谢谢关注缓慢思考！

　　原文来自YC的CEO Sam的blog。 最近看到很多独角兽倒下的消息，更显的这篇文章的提醒来的及时。正如Sam所说，很多创始人过早关注增长反而伤害了公司，j2直播，这值得反复强调。那么比增长更重要的是什么？ 让用户喜欢你的产品。做不到这一点，融资加速增长只是加速死亡。

　　Startups are defined by growth, but growth isn’t step one in building a great company. If you focus on trying to grow before you make a product people love, you are unlikely to succeed.

　　创业公司是由增长决定的，但增长不是建立一家伟大公司的第一步。如果在你专注于增长之前没能做出人们喜欢的产品，你就不可能成功。

　　We’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating–many founders hurt their companies by focusing on growth too soon.

　　我们曾经说过这个，但很值得反复强调 — 许多创始人因为过早专注于增长而伤害了他们的公司。

　　I’m not saying don’t grow at all–getting people to use your product, even in its earliest form, will help you better understand what your customers want. But focusing too heavily on growth before you’ve built something people love leads to the leaky bucket problem. You can get users to come in the door, but they don’t stay, and likely won’t return.

　　我不是说不要增长 — 让人们使用你的产品，即使是最早的形态，也有助于你更好地了解你的客户想要什么。但是在没有开发出人们喜欢的东西之前过分关注增长会导致水桶泄露问题。你可以把用户拉进门，但他们不会停留，而且可能不会回头。

　　If you first make sure your product is loved, it will be much easier to grow. Users will be easier to retain, and they’ll tell others about what you’ve made. Your users essentially become a free marketing and sales force for you. Your chances of building a giant company are much higher when you have a product that spreads by word of mouth.

　　如果你确信你的产品是用户喜欢的，增长就会变的更容易。用户将更容易留下来，他们也会告诉别人你的产品是什么。你的用户基本上成为你免费的营销和销售团队。当你拥有一个人们口头传播的产品时，你建立一个巨型公司的机会要高得多。

　　Facebook, for example, had a product people talked about obsessively from the start. Airbnb slogged for 1000 days before discovering how to make their product loved. Once they had that, it grew exponentially by word of mouth, and that still continues today.

　　例如，Facebook从一开始就有一个人们热烈讨论的产品。 Airbnb在发现如何使他们的产品获得人们喜欢之前，蹒跚前行了1000天。一旦他们的产品获得了用户喜欢，通过口头传播，它呈现出指数增长，并持续至今。

　　This is true for enterprise and hard tech companies, too– your sales process becomes much easier when word has spread that what you’re making is great.

　　这对于企业和高科技公司来说也是如此，当人们口头传播你的产品很伟大的时候，你的销售过程变得更加容易。

　　If your product isn’t loved, you might get early users, but growth will get hard later on. You’ll have to rely on inorganic means like ads, marketing, or PR to maintain your growth, and this gets very hard to sustain. And the larger you grow, the harder it becomes to course correct. Once your company is a big moving battleship, it becomes really hard to be nimble and quickly make the aggressive changes you need; your range of options becomes limited.

　　如果你的产品不被喜欢，你可能会获得些早期用户，j2直播，但后面的增长将变得艰难。你将不得不依靠无机的方式增长，比如广告、营销或公关，以维持你的增长，这是非常难以维持的。你增长的越大，就越难改变。一旦你公司已经成了一个大型的行进中的战舰，要变得灵活是件难事，你很难迅速做出你需要的激进改变。你的选项范围会变得非常有限。

　　So, if you’re already growing a company around a mediocre product, fix it now. Don’t try to avoid the problem by raising capital for growth– the problems will still be there, with higher expectations.

　　所以，如果你已经在围绕一个平庸的产品做增长，现在就修复它。不要试图通过融资驱动增长来规避这个问题 — 问题仍然存在，期望越高失望越大。

　　And if you’re just starting out, take the time to build a product your users love, no matter how long it takes. When they actively recommend your product to friends, you’re in the right place. 1

　　如果你刚刚开始创业，多花时间去开发你用户喜欢的产品，无论它需要多长时间。当他们积极地向朋友推荐你的产品的时候，你就找到了正确的地方。

　　愉悦资本是新一代VC基金，由刘二海、李潇、戴汨创立。我们是创始人也是投资经理。