初创公司为什么要我_我将第一家初创公司烧毁了。这是一些难得的教训。-CSDN博客

初创公司为什么要我

by Omer Goldberg

由Omer Goldberg

我将第一家初创公司烧毁了。这是一些难得的教训。 (I burned my first startup to the ground. Here are some hard lessons learned.)

It’s been nearly 12 months since my first startup went up in flames. I’m going to tell you how it all happened, in hopes that my mistakes — and the insights I learned from them — can help you in your own startup adventures.

自从我的第一家初创公司起火以来已经过去了将近12个月。我将告诉您这一切是如何发生的，希望我的错误以及从错误中吸取的见解可以帮助您进行自己的创业冒险。

Before you read this gasoline-drenched story, know that I’m doing fine now. I’ve launched a new startup called Mindflow.ai, which just graduated from Y Combinator’s Startup School. You can check out Mindflow.ai on GitHub and sign up for our Alpha release.

在您阅读这个充满汽油的故事之前，请知道我现在很好。我创办了一家名为Mindflow.ai的新创业公司，该公司刚从Y Combinator的创业学校毕业。您可以在GitHub上查看Mindflow.ai并注册我们的Alpha版本。

So without further ado, here are some hard lessons learned.

因此，事不宜迟，这里有一些艰难的教训。

“Make something people want.” —Paul Graham

“做出人们想要的东西 。” 保罗·格雷厄姆

Before setting out to build my first company, I was a frequent app builder and hackathon attendee. I loved the rush of “willing” an idea into existence with software. The more I built, the more I learned. After building several projects, I began to feel that with enough determination, patience and perseverance nearly anything was possible.

在着手建立我的第一家公司之前，我是一名频繁的应用程序构建者和hackathon与会者。我喜欢软件将“一个想法”“存为”的愿望。我建造的越多，我学到的越多。建立了多个项目之后，我开始感到，只要有足够的决心，耐心和毅力，几乎一切皆有可能。

But working on side projects, and building prototypes was no longer enough! I longed to build something with real utility. I wanted to experience creating software that actually solved a problem for people, preferably on a large scale. I wanted to build a company.

但是从事辅助项目和构建原型已经远远不够！我渴望用实际的工具来构建东西。我想体验创建实际上可以解决人们问题的软件，最好是大规模的软件。 我想建立一个公司 。

As a university student from Tel Aviv studying at the Technion (Haifa, over 100km away), the problem I wanted to tackle was clear. Transportation! Commuting was a pain point, and finding ways to and from campus was always a logistic issue.

来自特拉维夫的一名大学生在Technion(海法，相距100多公里)学习，我想解决的问题很明显。运输！通勤是一个痛点，寻找往返校园的方式始终是一个后勤问题。

乔·莱德 (JoiRyde)

Public transportation in Israel is infamous for being subpar and sparsely available on weekends. To combat this, students open Facebook groups for carpooling. Basically, a student will post his starting and final destinations and time of departure. Students wanting to join would reach out via Facebook, WhatsApp or SMS, coordinate a pickup and chip in on gas expenses.

以色列的公共交通周末臭名昭著，人烟稀少。为了解决这个问题，学生们打开Facebook团体拼车。基本上，学生将发布他的出发目的地和出发目的地以及出发时间。想要加入的学生将通过Facebook，WhatsApp或SMS进行联系，协调接送和筹集汽油费用。

These Facebook groups can get quite large, and often times coordinating a ride is a headache. Searching for a relevant post, remembering to bring exact cash, and talking to several drivers before finalizing ride details were just a few of the required steps for coordinating a ride.

这些Facebook团体可能会变得非常庞大，而且经常不时协调出行。搜索相关职位，记住携带确切的现金，在最终确定乘车详细信息之前与几位司机交谈只是协调乘车所需的一些步骤。

Even with the added effort of coordinating a ride, ride sharing was still a common solution. Ultimately, it was a smoother experience than public transportation.

即使在协调出行方面付出了更多努力，但出行共享仍然是常见的解决方案。最终，这是比公共交通更顺畅的体验。

I wanted to make the ride sharing experience easier and more enjoyable by building a mobile app that provided and end to end solution for the ride search, coordination and payment.

我想通过构建一个移动应用程序，使乘车搜索，协调和付款的端到端解决方案变得更轻松，更有趣。

招募团队 (Recruiting a Team)

Naturally, I turned to my hackathon buddies. After several weeks of advanced persuasion tactics ;) I convinced them that the cause was worthy.

自然，我转向了我的黑客马拉松伙伴。经过数周的高级说服策略；)我说服了他们，原因是值得的。

We were a team of 3. I would act as CEO, and my friends were CTO and CPO (Chief Product Officer).

我们是3人一组。我将担任CEO，我的朋友是CTO和CPO(首席产品官)。

We were all developers who had never built a real product. Everyone left their jobs, and those of us who were students (me!) put school on hold. We sorta looked like this:

我们都是从未开发过真正产品的开发人员。每个人都离开了工作，而我们这些学生(我！)则搁置了学校。我们看起来像这样：

早期的错误 (Early Mistakes)

As a first time founder, I didn’t really believe this would work. Although I wanted it to, in my mind, the best case scenario was that people on campus would use our app. I mostly expected to learn a ton along the way, and gain real world experience with my friends. This alone justified putting school on hold for me.

作为第一次创始人， 我真的不相信这会行得通 。尽管我希望这样做，最好的情况是，校园里的人会使用我们的应用程序。我最希望在此过程中学习大量知识，并与朋友们一起获得真实的经验。仅此一项就为我搁置了学校。

Because of this mindset, a lot of decisions that should have been weighed heavily were not.

由于这种心态，许多本应权衡沉重的决定却没有。

Although we each had roles on paper (CEO, CTO, CPO) we didn’t respect them. Every decision, be it API design, logo, or login flow was a fierce debate.

尽管我们每个人都有书面角色(CEO，CTO，CPO)，但我们并不尊重他们。 API设计，徽标或登录流程的每一个决定都是激烈的辩论。

Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This can even be expected in a group of passionate people. Everyone has a vision for “the best” product, and it’s natural that these visions don’t always align perfectly. But these debates need to be solved quickly and not hinder progress.

现在，这不一定是一件坏事。在一群热情的人们中甚至可以预料到这一点。每个人都有对“最佳”产品的愿景，很自然，这些愿景并非总是完美地契合。但是这些辩论需要Swift解决，而不是阻碍进展。

A startup is not a democracy. When you have a team everyone should have a set of responsibilities, and founders need to trust each other. For a given decision it is okay to voice your opinion. But at at the end of the day, the responsibility and authority should fall on one persons shoulders.

创业不是民主。 当您拥有团队时，每个人都应该承担一系列责任， 创始人需要彼此信任 。对于给定的决定，可以发表您的意见。但归根结底，责任和权威应该落在一个人的肩膀上。

最有价值球员 (MVP)

We all had heard of the importance of building an MVP to test your product out. Never go full development mode before validating your idea!

我们都听说过建立MVP以测试您的产品的重要性。 在验证您的想法之前，切勿进入完整的开发模式！

Although we had good intentions, our “MVP” was a full fledged cross platform mobile app. The amount of features was ridiculous.

尽管我们的意图很好，但我们的“ MVP”是一款成熟的跨平台移动应用程序。功能的数量是荒谬的。

Come to think of it, I can name several companies who have a smaller set of functionality than what we were trying to build out. This was bad for several reasons:

想到这一点，我可以说几家公司的功能集比我们尝试建立的公司少。这很糟糕，原因如下：

Our deadline was frustratingly far. We embarked on nearly 6 months of hardcore development, before having our MVP working. Interestingly enough, this deadline would never be reached…
我们的截止日期实在令人沮丧。在使MVP工作之前，我们进行了将近6个月的核心开发。有趣的是，这个截止日期将永远不会到来……
We coded alone, without real user feedback.
我们单独编码，没有实际的用户反馈。
We polished the app, trying to perfect it before letting anyone see what we were working on. What a waste of time!
我们抛光应用程序，试图让任何人看到我们在工作之前去完善它。真是浪费时间！

Here are some screenshots of what we were doing. Looking back, this does not look close to what an MVP should look like.

这是我们正在做的一些屏幕截图。往回看，这与MVP的外观并不相似。

资金和加速器 (Funding and Accelerators)

Damn, Facebook’s newsfeed algorithms are good. One bright morning while scrolling through my feed during a coding break, something strange pops up. Capsula transportation and a clean energy accelerator ad. They were offering 100k grants for entrepreneurs building smart transportation / clean energy ventures.

该死的，Facebook的新闻提要算法很好。一个灿烂的早晨，在编码中断期间滚动浏览我的Feed时，出现了一些奇怪的现象。胶囊运输和清洁能源促进剂广告。他们为建立智能交通/清洁能源企业的企业家提供了10万美元的赠款。

We debated whether or not we should apply… After all, we were just students… 2 days and 3 YOLOs later we submitted an application form.

我们辩论了是否应该申请……毕竟，我们只是学生……两天零三天的YOLO之后，我们提交了一份申请表。

Lo and behold, we were called in for an interview!

瞧，我们被邀请接受采访！

The accelerator interview cycle was an intense process. We prepared one pagers, executive summaries, pitch decks and did market research. Just a reminder, we were 3 hackers with no business development experience at all. This process was stressful and highlighted stark contrasts in approaches between team members.

加速器面试周期是一个紧张的过程。我们准备了一个传呼机，执行摘要，宣传单页并进行了市场调查。提醒一下，我们是3位没有任何业务开发经验的黑客。这个过程压力很大，并且突出了团队成员之间在方法上的鲜明对比。

This process ate into my development time, but it was extremely important. The research and preparation made me feel more confident about what we were building. At this point all of us started believing that this could become a real company.

这个过程占用了我的开发时间，但这非常重要。研究和准备使我对我们正在建造的东西更有信心。 至此，我们所有人开始相信这可以成为一家真正的公司。

Fast forward several weeks and we were selected for the grant! We were ecstatic. But with the accelerator selection, and the promise of funds being injected into the company, things got worse.

快进几周，我们被选为资助人！我们欣喜若狂。但是随着加速器的选择以及向公司注入资金的承诺，情况变得更加糟糕。

Our communication as a team deteriorated, and issues we had were magnified. As teammates, we overstepped our boundaries and everybody was trying to be involved in every decision being made. This was clear to all of us. But instead of handling the issues, we chose to suppress them. We didn’t want a potentially ugly conversation to mess up our mojo, or make us appear divided in front of investors. Man, that was a mistake.

我们作为一个团队的交流恶化了，我们遇到的问题也被放大了。作为队友，我们超越了自己的界限，每个人都试图参与做出的每个决定。这对我们所有人都是清楚的。但是，我们没有处理这些问题，而是选择了抑制它们。我们不想让丑陋的谈话弄乱我们的情绪，也不想让我们在投资者面前显得分裂。 伙计，那是一个错误。

事情分崩离析 (Things Fall Apart)

With the 100k grant, we now had runway to push our MVP. The accelerator provided legal counsel and one of the first things we did was register JoiRyde as a company. This involves allocating stock shares. What this did not involve was signing a vesting agreement of any sort. I emphasize signing, because we had one written up, but our new lawyers wanted to modify it, and told us not sign it yet.

有了10万美元的赠款，我们现在有了推动MVP的跑道。加速器提供了法律顾问，我们要做的第一件事就是将JoiRyde注册为公司。这涉及分配股票。这不涉及签署任何归属协议。我强调签署，因为我们有一份书面记录，但我们的新律师想对其进行修改，并告诉我们尚未签署。

So because we were equal partners with no vesting agreement, even though we were only 7 months in to our venture, all of us held 33% percent of the company. This was another fatal mistake for the company.

因此，由于我们是平等的合作伙伴，没有任何既得协议，因此即使我们只有7个月的投资时间，我们所有人都持有公司33％的股份。这是该公司的另一个致命错误 。

After going through the red tape of setting up a company, more decisions were to be made, like which founder would join me in San Francisco for our Alpha release. I’m going to skip details of the drama here out of respect for those involved.

在经历了成立公司的繁文，节之后，需要做出更多的决定，例如哪个创始人会在旧金山与我一起发布我们的Alpha版本。我将出于对相关人员的尊重而跳过这里的戏剧细节。

We couldn’t see eye to eye on the future of our company. Business decisions were taken personal. Damage done at this point was irreversible. Instead of solving differences between us as a team, one of our founders involved our investor. This signaled trouble for our investor, who reached out to me, trying to understand what was happening.

我们看不到公司的未来。业务决策是个人的。此时造成的损害是不可逆的。我们的一位创始人没有解决团队之间的分歧，而是让我们的投资者参与其中。这为我们的投资者表示了麻烦，他向我伸出援手，试图了解正在发生的事情。

After thinking over the matter, I decided that we couldn’t continue with the founder in question. Our company was about to face numerous challenges, in an already competitive market. If their were already serious problems with trust, communication and vision, these were sure to grow exponentially as the company progressed.

在考虑了此事之后，我决定不能再继续与有问题的创始人联系。在一个竞争激烈的市场中，我们公司将面临众多挑战。如果他们已经是信任，沟通和愿景方面的严重问题，那么随着公司的发展，这些肯定会成倍增长。

试图找到中间立场 (Trying to Find Middle Ground)

We tried to find a solution, by offering compensation to the founder in question.

我们试图通过向有争议的创始人提供补偿来找到解决方案。

We offered shares equal to what was written in our unsigned but verbally agreed upon founders agreement. Nope.

我们提供的股份等于未签署但经创始人书面同意的股份。不。

We offered more shares than the amount that was written in our unsigned but verbally agreed upon founders agreement. Nope.

我们的则是写在我们的签名，但在创始人口头同意协议中的量提供了更多的股份。不。

The founder in question wanted to leave the company with 33 percent ownership of stock. Legally, it was possible, because we didn’t have a vesting agreement. At this point the accelerator pulled out (rightfully so). No investor would back a company that was in such turmoil before it even had a single user. The ride was over.

有问题的创始人想让公司拥有33％的股份所有权。 从法律上讲，这是有可能的，因为我们没有归属协议。 此时，加速器退出了(理应如此)。在拥有单个用户的情况下，没有投资者会支持这样动荡不安的公司。旅程结束了。

回头看 (Looking Back)

12 months later, things have simmered down. I’ve gone back to school (finishing my junior year), launched an alpha version of my current venture Mindflow.ai, and am starting a Software Engineering internship at Facebook next month.

12个月后，事情变得平静了。我已经回到学校(大三毕业了)，发布了我目前的合资企业Mindflow.ai的Alpha版本，并准备在下个月在Facebook上进行软件工程实习。

Although my first company didn’t work out as I had planned, I learned a lot and am thankful for the experiences I had. To sum up the key takeaways from my journey.

尽管我的第一家公司没有按计划工作，但我学到了很多东西，并为自己的经历而感恩。总结我旅途中的主要收获。

Know Thy Founder — This sounds soooo cliche. Don’t start a company with someone you don’t know well! Starting a company is hard, and you’re going to experience a rollercoaster of emotions. Make sure you have a proven track record together, before rushing to open a company.
知道您的创始人 -这听起来很陈词滥调。不要与你认识的人开公司！创办公司很辛苦，您将经历过山车般的情绪。在着急成立公司之前，请确保您在一起拥有良好的往绩记录。
Stay Lean — Figure out the scope of your venture, and be as lean as possible. Is there enough work for 3 people? Is there enough for 2? Having too many founders is a sure way for frustration to build early and fast.
保持精益 -确定您的业务范围，并尽可能精简。 3个人有足够的工作量吗？有足够的2？太多的创始人是挫败早期和快速建立的肯定方法。
Find the missing pieces — When building a lean team, every founder should bring a distinct skill set to the table. Having 3 founders share similar skill sets doesn’t make much sense. Preferably, each founder brings something different and necessary to the mix.
找到缺失的部分 -建立精益团队时，每个创始人都应将独特的技能带到桌面上。让3位创始人共享相似的技能并没有多大意义。优选地，每个创建者为混合带来不同且必要的东西。
Ship fast, ship often — “Shhhhh….. We’re in stealth mode!!” LOLZ. Unless you’re working on a ground-breaking patent, show people what you’re working on as early as possible. Collect feedback, integrate it, ship, repeat.
快速运送，经常运送- “嘘……我们处于隐身模式！” 哈哈除非您正在研究具有开创性的专利，否则请尽早向人们展示您正在研究的内容。收集反馈，整合反馈，运送，重复。
Settle legal stuff ASAP — About to put your life on hold to start your company? Great! If you’ve already decided to do that, spend the time and money to sort out the basics like a founder agreement. This would have saved our company. I had never imagined things would play out like this. The second things start getting emotional the script changes quickly. Minimize potential damage before s*#t hits the fan.
尽快解决法律问题 -即将搁浅以成立公司吗？大！如果您已经决定这样做，那就花时间和金钱来整理基础知识，例如创始人协议。 这样可以节省我们的公司。 我从未想过会有这样的事情发生。第二件事开始让人激动，脚本Swift变化。在s *＃t击中风扇之前，将潜在的损坏降至最低。

向前进 (Moving forward)

If you found this helpful feel free to to give it a ❤. You can follow me on Medium, Linkedin or Github, where I post tech / entrepreneurship related stuff.

如果您发现此帮助有用，请给它一个❤。您可以在Medium ， Linkedin或Github上关注我，在其中发布与技术/企业家精神相关的内容。