创业家是怎样炼成的

一


真正做过事和没有做过的人是不一样的。


这是本大部头了。


在这本书当中，你会看到32个企业家谈到他们如何创办自己的企业，一路遇到的艰辛等等的心路历程。


我们总是会认为初创企业开始的时候肯定会有一些神奇的东西发生，会有一些turning point，或者some kind of magic happens,那么，要知道这些，The best way to understand what happens is to ask them，作者就是做了这件事。



其实看这本书的人，我猜大部分人都是抱着像我一样的心态，想发掘中他们成功的秘诀，看看他们有什么成功所必备的共同的素质。可能不单单是这本书，是所有人物传记类，访谈类的书籍都是如此。我们总认为他们总是比较特别的一群人，他们的成功是有迹可循的。



二


在武侠小说里面，渴望成为武林高手的人，都希望得到一本盖世神功的武林秘籍。因为这秘籍一旦得手，只要依葫芦画瓢，就可大功告成。
　　
　　
但是世事有怎会如此简单，也永远不会有这样或者那样的武林秘诀



Founders at work不是这样的秘诀。



但是这本书给到你的是他们的第一手经验that everyone can learn from.



三


作者说到，令他惊讶的是，这班功成名就，看起来很牛的家伙，当初其实也是个毛头小子，对未来充满不确定，秒秒钟都担心公司就瓜掉，头发都白了几条，每晚睡不着觉，想出路等等



但是，what set them apart的，就是那些所谓的成功的素质，也就是我们最关心的，包括：


NO.1 Perseverence


坚持是最重要的。Founders live day to day with a sense of uncertainty, isolation, and sometimes lack of progress. Plus, startups, by their nature, are doing new things—and when you do new things, people often reject you。

每天提心吊胆，老给人拒绝，随时瓜掉，黎明前的黑暗啊，但是你不知道黑暗过后是不是黎明，这才是最痛苦的。一句话，坚持就是胜利。


NO.2 Flexibility


其实就是being adpatable.Starting a startup is a process of trial and error. What guided the founders through this process was their empathy for the users. They never lost sight of making things that people would want.


360的周鸿祎说过，创业就是一个试错的过程，关键在于，你是否能尽快把所有的错试完之后，你是不是已经瓜掉了？


NO.3 Change the world


他们不仅仅是为make money，这样子是做不长的。They had a lot of pride in craftsmanship.And they wanted to change the world


当然，他们也很喜欢赚钱。



最后作者总结道：


我们不应该把这些人看作遥不可及，其实大家都是普通人，现在你知道了他们是怎么糊里糊涂把自己的企业弄出来了，那么，之后，对于去创办你自己的，就没那么恐惧了？（it will be less daunting for them to envision starting something of their own.）



我最希望大家读完这本书后，会心想：“Hey, these guys were once just like me. Maybe I could do it too”




“他妈的，老子其实不比当年的他们差，要不，我也试试！”






End



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总结性，说理性的段话很少，
这书特别适合喜欢听故事的童鞋


readingnote：




1.风险的评估：

The really complicated part is figuring out the risk. The financial
industry people understood the risk, but they weren’t willing to do the sort of stuff we did, where they would basically say, “Bad guys over here. Let’s get all the bad guys out.


The point is, the startups didn’t realize there was this risk. We didn’t really realize there was this risk component either when we started. But we were just lucky enough



2.合伙人的寻找：Try to have a good cofounder. I think it’s all about people, and, if you are doing it completely alone, it’s really hard. It’s not impossible, in particular if you are a loner and introverted type, but it’s still really hard.


3商业计划书的重要性：

The general piece of advice, which is fairly mundane and oft repeated, is: make sure you write a business plan because it will crystallize your thoughts to communicate your ideas with somebody else. Make sure that once you have written your business plan, you have somebody read and critique it and ask you questions.


4. 成就牛B工程师的关键：

.What is the key to excellence for an engineer?

Wozniak: You have to be very diligent. You have to check every little detail.You have to be so careful that you haven’t left something out. You have to thinkharder and deeper than you normally would. It’s hard with today’s large, huge programs.


5.对于黑客创办公司的建议：

What advice would you give to hackers who are thinking about
starting a company or making something on their own?


First of all, try to have the highest of ethics and to be open and truthfulabout things, not hiding. If you have to hide something for company reasons,at least explain what you’re doing. Don’t mislead people. Know in your heart that you are a good person with good goals because that will carry over to your own self-confidence and your belief in your engineering abilities. Always seek excellence: make your product better than the average person would.Lack of tools: find a way to do it. If you say, “I have to have a tool,” and you are a prima donna—”I have to have a certain development system”—if you can’t figure out a way to test something and get it working, I don’t think you’re
the right type of person to be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs have to keep adjusting to . . . everything’s changing, everything’s dynamic, and you get this idea and you get another idea and this doesn’t work out and you have to replace it with something else. Time is always critical because somebody might beat you to the punch.



6.年轻的优势：

It’s better to be young because you can spend a lot more nights, very, very late. Because you have to get things done, and there’s almost no other way to get around that. When the times come, they are critical.


7.别无他法，坚持，坚持，再坚持

“If you could describe in one word
the key to success for your company, what would that word be?” Very few answered in one word. The last person to talk was Michael Dell, and he said one simple word: persistence

Things never work out right the first time. You’ve always
got to do it two or three times to get it right. And things always go wrong. So persistence is the key to success.


8.勇于面对不确定性

I think it’s really important that you have a realization of what’s important.You can’t stress over things that you can’t necessarily control. Even though we can control the success of the company to a certain extent, you have to be grateful for what you’ve got





2012.6.17

By Hammer