如果成功，会发生什么？

“The answer to “what if this fails” is easy. You shut it down. The answer to “what if this succeeds” is much harder. Especially when you’re not willing to walk away from your main job. And I wasn’t.” – Mike Monteiro, Everything dies, Sometimes they die well

“对“如果失败会怎样”的答案很容易。 你把它关掉。 对于“如果成功了该怎么办”的答案要困难得多。 尤其是当您不愿意放弃主要工作时。 我不是。” – Mike Monteiro，一切都死了，有时候他们好了

I write and speak about side projects because I believe they are often the most realistic way for many of us to realize our product dreams. However this post talks of a problem we rarely hear voiced. We obsess over failure; build strategies to limit the damage when it happens; sometimes even glorify it. Most of us are so happy to discover that someone wants to buy our thing that we don’t consider at all what happens if this thing really takes off.

我写和谈论副项目，是因为我相信它们通常是实现我们许多产品梦想的最现实的方式。 但是，这篇文章谈论的是我们很少听到有人提出的问题。 我们沉迷于失败； 制定策略以限制损害的发生； 有时甚至美化它。 我们大多数人都非常高兴发现有人要购买我们的东西，因此我们根本不考虑如果这东西真正起飞会发生什么。

It might be that you achieve great success in terms of numbers of sales and users, but you are not making enough money to leave the day job or cut down the consultancy work. I wrote about this in my book when discussing the transition between client work and a product.

可能是您在销售和用户数量方面取得了巨大的成功，但您没有赚到足够的钱来辞掉日间工作或削减咨询工作。 在讨论客户工作和产品之间的过渡时，我在书中写到了这一点。

“If the issue is that despite a growing customer base you are finding that the product does not bring in enough revenue to be treated as a first class citizen then this would be a good time to start assessing why. Are you pricing it too cheaply? Are you reliant on an expensive service? Are you attracting a type of customer who needs a lot of handholding and so you find that most of the time you should be spending on developing the product is being burned up just doing support? Identifying these problems early on gives you a chance to fix them before they become a bigger issue.” – The Profitable Side Project Handbook

“如果问题在于尽管客户群在不断增长，但您发现该产品并没有带来足够的收入来视为头等舱公民，那么这将是评估其原因的好时机。 您定价太便宜了吗？ 您依赖昂贵的服务吗？ 您是否正在吸引需要大量处理的客户，因此您发现应该花大部分时间在开发产品上的时间已经花在了支持上吗？ 尽早发现这些问题可以使您有机会在它们成为更大的问题之前进行修复。” – 有利可图的项目手册

It might be however, that like Mike Monteiro, you have no interest in this thing becoming all that you do, that all you ever wanted was a side project. What then? Mule Radio is the sort of product that can be closed or scaled back without damaging customers. I’m sure those people who hosted shows there will be sad that they need to find a new home, but ultimately a product like Mule Radio can be allowed to “die well”. Not all products are like that.

但是，可能像Mike Monteiro一样，您对这件事变得不感兴趣，因为它变成了您所做的一切，而您想要的只是一个附属项目。 然后怎样呢？ Mule Radio是一种可以关闭或缩小规模而不会损害客户的产品。 我敢肯定，主持节目的人会为他们需要寻找新家而感到难过，但最终可以允许像Mule Radio这样的产品“消亡”。 并非所有产品都是这样 。

I’ve always felt a sense of responsibility to our customers, they use our product to provide a service to their clients. We have people with hundreds of Perch sites. I love the fact that we play a small part in the success of other small businesses and don’t take that responsibility lightly. Perhaps we are simply well-matched to the demands of this particular business, two people running a company and building a product that we are happy to live with for the long term.

我一直对客户有一种责任感，他们使用我们的产品为客户提供服务。 我们有数百个Perch网站的人。 我喜欢这样一个事实，我们在其他小企业的成功中起着很小的作用，并且不要轻视这一责任。 也许我们完全可以满足此特定业务的需求，两个人经营一家公司并开发一种我们很乐意长期使用的产品。

It may seem wishful thinking to consider what happens if you succeed, but for a solo founder or tiny team getting from zero to “takes up all of your time” can happen relatively quickly. Make sure that possibility is something that matches not only your pricing model and product, but also you and what you want from the business, what you want for your life.

考虑如果成功了会发生什么，这似乎是一厢情愿的想法，但是对于一个单独的创始人或小型团队而言，从零到“占用您的所有时间”可能会相对较快地发生。 确保这种可能性不仅与您的定价模型和产品相匹配，而且与您以及您从企业中获得的东西，您一生中想要的东西相匹配。

翻译自: https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2014/06/04/what-happens-if-you-succeed/