（接上半部分）
（譯者按：此文的翻譯難度比我想象的大，所以拖了好幾天。加之最近我的狀態不好，因此譯文質量可能不太高。如果譯文中有費解之處，請自行參照英語原文。）
4. Riskier Strategies are Possible
4. 必須使用風險更大的策略
Risk is always proportionate to reward. The way to get really big returns is to do things that seem crazy, like starting a new search engine in 1998, or turning down a billion dollar acquisition offer.
風險總是與回報成正比。得到大筆回報的方法，就是去做那些看上去很瘋狂的事情，比如1998年的時候開辦一家新的搜尋引擎，或者拒絕一筆10億美元的併購報價。
This has traditionally been a problem in venture funding. Founders and investors have different attitudes to risk. Knowing that risk is on average proportionate to reward, investors like risky strategies, while founders, who don't have a big enough sample size to care what's true on average, tend to be more conservative.
在風險投資業，這是一個傳統的矛盾。創業者和風險投資家對待風險有不同的態度。因為知道風險大回報大，所以投資家喜歡風險高的策略，而創業者不像投資家有那麼多投資，從而可以得到平均回報，創業者通常會更保守。
If startups are easy to start, this conflict goes away, because founders can start them younger, when it's rational to take more risk, and can start more startups total in their careers. When founders can do lots of startups, they can start to look at the world in the same portfolio-optimizing way as investors. And that means the overall amount of wealth created can be greater, because strategies can be riskier.
如果創業變得很容易，這個矛盾就會消失。因為創業者會在更年輕的時候，就開始創業，所以他可以承受更大的風險，在他們的一生中可以創辦更多的企業。當創業者能夠創辦多個企業，他們就會像看待證券組合那樣，看待整個世界，他們就會向投資家那樣優化他們的行為方式。這意味被創造出來的總財富將變得更多，因為創業策略變得風險更大了。
5. Younger, Nerdier Founders
5. 更年輕、更技術化的創業者
If startups become a cheap commodity, more people will be able to have them, just as more people could have computers once microprocessors made them cheap. And in particular, younger and more technical founders will be able to start startups than could before.
如果創業的成本降低，那麼更多的人將會去創業。這就好像晶片成本降低以後，更多的人會購買計算機一樣。尤其是，更年輕和更技術化的創業者，將能夠更早地開始創業。
Back when it cost a lot to start a startup, you had to convince investors to let you do it. And that required very different skills from actually doing the startup. If investors were perfect judges, the two would require exactly the same skills. But unfortunately most investors are terrible judges. I know because I see behind the scenes what an enormous amount of work it takes to raise money, and the amount of selling required in an industry is always inversely proportional to the judgement of the buyers.
過去，創業成本很高，你不得不說服投資家資助你創業。這和創業本身要求的技巧大不相同。如果投資家很懂行，那麼創業和說服投資家就是一回事。但是很不幸，大多數投資家不懂行。我知道這一點，因為我一直在幕後，我很清楚融資所要求的大量準備工作，投資家越不懂行，你的準備工作就越多。
Fortunately, if startups get cheaper to start, there's another way to convince investors. Instead of going to venture capitalists with a business plan and trying to convince them to fund it, you can get a product launched on a few tens of thousands of dollars of seed money from us or your uncle, and approach them with a working company instead of a plan for one. Then instead of having to seem smooth and confident, you can just point them to Alexa.
幸運的是，如果創業成本降低，就有另外一種方法說服投資者。你可以不帶著商業報告書就去見風險資本家，你也不用說服他出錢，你只需用從我們這裡得到的或從你叔叔那裡得到的幾萬美金作為啟動資金，先做出一個樣品。你給投資家展示的是一個正在運作的公司，而不是一份報告書。你也不用裝得很有信心，你只需給他看Alexa上的網站排名就行了。
This way of convincing investors is better suited to hackers, who often went into technology in part because they felt uncomfortable with the amount of fakeness required in other fields.
這種說服投資家的方式，更適合於黑客們。因為他們喜歡技術的部分原因就是，他們對其他領域的虛情假意感到不自在。
6. Startup Hubs Will Persist
6. 創業園區將繼續存在
It might seem that if startups get cheap to start, it will mean the end of startup hubs like Silicon Valley. If all you need to start a startup is rent money, you should be able to do it anywhere.
如果創業成本降低，表面上，矽谷那樣的創業園區似乎沒有存在的必要了。要是創業的啟動成本只是一點租金，那麼你應該在任何地方都可以創業。
This is kind of true and kind of false. It's true that you can now start a startup anywhere. But you have to do more with a startup than just start it. You have to make it succeed. And that is more likely to happen in a startup hub.
這種想法不完全正確。你確實能夠在任何地方創業。但是，你要做的並不僅僅是開始幹活。你必須讓你的專案獲得成功。在創業園區，你更可能獲得成功。
I've thought a lot about this question, and it seems to me the increasing cheapness of web startups will if anything increase the importance of startup hubs. The value of startup hubs, like centers for any kind of business, lies in something very old-fashioned: face to face meetings. No technology in the immediate future will replace walking down University Ave and running into a friend who tells you how to fix a bug that's been bothering you all weekend, or visiting a friend's startup down the street and ending up in a conversation with one of their investors.
我曾經反覆思考這個問題。我似乎覺得，創業成本的降低反而使得創業園區變得更重要了。創業園區就像其他任何產業的中心一樣，它的核心作用非常老式：就是可以面對面的聚會。你在馬路上散步，碰巧遇到了一個朋友，他告訴你如何解決困擾你整個週末的一個程式問題，或者你走到馬路對面朋友的公司做客，與他們的一個投資者隨便聊聊，這些事情在近期是沒有任何技術可以取代的。
The question of whether to be in a startup hub is like the question of whether to take outside investment. The question is not whether you need it, but whether it brings any advantage at all. Because anything that brings an advantage will give your competitors an advantage over you if they do it and you don't. So if you hear someone saying "we don't need to be in Silicon Valley," that use of the word "need" is a sign they're not even thinking about the question right.
是否要加入創業園區，這個問題就好像是否要接受投資一樣。問題的關鍵不是你需不需要它，而是它是否有用。如果一樣東西是有用的，你的競爭對手採用了它，而你沒有，這就意味著你的競爭對手將比你有優勢。所以，當你聽到有人說："我們不用待在矽谷"，"用"這個詞就是一個訊號，表明他們還沒有正確地思考這個問題。
And while startup hubs are as powerful magnets as ever, the increasing cheapness of starting a startup means the particles they're attracting are getting lighter. A startup now can be just a pair of 22 year old guys. A company like that can move much more easily than one with 10 people, half of whom have kids.
創業園區還是像以前一樣是一塊強有力的磁石，隨著創業成本的降低，它所能吸引的粒子變得越來越輕了。現在一個22歲的年輕人就能創業。這樣的小公司行動起來，比那些10個人、且半數員工有孩子的公司，快捷多了。
We know because we make people move for Y Combinator, and it doesn't seem to be a problem. The advantage of being able to work together face to face for three months outweighs the inconvenience of moving. Ask anyone who's done it.
我們知道這一點，因為我們讓創業者搬入我們自己的創業基地，所以我們有親身體驗，創業園區對我們來說，似乎沒有什麼壞處。能夠面對面一起工作三個月，有很多好處，這超過了搬家帶來的不方便。你隨便問一個參與者就知道了。
The mobility of seed-stage startups means that seed funding is a national business. One of the most common emails we get is from people asking if we can help them set up a local clone of Y Combinator. But this just wouldn't work. Seed funding isn't regional, just as big research universities aren't.
種子期的初創公司有很高的流動性，這意味著為他們提供啟動資金，是一項全國性的業務。我們收到的一種最常見的Email，就是人們詢問我們是否幫助他們在當地建立一個類似的創業園區。但是，這是做不到的。種子期的融資不可能是地域性的，這就像大型研究性大學不可能是地域性的一樣。
Is seed funding not merely national, but international? Interesting question. There are signs it may be. We've had an ongoing stream of founders from outside the US, and they tend to do particularly well, because they're all people who were so determined to succeed that they were willing to move to another country to do it.
如果種子期融資是全國性的，那麼它會不會是全球性的呢？這是有趣的問題。有跡象表明，它可能是全球性的。我們一直不斷地有來自美國之外的創業者，他們往往表現得非常好，因為他們全部都是那種下定決心，一定要成功的人，所以他們願意到另外一個國家來創業。
The more mobile startups get, the harder it would be to start new silicon valleys. If startups are mobile, the best local talent will go to the real Silicon Valley, and all they'll get at the local one will be the people who didn't have the energy to move.
初創公司的流動性越高，再建一個新的矽谷的可能性就越低。如果初創公司可以自由流動，那麼最好的一些人才就會前往矽谷。因為如果這些公司不搬家，那麼它們在當地只能僱到那些沒有動力前往矽谷的人。
This is not a nationalistic idea, incidentally. It's cities that compete, not countries. Atlanta is just as hosed as Munich.
順便說一句，這個問題與國家無關。它只是城市與城市之間的競爭，而不是國家與國家的競爭。美國的亞特蘭大和德國的慕尼黑一樣讓人精疲力竭。
7. Better Judgement Needed
7. 需要更好的判斷力
If the number of startups increases dramatically, then the people whose job is to judge them are going to have to get better at it. I'm thinking particularly of investors and acquirers. We now get on the order of 1000 applications a year. What are we going to do if we get 10,000?
如果初創企業的數目急劇增長，那麼那些負責判斷它們的人，不得不改進自己的工作。我特別對投資家和收購家進行了思考。我們現在每年收到的申請在1000份左右。那麼當這個數目變成10000的時候，我們應該怎麼做？
That's actually an alarming idea. But we'll figure out some kind of answer. We'll have to. It will probably involve writing some software, but fortunately we can do that.
這實際上是一個令人擔憂的問題。但是我們將會找到某種形式的答案。我們必須找到答案。這可能會涉及編寫一些軟體，很幸運的是，我們能夠做到這一點。
Acquirers will also have to get better at picking winners. They generally do better than investors, because they pick later, when there's more performance to measure. But even at the most advanced acquirers, identifying companies to buy is extremely ad hoc, and completing the acquisition often involves a great deal of unneccessary friction.
收購家也必須改進自己挑選贏家的本領。他們通常比投資家做得好，因為他們根據公司後期的表現進行挑選，那時有更多的證據可以衡量表現。但是即使是那些最高階的收購家，找到收購目標也是極端沒有規律，完成收購通常包括大量不必要的摩擦。
I think acquirers may eventually have chief acquisition officers who will both identify good acquisitions and make the deals happen. At the moment those two functions are separate. Promising new startups are often discovered by developers. If someone powerful enough wants to buy them, the deal is handed over to corp dev guys to negotiate. It would be better if both were combined in one group, headed by someone with a technical background and some vision of what they wanted to accomplish. Maybe in the future big companies will have both a VP of Engineering responsible for technology developed in-house, and a CAO responsible for bringing technology in from outside.
我想大公司會逐漸設定首席收購官（chief acquisition officers）這個職務，由他們負責挑選收購方和發生交易。目前，這兩個只能基本上是分開的。通常，有希望的初創企業是由程式設計師發現的。如果一家大公司決定要收購這些企業，那麼交易會移交給公司的管理層去談判。這兩個職能由一個團隊來完成，效果會好得多。團隊的領導人應該具有技術背景，瞭解自己想要完成的目標。也許在未來，大公司會同時有兩個高階管理職員，一個是負責內部技術發展的副總裁，另一個是負責將外部技術帶入公司的首席收購官。
At the moment, there is no one within big companies who gets in trouble when they buy a startup for $200 million that they could have bought earlier for $20 million. There should start to be someone who gets in trouble for that.
目前，在那些大公司裡，還沒有人為一些決策失誤負責。當他們可以在2000萬美元收購的時候，他們沒有同意收購，反而等到2億美元時才去收購。從現在起，應該有人對這樣的決策失誤負責。
8. College Will Change
8. 大學將發生變化
If the best hackers start their own companies after college instead of getting jobs, that will change what happens in college. Most of these changes will be for the better. I think the experience of college is warped in a bad way by the expectation that afterward you'll be judged by potential employers.
如果最好的技術人才在上完大學後，沒去找工作，而是去創業，那麼大學也將因此發生變化。大多數變化是好的。我想，大學教育被一種假設大大地扭曲了，這種假設是畢業後你的能力將由未來的僱主判斷。
One change will be in the meaning of "after college," which will switch from when one graduates from college to when one leaves it. If you're starting your own company, why do you need a degree? We don't encourage people to start startups during college, but the best founders are certainly capable of it. Some of the most successful companies we've funded were started by undergrads.
一個變化是"離校"的涵義，這個詞將從指"畢業"，改為指"離開學校"。如果你正在創業，學位有什麼用呢？我們不鼓勵人們在校期間創業，但是最好的創業者肯定在校期間就有這個能力了。我們資助過的一些最成功的公司，是由肆業生創辦的。
I grew up in a time where college degrees seemed really important, so I'm alarmed to be saying things like this, but there's nothing magical about a degree. There's nothing that magically changes after you take that last exam. The importance of degrees is due solely to the administrative needs of large organizations. These can certainly affect your life--it's hard to get into grad school, or to get a work visa in the US, without an undergraduate degree--but tests like this will matter less and less.
在我的成長年代，大學學位看上去真的很重要，所以我經常會潛意識地說出類似的觀點，但是學位並沒有魔力。學位的重要性僅僅在於大公司行政管理上的需要。它們肯定能夠影響你的人生----沒有本科學位，你很難申請研究生院入學，或者得到一張美國的工作簽證----但是這種衡量標準的重要性將變得越來越小。
As well as mattering less whether students get degrees, it will also start to matter less where they go to college. In a startup you're judged by users, and they don't care where you went to college. So in a world of startups, elite universities will play less of a role as gatekeepers. In the US it's a national scandal how easily children of rich parents game college admissions. But the way this problem ultimately gets solved may not be by reforming the universities but by going around them. We in the technology world are used to that sort of solution: you don't beat the incumbents; you redefine the problem to make them irrelevant.
除了學位的重要性變得越來越低，你上的是哪一所大學也將變得越來越不重要。創業時，判決你的是你的客戶，他們不關心你在哪裡上大學。所以在一個初創企業的世界裡，名牌大學將越來越不再被視為是一個門檻。在美國，富人子弟可以輕易進入名牌大學，這是國家的醜聞。最終解決這個問題的方法，也許不是改革大學的入學制度，而是名牌大學將會變得不重要。我們這些技術領域的人，都很習慣這種型別的解決方法：不是要求負責者改變，而是重新定義問題，使得跟他們脫離關係。
The greatest value of universities is not the brand name or perhaps even the classes so much as the people you meet. If it becomes common to start a startup after college, students may start trying to maximize this. Instead of focusing on getting internships at companies they want to work for, they may start to focus on working with other students they want as cofounders.
大學最大的價值，並不是學校的名字，或者你所在的系所，而是你遇到的那些人。如果離校創業很普遍，那麼學生可能應該儘早適應這一點，不再只關心到那些他們想工作的公司裡找到實習崗位，而是關心到那些其他同學創辦的公司中工作，併成為共同創辦者。
What students do in their classes will change too. Instead of trying to get good grades to impress future employers, students will try to learn things. We're talking about some pretty dramatic changes here.
學生在班級裡的行為也可能發生變化。學生將不再關心獲得高分，來打動未來的僱主，而將開始學習一些真正有用的東西。我們在這裡談論的是一些真正巨大的變化。
9. Lots of Competitors
9. 許許多多的競爭者
If it gets easier to start a startup, it's easier for competitors too. That doesn't erase the advantage of increased cheapness, however. You're not all playing a zero-sum game. There's not some fixed number of startups that can succeed, regardless of how many are started.
如果創業變得很容易，那麼你也很容易遇到競爭。但是，這改變不了成本下降帶來的趨勢。你參與的並非一個零和遊戲。成功者的數量並沒有上限，不管有多少人創業。
In fact, I don't think there's any limit to the number of startups that could succeed. Startups succeed by creating wealth, which is the satisfaction of people's desires. And people's desires seem to be effectively infinite, at least in the short term.
事實上，我認為成功者的數量是沒有任何極限的。初創公司要取得成功，就必須為社會創造出財富，來滿足人們的慾望。而人類的慾望實際上是無限的，至少在短期中看來如此。
What the increasing number of startups does mean is that you won't be able to sit on a good idea. Other people have your idea, and they'll be increasingly likely to do something about it.
創業者數量的增加，意味著你不能抱著一個想法不動。其他人也會想到你的創意的，並將其投入實踐的可能性會變得越來越大。
10. Faster Advances
10. 更快地前進
There's a good side to that, at least for consumers of technology. If people get right to work implementing ideas instead of sitting on them, technology will evolve faster.
上面這些變化會帶來一個好的結果，至少對技術的消費者來說是這樣的。如果人們正確地實踐了創意，而不是僅僅坐著描述創意，那麼技術就會更快地進步。
Some kinds of innovations happen a company at a time, like the punctuated equilibrium model of evolution. There are some kinds of ideas that are so threatening that it's hard for big companies even to think of them. Look at what a hard time Microsoft is having discovering web apps. They're like a character in a movie that everyone in the audience can see something bad is about to happen to, but who can't see it himself. The big innovations that happen a company at a time will obviously happen faster if the rate of new companies increases.
某些革新只是一段時間內在一個公司的內部產生，就好像進化論中的"間斷平衡說"（punctuated equilibrium，指短時期內驟變，然後在長時期內保持穩定）一樣。有些創意太具有顛覆性，所以大公司根本連想都不會想到。比如一旦網路應用程式變得流行，微軟公司的日子會變得非常難過。這種情形就像所有觀眾都意識到，電影中的某個角色將會遭到不幸的事件，但是人物本身卻對此一無所知。如果新公司的數量不斷增加，那麼那些發生在一個公司內部的革新，其出現的速率將明顯變得更快。
But in fact there will be a double speed increase. People won't wait as long to act on new ideas, but also those ideas will increasingly be developed within startups rather than big companies. Which means technology will evolve faster per company as well.
但是，事實上，這裡有一個雙重的速度增加。一方面，人們不會再坐等，會更快地將創意投入實踐，另一方面，初創公司比大公司有更多的創意。這意味著，不管是大公司還是初創公司，技術的發展都變得更快了。
Big companies are just not a good place to make things happen fast. I talked recently to a founder whose startup had been acquired by a big company. He was a precise sort of guy, so he'd measured their productivity before and after. He counted lines of code, which can be a dubious measure, but in this case was meaningful because it was the same group of programmers. He found they were one thirteenth as productive after the acquisition.
大公司真的不是一個能夠快速做事的地方。我最近遇到一個創業者，他的初創公司剛剛被一家大公司收購。他是一個數字感覺很強的人，所以他衡量了在收購前後公司的效率。他計算了程式碼的行數，這個指標不能算很準確，但是在這個案例中是有意義的，因為都是同一組程式設計師寫出來的程式碼。他發現，收購後寫出的程式碼只是收購前的十三分之一。
The company that bought them was not a particularly stupid one. I think what he was measuring was mostly the cost of bigness. I experienced this myself, and his number sounds about right. There's something about big companies that just sucks the energy out of you.
那家收購他們的公司並不是一家特別差的大公司。我想他衡量出來的，主要就是大型化的成本。我自己也有類似的經歷，他的數字聽上去和我的感覺差不多。大公司裡有一些東西，會讓你根本沒辦法發揮自己的能量。
Imagine what all that energy could do if it were put to use. There is an enormous latent capacity in the world's hackers that most people don't even realize is there. That's the main reason we do Y Combinator: to let loose all this energy by making it easy for hackers to start their own startups.
想象一下，如果人們的能量能夠全部發揮出來，那會是怎樣的情景。全世界所有技術人才的極大一部分潛在能量，沒有得到發揮，大多數人甚至還沒有意識到這一點。這就是我們創辦自己的風險投資公司的主要原因：解開束縛能量的重重限制，使技術人才能夠更容易地去創業。
A Series of Tubes
一系列的管道
The process of starting startups is currently like the plumbing in an old house. The pipes are narrow and twisty, and there are leaks in every joint. In the future this mess will gradually be replaced by a single, huge pipe. The water will still have to get from A to B, but it will get there faster and without the risk of spraying out through some random leak.
現在的創業有點像在老房子裡修水管。這些水管狹窄彎曲，每個結點上都有漏洞。在未來，這堆亂七八糟的水管將逐漸被一整根暫新的水管取代。水流依然將從A點流到B點，但是速度將變得更快，並且也不會在每個漏洞上噴出水花。
This will change a lot of things for the better. In a big, straight pipe like that, the force of being measured by one's performance will propagate back through the whole system. Performance is always the ultimate test, but there are so many kinks in the plumbing now that most people are insulated from it most of the time. So you end up with a world in which high school students think they need to get good grades to get into elite colleges, and college students think they need to get good grades to impress employers, within which the employees waste most of their time in political battles, and from which consumers have to buy anyway because there are so few choices. Imagine if that sequence became a big, straight pipe. Then the effects of being measured by performance would propagate all the way back to high school, flushing out all the arbitrary stuff people are measured by now. That is the future of web startups.
這將改善許多事情。如果有一根又大又直的管子，那麼就很容易評估一個人的表現，這種力量將會反饋影響到整個系統。表現永遠是最終的衡量標準，但是在現在的這種老式水管系統中，衡量人們的標準大多數時候都與表現無關。所以我們現在的世界就是這樣的一個世界，高中生們認為必須得到好的成績，然後進名牌大學；大學生們認為必須得到好的成績，然後打動僱主；僱員們在公司裡的大部分時間，都浪費在辦公室政治中；消費者們不得不購買他們能夠得到的商品，因為很少有其他選擇。想象一下，如果世界變了，變成一整根的大水管。可以根據人們做出的成績，來判斷他的價值，這種效果就會一路反饋，直到高中，一路上將現在那些老一套不合理的評價人們的標準都沖刷得乾乾淨淨。這就是未來的網際網路創業。
（完）