In 2011, I left my job as the second employee at Pinterest — before I vested any of my stock — to work on what I thought would be my life’s work.
2011年的时候，作为Pinterest（美国知名在线图片社交平台）的二号员工 - 在我兑现任何股票之前，我离开了Pinterest-去做我认为将会让我奋斗一生的工作。
作者图文截图：第一次网上公开分享自己的创业想法
I thought Gumroad would become a billion-dollar company, with hundreds of employees. It would IPO, and I would work on it until I died. Something like that.
我一直想着要让Gumroad(美国B2C在线销售平台，为艺术家设计师等各行各业制作人提供在线销售个人制作产品的交易平台)成为一家拥有数百名员工，价值十亿美元的公司。它将首次公开募股，我会继续努力，直到我去世。
Needless to say, that didn’t happen.
不用说，我想象的一切并没有发生。
Now, it may look like I am in an enviable position, running a profitable, growing, low-maintenance software business serving adoring customers. But for years, I considered myself a failure. At my lowest point, I had to lay off 75 percent of my company, including many of my best friends. I had failed.
现在看起来，我可能处于一个令人羡慕的位置，运营一个有利可图、不断发展、低维护而且是秉承客户至上的软件业务。但这么多年下来，我还是认为自己失败了。在公司最糟糕的时候，我不得不裁掉75％的公司，包括我最好的朋友。我是失败了。
It took me years to realize I was misguided from the outset. I no longer feel shame in the path I took to get to where I am today — but for a long time, I did. This is my journey, from the beginning.
我花了很多年才意识到我从一开始就被误导了。走到现在，那种羞耻感虽然已经过了 - 但很长一段时间里，我是真的感到羞耻。这是我的命运，从一开始便是。
A weekend project turned VC-backed startup
一个周末想出来的项目却成为VC追捧的创业公司
The idea behind Gumroad was simple: Creators and others should be able to sell their products directly to their audiences with quick, simple links. No need for a storefront.
Gumroad背后的想法很简单：制作人和其他人应该能够通过快速、简单的链接将他们的产品直接销售给他们的受众。不需要什么店面。
I built Gumroad the weekend I thought up the idea, and launched it early Monday morning on Hacker News. The reaction exceeded my grandest aspirations. Over 52,000 people checked it out on the first day.
某天周末我想到了这个创业点子，于是就建立了Gumroad，并于周一凌晨在Hacker News上发布了它。反应大大超出了我的预期。超过52,000人当天就查看了这个帖子。
Later that year, I left my job as the second employee at Pinterest — before I vested any of my stock — to turn Gumroad into what I thought would become my life’s work.
那年之后，我作为Pinterest的二号员工 - 在我兑现我的任何股票之前，我离开了这家公司-去做我认为将会成为我一生致力的工作。
Almost immediately, I raised $1.1M from an all-star cast of angel investors and venture capital firms, including Max Levchin, Chris Sacca, Ron Conway, Naval Ravikant, Collaborative Fund, Accel Partners, and First Round Capital. A few months later, in May 2012, we raised $7M more. Mike Abbott from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), a top-tier VC firm, led the round.
几乎立刻，我从全明星阵容的天使投资人和风险投资机构中筹集了110万美元，投资方中有Max Levchin，Chris Sacca，Ron Conway，Naval Ravikant，Collaborative Fund，Accel Partners和First Round Capital。几个月后，2012年5月，我们又筹集了700万美元。由来自顶级风险投资公司Kleiner Perkins Caufield＆Byers（KPCB）的Mike Abbott领投。
I was on top of the world. I was just 19, a solo founder, with over $8M in the bank and three employees. The world was starting to take note.
我似乎一下子站在了世界之巅。我当时只有19岁，是一位独立创始人，在银行里有超过800万美元的存款，还有三名员工。世界开始注意到我了。
We grew the team. We stayed focused on our product. The monthly numbers started to climb. And then, at some point, they didn’t.
我们的团队在成长。我们专注于我们的产品。每月的数字开始攀升。后来，在某些节点上，突然看不到这种增长了。
To keep the product alive, I laid off 75 percent of my company — including many of my best friends. It really sucked. But I told myself things would be fine: The product would continue to grow and no one far from the company would ever find out.
为了让产品能活下去，我解雇了公司75％的员工 - 包括我最好的朋友。真的很糟糕。但我告诉自己一切都会好的：产品会继续增长，公司以外的任何人都不会发现公司的变动。
Then, TechCrunch got wind of the layoffs and published “Layoffs Hit Gumroad As The E-Commerce Startup Restructures.” All of a sudden, my failure was public. I spent the week ignoring my support network and answering our customers’ concerns, many of whom relied on us to power their businesses. They wanted to know if they should look for alternative products. Some of our favorite, most successful creators left. This hurt, but I don’t blame them for trying to minimize the risk in their own businesses.
然后，TechCrunch（美国知名科技财经创业媒体）得到了裁员的风声，并发表了“裁员打击了 Gumroad，电子商务初创公司重组。”突然之间，我的失败变成公开的了。我花了一周时间，去忽略那些支持我的人，一直在解答客户们的担忧，其中许多人依靠我们，为他们的业务提供支持。他们想知道他们是否应该去寻找其他替代产品了。我们最喜欢，最成功的一些制作人也离开了。这很让人心痛，但我不会责怪，因为他们需要将自己的业务风险降到最低。
So what exactly went wrong, and when?
究竟出了什么问题，什么时候出的错呢？
Failing in style
风格出错
Let’s start with the numbers. This is our monthly processed volume, until the layoffs:
让我们从数字开始吧。这是我们的月度商品处理量，直到裁员：
Chart: Sahil Lavingia
It doesn’t look too bad, right? It’s going in the right direction: up.
看起来不是特别糟对吧？趋势上扬，在走上坡路。
But we were venture-funded, which was like playing a game of double-or-nothing. It’s euphoric when things are going your way — and suffocating when they’re not. And we weren’t doubling fast enough to raise the $15M+ Series B (the second major round of funding) we were looking for to grow the team.
但我们是由风险投资资助的，就像玩一场要不就翻倍要不就让你归零的游戏。当事情顺风顺水时，它会让人欣喜若狂 – 相反，它会令人窒息。我们的发展并没有足够快，以便可以让我们开启1500万美元+ B轮（第二轮主要资金）的融资，但我们期望通过这次募资去壮大团队。
For the type of business we were trying to build, every month of less than 20 percent growth should have been a red flag.
我们现在试图建立的这种业务类型，每月不到20％的增长其实是一个危险的信号。
But at the time, I thought it was okay. We had money in the bank and product-market fit. We would continue to ship product and things would work out. The online creator movement was still nascent; the slow growth wasn’t our fault. It always looked like change was right around the corner.
但当时，我认为这没关系。我们在银行里有存款，我们的产品与市场相匹配。我们会继续发布产品，这种模式能行。在线制作人风潮仍处于初期阶段；增长缓慢不是我们的错。总是觉得不久就会有气色。
But now, I realize: It doesn’t matter whose “fault” it is; we hit a peak in November 2014 and stalled. A lot of creators absolutely loved us, but there weren’t enough of them who needed our specific product offering. Product-market fit is great, but we needed to find a new, larger fit to justify raising more money (and then do it again and again, until acquisition or IPO).
但是到现在，我才意识到：其实“错误”出在哪里并不重要；我们的业务在2014年11月达到顶峰，但随后便停滞不前。很多制作人都非常喜欢我们，但是他们中没有很多人需要我们提供的特定的产品功能。产品市场契合度虽然很高，但我们需要找到一个新的、更大的契合来向投资者证明并筹集更多资金（然后一次又一次地重复这条路径，直到公司被收购或IPO）。
For the type of business we were trying to build, every month of less than 20 percent growth should have been a red flag.
对于我们试图建立的业务类型，每月不到20％的增长应该是一个危险的信号。
In January 2015, after our final double-or-nothing hail-mary, our bank balance dipped below 18 months of runway. I told my 20-person team the road ahead would be a tough one. We didn’t have the numbers to raise a Series B, and we would have to work really hard over the next nine months to get even close. To that end, we deprioritized everything except features that would directly move the needle. Many were not core to our business, but we needed to try everything we could to get our monthly processed volume to where it needed to be.
2015年1月，在我们遭受最后的，要不翻番要不归零的阵痛之后，我们的银行余额跌至18个月以来的最低点。我告诉我仅剩20个人的团队，前面的道路将非常艰难。我们没有业绩来筹集B轮融资，而且我们必须要在接下来的9个月里，努力工作以便为继生存。为此，我们推掉了很多产品功能，只留下最最紧要的那些；有些虽然并不是我们的核心业务，但我们需要尽一切努力使我们的月度商品处理量达到所需的水平。
If we succeeded, we would raise money from a top-tier VC again, hire more people, and pick up the journey where we’d left off. If we didn’t, we would have to drastically downsize the company.
如果我们成功了，我们就能再次从顶级VC那里筹集到资金，雇用更多的人，并开始重拾我们远离的旅程和梦想。如果我们没成功，那就必须要大幅缩减公司规模。
In those nine months, when the whole team knew we were fighting for our company’s life, not a single person left Gumroad. From “this is gonna be hard,” to “yep, turns out it was,” every single person worked harder than ever.
在那9个月里，当整个团队知道我们为公司的生存而战时，没有一个人离开Gumroad。从“这将是艰难的”到“是的，事实证明真的是很艰难”，每个人都比以往任何时候都更加努力。
We launched a “Small Product Lab” to teach new creators how to grow and sell. We shipped a ton of features, including weekly payouts, payouts to debit cards, payouts to the U.K., Australia, and Canada, various additions to our email features, product recommendations and search, analytics to see how customers are reading/watching/downloading the products they’ve purchased, and add-to-cart functionality. And that was just between August and November.
我们推出了一个“小产品实验室”，教新入驻的制作人如何成长和销售。我们发布了大量功能，包括每周付款，借记卡付款，英国，澳大利亚和加拿大的付款，补充我们电子邮件的各种功能，产品推荐和搜索，分析，以了解客户如何阅读/观看/下载他们购买的产品，添加到购物车的功能。所有这些产品、功能的研发和迭代，都仅仅发生在8月到11月三个月之内。
Unfortunately, we didn’t hit the numbers we needed.
不幸的是，我们还是没有达到我们需要的销售数字。
Slim down or shut down?
收缩还是关门？
Looking back, I’m glad we didn’t hit those numbers. If we’d doubled down, raised more money, and appeared in the headlines again, there would have been a very real possibility of even more spectacular failure.
回想起来，我很高兴我们没有达到这些数字。如果我们增加一倍的数字，筹集到了更多资金，并再次出现在头条新闻中，那么就会出现更加壮观的失败。
With that off the table, our options were:
Shut down the business, return the remaining money to investors, and try something new.
Continue with a slimmed-down version of the company to aim for sustainability.
Position the company for an acquihire.
有了这个挫折，我们接下来的选择是：
关闭业务，将剩余资金返还给投资者，并尝试新的事物。
继续推行精简版公司，以实现可持续发展。
寻求公司被聘用式收购。
Some of my investors wanted me to shut down the business. They tried to convince me that my time was worth more than trying to keep a small business like Gumroad afloat, and I should try to build another billion-dollar company armed with all of my learnings — and their money.
我的一些投资者希望我关闭这项业务。他们试图说服我，我的时间比试图挽回像Gumroad这样的小企业更有价值，以我的才学，和他们的钱，我应该尝试建立另一个价值数十亿美元的公司。
I tended to agree with them, to be honest. But I was accountable to our creators, our employees, and our investors — in that order. We helped thousands of creators get paid, every month. About $2,500,000 was going to go into the pockets of creators — for rent checks and mortgages, for student loans and kids’ college funds. And it was only growing! Could I really just turn that faucet off?
说实话，我倾向于同意他们的观点。但是我首先是要对我的制作人们负责，其次是我的员工，最后才是投资者负责。我们每个月帮助成千上万的制作人获得报酬。大约2,500,000美元将进入制作人的口袋 – 用于他们的租金支票和抵押贷款，学生贷款和儿童大学基金。公司其实也正在成长！我真的忍心把那个水龙头彻底关掉吗？
If I sold the company, it would be mostly for our stellar team — and I would no longer be able to control the destiny of the product. There were too many acquisition stories of companies promising exciting journeys and amazing synergies to come — and ending with a deprecated product a year later.
如果我卖掉公司，那也主要是为了我们这个团队 – 那样的话我将无法再控制产品的命运。有太多收购故事，承诺收购后公司会有激动人心的未来，会有很棒的协同效应，但一年之后，就以废弃产品为结束。
Selling was certainly tempting. I could say I sold my first company, raise more money, and do this all again with a new idea. But that didn’t sit right with me. We were responsible to our creators first. That’s what I told every new hire and every investor. I didn’t want to become a serial entrepreneur and risk disappointing yet another customer base.
卖，是肯定诱人的。我可以说我卖掉了我的第一家公司，筹集了更多的钱，然后再用新的想法再做另一家公司。但那并不适合我。我们首先对我们的制作人负责。这就是我告诉每一位新员工和每一位投资者的话。我不想成为一个连环企业家，并去冒让另一个客户群失望的危险。
We decided to become profitable at any cost. The next year was not fun: I shrunk the company from twenty employees to five. We struggled to find a new tenant for our $25,000/month office. We focused all of our remaining resources on launching a premium service.
我们决定不惜一切代价赚钱。第二年并不好玩：我把公司从二十名员工缩减到五名。我们努力为我们每月25,000美元的办公室找到了一个新的租户。我们将所有剩余资源都集中在推出优质服务上。
In June 2015, a few months before our layoffs, our financials looked like this:
Revenue: $89,000 for the month
Gross profit: $17,000
Operating expenses: $364,000
Net profit: -$351,000
2015年6月，在裁员前几个月，我们的财务状况如下：
收入：本月89,000美元
毛利润：17,000美元
运营费用：364,000美元
净利润： - 351,000美元
A year later, in June 2016, our monthly numbers looked like this:
Revenue: $176,000 for the month
Gross profit: $42,000
Operating expenses: $32,000
Net profit: +$10,000
一年后，2016年6月，我们的月度数字如下：
收入：本月为176,000美元
毛利润：42,000美元
运营费用：32,000美元
净利润：+ 10,000美元
It hurt, but it meant creators would keep getting paid. It also meant that we were in control of our own destiny.
这个过程虽然痛苦，但这意味着制作人会继续获得报酬。这也意味着我们可以掌握自己的命运。
From skeleton crew to lifestyle business
从瘦到骨架的团队到生活方式类业务
It got worse from there.
事情从那开始变得更糟。
Gumroad was no longer the venture-funded, fast-growing startup our investors and employees signed up for. As everyone else found other opportunities, the skeleton crew fizzled from five to one.
Gumroad不再是我们的投资者和员工签约时候的，由风险投资支持的、快速增长的创业公司。随着员工们找到其他工作机会，骨架团队从五人最后变为一人。
I was basically alone. I didn’t have a team, nor an office. And San Francisco was full of startups raising gobs of money, building amazing teams, and shipping great products. Some of my friends became billionaires. Meanwhile, I was running a “measly” lifestyle business. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but I had to keep the ship from sinking.
那个人就是我。我基本上一个人。我没有团队，也没有办公室。旧金山充满了创业公司，筹集了大量资金，建立了令人惊叹的团队，并输出了很棒的产品。我的一些朋友成了亿万富翁。但我呢，正在经营“可怜”的生活方式类业务。我也不想这样，但我不能让这艘船沉了。
Now, I understand some people would dream to be in that position. But at the time, I just felt trapped. I couldn’t stop, but there was only so much I could do as an army of one.
但到现在我才能理解，其实有些人会梦想跌到我那个处境。但当时，我只是感到自己被困住了。我无法停止，自己只能像一个军队一样来作战。
For years, my only metric of success was building a billion-dollar company. Now, I realize that was a terrible goal.
多年来，我唯一的成功标准就是建立一家价值数十亿美元的公司。现在，我意识到这是一个可怕的目标。
I shut off the rest of the world. I didn’t tell my mom about the layoffs — she had to read the article and tweets herself to find out. My friends were worried, but I assured them I was neither depressed nor suicidal. I left San Francisco for long stretches at a time, thinking that some travel would give me adequate distance. It only made me more lonely.
我中断了与周遭世界的联系。我没有告诉妈妈关于裁员的事情 - 她必须阅读报道和推文自己去找出答案。我的朋友都很担心我，但我向他们保证，我既不是抑郁也不会自杀。我会一次离开旧金山很长一段时间，以为旅行会给我足够的空间。但这让我更加孤独。
Every day, I woke up and took care of all of Gumroad’s support queries. I tried to fix all of the bugs I could. Often, I had to ask for help from former Gumroad engineers. They were all employed by then, but they always found time to help. Once all things Gumroad were taken care of, I tried to go to the gym, and if I had the willpower, work on a side project (a fantasy novel). Most days, I failed.
每天，我醒来并处理Gumroad的所有的客服查询。我试图解决所有可能的错误。通常，我不得不向前Gumroad工程师寻求帮助。当时他们都在其他公司工作，但他们总是抽出时间来帮忙。一旦Gumroad的所有事情都得到了解决，我就会去健身房，如果我有意志力，那就去做做副业（写一部奇幻小说）。但大多数时候，我还是做不到。
To me, happiness is about an expectation of positive change. Every year before 2016, there was an improvement in my expectations — in the team, the product, or the company. This was the first time in my life when the present year felt worse than the last.
对我来说，幸福，是对积极变化的期待。在2016年之前的每一年，我的期望值 – 对团队，产品或公司都会被刷新。但2016年之后，这是我生命中第一次感觉，这一年比上一年更糟糕。
Living in San Francisco was already a struggle. When Trump won the election, I ended up leaving for good.
住在旧金山已经是一场折磨。当特朗普赢得选举时，我最终选择离开了。
New beginnings
新的开始
Then one day, everything changed. Again. I’m wary about sharing this part of the story, because I don’t know if there is anything to learn from it. But it happened, so here it is.
然后有一天，一切都改变了。再次。我其实对分享以下这部分故事很谨慎，因为我不知道我如果说出来，是否有任何可以借鉴的价值。但事情发生了，那就跟大家说说吧。
On November 27, 2017, I got this email from KPCB, our lead investor:
2017年11月27日，我收到了来自我们的主要投资者KPCB这封电子邮件：
I am following up our conversation a few months ago. KP would like to sell our ownership back to Gumroad for $1. Can we discuss this week?
“接着几个月前我们聊的事情。 KP想以1美元的价格将Gumroad所有权再卖回给Gumroad。我们可以在本周讨论一下吗？”
Mike had left KPCB to start a new company, and KPCB didn’t want the operational headache of appointing a new board member. Plus, it helped their taxes. In one fell swoop, our liquidation preferences (how much we would have to sell for before dollars started going to employees) went from about $16.5M to $2.5M. All of a sudden, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Small, dim, and far away, but present. There was a path to an independent business, not beholden to the go-big-or-go-home mentality I signed up for when I raised money.
Mick离开KPCB并创办了一家新公司，KPCB因为不想再麻烦，也没有再去任命新董事会成员了。另外，不找新董事会成员对公司的纳税也有帮助。一下子，我们的优先清算资产变成了（在向员工支付员工所得之前公司可以卖多少钱）从大约1650万美元到250万美元之间。突然间，隧道尽头有一盏灯。虽然弱小，昏暗，遥远，但它是存在的。有一条通向独立企业的道路向我展现，而我也不是之前融资那会儿，要不就做大，要不就回家的心态了。
One investor joined them. We’ve bought back a couple more, since then. I keep the rest of the investors up-to-date with a brief email every few months.
一位投资者加入了KPCB，也开始向我们转卖公司的股权。从那以后，我们又陆续拉回几个投资者。我每隔几个月就会通过一封简短的电子邮件让剩下的投资者了解公司最新的情况。
The future came into focus: I could grow a small team, slowly buy back our investors, and build Gumroad into a meaningful business focused on our creators. We would never become a billion-dollar company, and that started to feel okay. Certainly, the thousands of creators selling on Gumroad wouldn’t mind.
未来的发展很明确了：我可以培养一个小团队，慢慢从投资者那里收回公司，并将Gumroad打造成一个专注于我们平台上的创造者的，有意义的业务。我们也许永远不会成为一个十亿美元的公司，但我们觉得可以接受这个现实了。当然，如果有成千上万的制作人们入驻Gumroad，在上面卖东西，我们也并不介意。
Finding new forms of impact
寻找新的影响力方式
The eight years I worked on Gumroad were full of personal ups and downs. There were months where I worked 16 hours a day, but there were also some months where I worked four hours a week. Here’s one way to picture that time:
在Gumroad工作的八年，我个人也经历了风风雨雨。有几个月我每天工作16个小时，但也有几个月我每周只工作四个小时。这是纪录那段时光的方式：
Chart: Sahil Lavingia
Can you tell which is which? I can’t. We had a sales team for a few years, then we didn’t. Can you tell when we made the switch? I can’t.
你能分辨出哪个是哪个？我不能。我们之前连续几年养着一个销售团队，后来团队没有了。你能看出来这种转变发生在什么时候？我不能。
It doesn’t matter how amazing your product is, or how fast you ship features. The market you’re in will determine most of your growth. For better or worse, Gumroad grew at roughly the same rate almost every month because that’s how quickly the market determined we would grow.
无论您的产品有多么神奇，或者您的产品推向市场的速度有多快都无关紧要。您所处的市场将决定您的大部分增长。不论是好是坏，Gumroad几乎每个月都以大致相同的速度增长，这种增速，其实是由市场来决定的。
Instead of pretending to be some sort of product visionary, trying to build a billion-dollar company, I’m just focused on making Gumroad better and better for our existing creators. Because they are the ones that have kept us alive.
与试图建立一个价值数十亿美元的公司、假装对某种产品远见卓识不同，我后来转而只是专注于让Gumroad更好，更好地为我们现有的制作人服务。因为他们是让我们能活下去的人。
Creating and capturing value
创造和抓住价值
At a CEO Summit many years ago, my all-time hero, Bill Gates, took the stage. Someone asked him how he dealt with failing to capture so much value. Microsoft was huge, sure, but tiny compared to the total impact it has had on the world and on humanity.
在多年前的CEO峰会上，我一直敬仰的英雄比尔盖茨登上了舞台。有人问他，面对不能获取更多的价值，他会怎么想。微软是巨大的，这毫无疑问，但相比它创造出来的，对世界和人类总体的价值来说，公司实际获取的价值还是微乎其微。
Bill’s answer: “Sure, but that’s true with all companies, right? They create some value and succeed in capturing a very small percentage of it.”
比尔回答：“当然，但所有公司都是这样，对吧？它们创造了一些价值，并成功获取这些价值中的一小部分。“
I am now more focused on creating value than capturing it. I still want to have as large an impact as possible, but I don’t need to create it directly or capture it in the form of revenue and valuation.
我现在更专注于创造价值而不是去捕捉它。我还是想着怎么扩大公司的影响力，但我不需要直接创造这种影响，或以收入和估值的形式去收获这些影响力。
Take Austen Allred, for example. He’s raised $48M for his startup Lambda School, and he got his start selling a book on Gumroad.
以Austen Allred为例。他为自己的创业公司Lambda School（一所在线编码课程教学平台）筹集了4800万美元，并开始在Gumroad上出售一本书。
Austen Allred推文截图，在卖书之后开始自己做公司
Startups have been founded by former Gumroad employees, and dozens more companies have been massively improved by recruiting our alumni. On top of that, our product ideas, like our credit card form and inline-checkout experience, have proliferated across the web, making it a better place for everyone — including those that have never used Gumroad.
这家初创公司是由前Gumroad员工投资的，其他一些公司也因为招募了Gumroad的前员工，公司业务才得到了极大的提升。最重要的是，我们的产品创意，如我们的信用卡表格和内联结账体验，已在网络上被大量采用，这使得Gumroad成为对每个人都有意义的公司- 包括那些从未使用过Gumroad平台和产品的人。
While Gumroad, Inc. may be small, our impact is large. There is, of course, the $178,000,000 we have sent to creators. But then there’s the impact of the impact, the opportunities that those creators have taken to create new opportunities for others.
虽然Gumroad，Inc。可能很小，但我们的影响很大。我们陆续已经向制作人送去了178,000,000美元的收入。但随之而来的是，我们是否可以创造更广泛更深层次的社会影响力，平台为这些创造者创造的商机，是否可以让创造者再去为其他人创造什么机会。
Opening up about our financials
开放我们的财务
I’ve found other ways to create value, too. After the layoffs, I didn’t talk to anyone about Gumroad. Not even my mom. And after moving away from San Francisco, I felt pretty disconnected from the startup community.
我也找到了创造价值的其他方法。在裁员之后，我没有和任何人谈论过Gumroad。甚至包括我妈。离开旧金山之后，我觉得与创业社区渐渐疏远了。
As a way to re-engage with the community, I thought about sharing our financials publicly. Founders starting their own companies could learn from our mistakes, utilizing our data to make better decisions.
作为重新与社区互动的一种方式，我考虑过公开分享我们的财务状况。让那些创办自己公司的创始人可以从我们的错误中吸取教训，通过研究我们的财务数据，帮助自己做出更好的决策。
It was scary: What if we don’t grow every month? It could scare off prospective customers. It’s something I would never expect a startup seeking venture capital to do. It makes sense to hold those cards as close to your chest for as long as possible when you must raise money, hire people, and compete for customers with other venture-seeking startups.
这个做法其实这很吓人：如果我们不是每个月都在成长怎么办？财务数据可能会吓跑潜在客户。我可不希望看到一个正在寻求风险投资的初创企业吓跑它的潜在客户。当你必须筹集资金、雇用人员以及与其他寻求风险投资的创业公司争夺客户时，财务数据这张牌越晚公开越好。
But, since we were not any of those things anymore, it was easier to share that information. We were profitable, and a no-growth month won’t change that. So in April 2018, I started to release our monthly financials publicly.
但是，由于我们已经过了那个阶段了，所以现在分享这些信息对我们来说没什么。我们已经盈利了，即便一个月没有增长，也不会改变这个事实。所以在2018年4月，我开始公开发布月度财务报告。
作者推文截图，公布公司财务数字
Ironically, more investors have reached out (we’re just interested in raising money from our customers for the moment, thanks!), more folks want to contribute to Gumroad, and our shift in focus has brought us closer to our creators.
具有讽刺意味的是，公司转好后，更多的投资者想要投资我们（我们现在只想从客户那里筹集资金，谢谢！），更多的人想要为Gumroad做出贡献，而我们的关注点，已经向我们自己的客户靠拢了。
And instead of freaking out about how “small” Gumroad actually is (like I thought they would), our creators have grown more loyal. It feels like we’re all in this together, trying to earn a living doing what we love.
与以往觉得Gumroad规模小的吓人（就像我想的那样）不同，现在我们的制作人对Gumroad变得比以前更加忠诚。感觉就像我们是一体的，努力做自己喜欢的事来一起谋生。
Soon, we’re also planning to open-source the whole product, WordPress-style. Anyone will be able to deploy their own version of Gumroad, make the changes they want, and sell the content they want, without us being the middleman.
很快，我们也计划开源整个产品，WordPress风格。任何人都可以部署他们自己的Gumroad版本，进行他们想要的更改，并销售他们想要的内容，而我们无需再成为中间人。
In 2018, we donated over $23,775 (eight percent of our profits) to different causes. We raised money for the hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico and the floods in Kerala. We helped fund the Presence-of-Blackness project in speculative fiction, and a Mexicanx publication.
在2018年，我们向不同的事业捐赠了超过23,775美元（占我们利润的8％）。我们为波多黎各的飓风救灾工作和喀拉拉邦的洪灾筹集资金。我们帮助Presence-of-Blackness在科幻小说项目中募集资金。还投资了墨西哥一家出版社。
Seeking the non-binary
追求非二进制
For years, my only metric of success was building a billion-dollar company. Now, I realize that was a terrible goal. It’s completely arbitrary and doesn’t accurately reflect impact.
多年来，我用来衡量成功的唯一标准就是建立一家价值数十亿美元的公司。现在，我意识到这是一个可怕的目标。太随意，并不能准确反映一个公司的影响力。
I’m not making an excuse or pretending that I didn’t fail. I’m not pretending that failure feels good. Everyone knows that the failure rate in startups — especially venture-funded ones — is super high, but it still sucks when you don’t reach your goals.
我不是在找借口或假装我没有失败。我不是在假装失败的感觉很好。每个人都知道创业公司的失败率非常高，特别是那些依靠风险投资的初创公司，但这不是借口，当你没有实现你的目标（数十亿美元的公司），你就是失败了。
I failed, but I also succeeded at many other things. Gumroad turned $10 million of investor capital into $178 million (and counting) for creators. Without a fundraising goal coming up, we’re simply focused on building the best product we can for our customers. On top of all that, I’m happy creating value beyond our revenue-generating product (like these words you’re reading).
我是失败了，但我也成功了很多其他事情。 Gumroad将1000万美元的投资变成了制作者手里的1.78亿美元营收。要是没有筹款的压力，那我们会做的更好，只会专注于为客户打造最好的产品。最重要的，也是更让人高兴的是，我们创造出了超出我们创收产品本身价值的价值（就像你正在阅读的下面这句话）。
作者推文：还没有成功我就迫不及待想写下失败的故事
I consider myself “successful” now. Not exactly in the way I intended, though I think what I’m doing now counts.
我认为自己现在是“成功”了。虽然并不完全按照我的意图，但我认为我现在做的事情是值得的。
Where did my singular focus on building a billion-dollar company come from in the first place? I think I inherited it from a society that worships wealth. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Bill Gates was my all-time hero and the world’s richest person. Ever since I can remember, I’ve equated “success” with net worth. If I heard someone say “that person’s really successful,” I didn’t assume they were improving the well-being of those around them, but that they’d found a way to make a ton of cash.
我就纳闷儿了，最开始的时候我一门心思想建立一家数十亿美元公司的念头是哪来的？我想我是从一个崇拜财富的社会继承而来的。我并不认为比尔盖茨能成为我的终身英雄，和他是世界上最富有的人完全没有关系。自从我记事儿以来，我就把“成功”等同于净值。如果我听到有人说“那个人真的很成功”，我并不认为他们正在改善周围人的福祉，而是他们找到了赚大钱的方法。
Wealth can be a measure of being able to improve the well-being of those around you, as seems to be the case for someone like Bill Gates, who has invested heavily in philanthropy. But it’s not the only way to measure success, nor is it the best one.
财富可以衡量是否能改善周围人的福祉，就像比尔盖茨这样在慈善事业上投入巨资的人一样。但这不是衡量成功的唯一方法，也不是最好的方法。
There’s nothing wrong with trying to build the next Microsoft. I personally don’t think billionaires are evil. And there’s a part of me that wishes I was still on that path.
尝试构建下一个Microsoft没有错。我个人认为亿万富翁并不邪恶。而且我对能成为亿万富翁的道路仍然心存希望。
But for better or worse, I’m on this one now. This has been my path to notbuilding a billion-dollar company. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
但无论好坏，我现在正走在我自己构建的道路上。这是我建造一家价值十亿美元的公司的道路。迈向十亿美元的道路有许多，但这条是我自己的。
Sahil Lavingia
Gumroad 创始人兼CEO
02.17.2019
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