怎样看竞争对手？（Startup Playbook from Sam Altman IV.5）

（创业由四个部分组成，理念、团队、产品、执行力。Startup Playbook 是YC掌门人Sam Altman对这四个方面的完整阐述，这是执行力当中关于竞争对手的部分）

A quick word about competitors: competitors are a startup ghost story.

用一个词来形容竞争对手这个东西：它是鬼一样的存在（像鬼一样吓人但并不存在的东西）。

First-time founders think they are what kill 99% of startups. But 99% of startups die from suicide, not murder. Worry instead about all of your internal problems. If you fail, it will very likely be because you failed to make a great product and/or failed to make a great company.

没有经验的创业者会觉得来自竞争对手的碾压是99%创业公司的死因，但其实并非如此——99%的创业公司死于自杀而不是谋杀。你还是多操心操心自己内部的事情吧，要是你失败了，那多半是因为没能打造一款卓越的产品或者建立一个优秀的公司（注：跟竞争对手做了些啥木有关系）。

99% of the time, you should ignore competitors. Especially ignore them when they raise a lot of money or make a lot of noise in the press. Do not worry about a competitor until they are beating you with a real, shipped product.

99%的时间里，你完全应该无视竞争对手。尤其是在他们融到了一大笔钱或者在媒体上造势的时候。在他们捣鼓出一个对你有实质性威胁的产品之前，对他们置之不理就好了。

Press releases are easier to write than code, which is easier still than making a great product. In the words of Henry Ford: “The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.”

在媒体上写软文比写代码要容易得多，而写代码又比做个伟大的产品容易得多。福特汽车的创始人亨利·福特说过，“你真正需要畏惧的竞争对手是那种不声不响，但坚持不懈地埋头干实事的人。”

Every giant company has faced worse competitive threats than what you are facing now when they were small, and they all came out ok. There is always a counter-move.

每个大公司在初期都应付过比你现在残暴得多的竞争压力，他们不都挺过来了？别怕，办法总比困难多。