原文地址： http://paulgraham.com/fr.html

以下为个人摘抄和只言片语的体会：

If you're an inexperienced founder, the only way to survive is by imposing external constraints on yourself.

number zero is: these rules exist for a reason. You wouldn't need a rule to keep you going in one direction if there weren't powerful forces pushing you in another.

1 Don't raise money unless you want it and it wants you.

raise money 的一个很关键原因是为了更快的增长速度，更好的远期存活。

＃2 Be in fundraising mode or not

Because fundraising is so distracting, a startup should either be in fundraising mode or not. And when you do decide to raise money, you should focus your whole attention on it so you can get it done quickly and get back to work.

想起看到朋友专心花了2个月去谈融资，谈成功后开始迅速回到扩张工作上。
总是觉得边谈边看，磨磨蹭蹭是不利于谈融资和做创业这两件事情的。

Investors will try to lure you into fundraising when you're not. It's great for them if they can, because they can thereby get a shot at you before everyone else. They'll send you emails saying they want to meet to learn more about you. If you get cold-emailed by an associate at a VC firm, you shouldn't meet even if you are in fundraising mode. Deals don't happen that way. [5] But even if you get an email from a partner you should try to delay meeting till you're in fundraising mode. They may say they just want to meet and chat, but investors never just want to meet and chat. What if they like you? What if they start to talk about giving you money? Will you be able to resist having that conversation? Unless you're experienced enough at fundraising to have a casual conversation with investors that stays casual, it's safer to tell them that you'd be happy to later, when you're fundraising, but that right now you need to focus on the company. [6]

想起以前被人追着着要去聊聊，还好当时脑子清醒，知道创业的根本是自己的产品，没有把产品打造好，去聊是没有用的。

Get introductions to investors.

ntros vary greatly in effectiveness. The best type of intro is from a well-known investor who has just invested in you. So when you get an investor to commit, ask them to introduce you to other investors they respect. [7] The next best type of intro is from a founder of a company they've funded. You can also get intros from other people in the startup community, like lawyers and reporters.

Get the first commitment.

Close committed money.

Avoid investors who don't "lead."

Have multiple plans.

sales people asked you "how much you'd spend" when you're in store to chose gift for friend, so that they could pick up the most expensive one for you in your range.

so does the investors when they ask you "how much you'd raise".

But if you're in the inexperienced but earnest majority, the solution is analogous to the solution I recommend for pitching your startup: do the right thing and then just tell investors what you're doing.

If you're so fortunate as to have to think about the upper limit on what you should raise, a good rule of thumb is to multiply the number of people you want to hire times $15k times 18 months. In most startups, nearly all the costs are a function of the number of people, and $15k per month is the conventional total cost (including benefits and even office space) per person.

Be profitable if you can.

You will be in a much stronger position if your collection of plans includes one for raising zero dollars—i.e. if you can make it to profitability without raising any additional money. Ideally you want to be able to say to investors "We'll succeed no matter what, but raising money will help us do it faster."

正是我所想，先赚钱了，然后再考虑加速的问题。如果一开始就不能赚钱，那么也不要去忽悠别人了，自己玩情怀就好了。

No one wants you if you seem desperate. And the best way not to seem desperate is not to be desperate. That's one reason we urge startups during YC to keep expenses low and to try to make it to ramen profitability before Demo Day.

雪中送炭，和锦上添花，世人都爱后者。那么你就织出一片好锦来。

hough it sounds slightly paradoxical, if you want to raise money, the best thing you can do is get yourself to the point where you don't need to.

哈哈。

Don't optimize for valuation.

Not only is fundraising not the test that matters, valuation is not even the thing to optimize about fundraising. The number one thing you want from phase 2 fundraising is to get the money you need, so you can get back to focusing on the real test, the success of your company. Number two is good investors. Valuation is at best third.

每次看到媒体报道创业公司融资多少钱，国内最高A轮融资，都会让人有一种误解：融资越多证明你越成功。最后创业者的成功变成了融资额的高低。

这是一种多大的误解。

真正的成功，是你的事业成功，是你想做的事情它成功了。也许甚至你都没有融资。

Yes/no before valuation.

Some investors want to know what your valuation is before they even talk to you about investing. If your valuation has already been set by a prior investment at a specific valuation or cap, you can tell them that number. But if it isn't set because you haven't closed anyone yet, and they try to push you to name a price, resist doing so.

Tell them that valuation is not the most important thing to you and that you haven't thought much about it, that you are looking for investors you want to partner with and who want to partner with you, and that you should talk first about whether they want to invest at all. Then if they decide they do want to invest, you can figure out a price. But first things first.

Beware "valuation sensitive" investors.

Occasionally you'll encounter investors who describe themselves as "valuation sensitive." What this means in practice is that they are compulsive negotiators who will suck up a lot of your time trying to push your price down. You should therefore never approach such investors first.

想起我的第一次创业，当年真是懵懂青涩啊。

Accept offers greedily.

Don't sell more than 25% in round 2

Our rule of thumb is not to sell more than 25% in phase 2, on top of whatever you sold in phase 1, which should be less than 15%.

Have one person handle fundraising.

The founder who handles fundraising should be the CEO, who should in turn be the most formidable of the founders.

Even if the CEO is a programmer and another founder is a salesperson? Yes.

Stop fundraising when it stops working.

Don't get addicted to fundraising.

The danger of fundraising is particularly acute for people who are good at it. It's always fun to work on something you're good at. If you're one of these people, beware. Fundraising is not what will make your company successful. Listening to users complain about bugs in your software is what will make you successful. And the big danger of getting addicted to fundraising is not merely that you'll spend too long on it or raise too much money. It's that you'll start to think of yourself as being already successful, and lose your taste for the schleps you need to undertake to actually be successful. Startups can be destroyed by this.

一切还是看回到初心。

Don't raise too much.

be nice

Don't make things complicated.

I realize it may seem odd to sum up this huge treatise by saying that my overall advice is not to make fundraising too complicated, but if you go back and look at this list you'll see it's basically a simple recipe with a lot of implications and edge cases. Avoid investors till you decide to raise money, and then when you do, talk to them all in parallel, prioritized by expected value, and accept offers greedily. That's fundraising in one sentence. Don't introduce complicated optimizations, and don't let investors introduce complications either.

Fundraising is not what will make you successful. It's just a means to an end. Your primary goal should be to get it over with and get back to what will make you successful—making things and talking to users—and the path I've described will for most startups be the surest way to that destination.

Be good, take care of yourselves, and don't leave the path