彼得泰爾:一個人的人生應該由他自己去規劃

This post is in partnership with Entrepreneur. The article below was originally published at .

本文與《創業者》雜誌（Entrepreneur）合作。下文最初發表於。

PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel is often known for his ability to understand what makes a company successful and for having some contrarian points of view. Following the sale of PayPal to eBay EBAY 0.14% in 2002, Thiel founded global hedge fund Clarium Capital Management, technology company Palantir and venture capital firm Founders Fund, which has invested in companies like Spotify, Oculus and SpaceX. Thiel was also Facebook’s first outside investor and currently sits on its board. Through his Thiel Foundation, four years ago, he created the Thiel Fellowship for up-and-coming entrepreneurs under 20, who are each given $100,000 and two years to eschew higher education and work on a venture of their choosing.

貝寶公司(PayPal)聯合創始人彼得o泰爾深知如何成功經營一家公司，並且因許多特立獨行的觀點而聞名於創投界。2002年將PayPal出售給易趣公司(eBay)之後，泰爾創建了全球對衝基金克萊瑞姆資本管理公司（Clarium Capital Management）、科技公司Palantir和風險投資公司創業者基金（Founders Fund），該基金投資的公司包括音樂平臺Spotify、虛擬現實公司Oculus和太空探索技術公司（SpaceX）。此外，泰爾也是Facebook第一位外部投資者，目前爲Facebook董事會成員。通過其泰爾基金會（Thiel Foundation），他在4年前設立了針對20歲以下優秀創業者的泰爾獎學金（Thiel Fellowship），有前途的創業者不用接受高等教育，即可獲得10萬美元和兩年的時間，從事自己選擇的事業。

Known for his strong opinions about hot-button topics like education, company culture and competition, Thiel has been in the news of late promoting his new book Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, which he co-wrote with former student Blake Masters, and was based upon the notes that Masters took while taking Thiel’s computer science course at Stanford. The authors aim to rebuff the notion that innovation is dead and instead delve into how entrepreneurs can explore new technologies and create fresh inventions in current fields and “uncharted frontiers.” We caught up with Thiel to talk about the value of being naive and finding inspiration off the beaten track.

泰爾因其對教育、公司文化與競爭等熱門話題的強烈觀點而名聲在外，近期，他的新書《從零到一：對創業，以及如何構築未來的一點思考》（Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future）使他再次成爲媒體熱點。該書由泰爾和他之前的學生布萊克o馬斯特斯共同創作，主要內容爲馬斯特斯在斯坦福大學（Stanford）上泰爾的計算機科學課時記錄的筆記。兩位作者並不認同“創新已死”的觀點，他們在書中探討了創業者如何開發新技術，在當前領域和“未知的前沿”創造發明。我們對泰爾進行了採訪，邀請他談論了天真的價值，以及如何獨闢蹊徑，尋找靈感。

Q: Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently when you were first starting up? How did you learn this lesson?

問：如果你具備現在的經驗和見識，你的第一次創業會有哪些不同？你是如何收穫這一經驗教訓的？

A:When I was starting out, I followed along the path that seemed to be marked out for me — from high school to college to law school to professional life. When I was working at a New York law firm, that path came to a dead end. All the aspiring lawyers on the outside wanted to get in but all of the people I worked with wanted to get out. It was like Alcatraz but all you had to do to escape was walk through the front door. So I left. And that experience helped me realize how many things in the world might be possible and valuable, yet ignored by most people, simply because they are not found on any conventional track.

答：最開始，我的成長道路似乎早已註定——從高中到大學，再到法學院，然後開始職業生涯。我在紐約一家律師事務所工作的時候，這條道路陷入了死衚衕。外面有抱負的律師都想進來，但我的同事們卻都想逃離這裏。那裏就像是惡魔島，要想逃離這裏，你只需走出那扇門。所以我離開了。這次的經歷讓我意識到，這個世界上有許多事情是可行的、有價值的，但卻被大多數人忽視，只是因爲你根本不可能在任何傳統的軌道上發現它們。

Q: What do you think would have happened if you had had this knowledge then?

問：如果你當時便有了這樣的感悟，你認爲會發生什麼？

A:If I’d realized how arbitrary it was, I might have gotten off the track a lot sooner. I know I would have thought about it more carefully. But there’s no way to run the experiment twice.

答：如果我能意識到職業道路是如此變幻莫測，我可能會更早離開那裏。我知道我肯定會更謹慎地考慮這個問題。但人生不可能重來。

Q: How do you think young entrepreneurs might benefit from this insight?

問：你認爲你的這些見解能夠給年輕的創業者們帶來哪些幫助？

A:An entrepreneur must deal with more uncertainty than a professional with a well-defined role. Because of that uncertainty, there’s always a temptation to reach out for some kind of guide, whether it’s old business school case studies, or, more likely, the most recent moves of the firms that you perceive to be competitors. Reacting to them can at least give some idea of what to do. We’re so used to competing on tracks that entrepreneurs can quickly get caught up in incremental battles with each other, almost without realizing it. But defining yourself by a competitor means giving up the most important reason to be an entrepreneur: You can do something new in the world that won’t be done unless you are the one to do it.

答：相比職責明確的專業人士，創業者必須應對更多不確定性。由於這些不確定性，他們往往會禁不住誘惑，試圖尋找各種指引，比如傳統的商學院案例研究，更有可能的是，被視爲競爭對手的公司最近的舉動等。根據競爭對手的舉動做出反應，至少可以讓你知道應該做什麼。我們早已習慣於發展道路上的競爭，以至於創業者之間會迅速陷入日益激烈的競爭，而他們本身幾乎都沒有意識到這一點。但是，通過競爭對手來確定自己的發展方向，意味着放棄了創業最重要的理由：你可以做一些世界上前所未有、如果沒有你就不可能出現的東西。

Q: Besides inventing a time machine, how might they realize this wisdom sooner?

問：除了發明一臺時間機器，他們如何才能更快深刻體會這些智慧？

A:I don’t know. How to teach people to do what hasn’t been done is a great riddle. It’s because schools tend to breed a kind of process-oriented conformity that I started a fellowship for young people who want to learn by getting something done in the real world — precisely so they can begin charting their own path as early as possible.

答：我不知道。如何教會人們去做從未有人做過的事情，是一個無解的謎題。正是由於學校往往教導學生遵從某種流程，我才爲那些希望在真實世界中學習如何創業的年輕人創辦了獎學金——只有這樣，他們才能儘早規劃自己的發展道路。

I taught a class at Stanford for the same reason — because I wanted to tell students that they don’t have to accept the paths laid down by their schooling or by their competitors. But fundamentally it’s something people have to figure out for themselves.

我在斯坦福任教也是出於同樣的原因——因爲我想告訴學生，他們不需要接受學校教育或競爭對手給他們鋪設的道路。從根本上來說，一個人的人生應該由他自己去規劃。

Q: What are you glad you didn’t know then that you know now?

問：有哪些事情是你現在已經知道，但很慶幸當時並不知道的？

A:If I had known how hard it would be to do something new, particularly in the payments industry, I would never have started PayPal. That’s why nobody with long experience in banking had done it. You needed to be naive enough to think that new things could be done. And it turned out to be true: PayPal worked. But if I’d had more experience, I’m sure I would have shied away from the risk and done something much more boring. This is one of the reasons that young people can have a strange advantage in technology in that they haven’t yet been brainwashed into thinking that current methods are inevitable.

答：如果我知道創新如此艱難，尤其是在支付行業，我恐怕不會創建貝寶。這也是爲什麼經驗豐富的銀行從業者中，沒人做這件事情。你需要足夠天真地認爲一件新事物能夠成功。結果證明了我的觀點：貝寶取得了成功。而如果我積累了更多經驗，我肯定會避開風險，從事一些更無聊的事情。所以，現在的年輕人有一種奇怪的技術優勢，因爲他們沒有被洗腦，不會認爲現有的方法是不可避免的。

Q: What is your best advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?

問：你對有抱負的創業者最好的建議是什麼？

A:The most important thing is simple: Start with a small market and dominate that first. Big markets are tempting because they seem full of opportunity but most of that opportunity will be for others to compete with you. Instead focus your ambition on a definitively superior solution to a specific problem.

答：最重要的事情很簡單：先從小市場開始，佔領這個市場。大的市場固然充滿誘惑，看起來滿是機遇，但大多數機會都會面臨許多競爭者。創業者應該聚焦某個特定的問題，集中精力做出一個絕對出色的解決方案。