原文地址: http://thenextweb.com/boris/2013/10/28/17000-youtubes-youtube/
I know an entrepreneur who launched an online video platform in 1998. It never took off, and went out of business within two years. He still tells people he invented YouTube.
我知道一个人在98年做了一个在线视频平台. 这个项目失败了, 2年后挂了. 但是那个创始人还是告诉别人他发明了youtube这类型的在线视频平台.
There were 18 Web search services before Google, and at least two of them were similar in the way they indexed pages online. I owned an application called Net2Phone in 1996 that allowed people to make online phone calls. That was years before Skype launched and became hugely successful.
在google之前有18种在线搜索服务, 至少有2个也是用这种类似的给页面建立在线索引的方式. 我自己96年的时候做了一个应用叫做Net2Phone. 比skype早了N年.
I once heard someone claim “There were 17,000 YouTubes before YouTube.” That means that there were 17,000 services that offered some way of uploading and sharing movies online.
我曾经听过有人声称:"有17000个youtube们在youtube之前." 这意味着曾经有17000个提供上传分享视频的服务.
In other words; nothing is new, everything is a copy of something, or at least an iteration on a previous idea. The difference between YouTube and the 16,999 companies that failed before it is a combination of several factors. Execution, focus, timing and luck are all part of it. And those factors can be as important as the original idea.
我这么和你说吧, 没什么是新鲜的, 所有的东西都是另一种的复制品, 或者至少是之前一个想法的迭代结果. 区别在于16999个公司失败了, youtube成功了. youtube的成功是多个因素的结合, 执行力, 专注度, 天时, 运气. 这些因素比最开始的想法重要多了.
Airbnb is an awesome company, and the idea is brilliant, except that there have been tens, maybe hundreds, of other companies that tried the same thing and failed, or were just less successful. Their value is not in the idea itself, but the perfect timing and execution.
Airbnb是一个非常棒的公司, 他们的idea很天才, 但是已经有数十家甚至上百家其他的公司已经试过他们这条路并失败了或者没他们那么成功. 他们的价值不是idea本身, 而且完美的时机和执行力.
Friendster came before Facebook and Orkut. Remember ICQ and MSN? How about Whatsapp? Geocities and Xoom made it possible to publish a homepage. WordPress was just an improvement on that original idea. Just like Tumblr is the new WordPress and Squarespace is the new Tumblr.
Friendster比facebook和orkut还早. 还记得ICQ和MSN吗? 或者Whatsapp? Geocities 和 Xoom 让发布一个个人主页成为可能. wordpress只是在他们的idea上面做了一下改进. 就像Tumblr是一个新的形式的wordpress, Squarespace又是一个新的形式tumblr.
The goal isn’t to reinvent the wheel or come up with an idea that no one else has ever come up with. You can be very successful just taking something that someone else failed at and do a better version, at a better time.
其实目的不是重复发明轮子或者想出一个idea以前从来没人想过的, 你其实可以靠别人失败的东西, 做一个更好的版本, 在一个更好的时机, 就可以变得非常成功
If it worked for YouTube, Google, Facebook, Whatsapp, AirBnB and Skype, it could work for you.
反正那些大公司都是这么成功的, 不管你信不信, 反正我是信了.