创业与商业paulgraham.com
怎样避免死亡
How Not to Die (2007)
2007 — 2019，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
Paul Graham 2007 年的经典短文，讨论创业公司最常见的死法：不是被竞争对手打败，而是创始人自己放弃。他指出创业公司很少被直接杀死，只要坚持活下去、保持与投资人等的联系，最终往往能成功。
为什么经久不衰：它把'坚持'这一朴素道理讲得透彻有力，多年来反复登上 HN 首页，对任何长期做项目的人都是一剂强心针。
HN 评论精选
失联是创业死亡最可靠的先兆；定期向投资人汇报本身就能救公司一命。
对我们来说，厄运将至的主要迹象就是联系不上你。如果几个月没听到某创业公司的消息，那是不好的信号；发邮件询问也不回复，那就是非常糟糕的信号。到目前为止，这个方法预测死亡的成功率是 100%。有人能说说这在今天是否仍是创业失败的好指标吗？从个人角度，我们四年来每月都发投资人更新，2017 年底差点烧光钱，那段时间的更新最难写，但正是逼着我向投资人阐述生存计划，才让公司活到盈利并坚持至今。
andygcook查看英文原文
For us the main indication of impending doom is when we don't hear from you. When we haven't heard from, or about, a startup for a couple months, that's a bad sign. If we send them an email asking what's up, and they don't reply, that's a really bad sign. So far that is a 100% accurate predictor of death. Can someone at YC comment on if this is still a good proxy for startup failure? From a personal perspective, we've sent out an investor update every single month [1] for our startup over the last four years. We also almost ran out of money at the end of 2017. The updates around that time were the hardest ones send out, but I can confirm they did help keep the company alive by forcing me to create and articulate a survival plan to our investors to get to profitability, which we pulled off [2] and are still going strong today. -- [1] The template we use for investor updates if you're curious: https://app.tettra.co/teams/tettra/pages/investor-update-template-rundown [2] The story about how we almost ran out of money but survived: https://tettra.co/blog/navigating-the-depths-of-nearly-failing-to-profitability-part-1-a-brewing-storm
反驳：不死只是必要条件，没有产品市场契合，苟活也不会致富。
我认为'只要不死就能致富'并不成立。我投资过一些（包括 YC 的）创业公司，完全照此执行，却始终没找到产品市场契合，本可以永远做下去，但投资人早已忘了他们。有的还在苟活，有的被收购，有的关门了。这其实是个伪二分法：不死的公司里只有一小部分能爆发，其余的你根本听不到。
diego查看英文原文
I don't think "If you can just avoid dying, you get rich" has proven true. I've invested in startups (including YC ones) that followed this to a tee. They never found product-market fit, they could have been going forever, investors forgot about them. Some are still going, some managed to get acquired, some closed shop. It's really a false dichotomy, only a small fraction of the companies that avoid dying manage to explode. You just don't hear about the rest.
时代背景变了：当人人都信奉'不死即胜'时，这条规律就不再成立。
这篇文章在写作的 2007 年是成立的：那时做创业的人少，很多好点子还没人做，移动浪潮即将爆发。就像当年'房价永远不会跌'的信念最终被泡沫破裂证伪一样，如果人人都相信只要开公司不放弃就能致富、哪怕点子很烂，这个信念本身也会被证伪。
maxlamb查看英文原文
I think this essay was valid for the year it was written (2007) where much fewer people were doing startups, lots of good ideas had not been executed yet, mobile was about to take off. Just like the belief in 2007 that "real estate prices can never go down" lead to the real estate bubble/crash that eventually invalidated that statement, if everyone starts beleiving if they start a company and never give up they will become rich even if their idea is bad, will end up invalidating that very belief.
多数创业公司不是死亡而是悄然淡出；外部反馈和截止日期能有效防止放弃。
有意思，我们常好奇创业公司的结局。虽然这话题不太吸引人——没人想读《创始人安息录》吧？创业公司大概像老兵，只是慢慢淡出。有人想要 memamp.com 吗？它一两周前刚过期。YC 结构的好处在于给创业公司反馈和截止日期，我认为光有这些就足以让公司活下去。
zach查看英文原文
Interesting to hear about this since many of us wonder what ends up happening. Kind of an unappealing subject -- nobody wants to read Founders at Rest, right? I guess startups are like old soldiers, they just fade away. Anyone want memamp.com? It went to unregistered status a week or two ago. But this was a good handling of the subject, and good for founders to hear. What I think is great about YC's structure is that it gives startups feedback and deadlines, and I agree that just getting those is enough to keep startups going. Someone should start a startup that just calls people once a week and talks with them about what they got done! It would work even better if the caller was of higher status, but it would work well enough with friends. But seriously, for startups this would work great. Get together with a group and make a weekly appointment for each person to call another each week and chat about what they're doing, preferably with a little demo. I'm sure one of you is already thinking of how to make this a Facebook app, but I think a personal phone call would work best. P.S.: "Francisco."
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