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.

几天前，我终于把优秀创业者的品质精炼成两个词：敏思而笃行。

之前我能想到最准确的反面品质是：坐以待毙。很多字典里把这个词解释为“运气不好”。但是，字典编辑们的功课没做到家。一个球队面对比自己菜的对手却栽在了黑哨手里，这叫运气差。坐以待毙有点逆来顺受的意思 － 世界碾过你，而你束手无策。

不幸的是“坐以待毙”没有合适的反义词，这就引起了点麻烦 － 在告诉创业者怎么做时，“别等死啊”可听不出一点豪情万丈。

打比方来说明我们寻求的品质并不难。这个品质最好的比喻也许是跑卫。好的跑卫不仅意志坚定，还能随机应变。他们的目标是跑到底线，飞奔中却能时时改变线路。

不过这只是个比喻，而且对于大多数老外（也即“非老美”）来说不够形象。说“像一个跑卫”跟“别坐以待毙”一样令人摸不着头脑。

但最终我想到了如何正面表达这种品质。当时我在为一群投资者准备一篇讲稿，告诉他们如何甄别创业者。 “不坐以待毙”的家伙长啥样呢？他们得思维敏捷，又能脚踏实地。仅仅“脚踏实地”并不足以成事 －除非在一些及其乏味的领域。其他领域里，总会遇到前所未有的困难。这意味着努力犁地不见得是最有效的耕田方法，因为开始并不知道这片田有多硬；也许会碰到一块泡沫塑料，或者，一块花岗岩。所以，你得想法多多（才能独辟蹊径），你得逼着自己换新方法。

敏思而笃行。

听起来不赖，但这真的是达到成功的通用方法吗？我不这么认为。比如，在写作或者绘画领域，这方子就不灵了。这类工作中，高度的好奇心更为重要。需要思如泉涌意味着（需要对付）来自外部的种种障碍，这些外部障碍在创业公司里很常见。而写作和绘画中，困难往往是内在的－限制你的是自己迟钝的内心。

或许还有一些领域里，“敏思笃行”也是成功的秘方。尽管会与其他领域有重叠，我认为简短表述成就一个优秀创业者的品质，这就是最好的两个词。再精简几乎不可能了。

现在我们知道该找些什么了，这就引出了其他的问题。比如，这种品质能教吗？经过四年的教授，我的答案是肯定的 － 能教，而且教成的不少。不是每个人都行，但是很多人可以。有些人天生消极，而其他人的潜力如璞玉待琢。

很多一路被管大的年轻人就属于这种情况。“敏思笃行”绝对不是在大公司和学校里如鱼得水的法宝。我甚至都懒得思考大公司的成功守则，那会长很多，复杂很多 － 包含了服从组织，贡献点子和拉帮结派这类东西。

发现这种品质让我们能进一步回答让人们困扰已久的一个问题：“最多能有多少创业公司？”。一些人认为经济学上讲这个数字没有上限。就像待证明定理的数量没有上限一样，我们也没有理由相信人们在消费新创造的社会财富的能力方面有上限。所以，创业公司的数量也许只取决于潜在创业者的数量。有些人能成为好的创业者，其他的不行。而我们现在能辨识出好的，也就知道了这个池塘能有点多大了。

这个测试标准也适用于个人。如果你想知道自己能否创业，问问自己能否敏于思，笃于行。如果你想拉个人跟你合伙，也可以看看他们是否具有同样的品质。

你甚至可以把它当作制胜策略。如果我开公司，镜子上就要贴上这句话。“做人们喜爱的产品”是目的，“敏思而笃行”是达成的手段。