even though that’s the time they should rationally be most willing to buy?
几段前，当我谈到投资者在不景气的市场中不愿意投资初创企业时，你是否在点头赞同的同时心里想着“愚蠢的投资者”？尽管那个时候他们理性上应该最愿意购买
Well, founders aren’t much better. When times get bad, hackers go to grad school. And no doubt that will happen this time too. In fact, what makes the preceding paragraph true is that most readers won’t believe it—at least to the extent of acting on it.
嗯，创始人们也不好过。当时机不好的时候，黑客们会去读研究生。毫无疑问，这次也会发生。事实上，让上述段落成立的原因是大多数读者不会相信它——至少不会采取行动。
So maybe a recession is a good time to start a startup. It’s hard to say whether advantages like lack of competition outweigh disadvantages like reluctant investors. But it doesn’t matter much either way. It’s the people that matter.
也许经济衰退是创办一家初创企业的好时机。很难说像缺乏竞争这样的优势是否能抵消像不情愿的投资者这样的劣势。但无论如何，这并不重要。重要的是人。
And for a given set of people working on a given technology, the time to act is always now.
对于一组在某项技术上工作的人来说，行动的时机永远是现在。
原文链接：http://paulgraham.com/badeconomy.html
