playcafe.com在停止更新3个月后，正式宣布关闭，网站创始人Mark Goldenson写了一封很长的公开信，总结了自己从失败中得到的10个教训，对正在进行互联网创业和将要进行创业的人来说，都是一笔宝贵的财富。

1. 尽快拿到风险投资
Find quick money first.
Mark说，他们很幸运，认识一些硅谷中实力最雄厚的风险投资家。但是后来发现，这并不有利。因为这样的风险投资家，手里有一大堆项目可供选择，所以他们通常不愿意过早介入，而宁愿等到风险最小化的时候再投钱。但是，对于创业者来说，资金比建议和人脉更有价值。
Mark认为，如果有机会重新开始，他们会将重点放在那些不那么知名的风险投资家身上，争取在项目的最早期阶段就拿到投资。他说，你要记住一点，如果见面三次以后，还是定不下来，那么不是你的项目不行，就是你找错了人。从另一个角度看，如果你的项目势头良好，你不用去找大牌的风险投资家，他们自己就会找上门。

2. 不要做内容
Content businesses suck.
每天为访问者提供有价值的内容，是一项极其艰巨的任务。
同时做到优秀的内容和优秀的网站性能，看上去似乎可行，但是实际上很难做到。以美国三大电视网为例，它们只负责节目的传播，大部分播放的节目都是外购的。原因就在于“制作内容”和“传播内容”是两件不同的事，而且难度都很大，所以最好还是进行分工。

Mark说，我们知道自己在内容制作上是新手，但是我们觉得，找个漂亮姑娘在摄像机前一站，给观众出出题目就够了。事实证明我们错了，制作高质量的内容，超出了我们的财力可以承受的范围。

请回想一下《美国偶像》这个电视节目，它是美国收视率最高的节目，几乎可以动用无限的资源。但是尽管如此，这个节目在直播中还是会不断地出错。这就足以说明内容制作的难度了。更何况除了内容以外，我们还要为服务器宕机、受攻击、网站升级、客户投诉等等这些事情操心。

我建议任何创业者或投资者，在选择内容制作这个方向之前，都要三思。走内容这条路，比走技术这条路，难度要大一个数量级。Youtube的创始人将网站卖给Google，价格是16.5亿美元，但是Youtube上的内容提供者，想通过节目赚到哪怕这个数字的百分之一，恐怕都是不可能的。而且，数字录像技术DVR和网络分享下载，都会使得你的收入减少，赶跑任何广告客户。
也许，走“生产内容”这条路，最主要的和唯一的原因，就是你真正喜欢做这件事，而不是为了赚钱。

3. 速度 vs 稳定性
Know when to value speed vs. stability.
要一个性能良好、开发缓慢的网站，还是要一个性能不佳、但是开发快速的网站？你会怎么选择？

在我们的原始设想中，PlayCafe是一个相当复杂的网站。内容和技术两方面的复杂性，占用了大量的开发时间，最终伤害到了我们。网站的每一个方面，我们都想把它做得又好又稳定。（这并不奇怪，人的天性就是这样。）但是不幸的是，我们的行动步伐因此变得缓慢，而在这个以新颖性和娱乐性为基础的行业中，这是致命的。

有一个隐喻，我很喜欢：如果允许一个新手一次走两步，那么他就可以击败象棋大师。（A chess novice can defeat a master if moving twice each round.）

快速的开发通常会增加软件的错误和不稳定性，如果你是完美主义者，你会感到被冒犯了。但是，我同意Reid Hoffman的说法，那就是当网站的第一个版本发布的时候，如果你看着它不感到难为情，那就说明你用来开发的时间太多了。（If you review your first site version and don’t feel embarrassment, you spent too much time on it.）

有一个例外，如果你的产品是用来完成某项特定任务的，那么上面的说法就不成立了。比如，ebay的购物功能和twitter的发消息功能，必须保持稳定易用。这种功能的开发缓慢，恰恰是因为有大量用户使用它，所以不能急于求成。你必须把这个功能做对。

4. 珍惜每一分钟
Set a dollar value on your time.
我有一个坏习惯，那就是喜欢找便宜货，因此经常同别人砍价。为了把无线上网的账单降低100美元，我可以花上3个小时去谈判。我的错误在于忽略了时间的价值。相对于我们获得的投资，这样使用时间简直太不值得了。

时间比钱重要，因为你没法挣来更多的时间。（Time is arguably more valuable than money
because you can’t raise more time.）

5. 营销很重要
Marketing requires constant expertise.
PlayCafe最主要的失败原因，在于销售。其他方面的工作，我们其实做得都不差，就是销售不行，始终无法吸引到足够的访问者。我后来意识到，营销不是一个新手在业余时间，自己就能琢磨出来的，而是需要资深的、有经验的专业人员。

互联网是一个超级饱和的领域，成功的营销能够创造和吸引“差别性的需求”，这对于业余人员，实在是有点太难了。下一次，我们会多募集一些资金，尽早雇佣一个营销专家。

例外的情况是产品本身非常打动人心，用户从内心里认同你、拥护你。这时不用你去做营销，用户就会主动帮你宣传，拉来新的访问者。但是，即使是这样的产品，营销也能加速它的成长。

6. 精确估计发展用户的成本
Control and calculate your user acquisition costs.
网站开张的初期，我们的想法很天真，觉得就是拍摄一些好玩的视频，组织有趣的游戏，搞一些吸引人的奖品，这样就能把网站推广出去。

这种想法不能算错，但是最佳的营销策略必须是精确的和可控的，而不能是如此粗糙和充满变数的。如果你知道发展一个新用户的成本，你就知道了你需要多少资金和收入，你就能控制整个流程，就能用数学公式代替猜测和臆断。

Google的AdWords关键词工具，是一个很不错的起点。它会告诉你，每一个搜索的次数和流量估计。你可以针对某个特定的搜索投放广告。理想的投放对象，是每月搜索次数10000次以上，已售出的竞价广告位不超过3个，并且与你的网站有很强相关性的搜索词。

比如，“game TV shows”每月有12000次搜索，已售出的竞价广告位是7个，而“2008 game
show”每月有14800次搜索，售出的广告位仅有1个。这两种搜索的相关性，差不多是相等的，因此后者是更好的选择，使你可以更便宜地获得访问者。你的第一批访问者通常是最昂贵的，每个需要10-20美元的发展成本，以后随着网站品牌的成长和口碑效应，发展用户的成本就会降下来。

我们犯的一个错误，就是将太多的钱投在公关公司、网页广告和传统媒体的广告之上。有一次，我们花了5000美元，请了一个推广专家，到头来却没有什么效果，此人声称还需要5000美元才会见效。……以后，我会尽量只把钱投在有精确数据作为依据的营销方式上。

7. 尽早结成伙伴关系
Form partner relationships early, even if informal.
与其他公司结成伙伴关系，通常在短期内不会有明显效果，而且这种关系也不受你控制。但是从长期看，这种做法确实有一些潜在的优点。每一个合作伙伴，都会给你带来更多与外界的联系渠道、更丰富的营销手段、帮你发现潜在的竞争者，甚至最终可能成为收购你的人。

由于我们过于自信，没有将发展合作伙伴放到优先地位，导致错过了与CBS、FremantleMedia和GSN这样的电视网发展更紧密关系的机会。它们后来表示，如果有更多的合作、更了解我们的价值的话，可能会出钱收购我们。

我学到的一点，就是非正式的关系有时也很有用，而且不用花很多时间就能建立。单纯地拜访一下其他公司的决策者，都有助于发展双方之间的关系和善意。

8. 你总是会低估支出
Plan costs conservatively and err on the side of raising too much.

我真的觉得，如果有更多的资金，我们的结局可能会不一样，因为我们就能尝试更多的策略了。虽然我们做了一个很详细的预算，但是还是大大低估了支出。下一次，我们一定会多了解一些成本的真实情况后，再做预算，并且在筹集资金的时候，金额一定要超过预算的金额。这也有助于节约你的时间，不必急着进行下一轮融资。

虽然预算的第一稿一定错得离谱，但它还是有用的，你并没有浪费时间。它能帮助你对经营活动的每一个方面，有一个大致的估计，判断你的商业模式是理智多于疯狂，还是疯狂多于理智。

9. 不做没有其他选择的谈判
The key to negotiating is having options.
我听到的最有用的单个建议，是这样一句话：“永远保持多种选择。”（Always have options.）
作为创始人和CEO，我做的每一件事几乎都是谈判。选择风险投资者是谈判，雇佣员工是谈判，签署商业协议是谈判，支付供应商是谈判，甚至公司内部谈论技术问题也是谈判。最好的让对方服从的方法，就是明示或暗示，你有多种选择，不一定非同他谈不可。选择不用多，两个就够了。如果你只有一条路可走，非跟对方谈成不可，你就等着被修理吧。（Being
at the mercy of a lone option is a recipe for getting screwed.）
对于谈判，我的经验是：
* 参与谈判的决策人越多，整件事情就越值得谈判。
* 如果你听到有人说“这是不可谈判的”，却又说不出理由，这就表明你应该找他的上司谈判。
* 礼貌地向对方暗示，你比他们有更多的耐心。
* 销售人员通常更容易被说服，因为他们更善于社交，而且收入与销售额挂钩。

10. 知易行难
Knowing isn’t enough.
你知道我最丧气的是什么事吗？
那就是以上九点，大部分我在创业之前就知道，可是最终还是在它们上面栽跟头了。在创立PlayCafe之前，我已经在创业公司中工作了10年（虽然作为CEO这是第一次）。要是二年前看到上面这些文字，我的想法一定同你们中很多人现在的想法相同：“又是老一套，毫无新意。”

对于我来说，真正崭新的体验，就是我非常痛苦地体验到了“知”与“行”之间的鸿沟。在硅谷这个地方，到处都会有人给你忠告，但是就像外科医生一样，不亲自去开刀，是不会学会做手术的。我觉得，一定要有很多第一手经历，你才发现现实是那么复杂，充满了意想不到的事情。很多人提忠告的时候，都会说：“只有等到你有麻烦了，才会明白我说的意思。”是的，知识来自于积累，经验是用高昂代价换来的。

天底下有各种互相矛盾的建议，比如一些人说“要多了解客户的需求”，另一些人却说“首先立足于你自己的需求”；一些人说“不要融资太多”，另一些人却说“不要融资太少”。哪一种看法是正确的？也许这取决于不同的情况，并没有统一的答案。
他人的建议不像软件的代码那样，保证能够运行。它们更像地图上的坐标，你必须受过训练，而且在有参照物的情况下，才能帮到你。我希望，我的这次失败能够使得我（还有你）离成功更近一些。

中文翻译转载自：阮一峰的网络日志

A year and a half ago, my co-founder Dev Nag and I started an internet TV network for games called PlayCafe. Our ambitious plan was to run highly interactive game shows in which everyone was a contestant. Players could watch our hosts, answer questions, win prizes, form teams, call our studio, live chat, and run their own games. It was a huge undertaking, but despite great engagement — users watched for 87 minutes per session and 40 percent returned within a week — we didn’t reach enough users. We may revive it in the future, but for now, we’ve placed the site in hibernation and returned remaining funds to our investors.

What follows is a post-mortem of what we did right and wrong and how we will improve next time. I feel too many entrepreneurs are afraid to discuss their failures, locking up important lessons. I hope you find some of this useful.

1. Find quick money first. We were fortunate to know several top investors but we spun our wheels pitching too early and trying to optimize terms. Many entrepreneurs seek A-list investors first; quick (but not dumb) money is more valuable. There are only about 30 high-profile investors in the Valley, they all know each other, and they generally have enough deal flow to wait until risk is minimized.  Money is more valuable than advice or connections since there are easier sources for the latter.

Next time, we’ll focus on strengthening our network of investors who are comfortable at the earliest stage and invest quickly, even if they don’t have a high profile (as long as there aren’t red flags). More than three meetings is too long and indicates your network isn’t broad enough or your pitch is poor.

Lesser-known investors also often have more time to give you. David Shen, previously unknown to us, initiated multiple deals and a site-wide design evaluation for us; it took one meeting for David to commit. You want to find 10 David Shens. Once you have traction, the Reid Hoffmans and Ron Conways will find you anyway.

2. Content businesses suck (or: do it for love and expect to lose money). Producing quality content every day is a herculean task, especially live. The idea of creating both the content and technology for PlayCafe seemed achievable, but TV networks focus on distribution and studios on production for good reason: both are hard. Dev and I knew we were production novices but we thought live-filming a pretty girl delivering trivia with one camera guy was simple enough. We were wrong; the business was beyond our pay grade.

Watch American Idol, the country’s most popular show, and you’ll see how often they screw up despite massive resources: sound and video fail, hosts and contestants stammer, camera angles are wrong, stretches get boring, and it happens despite a reality format that is simpler than live sports or news. They also don’t have to deal with DOS attacks, server downtime, scalability, or customer support like we did.

I would advise any entrepreneur or investor considering content to think twice, as Howard Lindzon from Wallstrip warned us. Content is an order of magnitude harder than technology with an order less upside; no YouTube producer will earn within a hundredth of $1.65 billion. This will only become more true as DVRs and media-sharing reduce revenues and pay-for-performance ads eliminate inefficient ad spend, of which there is a lot. The main and perhaps only reason to do content should be the love of creating it.

3. Know when to value speed vs. stability. Another reason PlayCafe’s complexity hurt us is that developing good content and technology simultaneously required too much time. We tried to make each deep and stable — important, we thought, given our live nature — but we were too slow to iterate in a novelty- and entertainment-based business.

A metaphor I like is that a chess novice can defeat a master if moving twice each round. This generally increases bugs and offends perfectionists, but I agree with Reid Hoffman that if you review your first site version and don’t feel embarrassment, you spent too much time on it.

An exception is when your product is mission-critical for users. An eBay outage is a catastrophe while a Twitter one is a joke. eBay iterates slowly partly because 1.3 million businesses depend on it. It has to get it right.

4. Set a dollar value on your time. I agree with Paul Graham that good entrepreneurs arerelentlessly resourceful, but I have a bad habit of bargain-hunting for sport. I spent three hours negotiating our wireless bill down $100, which was a poor use of time given our funding. The mantra to pinch pennies ignores the value of time.

Time is arguably more valuable than money because you can’t raise more time. Dev suggested pricing our hours. You can divide your available work hours by salary, remaining funding, or total company costs. Ours was around $50/hour. If I was going to spend 5 hours negotiating, I’d have to save at least $250. This value should increase as you gain funding and traction. For anything greater than $500 at any stage, I’d still strive for NPR: Never Pay Retail.

5. Marketing requires constant expertise. The main failure of PlayCafe was marketing. Dev and I came from PayPal, a strongly viral product at a company almost hostile to marketing. Our efforts in SEO, SEM, virality, platforms, PR, and partnerships weren’t terrible, but drawing users to a live event requires constant, skillful work.

Like creating content, I no longer think marketing is something smart novices can figure out part-time. As the web gets super-saturated, marketing is the difference-maker, and it’s too deep a skill to leave to amateurs.

An exception is inherently viral ideas, especially one-to-many virality, where normal use of your product reaches new users, not “word-of-mouth” viral that requires users to advocate you. With inherent virality, a barely adequate product might suffice, though even then marketing should accelerate growth. Next time we’ll raise enough to hire a marketing expert early.

6. Control and calculate your user acquisition costs. We initially conceived of marketing as a wildly creative exercise: filming viral videos, launching clever campaigns, pitching media players. That’s partly true, but the best marketing is controlled and calculated. If you know exactly how much it costs to acquire a user and you control the entire process, you then know how much capital and revenue you need, reducing your marketing plan from fuzzy guesswork to a clean formula.

Until you find a marketing expert, a place to start is the AdWords keyword tool, which shows you how many people Google for certain words, and the Traffic Estimator, which shows the rough cost of buying keyword ads on Google.com. Yahoo has similar tools. The ideal terms have a decent number of monthly searches (10,000+), low number of competing advertisers (3 or less), and strong relevance to your site.

For example, “game TV shows” has 12,100 monthly searches with 7 currently competing ads, while “2008 game show” has 14,800 monthly searches with only 1 ad. The relevance of these searchers is roughly the same so the latter is a better chance to acquire users cheaply. Your first users are the most expensive and can cost $10-20/user, but the cost should decline as your brand and word-of-mouth grows. The promised land is when you convert and monetize well enough to literally buy users.

Other tactics to control and calculate include A/B testing, tracking sign-up and purchase conversion, and creating landing pages to drive SEO and track different campaigns; look at the bottom of Mint.com for a good example. For fuzzier marketing tactics like blogs and press, knowing the time you spend on each, the value of your time, and your break-even acquisition cost will help you calculate efforts that aren’t cost-effective. A data-driven culture is a well-oiled machine.

I would also avoid money pits like PR firms, CPM ads, billboards, and TV/radio spots. We wasted $5,000 on a promoter who produced almost no buzz then said it takes a few $5,000 sprees to see results. Unless you control and calculate, these methods are mainly for marketers bad at math.

7. Form partner relationships early, even if informal. Two downsides of partnerships are that they’re slow and you lack control, but they do have advantages beyond driving users and revenues. Partners can make connections, teach you the market, flag potential competitors, and become potential acquirers. Believing we had little leverage, we de-prioritized several partners who later said they might have bought us if we had built a stronger relationship and proven our value.

We learned that you can build informal relationships with little time. Meeting decision-makers early, keeping them in the loop, and being genuinely helpful builds familiarity and goodwill, which reaps some of the above benefits without the pain of hashing out a deal. It takes foresight and maintenance, but dating before getting married also makes it more likely the partnership will be healthy.

8. Plan costs conservatively and err on the side of raising too much. While I’m doubtful more funding would have made the difference in our case, it would have let us try more tactics. We did a detailed financial plan, but I underestimated costs to fully expand. Next time we’ll better know real costs and likely bite the dilution bullet to raise a bit more than needed. This also prevents spending a lot of time raising extra rounds.

Glenn Kelman from Redfin has some nice common costs. To refine, ask a successful entrepreneur for a previous financial plan to vet yours. I disagree with folks who think financial plans are a waste. They are indeed wrong the moment you start, but they help you estimate headcount, fundraising, break-even, and whether your business model is insane.

9. The key to negotiating is having options. The single most useful piece of advice I got was from Bill Trenchard, founder of LiveOps: “Always have options.”

Almost everything you do as a founder/CEO involves negotiation: closing investors, hiring employees, signing partners, paying vendors, even advocating features internally. The best way to persuade your counter-parties is signaling — implicitly or explicitly — that you have viable options (also called BATNAs). Just two can be enough. Being at the mercy of a lone option is a recipe for getting screwed.

The more humans are involved, the more negotiable the system. If you hear a human say “that’s our policy” without much reason, bells should go off that you have room to negotiateif you reach the right decision-maker. Be nice, ask to speak with a manager, and politely signal that your endurance will outpace their patience. Higher-ups know the value of time and make exceptions accordingly. Sales managers are especially persuadable because they’re social and work on commission.

That so much of a founder’s job involves negotiation also means work can get adversarial and lonely. It really helps to have a group of friends you don’t have to haggle with.

10. Knowing isn’t enough. Most frustrating is that Dev and I knew much of the above going in. We’ve been doing this for 10 years each across three startups (though this is our first significant one at the helm). I could have sent this to myself two years ago and probably would have thought what many of you are thinking: this is nothing new.

What’s new for me is painfully experiencing the gap between knowing and doing. Advice is thrown liberally around the Valley, but like a surgeon who has studied but never practiced, I think it takes a lot of hands-on experience to learn intricacies and exceptions. I think advisers should more often say, “You probably won’t get what I’m saying until you screw it up.” Expertise takes time, and pithiness comes with a cost.

Plenty of useful advice conflicts for this reason: Know Your Customer vs. Build For Yourself,Don’t Raise Too Much vs. Don’t Raise Too Little. The better answer to these questions is It Depends. Advice isn’t like code that’s easily executed, but like map coordinates that require skill and context. My hope is that our experience brings us (and you) a little closer to that.