# Zach Sims at Startup School NY 2014  

> `[00:00:00]` I have a distinct privilege right now to introduce another one of those New York Y Combinator companies.

`[00:00:00]` 我现在有一个独特的特权来介绍另一家纽约 Y 组合公司。

> CEO is co-founder and CEO Zach Sims who started Code Academy.

首席执行官是联合创始人兼首席执行官扎克·西姆斯，他创办了代码学院。

> Yes hopefully I\'ll know about Code Academy If programming is the fluency of this generation.

是的，希望我能了解代码学院，如果编程是这一代的流利之处的话。

> They are the place they are the global place to learn it since they launched about three years ago.

自三年前推出以来，它们是全球学习的地方。

> They have now served I think over 24 million students all over the world in every single country.

我认为，他们现在为世界各地每一个国家的 2400 万学生服务。

> Is that true as well as Antarctica.

南极洲也是这样吗。

> Presumably we\'re going to hear more about that.

我们大概会听到更多关于这一点的消息。

> One of the things that\'s really exciting about this is not only was he a drop out from Columbia but yes was that for dropouts or for Columbia.

其中一件令人兴奋的事情是，他不仅从哥伦比亚退学，而且对辍学或哥伦比亚大学来说也是如此。

> I\'m not sure but we\'ll say both.

我不确定，但我们可以说两者兼而有之。

> But like so many startup stories you know from the outside it seems really simple really clear I figure something out makes something people want to grow grow grow them before you know you\'re on The Colbert Report which is was there was a great episode but in fact every startup has its own cluster and I hope Zach shares with you the story of the few weeks running up to demo day because Code Academy was anything but a sure thing.

但是，就像你从外面知道的很多创业故事一样，看起来真的很简单，真的很清楚，我想出了一些东西，在你知道你在“科尔伯特报告”(Colbert Report)上有一个很棒的插曲之前，我就想做一些人想要做的事情，但事实上，每一家初创公司都有自己的集群，我希望扎克和你分享几个星期以来的故事。演示一天因为代码学院绝对不是一件确定的事情。

> So please give it up for Zach Sims.

所以请为扎克·西姆斯放弃吧。

> `[00:01:19]` Awesome thank you Alexis.

`[00:01:19]` 太好了，谢谢你，亚历克西斯。

> I didn\'t realize I\'d have to compete with the soccer game today.

我没有意识到我今天必须和足球比赛。

> Should have interwove and like the score in my presentation.

应该是交织在一起的，喜欢我演讲中的分数。

> But anyway my name\'s Zach Sims.

但不管怎样我叫扎克·西姆斯。

> And as Alexis just mentioned I started a company called Code Academy with my co-founder Ryan and we teach people the skills they need to find jobs in the 21st century online.

正如 Alexis 刚才提到的，我和我的联合创始人 Ryan 创建了一家名为 CodeAcademy 的公司，我们教人们在 21 世纪在线寻找工作所需的技能。

> But as Alexis mentioned it wasn\'t always that way.

但正如亚历克西斯所提到的，情况并不总是这样。

> So when I go to a talk like this and I sit in the audience I always ask why is that person on stage.

所以当我去做这样的演讲时，我总是坐在观众中，我总是问为什么那个人在舞台上。

> What experiences have they been through that let them stand up and preach to people and what can I learn from that.

他们经历了什么样的经历，让他们站起来向人们宣讲，我从中学到了什么。

> And so today I looked at the slate of speakers that\'s here today and saw a lot of pretty awesome names.

所以今天我看了今天在这里的演讲人名单，看到了很多非常棒的名字。

> You have world class investors you have people who are changing the world with nonprofits and people with super fast growing companies and then I think they needed someone to fill the cliche spot they needed to drop out.

你有世界级的投资者，有人用非营利组织改变世界，有的人拥有超高速发展的公司，然后我认为他们需要有人来填补他们需要退出的陈词滥调。

> So my story is somewhat similar to what you\'d see on the Social Network the movie that hopefully a lot of you are familiar with but with a lot less Trent Reznor music and a lot less cocaine.

所以，我的故事有点类似于你在社交网络上看到的电影，希望你们中的很多人都熟悉这部电影，但有更少的特伦特·雷兹诺音乐和更少的可卡因。

> So.

所以

> What I hope you guys leave with at the end of today is kind of our story and hopefully a few key lessons you can learn that will tell you some things you can do to eventually one day prepare yourself to start your own company and then a lot of things that we did that you probably shouldn\'t do if you do start your own company and hopefully a couple of fun stories in between.

我希望你们在今天结束时留下的是我们的故事，希望你们能学到一些关键的经验教训，告诉你们一些你可以做的事情，最终有一天你可以为自己的公司做好准备，然后我们做了很多你可能不应该做的事情，如果你真的成立了你自己的公司，希望在中间有几个有趣的故事。

> Because as Alexis said You hear all the time about people who kind of just hit it and it just works.

因为就像亚历克西斯说的，你经常听到有人打它，它只是起作用。

> And I think the story that\'s been told about Code Academy a lot is that we built the actual product a few weeks before Demo Day and launch and had a lot of success but it wasn\'t really that easy.

我认为关于代码学院的故事是，我们在演示日前几周制作了实际的产品，并取得了很大的成功，但这并不是那么容易。

> So I want to go back to 2003 when I really started becoming interested in the Internet and that was the year that the iTunes music store got really big.

所以我想回到 2003 年，那时我开始对互联网产生兴趣，那是 iTunes 音乐商店变得非常大的一年。

> They ran the first advertisements for the iTunes music store and somewhat ironically they were headlined byDr.

他们为 iTunes 音乐商店刊登了第一批广告，但颇具讽刺意味的是，这些广告的标题是 dr。

> Dre and so now that\'s all kind of come full circle.

德雷，等等，现在这一切都成了一个完整的循环。

> A few years later I got my first iPod in 2003 and I brought it with me everywhere for the first time you could carry a thousand songs in your pocket.

几年后，我在 2003 年买到了我的第一台 iPod，我第一次随身携带了它，这是你第一次在口袋里放一千首歌。

> And so I brought it to the gym I brought it on runs and it skipped throughout the runs.

所以我把它带到了健身房，我带它跑步，它在整个跑步过程中跳过。

> But what I didn\'t have was a way to protect it.

但我所没有的是一种保护它的方法。

> When I dropped it on the ground which happened all the time and as all you know with hard drives dropping them on the ground isn\'t so great.

当我把它扔在地上的时候，它一直在发生，正如你所知道的，硬盘把它们扔在地上并不是很好。

> So I looked online and I tried to find a case that I could use for my iPod and instead of doing what the normal person dies and buying the first one that I saw I realized should just make one myself.

所以我在网上查了一下，我试着找一个可以用来装 iPod 的箱子，而不是做正常人死了的事，买第一个我意识到应该自己做的盒子。

> So at the age of 13 in 2003 I emailed a bunch of different iPod case manufacturers across the country and told them that I had the greatest idea ever to build a waterproof iPod case.

因此，在 2003 年，我 13 岁的时候，我给全国各地的一群不同的 iPod 机箱制造商发了邮件，告诉他们我有一个有史以来最棒的想法来制造一个防水的 iPod 外壳。

> I didn\'t tell them that I was 13 and had no idea what I was talking about.

我没有告诉他们我 13 岁，也不知道我在说什么。

> So after around six months of emailing with someone who worked at a big case manufacturer across theU.S.

因此，在与一位在美国一家大型箱包制造商工作的人进行了大约六个月的电子邮件之后。

> finally I had something in my hands that had gone from having an idea when I first got the iPod to having something that now protected it everywhere.

最后，我手里拿着一些东西，从我第一次买 iPod 时的想法变成了现在到处保护它的东西。

> And then a couple of weeks later the guy on the other end who worked at the case manufacturer asked to get on the phone with me so we could talk about how we were going to launch and market what we had built.

几周后，在箱子制造商工作的另一端的那个家伙要求和我打电话，这样我们就可以谈谈我们将如何推出和销售我们建造的产品。

> And so what I thought was really cool was that no one on the Internet knew that I was 13 and in my parents basement.

所以我觉得很酷的是，互联网上没有人知道我 13 岁，在我父母的地下室里。

> It\'s really the great equalizer.

这真是个伟大的均衡器。

> The great equalizer that is until you get on the phone with someone and your voice cracks 10 seconds into the phone call.

最伟大的均衡器是，直到你和某人通了电话，你的声音在电话中发出了 10 秒的裂痕。

> So.

所以

> That relationship was really fruitful until he realized that I was 13.

在他意识到我 13 岁之前，这段关系真的很有成效。

> But what was really empowering about that was that I realized that being young or being somewhere not in New York or in San Francisco didn\'t matter on the internet didn\'t matter that I never built hardware before it didn\'t matter that I didn\'t know what marketing was.

但真正让我感到鼓舞的是，我意识到，年轻或者不在纽约或旧金山并不重要，在互联网上我从来没有制造过硬件并不重要，因为我不知道什么是营销。

> But the Internet allowed me to learn all these things very quickly and to build something that came out of that.

但互联网让我能够非常快地了解所有这些东西，并从中产生一些东西。

> So it was one of the first lessons I learned early on is don\'t know until you try.

因此，这是我在早期学到的第一课之一，直到你试着才知道。

> And so I started trying pretty early.

所以我很早就开始尝试了。

> So after that first experience kind of kept going back to the question of how do I learn more about the Internet and what I can do with it.

因此，在第一次体验之后，我又回到了一个问题上，那就是如何更多地了解互联网，以及我能用它做些什么。

> It already seen what an amazing impact it can have on me and people around me.

它已经看到了它对我和我周围的人有多么惊人的影响。

> And so I went to the library and I picked up a book on THP and Miis.

于是我去图书馆拿了一本关于 THP 和 Miis 的书。

> Q L for Dummies.

Dummies 的 Q L。

> I went to a shelf and I saw a list full of yellow and black books picked up a few of them that had acronyms I didn\'t quite understand and I figured you know a book for the rest of us we can really sympathize with that.

我走到一个书架上，看到一张满是黄色和黑色书籍的清单，里面有几本我不太懂的缩略语，我想你知道一本书，对我们其他人来说，我们真的很同情。

> And I went home and I read a bunch of four Demis books but it never really clicked and I never really built anything with the knowledge that I\'d picked up by reading these books because they didn\'t actually have me working on real projects.

回到家，我读了四本德米斯的书，但是它从来没有被点击过，我从来没有建立任何我通过阅读这些书学到的知识，因为它们实际上没有让我从事真正的项目。

> So when I turned 18 I went to Columbia in New York as Alexis mentioned and instead of studying computer science for some reason I decided to study political science.

所以当我满 18 岁的时候，我去了纽约的哥伦比亚大学，就像亚历克西斯提到的那样，我没有因为某种原因学习计算机科学，而是决定学习政治学。

> And I usually try not to mention that but I\'ll tell you guys that secret.

我通常尽量不提这个，但我会告诉你们这个秘密。

> So I went to college and my first semester I tried to find people that were like me that were interested in technology that were interested in startups.

所以我上了大学，我的第一个学期我试着找到像我一样对科技感兴趣的人，他们对创业感兴趣。

> But there was no one.

但没有人。

> I asked everyone around me and what are you guys interested in doing with with your future and your careers and half of them told me were definitely not thinking about that we\'re just interested in partying.

我问了我周围的每个人，你们对自己的未来和事业有兴趣做什么，他们中的一半告诉我，他们肯定没有想过我们只是对派对感兴趣。

> And the other half looked at me similarly weirdly and said you know we\'re working in banking consulting.

另一半人也奇怪地看着我说：“你知道，我们在银行咨询部门工作。”

> Obviously like everyone else in New York.

显然和纽约的其他人一样。

> So I was a little discouraged but second semester of my freshman year saw a poster that there was gonna be a talk from someone who I thought was kind of famous in the New York startup scene.

所以我有点泄气，但是我大一的第二学期看到了一张海报，上面写着一个我认为在纽约创业时很有名的人的演讲。

> And name is Sam less in and he started a company called Drop Yo.

名字叫山姆，他创办了一家名为 DROYO 的公司。

> It was a file sharing company and he was coming and I showed up two hours early for his talk.

那是一家文件共享公司，他要来了，我提前两个小时来听他的谈话。

> I was thinking there\'s gonna be like a packed house.

我在想，那里会像一个挤满了人的房子。

> You know I got there and it was in a really small room but it was in that really nice building.

你知道我到了那里，它在一间很小的房间里，但它在那栋非常漂亮的建筑里。

> So I figured like very important person a lot of people are gonna be here.

所以我想像个很重要的人很多人都会在这里。

> Sam showed up on time and no one else showed up.

山姆准时出现，其他人都没来。

> So that was New York in 2008.

那就是 2008 年的纽约。

> It was a world where no one was interested in startups and you got ridiculed and there was no one to talk to you about about working in technology.

在这个世界里，没有人对创业感兴趣，你被嘲笑，也没有人和你谈论科技工作。

> And so Sam was the only thing I had.

所以山姆是我唯一拥有的东西。

> So I pestered him for the next six months until he finally let me work for him for a summer for free.

所以在接下来的六个月里，我一直缠着他，直到他终于让我免费为他工作了一个夏天。

> And I tutored the essay at night back in Connecticut where I\'m from.

晚上，我在康涅狄格州辅导这篇文章，我来自康涅狄格州。

> And I sat on the couch and I learned everything I could from what Sam was doing.

我坐在沙发上，从山姆所做的一切中学到了一切。

> I went back to college and I said What can I do next that will help me learn more how we become better than the experience I had at dropping them.

我回到了大学，我说接下来我能做些什么，这将帮助我更多地了解我们是如何变得更好的，而不是我放弃他们的经历。

> I definitely wasn\'t taking another class on political theory which at that point was interesting but not quite relevant to what I wanted to do after I graduated.

我绝对不想再上一门政治理论课，这门课当时很有趣，但与我毕业后想要做的事情不太相关。

> So I got to know a lot of other people in New York who were working in startups and I went to tech crunch disrupt that year and I saw two friends of mine demos something called group me that at the time allowed you to text one phone number.

所以我认识了纽约很多在初创公司工作的人，那年我去了科技危机公司，我看到了我的两个朋友，一个叫“我组”的人，当时我可以发短信给你一个电话号码。

> They created a group chatting application you could send one one text to one number go to like five or six people and they could all text back to that number.

他们创建了一个群聊天应用程序，你可以把一条短信发送给一个号码，然后发送给五到六个人，然后他们都可以发回那个号码。

> And I thought it was super cool.

我觉得很酷。

> The two founders who were friends of mine had been at a music festival the week beforehand and experienced this themselves when they were trying to text and there was no data.

这两位创始人是我的朋友，他们在一周前参加过一个音乐节，当他们试图发短信时，他们自己也经历过这种情况，而且没有任何数据。

> And that for their e-mails to get through and they could text each other and they got lost and then a week later they built something that solve their problem.

为了让他们的电子邮件通过，他们可以互相发短信，然后迷路了，一周后，他们建立了解决问题的方法。

> That was crazy to me.

对我来说太疯狂了。

> And so Grooby went on to be super popular at tech crunch disrupt and I eventually joined them to work on group me when it was just the two of them and me in an apartment with a couple other people and I realized that solving their problem was the key to their early success.

所以 Grooby 在科技危机中非常受欢迎，我最终加入了我的团队，当时只有他们俩和我和其他几个人住在一间公寓里，我意识到解决他们的问题是他们早期成功的关键。

> They\'d build something that they needed to use and they figured you know there\'s a lot of people to go to music festivals and there\'s a lot of people that need to communicate and so they build something for themselves.

他们会建造一些他们需要使用的东西，他们认为你知道有很多人可以去参加音乐节，还有很多人需要交流，所以他们为自己建立了一些东西。

> And so what I had a group me was something that finally my friends believed in and went from you know my friends looking at me as if I had the worst ideas ever to adding them all to a group chat.

所以，我有了一个团体，我的朋友们终于相信了，我的朋友们看着我，好像我有了最糟糕的想法，把他们都加入到了集体聊天中。

> And for the first time they thought that something I was involved in was pretty cool.

他们第一次觉得我参与的事情很酷。

> And then a lot of other people thought it was pretty cool too.

然后很多其他人认为这也很酷。

> And so we went from nothing in think it was July of 2010 descending hundreds of thousands of messages a day really really quickly.

因此，我们从无到有地认为，那是 2010 年 7 月，每天减少数十万条信息的速度非常快。

> We hired a team and we came up with it with a sign that pound sign in retrospect a little embarrassing.

我们雇了一个团队，我们想出了一个标志-回想起来，那个英镑标志有点尴尬。

> `[00:10:33]` To Alvin\'s fast slide quickly and I realize that you know the most important thing I could do is get a front row seat on the rocket ship you know and watch as group me grew from 2 people to 15 people to 20 people and then less than a year after with stardate it sold to Skype.

‘

> `[00:10:52]` So after that I went back to laughter.

`[00:10:52]` 那之后，我又笑了起来。

> `[00:10:59]` I went back to college and you know I had such a good experience.

`[00:10:59]` 我回到了大学，你知道我有这么好的经历。

> I kind of figured what most people would do is double down and go back and work in startups.

我想，大多数人会做的是加倍下来，回到创业公司工作。

> But I fell prey to the peer pressure and I interviewed at banks and consulting firms like everyone else and I realized sitting across the table from all these managing director is there was absolutely nothing I wanted to learn from these people.

但我和其他人一样，在银行和咨询公司接受了同行的压力采访，我意识到坐在这些董事总经理的对面，我绝对不想从这些人身上学到任何东西。

> Desolately nothing.

一无所有。

> I sat there and I regurgitated a discounted cash flow function.

我坐在那里，然后恢复了一个贴现现金流函数。

> I learned the night beforehand and even doing it in an interview was just massively painful and figured if that was going to be my life for 18 hours a day for two years I should choose something else to do.

我在前一天晚上就知道了，甚至在一次面试中做这件事也是非常痛苦的，我想，如果这是我每天 18 小时的生活，持续两年，我应该选择其他的事情去做。

> `[00:11:39]` But what I also saw was that the skills that I had learned over the past two and a half years while I was a Columbia weren\'t relevant to what mattered in the job market.

`[00:11:39]` 但我也看到，在过去两年半的时间里，我在哥伦比亚学到的技能与就业市场的重要性无关。

> And I saw that all my friends struggled to find jobs.

我发现我所有的朋友都很难找到工作。

> Two and a friend of mine Ryan at the time was a senior.

当时我的两个朋友莱恩是个大四学生。

> And all of his friends were trying to find jobs.

他所有的朋友都想找工作。

> And even though they were they were seniors graduating from Columbia a lot of them still struggle because the skills that they were learning weren\'t immediately practical.

尽管他们是从哥伦比亚大学毕业的高年级学生，但他们中的许多人仍然在挣扎，因为他们正在学习的技能并不是立即实用的。

> So I talked to Ryan who at the time probably thought I was crazy and said we should fix this.

所以我和瑞恩谈了谈，他当时可能觉得我疯了，说我们应该解决这个问题。

> You know this gap between education and employment and it shouldn\'t be too hard to solve.

你知道教育和就业之间的差距，应该不难解决。

> I sent him an email on the first e-mail that I think kind of really started the company with this headline.

我在第一封电子邮件上给他发了一封电子邮件，我认为这是公司的第一封邮件。

> One other thing that one other thing turned out to be your company.

另一件事，原来是你的公司。

> But we started talking about ways to connect people with skills that would eventually help them find jobs.

但我们开始讨论如何将人们的技能联系起来，从而最终帮助他们找到工作。

> And we realized we should just get started.

我们意识到我们应该开始了。

> We had a lot of free time and nights and weekends.

我们有很多空闲的时间，晚上和周末。

> And so we started building a bunch of different ideas.

所以我们开始建立一系列不同的想法。

> The first one we\'ve always been really great at namings.

第一个我们一直都很擅长命名。

> The first one is called Come recruit us I believe.

第一个叫来招募我们我相信。

> `[00:12:51]` I think we had the dotU.S.

`[00:12:51]` 我想我们有了美国。

> domain name.

域名。

> So we\'re very inventive.

所以我们很有创造力。

> And at the time we figured the best way to connect students with jobs was to have them log in with their Facebook account and just say where they wanted to work.

当时，我们认为最好的办法是让学生登录他们的 Facebook 账号，然后说出他们想在哪里工作。

> It seemed pretty simple.

看起来很简单。

> So we built the first version of this in 2011 and we talked to a lot of friends and mentors people who worked at startups before.

因此，我们在 2011 年建立了第一个版本，我们与许多朋友和导师交谈，这些人曾在初创公司工作过。

> And all the people that worked at startups looked at us and said This is the dumbest thing I\'ve ever heard.

所有在初创公司工作的人都看着我们说，这是我听过的最愚蠢的事情。

> We\'re like it\'s OK.

我们就像没事一样。

> You\'re not the market for this.

你不是这个的市场。

> So we spoke to our friends a Colombian.

所以我们跟我们的朋友说了一个哥伦比亚人。

> We\'re going to help you get jobs and they all looked at us.

我们会帮你找到工作，他们都看着我们。

> This is the dumbest thing I\'ve ever heard.

这是我听过的最愚蠢的事。

> It says very very encouraging.

上面写着很鼓舞人心。

> `[00:13:33]` Horizon and I took that feedback and we said you know well we\'ll roll with this and we\'ll apply to Y Combinator because if no one else thinks our idea is good maybe someone will think it\'s crazy.

`[00:13:33]` Horizon 和我接受了反馈，我们说你知道，我们会接受这一点，我们将申请 Y 组合，因为如果没有人认为我们的想法是好的，也许有人会认为这是疯狂的。

> `[00:13:44]` So we filled out a y our Y Combinator application and we asked for some feedback and got some of the best advice I\'ve gotten since we started the company which is we had too many words and not enough information.

`[00:13:44]` 所以我们填写了一个 Y 组合器应用程序，我们询问了一些反馈意见，并得到了一些我自创建公司以来得到的最好的建议，那就是我们有太多的单词而没有足够的信息。

> And that was probably because we didn\'t really know what we were building ourself and so we just kind of put a lot of words around around a thing in it.

这可能是因为我们不知道自己在做什么，所以我们就在里面放了很多的话。

> And you know we we applied twice and figured we\'d never ever get in.

你知道我们申请了两次还以为我们永远也进不来了。

> Turned out we got an email a couple of weeks later and we were invited to interview.

结果，几周后我们收到了一封电子邮件，我们被邀请去面试。

> So we flew out to California and we met with all the partners.

所以我们飞到了加利福尼亚，我们会见了所有的合作伙伴。

> And before doing that we landed went to a coffee shop.

在此之前，我们去了一家咖啡店。

> We figured it and put the finishing touches on on the thing that we had built that helped people find jobs through Facebook.

我们意识到了这一点，并对我们建造的帮助人们通过 Facebook 找到工作的东西做了最后的修改。

> `[00:14:27]` And we realized on the plane this amount had an epiphany that this is just a horrible idea.

`[00:14:27]` 我们在飞机上意识到，这是一个可怕的想法。

> Everyone had been talking to us was absolutely right it was just the worst idea ever you know.

每个人都在和我们交谈是完全正确的，这是你所知道的最糟糕的想法。

> So at the time we figured well we can hold programmers find jobs that\'s a better niche because we were you know I was learning to program myself.

因此，当时我们认为，我们可以让程序员找到一个更好的职位，因为我们是，你知道，我正在学习自己编程。

> My co-founder was a programmer.

我的联合创始人是个程序员。

> We were doing programming challenges.

我们在做编程上的挑战。

> So we spent the next 48 hours in a café in San Francisco building a way for people to take programming challenges and then find jobs from there and were so focused on building the first prototype of that product that we didn\'t realize we had locked the keys to or Veon be inside or beN.V.

接下来的 48 个小时，我们在旧金山的一家咖啡馆里建立了一种方式，让人们能够接受编程挑战，然后在那里找到工作，我们如此专注于制造第一个原型产品，以至于我们没有意识到我们已经锁定了通往或 Veon Inside 或 BeN.V 的钥匙。

> So we went back that night and didn\'t have a place to stay.

所以那天晚上我们回去了，没有地方住了。

> So next morning we showed up at Y Combinator looking a little raggedy and just a total mess and we figured we walked in.

所以第二天早上，我们出现在 Y Combinator，看起来有点杂乱无章，一团糟，我们想我们走了进去。

> We spoke to the partners for ten minutes and we got question after question but the weird thing was they were answering each other\'s questions so we didn\'t know whether that meant we had a really good idea or a not so good idea and we didn\'t have a chance to demo what we had spent 48 hours building and so on the way out one of the partners tapped us on the shoulders kind of looked at us and said Can you guys even actually program.

我们和合伙人谈了十分钟，我们得到了一个接一个的问题，但奇怪的是，他们正在回答对方的问题，所以我们不知道这是否意味着我们有一个好主意，或者不是一个好主意，我们没有机会演示我们花了 48 个小时建造的东西，在离开其中一个拍档的路上，等等。我们在肩膀上看着我们说，你们真的可以编程吗？

> Kind of like sheepishly nodded and they they didn\'t ask how well the answer was yes.

有点像害羞地点点头，他们没有问答案有多好。

> So we left and we said well we blew it and we flew out here we had this big shot.

所以我们离开了，我们说，我们搞砸了，我们飞到这里，我们有这么大的机会。

> We got a lot of questions and we don\'t even get to answer any of them.

我们有很多问题，甚至没有回答任何一个问题。

> And they don\'t even think we know we\'re doing so which wasn\'t far from the truth at the time.

他们甚至不认为我们知道我们在这么做，这与当时的事实相去甚远。

> And so we we went from being on a superhigh before interview to super low walking around Palo Alto.

所以我们从面试前的超级兴奋变成了在帕洛阿尔托漫步的超低水平。

> And then a few hours later Paul Graham called us and said We\'d like to have you for Y Combinator this year.

几个小时后，保罗·格雷厄姆打电话给我们，说我们希望今年有你为 Y 组合公司服务。

> I think my answer to him on the phone was like This is the wrong number.

我想我在电话里给他的回答是：这个号码打错了。

> How do you do.

你好

> Are you serious.

你是认真的。

> And then I did something smart and I said Can I get back to you which I have no idea what I did when we needed to think about but apparently we did.

然后我做了一件聪明的事，我说，我能回你那里吗？我不知道当我们需要思考的时候，我做了什么，但很明显，我们做了。

> So a couple of weeks later we got our first check from my combinator.

几周后，我们从我的组合器那里得到了第一张支票。

> So the first feeling of like wow we actually made it.

所以第一次感觉就像哇，我们真的做到了。

> Know everyone gets into like nominator instantly successful it\'s like pixie dust.

大家都知道，每个人都像个提名人，很快就成功了，就像精灵尘埃一样。

> So that\'s what we figured and we moved out to Silicon Valley and we said you know awesome everything set from here on out going to live and work in a sweet office.

这就是我们的想法，我们搬到了硅谷，我们说，从现在开始，一切都很棒，我们要在一间温馨的办公室里生活和工作。

> You know you see all these pictures of brick in San Francisco and then we get out there and we crash on the floor of a friend\'s apartment who worked a Palantir.

你知道，你在旧金山看到了所有这些砖头的照片，然后我们跑到外面，在一位在帕兰提尔工作的朋友的公寓里撞车。

> And so this was our office and.

所以这是我们的办公室。

> And where we slept for the first couple of weeks until we realized it\'s not productive when your desk is the box for a coffee machine laughter.

我们在那里睡了几个星期，直到我们意识到当你的桌子是咖啡机笑的盒子时，它是没有效率的。

> `[00:17:14]` So we moved into our own office.

`[00:17:14]` 所以我们搬到了自己的办公室。

> I felt really warm and cozy.

我感到非常温暖和舒适。

> `[00:17:18]` This  `[00:17:18]` is our apartment too.

`[00:17:18]` 这也是我们的公寓。

> You\'ll notice we were really good at namings so the company\'s name is right Zach is my co-founder his name is Ryan and my name is Zach and we figured like very very inventive.

你会注意到我们非常擅长命名，所以公司的名字是对的，扎克是我的联合创始人，他的名字是 Ryan，我的名字是 Zach，我们觉得很有创意。

> `[00:17:30]` You\'ll see this is a recurring theme we\'ll get back to this.

`[00:17:30]` 你会看到这是一个反复出现的主题，我们将回到这个主题。

> So this was our first office.

这是我们的第一个办公室。

> And finally we were excited like we\'re doing something right.

最后，我们很兴奋，好像我们做了正确的事情。

> We have an office we have an apartment.

我们有办公室我们有公寓。

> Let\'s prove what we\'re doing shouldn\'t be so hard you know.

让我们来证明我们所做的不应该那么困难。

> So we spoke to a bunch of a bunch of startups and we said you know we have a way for you to hire more programmers and they said that is awesome.

所以我们采访了一群初创公司，我们说我们有办法让你雇佣更多的程序员，他们说这太棒了。

> The hardest thing we do is hire.

我们做的最困难的事就是雇佣。

> And we can\'t find a way to find people we can\'t find a way to evaluate them.

我们找不到方法去找人，我们也找不到评估他们的方法。

> And so we knew we were on the right track there.

所以我们知道我们在正确的轨道上。

> Now we talked to the programmers and we said we have this really awesome thing.

现在我们和程序员谈了谈，我们说我们有一件很棒的事情。

> We will help you get jobs and you know just to do it.

我们会帮助你找到工作，你知道只是为了做这件事。

> You just have to do these fun challenges.

你只需要做这些有趣的挑战。

> And they had absolutely no interest in what we were building.

他们对我们的建筑毫无兴趣。

> Went to a Y Combinator dinner and they were all like you know we just started a company and I see and I still get 50 linked and e-mail requests everyday like why am I going to mess around on your on your garbage platform.

参加了一次 Y 组合晚宴，他们都觉得我们刚刚成立了一家公司，我看到了，我每天都会收到 50 个链接和电子邮件请求，为什么我要在你的垃圾平台上乱搞呢？

> So we went back to the drawing board.

所以我们又回到了画板上。

> And you\'ll notice this is not the first time we went back to the drawing board.

你会注意到这不是我们第一次回到画板上。

> But this time it wasn\'t just metaphorical and we didn\'t go back to the original concept that we had of helping people learn skills to find jobs.

但这一次，这不仅仅是比喻，我们没有回到最初的概念，我们有帮助人们学习技能，以找到工作。

> Instead we basically became random startup idea generators.

相反，我们基本上变成了随机的启动想法生成器。

> So here\'s a few of our ideas you\'ll notice some of them are really good like building a CRM for club promoters luridly if you spun like a jackpot wheel you would not get anything as crazy as what we were coming up with.

因此，我们的一些想法，你会注意到，其中一些是非常好的，比如为俱乐部的发起者建立一个客户关系管理系统(CRM)，如果你像一个头奖的轮子一样旋转，你就不会得到任何我们想出来的疯狂的东西。

> So we kind of sat there and were like Well unclear what we\'re doing but we\'re in Y Combinator and we have a hundred seventy thousand dollars so that\'s cool.

所以我们坐在那里，好像不清楚我们在做什么，但是我们在 Y 组合望远镜里，我们有 17 万美元，所以这很酷。

> And there\'s two of us and we figure we can move in with friends.

我们两个人可以搬去和朋友住。

> We could eat ramen and we would have five years of burn just work on your hands for club promoters all day.

我们可以吃拉面，我们会有五年的烧伤，只是在你的手上为俱乐部的发起人整天工作。

> So we were determined.

所以我们下定决心。

> Not to fail.

不要失败。

> And I remember going to office hours with Sam Altman and Sam and called us.

我记得和山姆·奥尔特曼和山姆一起去上班的时候打电话给我们。

> You know the worst the worst ratio of intelligence to ideas.

你知道智力和思想之间最糟糕的比例。

> So smart but such stupid ideas.

如此聪明但如此愚蠢的想法。

> `[00:19:36]` So every night we\'d go home and I\'d sit there and run.

`[00:19:36]` 所以每天晚上我们回家，我就坐在那里跑步。

> I would write code for one of these ideas and we\'d get super super frustrated both with what we were building.

我会为其中一个想法编写代码，我们会对我们正在构建的内容感到非常沮丧。

> But for me without a formal programming background I had takenC.S.

但对我来说，没有正式的编程背景，我就上了 C.S。

> one on one when I was a Columbia.

我还是哥伦比亚大学的时候一对一。

> I had read a couple of those for Dummies books.

我读了几本关于哑剧的书。

> And Ryan had actually started an organization on campus in Columbia to teach people how to program.

瑞安在哥伦比亚大学成立了一个组织，教人们如何编程。

> And so in the process I was learning the skills I needed to do my job basically.

所以在这个过程中，我学到了做我的工作所需要的技能。

> And so we started kind of came back to where we started which is can we teach people the most important skill they need to find a job in the 21st century which was programming and we had sort of patient zero which is me if I could learn how to program well then probably a couple older people could use it too.

于是我们又回到了起点，我们可以教人们在 21 世纪找到一份工作所需要的最重要的技能，那就是编程，我们的病人是零，如果我能学会编程，那么也许有几个年纪大的人也会用到它。

> And this was around 3 to 4 weeks before Demo Day.

这大约是演示日前的 3 到 4 周。

> At this point.

在这一点上。

> And so we started building the first version of Code Academy and we spoke to a couple of the partners NYC and some investors and again you\'ll notice this is a common refrain.

于是我们开始建造第一个版本的代码学院，我们和纽约的几个合作伙伴以及一些投资者进行了交谈，你会再次注意到这是一个常见的重复。

> They told us it was really stupid.

他们告诉我们这真的很蠢。

> And a lot of them told us that there were only 100000 employed programmers in the US.

他们中的很多人告诉我们，在美国只有 100000 名受雇的程序员。

> Like there\'s just no market for something that teaches people to program.

就像没有什么市场可以教人们编程。

> People are not interested in programming and never will be.

人们对编程不感兴趣，而且永远也不会感兴趣。

> That was something we heard a couple times.

我们听过几次了。

> `[00:21:01]` But this time you knew something was different.

`[00:21:01]` 但这一次你知道有什么不一样的。

> Ryan and I were super interested in what we were doing mostly because we were building for me and based on Ryan\'s experience.

莱恩和我对我们正在做的事情非常感兴趣，主要是因为我们是为我而建的，而且是基于瑞安的经验。

> And so we\'d go home every night worked all the time.

所以我们每天晚上都回家工作。

> We did some research for some of the fundamental pieces of code Kadam Ryan still tries to convince me that playing Farmville counted as research for how he eventually built the gamification Antica Academy.

我们对一些基本代码进行了一些研究，KadamRyan 仍然试图说服我，扮演 Farmville 是他如何最终建立游戏化 Antica 学院的研究。

> `[00:21:26]` I think he was addicted.

`[00:21:26]` 我想他上瘾了。

> `[00:21:29]` And then we showed the first version of code academy to a lot of investors and everyone at Y Combinator and the line that people generally use is you should be embarrassed when you launch for the first time.

`[00:21:29]` 然后我们向许多投资者和 Y Combinator 的每个人展示了代码学院的第一版，人们通常使用的是当你第一次启动时应该感到尴尬。

> But what people told us was you should be embarrassed when you launch for the first time.

但人们告诉我们的是，当你第一次发射的时候，你应该感到尴尬。

> Not this embarrassed it\'s like you know who Facebook get out was what we were told.

这并不是让我们尴尬的\就像你知道 Facebook 会把谁弄出来，这是我们被告知的。

> So you know we went back and I played with it a couple times.

所以你知道我们回去玩了几次。

> `[00:21:55]` This is made for me and it works for me and I know javascript now.

`[00:21:55]` 这是为我做的，它为我工作，我现在知道 javascript 了。

> So we\'re doing something right and I really like the experience.

所以我们做的很对，我真的很喜欢这样的经历。

> And this is another thing we learned again as as I learned in the group me instance it\'s much easier when you\'re building for yourself.

这是我们再次学到的另一件事，就像我在小组中学到的那样，当你为自己而建的时候，这件事会容易得多。

> All these people we were showing Code Academy.

所有这些人都是我们展示给代码学院的。

> You didn\'t get it because they knew how to program.

你不明白是因为他们知道怎么编程。

> But I didn\'t.

但我没有。

> So this was the one of the first early versions of Code Academy.

这是代码学院最早的版本之一。

> You know you learn in line learning by doing.

你知道你是通过做来学习的。

> And there\'s no video and no boring books you have to read it\'s all instantaneous feedback.

没有视频，也没有无聊的书，你必须阅读它，所有这些都是即时反馈。

> And so we launched Code Academy and we left we left the apartment.

于是我们开办了密码学院然后离开了公寓。

> Right and I bet that there wouldn\'t be more than 50 people on the site at the same time that day and we installed HRP and we left to get bagels.

没错，我敢打赌，当天同一时间，网站上不会有超过 50 人，我们安装了 HRP，然后我们离开去买百吉饼。

> We got to the bagel store and my phone started going off because there were 1000 people on the site at the same time with something that we had built basically for like me and my mom to use.

我们到了百吉饼店，我的手机开始响了，因为网站上同时有 1000 人，我们为我和我的妈妈做了一些基本的东西。

> `[00:22:52]` And we noticed stuff like this on Reddit where people just had no idea how to how to program before how to learn this skill and all of a sudden we made it easy for them.

`[00:22:52]` 我们在 Reddit 上注意到了这样的事情，人们在学习这种技能之前根本不知道如何编程，突然之间，我们让他们变得很容易。

> `[00:23:01]` And that was super super empowering.

`[00:23:01]` 那是超级授权。

> Turns out that wasn\'t an isolated case.

事实证明那不是一个孤立的案子。

> This is Ryan with our Torpey dashboard that day you\'ll notice we actually broke the chart it\'s manometer because so many people were on the site at the same time.

这是瑞安和我们的 Torpey 仪表板，那天你会注意到，我们实际上打破了图表，它的压力表，因为这么多的人在同一时间在网站上。

> And so immediately we basically went from being the least popular company in Y Combinator that summer where you know three weeks beforehand we actually suggested to us that we just not demo Demo Day because you know you don\'t have an idea.

因此，我们很快就从 Y Combinator 的最不受欢迎的公司发展到了那个夏天，在那里，你知道三个星期前，我们实际上建议我们不要演示日，因为你知道你没有什么想法。

> You haven\'t built anything.

你什么都没做。

> It\'s not possible to make anything in three weeks.

三周内做什么都不可能。

> Not plausible.

不可信。

> So we built something anyway and we were the fastest growing Y Combinator company at that time.

所以我们建立了一些东西，我们当时是发展最快的 Y 组合公司。

> And this was sort of the bullet point was you know we we taught people to program.

这就是我们教人们编程的重点。

> And finally we had the data that millions of people do want to learn programming and we were the answer and this was the slide the two of us used to talk about ourselves.

最后，我们得到了数以百万计的人想要学习编程的数据，我们就是答案，这是我们俩过去常谈论自己的幻灯片。

> `[00:23:53]` Look a little young and we went from having no one to pay attention to us and no one returning our cold e-mails to investors texting me and saying they actually had a dream about Code Academy.

`[00:23:53]` 看上去有点年轻，我们从没有人关注我们，也没有人回复我们冰冷的电子邮件给投资者发短信给我，说他们真的做了一个关于代码学院的梦。

> It turns out I thought it like this whole thing was a dream is like we\'re still eating Rahmon and like nothing you know is not possible to a few weeks later we closed our series with the gentleman who just was on stage with Fred and in Union Square Ventures and we moved back to New York and we actually went to an AGM to verify it was like this cannot be real.

原来我以为整件事都是个梦，就像我们还在吃拉赫蒙一样，就像什么都不可能，直到几周后，我们结束了与弗雷德和联合广场风投刚刚上台的这位先生的系列赛，我们搬回了纽约，我们去了一家 AGM 公司，证实这一切都是不可能的。

> Well how is this money in her bank account.

她银行账户里的钱是怎么回事。

> So armed with two and a half million dollars in on cloud nine after raising our series we set about building a company.

所以在云 9 上装备了 250 万美元，在我们的系列节目中，我们开始建立一家公司。

> But we realized it pays to be a cockroach.

但我们意识到做蟑螂是值得的。

> And by that I mean it pays just to not stop and just to not die like we thought everything along the way it tried to kill us.

我的意思是，不停止，不像我们所想的那样死亡，这是值得的，因为它一直想要杀死我们。

> Right.

右（边），正确的

> Like all of our friends were like startups are dumb.

就像我们所有的朋友一样，创业公司是愚蠢的。

> Your dumb your ideas are dumb.

你的愚蠢，你的想法是愚蠢的。

> And we kind of just looked at all of them and said whatever and build Code Academy it pays not to quit.

我们只是看了看所有的人，说了什么就建代码学院，不放弃是值得的。

> `[00:25:07]` So after moving back to New York we thought like we\'re on cloud 9 we have all this money all these people on our Web site.

`[00:25:07]` 所以搬回纽约后，我们以为我们就像在云端一样，我们有这么多钱，所有这些人都在我们的网站上。

> Turns out that last part was not true because all those people were on our Web site because we were on tech crunch.

最后一部分并不是真的，因为所有的人都在我们的网站上，因为我们处于技术危机中。

> And so hopefully some of you are familiar with the Tech Crunch of initiation.

所以希望你们中的一些人熟悉印心的技术。

> Riegert super popular and then you at the drop of sorrow where everything\'s miserable.

里格特超级受欢迎，然后你在悲伤的点滴里，一切都很悲惨。

> And we had that and we went back and we tried to hot fire find more people to join the team.

我们有这样的想法，我们回去了，我们努力寻找更多的人加入我们的队伍。

> We interviewed 100 people before hiring our first person.

在雇用第一个人之前，我们采访了 100 人。

> That is an exercise in frustration.

这是一种挫折感。

> So we realized startups really are a roller coaster.

所以我们意识到初创公司真的是过山车。

> You know we went from getting into Y Combinator and thinking success was a sure thing too.

你知道，我们从进入 Y 组合，并认为成功也是肯定的事情。

> Two weeks later realizing we didn\'t have an idea to eventually going back to the original idea that we had and finding the right implementation of it.

两周后，我们意识到我们没有办法最终回到原来的想法，并找到正确的实现。

> And the thing is that startups are much easier to deal with when you actually care about what you\'re doing.

问题是，当你真正关心自己在做什么的时候，创业公司更容易处理。

> So now every morning we wake up read the newspaper and you see that a year after they graduate more than 50 percent ofU.S.

所以，每天早上，我们醒来，读报纸，你会发现，在他们毕业一年后，美国有超过 50%的人毕业。

> college students are unemployed or underemployed that by 2020 there\'s going to be more than a million open programming jobs.

大学生失业或就业不足，到 2020 年，将有 100 多万个开放式编程工作。

> If education keeps going at the same speed and this is really motivating for us because this is a massive problem because the world companies won\'t grow as fast as they can.

如果教育继续以同样的速度发展，而这对我们来说确实是激励因素，因为这是一个巨大的问题，因为世界企业不会像他们所能的那样快速增长。

> People won\'t have jobs if we don\'t exist.

如果我们不存在，人们就不会有工作。

> And to this day in a more than 24 million people have used code academy is something that we started building in our dorm room at Columbia and then built in California and now proudly build in New York.

直到今天，超过 2400 万人使用了代码学院，这是我们在哥伦比亚大学的宿舍里开始建造的，然后在加利福尼亚建造，现在纽约自豪地建造。

> More than 24 million people have used something that we built.

超过 2400 万人使用了我们建造的东西。

> But what matters most is the stories of the people that use it.

但最重要的是使用它的人的故事。

> People like Ryan who a year and a half ago had absolutely no idea how to program learned on code academy built an app called circuit that was featured as one of Time\'s best Web sites of 2013.

像瑞安这样的人，一年半前完全不知道如何在代码学院上编程学习，他们创建了一个名为电路的应用程序，它被列为 2013 年时代最好的网站之一。

> And then two weeks ago Ryan sold his company.

两周前 Ryan 卖掉了他的公司。

> So he went from knowing absolutely nothing to a year and a half later building a company and a startup in a product and selling it there there\'s people like Amy who at 13 started learning to program on code academy.

因此，他从完全一无所知到一年半后，在一家公司和一家初创公司中建立了一家产品，并在那里销售，就像艾米这样的人，他们在 13 岁时就开始学习在代码学院编程。

> And by the time she was 14 the EU and called her the European Digital girl of the year because she spoke all over Europe telling everyone how important programming was for the future.

当她 14 岁的时候，欧盟称她为年度欧洲数字女孩，因为她在欧洲各地发表演讲，告诉每个人编程对未来是多么重要。

> So hopefully a couple of things you guys will take away from today\'s talk.

所以希望你们能从今天的谈话中拿走一些东西。

> First you shouldn\'t make excuses to get started.

首先，你不应该找借口开始工作。

> It\'s really simple.

真的很简单。

> You have the internet which is the biggest distribution engine ever and the tools is all you need is a web browser and a text editor should optimize everything you do for learning.

你有一个互联网，它是有史以来最大的发行引擎，你所需要的工具就是一个网络浏览器，文本编辑器应该优化你为学习所做的一切。

> You get a front row seat on a rocket ship so you know what it\'s like to build a company and we\'re hiring if you want us to be that rocket ship.

你在火箭飞船上有一个前排座位，所以你知道建立一家公司的感觉，如果你想让我们成为火箭飞船的话，我们会雇用你的。

> You should realize that startups are a roller coaster and you should never ever give up.

你应该意识到创业是一种过山车，你永远不应该放弃。

> And lastly you should be passionate about what you\'re working on because that will make all the difference.

最后，你应该对你正在做的事情充满激情，因为这会让一切都变得不同。

> Maybe the most important thing I\'ve learned after doing this for a few years and speaking a few times and speaking with a couple other people that speak is that everyone here has no idea what they\'re doing.

也许在做了几年之后，我学到的最重要的一件事就是，每个人都不知道自己在做什么。

> And so even as you get further along and you build a startup you realize that startups are hard and there are new challenges at every step along the way.

因此，即使你走得更远，创建了一家创业公司，你也会意识到创业很艰难，而且在创业过程中的每一步都会遇到新的挑战。

> So despite the fact that none of us quite know what we\'re doing yet you don\'t know until you try.

所以，尽管我们中没有一个人很清楚自己在做什么，但在你尝试之前，你还不知道自己在做什么。

> So thank you.

所以谢谢你。

