为什么是YC
为什么是YC
2006年3月，修订于2009年8月
昨天，我们资助的一位创始人问我为什么创办了Y Combinator。或者更准确地说，他问我们是否主要是为了好玩而创办YC。
有点，但不完全是。能够再次与Rtm和Trevor一起工作是非常有趣的。在卖掉Viaweb后我怀念这种感觉，之后所有年我都有一个后台进程在运行，寻找我们可以一起做的事情。Y Combinator肯定有乐队重聚的成分。每隔几天我都会不小心叫它”Viaweb”。
我们创办Viaweb非常明确地是为了赚钱。我厌倦了从一个自由职业项目活到下一个项目，决定尽可能努力工作，直到我赚到足够的钱一劳永逸地解决这个问题。Viaweb有时很有趣，但它不是为了有趣而设计的，而且大多数时候并不有趣。如果有任何创业公司是有趣的，我会感到惊讶。所有创业公司大部分都是辛苦活。
我们创办Y Combinator的真正原因既不是自私也不是高尚。我们创办它不是为了赚钱；我们不知道平均回报可能是什么，而且几年内都不会知道。我们创办YC也不是主要为了帮助年轻的准创始人，尽管我们确实喜欢这个想法，偶尔用这样的想法安慰自己：如果我们所有的投资都失败了，我们至少做了无私的事情。（这奇怪地是不确定的。）
我们创办Y Combinator的真正原因可能只有黑客才能理解。我们这样做是因为它看起来是一个如此伟大的黑客手段。有成千上万聪明的人可以创办公司但没有创办，而在恰当的地方施加相对较小的力量，我们就可以为世界带来一股新的创业公司浪潮，而这些公司本可能不存在。
在某种程度上这是高尚的，因为我认为创业公司是好事。但真正激励我们的是那种完全非道德的欲望，这种欲望会激励任何黑客，当他看着某个复杂的设备并意识到通过微小的调整他可以使它更高效地运行时。在这种情况下，这个设备是世界经济，而幸运的是它恰好是开源的。
Why YC
March 2006, rev August 2009
Yesterday one of the founders we funded asked me why we started Y Combinator. Or more precisely, he asked if we’d started YC mainly for fun.
Kind of, but not quite. It is enormously fun to be able to work with Rtm and Trevor again. I missed that after we sold Viaweb, and for all the years after I always had a background process running, looking for something we could do together. There is definitely an aspect of a band reunion to Y Combinator. Every couple days I slip and call it “Viaweb.”
Viaweb we started very explicitly to make money. I was sick of living from one freelance project to the next, and decided to just work as hard as I could till I’d made enough to solve the problem once and for all. Viaweb was sometimes fun, but it wasn’t designed for fun, and mostly it wasn’t. I’d be surprised if any startup is. All startups are mostly schleps.
The real reason we started Y Combinator is neither selfish nor virtuous. We didn’t start it mainly to make money; we have no idea what our average returns might be, and won’t know for years. Nor did we start YC mainly to help out young would-be founders, though we do like the idea, and comfort ourselves occasionally with the thought that if all our investments tank, we will thus have been doing something unselfish. (It’s oddly nondeterministic.)
The real reason we started Y Combinator is one probably only a hacker would understand. We did it because it seems such a great hack. There are thousands of smart people who could start companies and don’t, and with a relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place, we can spring on the world a stream of new startups that might otherwise not have existed.
In a way this is virtuous, because I think startups are a good thing. But really what motivates us is the completely amoral desire that would motivate any hacker who looked at some complex device and realized that with a tiny tweak he could make it run more efficiently. In this case, the device is the world’s economy, which fortunately happens to be open source.