How To Be Successful 如何取得成功

I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up wanting the latter.

我观察过数千位创始人，也思考过很多关于怎样才能赚到巨额财富或创造出真正重要的东西。通常，人们一开始追求的是前者，最终却会转向后者。

Here are 13 thoughts about how to achieve such outlier success. Everything here is easier to do once you’ve already reached a baseline degree of success (through privilege or effort) and want to put in the work to turn that into outlier success. [1] But much of it applies to anyone.

以下是关于如何取得这种极致成功的13个思考。一旦你已经通过某种优势或自身努力达到了一定程度的成功，并愿意投入努力将其推向极致，那么这里所说的一切做起来都会更容易。[1] 但其中大部分对任何人都适用。

1. Compound yourself

1. 让自己复合增长

Compounding is magic. Look for it everywhere. Exponential curves are the key to wealth generation.

复利是魔法。要到处寻找它。指数曲线是创造财富的关键。

A medium-sized business that grows 50% in value every year becomes huge in a very short amount of time. Few businesses in the world have true network effects and extreme scalability. But with technology, more and more will. It’s worth a lot of effort to find them and create them.

一家每年价值增长50%的中型公司，会在极短时间内变得极其庞大。世界上真正具备网络效应和极致可扩展性的企业很少。但随着技术的发展，这样的企业会越来越多。花大力气去找到并创造它们，非常值得。

You also want to be an exponential curve yourself—you should aim for your life to follow an ever-increasing up-and-to-the-right trajectory. It’s important to move towards a career that has a compounding effect—most careers progress fairly linearly.

你自己也应该成为一条指数曲线——你的人生目标应该是沿着一条持续向右上方攀升的轨迹前进。重要的是，要朝着具有复合效应的职业方向发展——大多数职业的进展是相当线性的。

You don't want to be in a career where people who have been doing it for two years can be as effective as people who have been doing it for twenty—your rate of learning should always be high. As your career progresses, each unit of work you do should generate more and more results. There are many ways to get this leverage, such as capital, technology, brand, network effects, and managing people.

你不会想待在那种干了两年的人和干了二十年的人效率差不多的职业里——你的学习速率应该始终保持在高位。随着职业生涯的推进，你付出的每一份努力都应该产生越来越大的成果。获得这种杠杆的方式有很多，比如资本、技术、品牌、网络效应，以及管理人。

It’s useful to focus on adding another zero to whatever you define as your success metric—money, status, impact on the world, or whatever. I am willing to take as much time as needed between projects to find my next thing. But I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote.

专注于给你所定义的成功指标——金钱、地位、对世界的影响，或其他任何东西——再加一个零，这样做很有用。我愿意在项目之间花足够长的时间，去寻找我的下一件事。但我始终希望，这个项目一旦成功，会让我职业生涯中其余的成就看起来像个脚注。

Most people get bogged down in linear opportunities. Be willing to let small opportunities go to focus on potential step changes.

大多数人会被线性的机会困住。你要愿意放弃小机会，以便专注于潜在的阶跃式变化。

I think the biggest competitive advantage in business—either for a company or for an individual’s career—is long-term thinking with a broad view of how different systems in the world are going to come together. One of the notable aspects of compound growth is that the furthest out years are the most important. In a world where almost no one takes a truly long-term view, the market richly rewards those who do.

我认为，无论是对于公司还是个人职业生涯，商业中最大的竞争优势，是以长远的眼光、用广阔的视角去思考世界上不同体系将如何汇聚在一起。复合增长一个值得注意的特点，就是最遥远的年份才是最重要的。在一个几乎没有人真正采取长远视角的世界里，市场会极为慷慨地奖励那些这样做的人。

Trust the exponential, be patient, and be pleasantly surprised.

相信指数，保持耐心，然后收获惊喜。

2. Have almost too much self-belief

2. 拥有几乎过度的自信

Self-belief is immensely powerful. The most successful people I know believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion.

自信的力量极其强大。我认识的那些最成功的人，对自己的相信几乎到了妄想的地步。

Cultivate this early. As you get more data points that your judgment is good and you can consistently deliver results, trust yourself more.

要尽早培养这一点。随着你获得越来越多证明你的判断力良好、能够持续交付结果的数据点，你就会更加相信自己。

If you don’t believe in yourself, it’s hard to let yourself have contrarian ideas about the future. But this is where most value gets created.

如果你不相信自己，你就很难让自己对未来持有与大多数人相悖的想法。而这恰恰是大部分价值被创造出来的地方。

I remember when Elon Musk took me on a tour of the SpaceX factory many years ago. He talked in detail about manufacturing every part of the rocket, but the thing that sticks in memory was the look of absolute certainty on his face when he talked about sending large rockets to Mars. I left thinking “huh, so that’s the benchmark for what conviction looks like.”

我记得很多年前，埃隆·马斯克带我去参观SpaceX的工厂。他极为详尽地讲解了火箭每一个零部件的制造过程，但令我记忆犹新的是，当他说到要把大型火箭送上火星时，他脸上那种绝对确信的神情。我离开时心想：“原来这就是信念感应该有的样子。”

Managing your own morale—and your team’s morale—is one of the greatest challenges of most endeavors. It’s almost impossible without a lot of self-belief. And unfortunately, the more ambitious you are, the more the world will try to tear you down.

管理你自己的士气——以及你团队的士气——是绝大多数事业中最大的挑战之一。没有强大的自信，这几乎是不可能做到的。而且不幸的是，你的雄心越大，世界就越会试图把你往下拽。

Most highly successful people have been really right about the future at least once at a time when people thought they were wrong. If not, they would have faced much more competition.

大多数极其成功的人，都曾在人们认为他们错了的时候，至少有一次关于未来的判断被证明是完全正确的。如果不是这样，他们本会面临多得多的竞争。

Self-belief must be balanced with self-awareness. I used to hate criticism of any sort and actively avoided it. Now I try to always listen to it with the assumption that it’s true, and then decide if I want to act on it or not. Truth-seeking is hard and often painful, but it is what separates self-belief from self-delusion.

自信必须与自知之明相平衡。我过去讨厌任何形式的批评，并会主动回避。现在，我试着总是先假设批评是正确的去倾听，然后决定是否要据此行动。追求真相是艰难的，而且常常是痛苦的，但正是这一点将自信与自欺区分开来。

This balance also helps you avoid coming across as entitled and out of touch.

这种平衡也有助于你避免给人留下自以为理所应当、不接地气的印象。

3. Learn to think independently

3. 学会独立思考

Entrepreneurship is very difficult to teach because original thinking is very difficult to teach. School is not set up to teach this—in fact, it generally rewards the opposite. So you have to cultivate it on your own.

创业之所以很难教授，是因为原创性思维很难教授。学校的设置就不是为了教这个的——事实上，它通常奖励的是相反的东西。所以你必须自己去培养。

Thinking from first principles and trying to generate new ideas is fun, and finding people to exchange them with is a great way to get better at this. The next step is to find easy, fast ways to test these ideas in the real world.

从第一性原理出发思考并尝试产生新想法，是很有趣的；找到可以交流这些想法的人，是提高这种能力的好方法。下一步，就是找到简单、快捷的方式，在现实世界中检验这些想法。

“I will fail many times, and I will be really right once” is the entrepreneurs’ way. You have to give yourself a lot of chances to get lucky.

“我会失败很多次，然后真正正确那一次”是创业者的道路。你必须给自己很多次机会，去撞上好运。

One of the most powerful lessons to learn is that you can figure out what to do in situations that seem to have no solution. The more times you do this, the more you will believe it. Grit comes from learning you can get back up after you get knocked down.

你需要学会的最有力的道理之一是，你能够在看似无解的局面中想出办法来。你这样做的次数越多，你就越会相信这一点。韧性来自于认识到你被击倒之后还能重新站起来。

4. Get good at “sales”

4. 善于“销售”

Self-belief alone is not sufficient—you also have to be able to convince other people of what you believe.

光有自信是不够的——你还必须能说服别人相信你所相信的。

All great careers, to some degree, become sales jobs. You have to evangelize your plans to customers, prospective employees, the press, investors, etc. This requires an inspiring vision, strong communication skills, some degree of charisma, and evidence of execution ability.

所有伟大的职业生涯，在某种程度上，都会变成销售工作。你必须向客户、潜在员工、媒体、投资者等对象推销你的计划。这需要令人振奋的愿景、强大的沟通技巧、一定程度的魅力，以及能够证明执行能力的证据。

Getting good at communication—particularly written communication—is an investment worth making. My best advice for communicating clearly is to first make sure your thinking is clear and then use plain, concise language.

练好沟通——尤其是书面沟通——是一项值得做的投资。我对于清晰沟通的最佳建议是，首先确保你的思路清晰，然后使用平实、简洁的语言。

The best way to be good at sales is to genuinely believe in what you’re selling. Selling what you truly believe in feels great, and trying to sell snake oil feels awful.

善于销售的最好方式，就是真正相信你正在销售的东西。推销你真心相信的东西感觉很棒，而试图卖假药则会让你感觉很糟糕。

Getting good at sales is like improving at any other skill—anyone can get better at it with deliberate practice. But for some reason, perhaps because it feels distasteful, many people treat it as something unlearnable.

提高销售能力就像提高任何其他技能一样——任何人都可以通过刻意练习变得更好。但出于某种原因，也许是因为它让人感觉不适，许多人把它当成一种无法学会的东西。

My other big sales tip is to show up in person whenever it’s important. When I was first starting out, I was always willing to get on a plane. It was frequently unnecessary, but three times it led to career-making turning points for me that otherwise would have gone the other way.

我的另一个重要销售建议是：只要事情重要，就尽量亲自到场。我刚起步的时候，总是愿意坐上飞机。经常是没必要的，但有三次给我带来了职业生涯的转折点，否则结果会完全不同。

5. Make it easy to take risks

5. 让冒险变得容易

Most people overestimate risk and underestimate reward. Taking risks is important because it’s impossible to be right all the time—you have to try many things and adapt quickly as you learn more.

大多数人高估风险、低估回报。冒险很重要，因为你不可能一直正确——你必须尝试很多事情，并在学到更多时快速调整。

It’s often easier to take risks early in your career; you don’t have much to lose, and you potentially have a lot to gain. Once you’ve gotten yourself to a point where you have your basic obligations covered you should try to make it easy to take risks. Look for small bets you can make where you lose 1x if you’re wrong but make 100x if it works. Then make a bigger bet in that direction.

职业生涯早期往往更容易冒险；你没什么可失去的，却可能收获很多。一旦你到了基本生活有保障的阶段，就应该尽量让自己更容易去冒险。去寻找你可以下注的小机会：如果错了，损失一倍；如果成了，能赚一百倍。然后朝那个方向下更大的注。

Don’t save up for too long, though. At YC, we’ve often noticed a problem with founders that have spent a lot of time working at Google or Facebook. When people get used to a comfortable life, a predictable job, and a reputation of succeeding at whatever they do, it gets very hard to leave that behind (and people have an incredible ability to always match their lifestyle to next year’s salary). Even if they do leave, the temptation to return is great. It’s easy—and human nature—to prioritize short-term gain and convenience over long-term fulfillment.

不过，别攒太久。在 YC，我们经常注意到一个在 Google 或 Facebook 工作过很长时间的创始人身上存在的问题。当人们习惯了舒适的生活、可预测的工作，以及不管做什么都能成功的名声之后，就很难把这些放下（而且人有一种不可思议的能力，总能使自己的生活方式与下一年的薪水相匹配）。即使他们真的离开了，回去的诱惑也很大。优先考虑短期收益和便利，而不是长期的满足感，这很容易——也是人的天性。

But when you aren’t on the treadmill, you can follow your hunches and spend time on things that might turn out to be really interesting. Keeping your life cheap and flexible for as long as you can is a powerful way to do this, but obviously comes with tradeoffs.

但当你不在那台跑步机上时，你可以追随自己的直觉，把时间花在那些可能最终变得真正有意思的事情上。尽可能长久地保持生活的低成本和高灵活性，是实现这一点的有力方式，但显然也伴随着取舍。

6. Focus

6. 专注

Focus is a force multiplier on work.

专注是工作的力量倍增器。

Almost everyone I’ve ever met would be well-served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on. It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours. Most people waste most of their time on stuff that doesn’t matter.

我见过的几乎每一个人，如果多花点时间思考该专注于什么，都会受益良多。做正确的事远比工作很多小时更重要。大多数人把大部分时间浪费在无关紧要的事情上。

Once you have figured out what to do, be unstoppable about getting your small handful of priorities accomplished quickly. I have yet to meet a slow-moving person who is very successful.

一旦你想清楚了该做什么，就要势不可挡地去实现，把你那少数几件要优先完成的事快速做完。我还没见过哪个动作缓慢的人能取得非常大的成功。

7. Work hard

7. 努力工作

You can get to about the 90th percentile in your field by working either smart or hard, which is still a great accomplishment. But getting to the 99th percentile requires both—you will be competing with other very talented people who will have great ideas and be willing to work a lot.

凭聪明工作或凭努力，你大约能到达所属领域的前 90 百分位，这本身已经是很了不起的成就。但要到达前 99 百分位，则需要两者兼备——你将与其他非常有才华的人竞争，他们既有好的想法，也愿意付出大量努力。

Extreme people get extreme results. Working a lot comes with huge life trade-offs, and it’s perfectly rational to decide not to do it. But it has a lot of advantages. As in most cases, momentum compounds, and success begets success.

极致之人取得极致结果。大量工作伴随着巨大的生活取舍，选择不这样做也完全合理。但它有很多好处。就像大多数情况一样，势头会复合增长，成功会催生更多成功。

And it’s often really fun. One of the great joys in life is finding your purpose, excelling at it, and discovering that your impact matters to something larger than yourself. A YC founder recently expressed great surprise about how much happier and more fulfilled he was after leaving his job at a big company and working towards his maximum possible impact. Working hard at that should be celebrated.

而且这通常真的很有趣。人生的重大乐趣之一，就是找到你的使命，在其中表现出色，并发现你的影响力对于比自己更大的事物很重要。一位 YC 创始人最近表达了巨大的惊讶：他在离开一家大公司的工作、朝着他最大可能的影响力去努力之后，变得快乐和充实得多。为这个目标而努力工作，是值得赞扬的。

It’s not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a Bad Thing in certain parts of the US, but this is certainly not the case in other parts of the world—the amount of energy and drive exhibited by entrepreneurs outside of the US is quickly becoming the new benchmark.

我不完全清楚为什么在美国的某些地方，努力工作成了一件坏事，但在世界其他地方显然不是这样——美国以外的企业家所展现出的那种能量和驱动力，正在迅速成为新的标杆。

You have to figure out how to work hard without burning out. People find their own strategies for this, but one that almost always works is to find work you like doing with people you enjoy spending a lot of time with.

你必须找到如何在努力工作却不倦怠的方法。人们有各自用来应对的策略，但一个几乎总是奏效的方法是：找到你喜欢做的事，并与你乐于长时间相处的人一起做。

I think people who pretend you can be super successful professionally without working most of the time (for some period of your life) are doing a disservice. In fact, work stamina seems to be one of the biggest predictors of long-term success.

我认为，那些假装你在职业生涯中（某个阶段）可以只工作很少时间就取得巨大成功的人，是在做一件有害的事。事实上，工作耐力似乎是长期成功最重要的预测指标之一。

One more thought about working hard: do it at the beginning of your career. Hard work compounds like interest, and the earlier you do it, the more time you have for the benefits to pay off. It’s also easier to work hard when you have fewer other responsibilities, which is frequently but not always the case when you’re young.

关于努力工作，还有一个想法：在你职业生涯开始时这样做。努力工作像利息一样会复合增长，你做得越早，收益兑现的时间就越长。而且当你要承担的其他责任较少时，更容易做到努力工作——这通常是但并不总是在年轻时的情况。

8. Be bold

8. 大胆

I believe that it’s easier to do a hard startup than an easy startup. People want to be part of something exciting and feel that their work matters.

我相信，做一家困难的初创公司比做一家简单的初创公司更容易。人们渴望成为激动人心的事业的一部分，并感到自己的工作有意义。

If you are making progress on an important problem, you will have a constant tailwind of people wanting to help you. Let yourself grow more ambitious, and don’t be afraid to work on what you really want to work on.

如果你正在一个重要问题上取得进展，就会有一股持续的顺风——人们会想帮助你。让自己更有雄心，不要害怕去从事你真正想做的事。

If everyone else is starting meme companies, and you want to start a gene-editing company, then do that and don’t second guess it.

如果其他人都在创办模因公司，而你想创办一家基因编辑公司，那就去做，不要犹豫。

Follow your curiosity. Things that seem exciting to you will often seem exciting to other people too.

跟随你的好奇心。那些让你感到兴奋的事情，往往也会让其他人感到兴奋。

9. Be willful

9. 有意志力

A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time—most people don’t even try, and just accept that things are the way that they are.

一个大秘密是：你能够在令人惊讶的很大比例的情况下让世界按你的意愿改变——大多数人甚至不去尝试，只是接受了事物本来的样子。

People have an enormous capacity to make things happen. A combination of self-doubt, giving up too early, and not pushing hard enough prevents most people from ever reaching anywhere near their potential.

人们拥有把事情做成的巨大能力。自我怀疑、过早放弃和不够用力这三者的结合，使得大多数人从来没接近过自己的潜力。

Ask for what you want. You usually won’t get it, and often the rejection will be painful. But when this works, it works surprisingly well.

去要你想要的。你通常不会要到，而且被拒绝往往令人痛苦。但一旦奏效，效果出奇地好。

Almost always, the people who say “I am going to keep going until this works, and no matter what the challenges are I’m going to figure them out”, and mean it, go on to succeed. They are persistent long enough to give themselves a chance for luck to go their way.

那些人说“我会一直走下去，直到这件事做成，不管遇到什么挑战，我都会找到办法”，并且说到做到——他们几乎总是取得了成功。他们坚持了足够长的时间，给了自己一个让运气眷顾的机会。

Airbnb is my benchmark for this. There are so many stories they tell that I wouldn’t recommend trying to reproduce (keeping maxed-out credit cards in those nine-slot three-ring binder pages kids use for baseball cards, eating dollar store cereal for every meal, battle after battle with powerful entrenched interest, and on and on) but they managed to survive long enough for luck to go their way.

Airbnb 是我在这方面的标杆。他们流传的许多故事，我不会建议别人照着做（把刷爆的信用卡放在小孩子装棒球卡的那种九格活页夹里，每顿饭都吃一元店买来的麦片，一次又一次地与根深蒂固的强大利益集团交锋，等等等等），但他们撑了足够久，终于等来了运气的降临。

To be willful, you have to be optimistic—hopefully this is a personality trait that can be improved with practice. I have never met a very successful pessimistic person.

任性需要乐观——但愿这是一种可以通过练习改善的性格特质。我从未见过一个非常成功的悲观主义者。

10. Be hard to compete with

10. 让自己难以被竞争

Most people understand that companies are more valuable if they are difficult to compete with. This is important, and obviously true.

大多数人都明白，如果一家公司难以被竞争，它的价值就更高。这点很重要，而且显然是对的。

But this holds true for you as an individual as well. If what you do can be done by someone else, it eventually will be, and for less money.

但这对你作为个体同样成立。如果你做的事情能被别人做，那最终就会被别人做，而且花的钱更少。

The best way to become difficult to compete with is to build up leverage. For example, you can do it with personal relationships, by building a strong personal brand, or by getting good at the intersection of multiple different fields. There are many other strategies, but you have to figure out some way to do it.

变得难以被竞争的最佳方式是建立起杠杆。比如，你可以通过个人关系来做到，可以建立一个强大的个人品牌，也可以在多个不同领域的交叉点上变得出色。还有很多其他策略，但你必须找到某种方法来实现。

Most people do whatever most people they hang out with do. This mimetic behavior is usually a mistake—if you’re doing the same thing everyone else is doing, you will not be hard to compete with.

大多数人做他们周围大多数人做的事。这种模仿行为通常是个错误——如果你在做和其他人一样的事，你就不会难以被竞争。

11. Build a network

11. 建立人际网络

Great work requires teams. Developing a network of talented people to work with—sometimes closely, sometimes loosely—is an essential part of a great career. The size of the network of really talented people you know often becomes the limiter for what you can accomplish.

伟大的工作需要团队。建立一个由有才华的人组成的合作网络——有时紧密，有时松散——是伟大事业中必不可少的一部分。你认识的那些真正有才华的人所构成的网络规模，往往会成为你所能成就之事的瓶颈。

An effective way to build a network is to help people as much as you can. Doing this, over a long period of time, is what lead to most of my best career opportunities and three of my four best investments. I’m continually surprised how often something good happens to me because of something I did to help a founder ten years ago.

建立人际网络的一个有效方法是尽可能多地帮助别人。在很长一段时间里坚持这么做，为我带来了大部分最好的职业机会，也促成了我四笔最好投资中的三笔。我时常感到惊讶，因为我十年前帮助某位创始人做的某件事，竟会在后来为我带来如此多的好事。

One of the best ways to build a network is to develop a reputation for really taking care of the people who work with you. Be overly generous with sharing the upside; it will come back to you 10x. Also, learn how to evaluate what people are great at, and put them in those roles. (This is the most important thing I have learned about management, and I haven’t read much about it.) You want to have a reputation for pushing people hard enough that they accomplish more than they thought they could, but not so hard they burn out.

建立人际网络最好的方式之一，是树立一种真正照顾好与你共事之人的声誉。在分享上行收益时要过分慷慨，这会以十倍的程度回馈于你。还要学会评估人们擅长什么，并把他们放在那些角色上。（这是我在管理学上学到的最重要的事，而且我很少看到有人写这方面的内容。）你想要的名声是：你会把人逼得足够紧，让他们完成超出自己预想的成就，但又不会紧到让他们耗尽精力。

Everyone is better at some things than others. Define yourself by your strengths, not your weaknesses. Acknowledge your weaknesses and figure out how to work around them, but don’t let them stop you from doing what you want to do. “I can’t do X because I’m not good at Y” is something I hear from entrepreneurs surprisingly often, and almost always reflects a lack of creativity. The best way to make up for your weaknesses is to hire complementary team members instead of just hiring people who are good at the same things you are.

每个人在某些方面都比别人强。用你的优势来定义自己，而不是用你的弱点。承认你的弱点，并想办法绕开它们，但不要让它们阻止你去做你想做的事。让我意外的是，我经常听到创业者说"我做不了X，因为我不擅长Y"，这几乎总是反映出创造力的缺乏。弥补弱点最好的办法，是招募互补的团队成员，而不是只招那些和你在相同事情上擅长的人。

A particularly valuable part of building a network is to get good at discovering undiscovered talent. Quickly spotting intelligence, drive, and creativity gets much easier with practice. The easiest way to learn is just to meet a lot of people, and keep track of who goes on to impress you and who doesn’t. Remember that you are mostly looking for rate of improvement, and don’t overvalue experience or current accomplishment.

建立人际网络中特别有价值的一环，是学会发现未被发掘的人才。通过练习，快速识别智力、驱动和创造力会变得容易得多。最简单的学习方式就是见很多人，并追踪谁后来让你另眼相看，谁没有。记住，你主要寻找的是进步速度，不要高估经验或当下的成就。

I try to always ask myself when I meet someone new “is this person a force of nature?” It’s a pretty good heuristic for finding people who are likely to accomplish great things.

当我遇到一个新认识的人时，我总试着问自己："这个人是自然力量吗？" 这是一个相当好的启发式方法，用来发现那些可能成就大事的人。

A special case of developing a network is finding someone eminent to take a bet on you, ideally early in your career. The best way to do this, no surprise, is to go out of your way to be helpful. (And remember that you have to pay this forward at some point later!)

建立人际网络的一个特例是，找到一位杰出的人，让他在你身上押注，最好是在你职业生涯的早期。做到这一点的最佳方式，毫不意外，就是不计辛劳地帮上忙。（并记住你必须在将来某个时候把这份情义传递出去！）

Finally, remember to spend your time with positive people who support your ambitions.

最后，记住要和那些支持你抱负的积极的人在一起。

12. You get rich by owning things

12. 你靠拥有东西来致富

The biggest economic misunderstanding of my childhood was that people got rich from high salaries. Though there are some exceptions—entertainers for example —almost no one in the history of the Forbes list has gotten there with a salary.

我童年时代对经济最大的误解，是以为人们是靠高薪致富的。尽管有一些例外——比如娱乐明星——但在福布斯榜的历史上，几乎没有人是靠薪水上去的。

You get truly rich by owning things that increase rapidly in value.

你真正致富，靠的是拥有那些价值迅速增长的东西。

This can be a piece of a business, real estate, natural resource, intellectual property, or other similar things. But somehow or other, you need to own equity in something, instead of just selling your time. Time only scales linearly.

这可以是企业的一部分、房地产、自然资源、知识产权，或其他类似的东西。但不管怎样，你需要拥有某样东西的权益，而不只是出售你的时间。时间只能线性增长。

The best way to make things that increase rapidly in value is by making things people want at scale.

创造那些价值迅速增长的东西，最好的方法是以规模化的方式去创造人们想要的东西。

13. Be internally driven

13. 要由内在驱动

Most people are primarily externally driven; they do what they do because they want to impress other people. This is bad for many reasons, but here are two important ones.

大多数人主要是由外部驱动的；他们做事是因为想给别人留下深刻印象。这有很多不好的原因，但这里只说两个重要的。

First, you will work on consensus ideas and on consensus career tracks. You will care a lot—much more than you realize—if other people think you’re doing the right thing. This will probably prevent you from doing truly interesting work, and even if you do, someone else would have done it anyway.

第一，你会追求那些共识性的想法和共识性的职业路径。你会在意——远比你意识到的更在意——别人是否认为你做得对。这很可能会阻止你去做真正有趣的工作，即使你做了，别人本来也会做。

Second, you will usually get risk calculations wrong. You’ll be very focused on keeping up with other people and not falling behind in competitive games, even in the short term.

第二，你通常会对风险做出错误计算。你会非常专注于跟上别人，不在竞争性游戏中落后，哪怕只是短期。

Smart people seem to be especially at risk of such externally-driven behavior. Being aware of it helps, but only a little—you will likely have to work super-hard to not fall in the mimetic trap.

聪明人似乎尤其容易陷入这种外部驱动的行为模式。意识到这一点会有帮助，但帮助有限——你可能必须非常努力，才不会掉进模仿陷阱。

The most successful people I know are primarily internally driven; they do what they do to impress themselves and because they feel compelled to make something happen in the world. After you’ve made enough money to buy whatever you want and gotten enough social status that it stops being fun to get more, this is the only force I know of that will continue to drive you to higher levels of performance.

我认识的最成功的人主要是由内在驱动的；他们做事是为了打动自己，是因为他们感到一种强烈的冲动，要让某件事在这个世界上发生。在你赚到了足够买任何想要的东西的钱，获得了足够多的社会地位以至于获得更多不再有趣之后，这是我所知的唯一一种能继续推动你达到更高水平的力量。

This is why the question of a person’s motivation is so important. It’s the first thing I try to understand about someone. The right motivations are hard to define a set of rules for, but you know it when you see it.

这就是为什么一个人的动机问题如此重要。这是我在了解一个人时最先试图弄清楚的事。正确的动机很难用一套规则来定义，但当你看到它时，你就会知道。

Jessica Livingston and Paul Graham are my benchmarks for this. YC was widely mocked for the first few years, and almost no one thought it would be a big success when they first started. But they thought it would be great for the world if it worked, and they love helping people, and they were convinced their new model was better than the existing model.

杰西卡·利文斯顿和保罗·格雷厄姆是我衡量这件事的标杆。YC 在最初几年被广泛嘲笑，几乎没人觉得它起步时能取得巨大成功。但他们认为，如果这件事做成，会让世界变得更好；他们热爱帮助他人，并且坚信自己的新模式比现有模式更好。

Eventually, you will define your success by performing excellent work in areas that are important to you. The sooner you can start off in that direction, the further you will be able to go. It is hard to be wildly successful at anything you aren’t obsessed with.

最终，你会用来定义自己成功的标准，是在你认为重要的领域做出卓越的工作。你越早朝着那个方向开始，就能走得越远。在任何你并不痴迷的事情上，都很难取得巨大的成功。

Until then, if you aren't born lucky, you have to claw your way up for awhile before you can take big swings. If you are born in extreme poverty, then this is super difficult :(

在那之前，如果你不是天生幸运，就必须先奋力向上攀爬一阵子，才能获得放手一搏的机会。如果你出生在极端贫困中，那这真的非常艰难 :(

It is obviously an incredible shame and waste that opportunity is so unevenly distributed. But I've witnessed enough people be born with the deck stacked badly against them and go on to incredible success to know it's possible.

机会的分布如此不均，显然是一件令人难以置信的憾事和浪费。但我已经目睹了足够多的人，他们出生时手里的牌糟得不能再糟，却最终取得了惊人的成功，所以我知道这是可能的。

Thanks to Brian Armstrong, Greg Brockman, Dalton Caldwell, Diane von Furstenberg, Maddie Hall, Drew Houston, Vinod Khosla, Jessica Livingston, Jon Levy, Luke Miles (6 drafts!), Michael Moritz, Ali Rowghani, Michael Seibel, Peter Thiel, Tracy Young and Shivon Zilis for reviewing drafts of this, and thanks especially to Lachy Groom for help writing it.

感谢 Brian Armstrong、Greg Brockman、Dalton Caldwell、Diane von Furstenberg、Maddie Hall、Drew Houston、Vinod Khosla、Jessica Livingston、Jon Levy、Luke Miles（六稿！）、Michael Moritz、Ali Rowghani、Michael Seibel、Peter Thiel、Tracy Young 和 Shivon Zilis 审阅本文草稿，特别感谢 Lachy Groom 帮助撰写。