A couple days ago I finally got being a good startup founder down to two words: relentlessly resourceful.

Till then the best I'd managed was to get the opposite quality down to one: hapless. Most dictionaries say hapless means unlucky. But the dictionaries are not doing a very good job. A team that outplays its opponents but loses because of a bad decision by the referee could be called unlucky, but not hapless. Hapless implies passivity. To be hapless is to be battered by circumstances—to let the world have its way with you, instead of having your way with the world. [1]

Unfortunately there's no antonym of hapless, which makes it difficult to tell founders what to aim for. "Don't be hapless" is not much of rallying cry.

It's not hard to express the quality we're looking for in metaphors. The best is probably a running back. A good running back is not merely determined, but flexible as well. They want to get downfield, but they adapt their plans on the fly.

Unfortunately this is just a metaphor, and not a useful one to most people outside the US. "Be like a running back" is no better than "Don't be hapless."

But finally I've figured out how to express this quality directly. I was writing a talk for investors, and I had to explain what to look for in founders. What would someone who was the opposite of hapless be like? They'd be relentlessly resourceful. Not merely relentless. That's not enough to make things go your way except in a few mostly uninteresting domains. In any interesting domain, the difficulties will be novel. Which means you can't simply plow through them, because you don't know initially how hard they are; you don't know whether you're about to plow through a block of foam or granite. So you have to be resourceful. You have to have keep trying new things.

Be relentlessly resourceful.

That sounds right, but is it simply a description of how to be successful in general? I don't think so. This isn't the recipe for success in writing or painting, for example. In that kind of work the recipe is more to be actively curious. Resourceful implies the obstacles are external, which they generally are in startups. But in writing and painting they're mostly internal; the obstacle is your own obtuseness. [2]

There probably are other fields where "relentlessly resourceful" is the recipe for success. But though other fields may share it, I think this is the best short description we'll find of what makes a good startup founder. I doubt it could be made more precise.

Now that we know what we're looking for, that leads to other questions. For example, can this quality be taught? After four years of trying to teach it to people, I'd say that yes, surprisingly often it can. Not to everyone, but to many people. [3] Some people are just constitutionally passive, but others have a latent ability to be relentlessly resourceful that only needs to be brought out.

This is particularly true of young people who have till now always been under the thumb of some kind of authority. Being relentlessly resourceful is definitely not the recipe for success in big companies, or in most schools. I don't even want to think what the recipe is in big companies, but it is certainly longer and messier, involving some combination of resourcefulness, obedience, and building alliances.

Identifying this quality also brings us closer to answering a question people often wonder about: how many startups there could be. There is not, as some people seem to think, any economic upper bound on this number. There's no reason to believe there is any limit on the amount of newly created wealth consumers can absorb, any more than there is a limit on the number of theorems that can be proven. So probably the limiting factor on the number of startups is the pool of potential founders. Some people would make good founders, and others wouldn't. And now that we can say what makes a good founder, we know how to put an upper bound on the size of the pool.

This test is also useful to individuals. If you want to know whether you're the right sort of person to start a startup, ask yourself whether you're relentlessly resourceful. And if you want to know whether to recruit someone as a cofounder, ask if they are.

You can even use it tactically. If I were running a startup, this would be the phrase I'd tape to the mirror. "Make something people want" is the destination, but "Be relentlessly resourceful" is how you get there.

幾天前，我終于把優秀創業者的品質精煉成兩個詞：敏思而篤行。

之前我能想到最準確的反面品質是：坐以待斃。很多字典里把這個詞解釋為“運氣不好”。但是，字典編輯們的功課沒做到家。一個球隊面對比自己菜的對手卻栽在了黑哨手里，這叫運氣差。坐以待斃有點逆來順受的意思 － 世界碾過你，而你束手無策。

不幸的是“坐以待斃”沒有合適的反義詞，這就引起了點麻煩 － 在告訴創業者怎么做時，“別等死啊”可聽不出一點豪情萬丈。

打比方來說明我們尋求的品質并不難。這個品質最好的比喻也許是跑衛。好的跑衛不僅意志堅定，還能隨機應變。他們的目標是跑到底線，飛奔中卻能時時改變線路。

不過這只是個比喻，而且對于大多數老外（也即“非老美”）來說不夠形象。說“像一個跑衛”跟“別坐以待斃”一樣令人摸不著頭腦。

但最終我想到了如何正面表達這種品質。當時我在為一群投資者準備一篇講稿，告訴他們如何甄別創業者。 “不坐以待斃”的家伙長啥樣呢？他們得思維敏捷，又能腳踏實地。僅僅“腳踏實地”并不足以成事 －除非在一些及其乏味的領域。其他領域里，總會遇到前所未有的困難。這意味著努力犁地不見得是最有效的耕田方法，因為開始并不知道這片田有多硬；也許會碰到一塊泡沫塑料，或者，一塊花崗巖。所以，你得想法多多（才能獨辟蹊徑），你得逼著自己換新方法。

敏思而篤行。

聽起來不賴，但這真的是達到成功的通用方法嗎？我不這么認為。比如，在寫作或者繪畫領域，這方子就不靈了。這類工作中，高度的好奇心更為重要。需要思如泉涌意味著（需要對付）來自外部的種種障礙，這些外部障礙在創業公司里很常見。而寫作和繪畫中，困難往往是內在的－限制你的是自己遲鈍的內心。

或許還有一些領域里，“敏思篤行”也是成功的秘方。盡管會與其他領域有重疊，我認為簡短表述成就一個優秀創業者的品質，這就是最好的兩個詞。再精簡幾乎不可能了。

現在我們知道該找些什么了，這就引出了其他的問題。比如，這種品質能教嗎？經過四年的教授，我的答案是肯定的 － 能教，而且教成的不少。不是每個人都行，但是很多人可以。有些人天生消極，而其他人的潛力如璞玉待琢。

很多一路被管大的年輕人就屬于這種情況。“敏思篤行”絕對不是在大公司和學校里如魚得水的法寶。我甚至都懶得思考大公司的成功守則，那會長很多，復雜很多 － 包含了服從組織，貢獻點子和拉幫結派這類東西。

發現這種品質讓我們能進一步回答讓人們困擾已久的一個問題：“最多能有多少創業公司？”。一些人認為經濟學上講這個數字沒有上限。就像待證明定理的數量沒有上限一樣，我們也沒有理由相信人們在消費新創造的社會財富的能力方面有上限。所以，創業公司的數量也許只取決于潛在創業者的數量。有些人能成為好的創業者，其他的不行。而我們現在能辨識出好的，也就知道了這個池塘能有點多大了。

這個測試標準也適用于個人。如果你想知道自己能否創業，問問自己能否敏于思，篤于行。如果你想拉個人跟你合伙，也可以看看他們是否具有同樣的品質。

你甚至可以把它當作制勝策略。如果我開公司，鏡子上就要貼上這句話。“做人們喜愛的產品”是目的，“敏思而篤行”是達成的手段。