这一篇文章应该起名为“为什么我们不应该看新闻”。 之前， 美团王兴在微博中评论到“[…] 可是，特斯拉的市值其实还赶不上马斯克创办的另一家公司PayPal，一家最近十几年几乎啥也没干的支付公司。金融就是这么躺赚，真的合理么？”
巧的是，新年书单上的第一本书的第一章节就是介绍PayPal的发展历程。用cofounder Levchin自己的话来说
- I think a good way to describe PayPal is: a security company pretending to be a financial services company.
- PayPal succeeded because it could deal with fraud —and its competitors couldn’t.
根据书中对Levchin的采访来看，从一开始他就掌握了在当时安全领域中相当特殊的技术。也就是说从一开始，他就是安全方面的专家。另外在PayPal的发展过程中，他们也遇到了诈骗等让银行业一直头疼的问题，而他们的成功正是因为他们找到了解决方案。所以不是很清楚王兴究竟是以怎样的心态发的这条博客。
根据书中的描述，Levchin在PayPal创业之前已经开过三家公司。这给人的启示是，想干事情要趁早。虽然有很多看似一夜暴富的神话，比如最近上市的Airbnb, 但是Airbnb是2008创立的，是一家发展了12年的公司。普遍来说，公司想要成功，都得以年计算。三年就能获得成功的公司凤毛麟角。如果平均下来一个公司需要发展5年才能小有所成，如果一个人初次建立的公司几乎是无法成功的，那么在最理想的情况下，第一次创业失败，第二次创业成功，这也需要5到10年的时间。也就是说，如果今天立刻开始着手准备创业，也得等到5年后才能看到效果。
这就带来一个问题。假如我们需要投入5到10年的时间，那我们究竟应该做什么才值得我们的投入？目前我的感受是根本没有人会知道这个问题的答案。5年时间，什么都有可能发生。尤其是现在技术飞速发展，转瞬之间一个在一年前看还是一个好的商业想法就有可能变得过时且一文不值。而且就算真的找到非常不错的点子，在执行的过程中也会遇到各种各样的挑战。有可能一个完全不可控的偶然因素就可以彻底毁掉一个公司甚至是一个产业。
总得来看，Levchin一开始自己也不知道自己将会做出一个PayPal。整个创业的过程是一个不断摸索、适应和调整的过程。做出错误的决定是在所难免的，而且哪怕是重新再来一遍，考虑到做决定时的处境以及可用的信息，也许仍然会做出同样的选择。
There are all sorts of tactical decisions that we made here and there that played out to be wrong, but it’s not like I could have predicted it. It’s not one of these things that I’m now smarter and therefore I could have done it even better. I think, given the information available at the time, I would have likely chosen the same outcome.
所以说每一次都做出正确的决定不应该成为最终的目标，但在那些重要的时刻我们又要能果断出手，顶住压力做出正确的决定。对于PayPal来说，他们的重要时刻就是他们意识到诈骗在不断侵蚀他们收益的时候。 他们需要做出一个决定，是继续迁移他们的产品到windows系统上还是应该投入资源来解决诈骗问题。
相比于无时无刻都尝试做出最正确的决定以及在一开始就设定一个正确的目标，适应性看上去倒是更为关键一些。在PayPal之前，他们一共有过六个不同的商业计划，甚至他们申请资金的时候都不是以PayPal为名义申请的。但是一旦市场的反应明显指明PayPal的潜力的时候，他们果断地切换到PayPal上了。说到底，对于创业者来说，自己的看法是否正确一点也不重要。市场经济的美妙之处就是市场几乎永远是对的。
Levchin提到的另外一个比较重要的事情是找到好的合伙人和团队。一个人单干还是过于困难。尤其是当前这个专业无比细分的时代，想要一个人掌握所有的技能几乎是不可能的。与此同时，任何一个产品，从最开始的想法到最终的成品，整个开发流程会涉及到很多领域。 以一个人的力量去涉猎这么多领域，不说完全不可能，至少也是效率极低的。
原文摘录
- The company went through several ideas, including cryptography software and a service for transmitting money via PDAs, before finding its niche as a web-based payment system.
- PayPal succeeded because it could deal with fraud —and its competitors couldn’t.
- I had already founded three different companies during college and the year after, which I spent in Champaign-Urbana, where I went to school.
- What I wanted t odd was capitalize on that emergence of technology. And then, of course, enterprise requires security; security requires these scare skills; I have the skills; start a company.
- But no one was making the software because there was no demand.
- As soon as we got funding, we started hiring aggressively, and we built this app for the Palm Pilot, which was getting pretty good growth.
- Sometime by early 2000, we realized that all these people were trying to sue the website for transactions, and the growth of that was actually more impressive than the growth of the handled device one, which was inexplicable.
- Eventually we realized that these guys were begging to be our users.
- I realized that we were losing a lot more money in fraud than I thought we were. It was still early 2001.
- It’s one of these things where you want to change one big thing at a time, and the fraud is a pretty big thing.
- We started with this, “Fraud is going to kill us. What can we do to save ourselves?” They started from, “We have no fraud. How can we build this and not let any more fraud in?” Which is the wrong position to start because you are limiting your users, and new users learning about a new system really don’t want to be restricted.
- The idea was: I can send you the money, even if you aren’t a member.
- What is surprising: It was all surprising. Nonstop learning of things that I didn’t really know before.
- Try to have a good cofounder. I think it’s all about people, and, if you are doing it completely alone, it’s really hard. It’s not impossible, in particular if you are a loner and introverted type, but it’s still really hard.
- That sort of sounds touchy-feely, but I think you have to really have good people. If you have a good team, you are halfway there. Even more importantly, perhaps, you have to have a really strong cofounder. Someone you can rely on in a very fundamental way.
- There are all sorts of tactical decisions that we made here and there that played out to be wrong, but it’s not like I could have predicted it. It’s not one of these things that I’m now smarter and therefore I could have done it even better. I think, given the information available at the time, I would have likely chosen the same outcome.
- The goal —at least the way I think about entrepreneurship — is you realize one day that you can’t really work for anyone else. You have to start your own thing. It almost doesn’t matter what that thing is. We had six different business plan changes, and then the last one was PayPal.
- I don’t think there was ever any clarity as to who we were until we knew it was working.
- To their credit, they were like, “All right, you guys are smart. Let’s do it.” Usually VCs get freaked out by that, but these guys were like, “OK. You’re so crazy. Let’s go.”
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