PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel is often known for hisability to understand what makes a companysuccessful and for having some contrarian points ofview. Following the sale of PayPal to eBay EBAY0.14% in 2002, Thiel founded global hedge fundClarium Capital Management, technology companyPalantir 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 itsboard. 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 eschewhigher education and work on a venture of their choosing.
贝宝公司(PayPal)联合创始人彼得o泰尔深知如何成功经营一家公司，并且因许多特立独行的观点而闻名于创投界。2002年将PayPal出售给易趣公司(eBay)之后，泰尔创建了全球对冲基金克莱瑞姆资本管理公司(ClariumCapital Management)、科技公司Palantir和风险投资公司创业者基金(Founders Fund)，该基金投资的公司包括音乐平台Spotify、虚拟现实公司Oculus和太空探索技术公司(SpaceX)。此外，泰尔也是Facebook第一位外部投资者，目前为Facebook董事会成员。通过其泰尔基金会(Thiel Foundation)，他在4年前设立了针对20岁以下优秀创业者的泰尔奖学金(Thiel Fellowship)，有前途的创业者不用接受高等教育，即可获得10万美元和两年的时间，从事自己选择的事业。
Known for his strong opinions about hot-button topics like education, company culture andcompetition, Thiel has been in the news of late promoting his new book Zero to One: Notes onStartups, 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 courseat Stanford. The authors aim to rebuff the notion that innovation is dead and instead delveinto how entrepreneurs can explore new technologies and create fresh inventions in currentfields and “uncharted frontiers.” We caught up with Thiel to talk about the value of being naiveand finding inspiration off the beaten track.
泰尔因其对教育、公司文化与竞争等热门话题的强烈观点而名声在外，近期，他的新书《从零到一：对创业，以及如何构筑未来的一点思考》(Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future)使他再次成为媒体热点。该书由泰尔和他之前的学生布莱克o马斯特斯共同创作，主要内容为马斯特斯在斯坦福大学(Stanford)上泰尔的计算机科学课时记录的笔记。两位作者并不认同“创新已死”的观点，他们在书中探讨了创业者如何开发新技术，在当前领域和“未知的前沿”创造发明。我们对泰尔进行了采访，邀请他谈论了天真的价值，以及如何独辟蹊径，寻找灵感。
Q: Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently when you were firststarting up? How did you learn this lesson?
问：如果你具备现在的经验和见识，你的第一次创业会有哪些不同?你是如何收获这一经验教训的?
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 NewYork law firm, that path came to a dead end. All the aspiring lawyers on the outside wanted toget in but all of the people I worked with wanted to get out. It was like Alcatraz but all you hadto do to escape was walk through the front door. So I left. And that experience helped merealize how many things in the world might be possible and valuable, yet ignored by mostpeople, simply because they are not found on any conventional track.
答：最开始，我的成长道路似乎早已注定——从高中到大学，再到法学院，然后开始职业生涯。我在纽约一家律师事务所工作的'时候，这条道路陷入了死胡同。外面有抱负的律师都想进来，但我的同事们却都想逃离这里。那里就像是恶魔岛，要想逃离这里，你只需走出那扇门。所以我离开了。这次的经历让我意识到，这个世界上有许多事情是可行的、有价值的，但却被大多数人忽视，只是因为你根本不可能在任何传统的轨道上发现它们。
Q: What do you think would have happened if you had had this knowledge then?
问：如果你当时便有了这样的感悟，你认为会发生什么?
A:If I’d realized how arbitrary it was, I might have gotten off the track a lot sooner. I know Iwould have thought about it more carefully. But there’s no way to run the experiment twice.
答：如果我能意识到职业道路是如此变幻莫测，我可能会更早离开那里。我知道我肯定会更谨慎地考虑这个问题。但人生不可能重来。
Q: How do you think young entrepreneurs might benefit from this insight?
问：你认为你的这些见解能够给年轻的创业者们带来哪些帮助?
A:An entrepreneur must deal with more uncertainty than a professional with a well-definedrole. Because of that uncertainty, there’s always a temptation to reach out for some kind ofguide, whether it’s old business school case studies, or, more likely, the most recent moves ofthe firms that you perceive to be competitors. Reacting to them can at least give some idea ofwhat to do. We’re so used to competing on tracks that entrepreneurs can quickly get caughtup in incremental battles with each other, almost without realizing it. But defining yourself by acompetitor means giving up the most important reason to be an entrepreneur: You can dosomething new in the world that won’t be done unless you are the one to do it.
答：相比职责明确的专业人士，创业者必须应对更多不确定性。由于这些不确定性，他们往往会禁不住诱惑，试图寻找各种指引，比如传统的商学院案例研究，更有可能的是，被视为竞争对手的公司最近的举动等。根据竞争对手的举动做出反应，至少可以让你知道应该做什么。我们早已习惯于发展道路上的竞争，以至于创业者之间会迅速陷入日益激烈的竞争，而他们本身几乎都没有意识到这一点。但是，通过竞争对手来确定自己的发展方向，意味着放弃了创业最重要的理由：你可以做一些世界上前所未有、如果没有你就不可能出现的东西。
Q: Besides inventing a time machine, how might they realize this wisdom sooner?
问：除了发明一台时间机器，他们如何才能更快深刻体会这些智慧?
A:I don’t know. How to teach people to do what hasn’t been done is a great riddle. It’sbecause schools tend to breed a kind of process-oriented conformity that I started afellowship 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。如何教会人们去做从未有人做过的事情，是一个无解的谜题。正是由于学校往往教导学生遵从某种流程，我才为那些希望在真实世界中学习如何创业的年轻人创办了奖学金——只有这样，他们才能尽早规划自己的发展道路。
I taught a class at Stanford for the same reason — because I wanted to tell students that theydon’t have to accept the paths laid down by their schooling or by their competitors. Butfundamentally it’s something people have to figure out for themselves.
我在斯坦福任教也是出于同样的原因——因为我想告诉学生，他们不需要接受学校教育或竞争对手给他们铺设的道路。从根本上来说，一个人的人生应该由他自己去规划。
Q: What are you glad you didn’t know then that you know now?
问：有哪些事情是你现在已经知道，但很庆幸当时并不知道的?
A:If I had known how hard it would be to do something new, particularly in the paymentsindustry, I would never have started PayPal. That’s why nobody with long experience in bankinghad done it. You needed to be naive enough to think that new things could be done. And itturned out to be true: PayPal worked. But if I’d had more experience, I’m sure I would haveshied away from the risk and done something much more boring. This is one of the reasonsthat young people can have a strange advantage in technology in that they haven’t yet beenbrainwashed into thinking that current methods are inevitable.
答：如果我知道创新如此艰难，尤其是在支付行业，我恐怕不会创建贝宝。这也是为什么经验丰富的银行从业者中，没人做这件事情。你需要足够天真地认为一件新事物能够成功。结果证明了我的观点：贝宝取得了成功。而如果我积累了更多经验，我肯定会避开风险，从事一些更无聊的事情。所以，现在的年轻人有一种奇怪的技术优势，因为他们没有被洗 脑，不会认为现有的方法是不可避免的。
Q: What is your best advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?
问：你对有抱负的创业者最好的建议是什么?
A:The most important thing is simple: Start with a small market and dominate that first. Bigmarkets are tempting because they seem full of opportunity but most of that opportunity willbe for others to compete with you. Instead focus your ambition on a definitively superiorsolution to a specific problem.
答：最重要的事情很简单：先从小市场开始，占领这个市场。大的市场固然充满诱惑，看起来满是机遇，但大多数机会都会面临许多竞争者。创业者应该聚焦某个特定的问题，集中精力做出一个绝对出色的解决方案。