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March 15, 2024

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Edwin Ong

2024.03.06

翻译:田头草

在硅谷,极少有人能像 Y Combinator 的总裁兼首席执行官 Garry Tan (陈嘉兴) 那样高调。Garry在其辉煌的职业生涯中担任过许多不同的职务。

除了领导世界上最成功的创业加速器(Y Combinator) 之外,Garry 是 Palantir (帕浪)的第 10 名员工,共同创立了 Posterous(最早的博客网站之一),创立了 Initialized Capital(管理规模超过 32 亿 美元的风险投资基金),甚至还由投资而步入政界,成为旧金山当地政治的杰出活动家。

(译者注;Palantir 帕浪公司基本上没有中文的介绍,帕浪服务的用户牛气冲天)

(译者注:Posterous 被Twitter 于2012 年收购)

我有幸有机会了解Garry 的亚裔身份如何影响他的生活,我希望他的答案能够帮助和启发我们的读者。言归正传:

一、克服有害的心态

1. 因稀缺环境而诱发稀缺的粘性心态

Ong: 

我的经验是,工薪阶级父母(尤其是亚洲移民)的孩子往往有一种因稀缺环境而诱发稀缺的粘性心态——即使他们的社会经济地位已经有所提高。加里此前曾谈到过他的“价值 2 亿美元的错误”。也就是说,他拒绝了 Peter Thiel 成为 Palantir 创始成员的邀请。对我来说,这似乎是这种心态的体现,所以我问Garry他是如何克服的:

(译者注:Peter Thiel,“奇葩的牛人,自由穿梭于法律、金融、投资及创业之间。”)

(译者注:当时Garry 是微软高薪稳定的员工)。

Tan: 

我能够意识到这些东西是双向门。以良好的条件退出一家大型科技公司实际上意味着你可以随时回去。有单向门和双向门之分。

对于与我们一样环境长大的人来说,一切都感觉像是一扇单向门。但如果你什么时候能意识到这是错误的,那么你就改造了那些有钱人默认拥有的一些特权。

Ong: 

亚马逊创始人杰夫·贝索斯(Jeff Bezos)多次谈论单向门与双向门框架。你可以在这里听到他更深入的阐述。https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VFwCGECvq4I&ab_channel=LexClips

(译者注:单向门VS双向门,贝佐斯认为决策有两种。一种决策是单向门(one-way door),不可逆转而且非常重要。另一种决策是双向门(two-way door),90%以上的决策都属于此。也就是说,可以制定决策并执行,一旦事实证明决策错误,马上可以推倒重来,损失不大。)

2. 亚裔社区对心理健康的耻辱感

Ong: 

亚裔社区对心理健康的耻辱感,是另一种越来越受到关注的心态。就我个人而言,因为我的移民父母为了生存而拼尽全力,我觉得我没有权利抱怨我的心理健康,因为我的生活相对安逸。我问Garry这是否引起他的共鸣以及他如何克服这种心理障碍:

Tan: 

我假装自己没有任何问题,花了很多时间试图融入其中。但最终,有关我童年的事情或不寻常的留下创伤的反应,会在我的职业生活中突然出现。在某个时候,我开始单独接受治疗,这对我帮助很大。

所有这些我无法控制的事情突然变成了我可以整合和意识到的事情,并做出更好的选择。卡尔·荣格说:你未觉察到的潜意识决定着你的人生,你却将其称之为“命运”。(译者注:荣格是瑞士心理学家、精神科医师,分析心理学的创始人。)

3. 第三种常见心态是低着头,避免搅局

Ong:

我在亚裔美国人中看到的第三种常见心态是低着头,避免搅局,即使这意味着抑制自己的想法。鉴于Garry是一个非常直言不讳的人,我问他是如何培养自信的:

Tan:

我记得在高中时,我是校报的编辑,注意到我们在比较贫困高中的学生因为同样的违规行为而受到严厉的判决和开除,而在富人区的学校则仅会受到不痛不痒的轻罚。我对此非常生气,我写了一篇文章揭露它,但被我的高中指导报纸的老师审查(没过)了。我已经快毕业,并已被斯坦福大学录取了,所以我就顺其自然了。

但在我内心深处,有一种对被压制的愤怒,我永远不会忘记。

在出报纸之前,我会使用 Pagemaker (译者注:一款页面排版软件)出版“地下”报纸,而我的英语老师会为班级复印报纸 – 这给了我一种我永远不会忘记的力量。因为否则我就是角落里骨瘦如柴的亚洲书呆子,但是当我可以传达我社区的声音,我有了立足点。我从未忘记过这一点。

二、关于亚裔社区

Ong:

关于社区的话题,我问Garry 是什么促使他成为亚裔社区的积极倡导者:

Tan: 

我对旧金山的亚裔美国人社区有强烈的团结感。我们是这座城市的重要组成部分,但我们却没有被看到。我们没有被听到。

当地领导人甚至会诋毁我们为确保亚裔美国长辈安全所做的努力。现在我知道我需要为那些没有发言权的人而战。

我发现的最酷的事情之一是一个名为“亲爱的社区”的非营利组织,它将刚新到旧金山的亚裔美国人(通常是年轻的专业人​​士)以及传统的旧金山唐人街社区联系起来。看到聪明的人们聚集在一起,为这座城市的人民而战,真是太棒了。

(译者注:了解旧金山的严重的社会现状的读者,就能更深入理解Garry 的这段话)。

Ong:

我还提到他最近去新加坡参加一个名为SWITCH的创业活动,并问他对亚洲国家涌现的创业场景有何感想:

Tan:

初创公司正在世界各地涌现。您可以从 YouTube 和网络上学习。 YC 校友遍布世界各地。我很高兴看到从湾区开始的事情现在已经成为一种全球现象,而且还在不断增长。

三、亚裔创始人经验

Ong:

在朋友的建议下,我问Garry:“我可以向哪些非技术性的亚洲创始人榜样学习?对于在初创公司作为非技术员工而言,最有价值去学习的技能是什么?” Garry的回答有点挑战了我问题的前提:

Tan:

在初创公司和技术领域,技术是关键优势。如果可以的话,请更重于科技。然后成为一名博学者:科技人员掌握软技能比反过来要容易得多。

Ong:

事后看来,我承认,如果你不愿意付出努力来成为技术人才,那么期望在科技行业获得优异成果似乎很愚蠢。他给我上了一课。

四、如何看待自己的亚裔身份

Ong:

最后,我问了Garry,和我问所有受访人的问题一样——作为创始人,他如何看待自己的亚裔身份:

Tan:

直到很晚我才想到这一点。坦白说,我试图假装这不是问题,虽然绝对存在“竹制天花板”- 既使对我来说。我没有获得晋升和/或人们认为我没有能力做我所做的事情。我会愤怒地辞掉工作,这是解决问题的一种方式,但我看到事情可以有不同的解决方式。

作为一名创始人,我发现我需要提高自己畅所欲言的能力,尤其是当我知道自己绝对正确时,要尽可能自信。

我有一种隐而不发的心理,我甚至没有意识到这是为了和谐。在没有意识到的情况下,我有时会自我放弃,然后又被动地攻击它。我不再这样做了,这是我作为领导者发展的关键一步。我希望我早点发展这种能力,这都是因为我童年时无意识的编程。

(译者注:Garry 在 14 岁时开始编程,他通过制作网页和网站的互联网部分获得每小时 7 美元的报酬。这笔收入帮助他的父母支付了买房的第一笔首付。)

Ong:

我从这次采访中得到的最大收益是,“永远正确、直言不讳”的 Garry Tan 并不总是如此,而且在某一时刻,他非常像典型的亚裔孩子。Garry 的故事证明,只要有自我意识和决心,任何人都可以实现巨大的成长并成为行业领导者。

呼吁

Ong:

如果您有一个雄心勃勃的创业想法,并希望成为一个令人惊叹的创始人社区的一部分,请申请 Y Combinator! Y Combinator 每年运行两次批次——冬季和夏季。 

2024年夏季批次的申请已开放,您可以通过 https://www.ycombinator.com/apply 进行申请

感谢Garry 接受采访!

照片来源:Y Combinator

英文采访链接

Garry Tan on Startups, Advocacy, and Overcoming Cultural Mindsets

附:福布斯中国对陈嘉兴的介绍

https://www.forbeschina.com/billionaires/61673

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                Factors That Affect the Cost of Web Development Services

                Here are 8 factors that can affect the cost of web development services:

                1. Location of the development team: The cost of living and average wages in a given location can affect the hourly rate for web development services. Generally, web development services in countries with a higher cost of living, such as the US and Europe, tend to be more expensive than those in countries with a lower cost of living.
                2. The development team’s level of experience and expertise: Developers with more experience and expertise may charge a higher hourly rate for their services. On the other hand, full-stack web developers can spend less time on a project and provide more quality services that are essential for enterprise web projects.
                3. Specific technologies and tools required for the project: Projects that require specialized knowledge and experience in certain programming languages or frameworks may have a higher hourly rate compared to those that use more common and widely-used technologies.
                4. Project complexity and scope: The complexity and scope of the project can affect the amount of time and resources required to complete it, which can, in turn, affect the cost.
                5. Design and branding: The cost of web development services can be affected by the cost of design and branding elements, such as the cost of creating a custom logo, selecting color schemes and layouts, and other visual elements that are unique to the project.
                6. Third-party integrations: The cost of web development services can be affected by the cost of integrating third-party tools or services, such as payment gateways, analytics, and other features that are not included in the core development services.
                7. The level of customization required: Customized solutions will require more time and resources to develop, resulting in higher costs.
                8. The need for SEO and marketing: Implementing an SEO strategy and a marketing plan can add to the development costs. This may include optimizing website structure, content, and meta tags for search engines, building backlinks, developing an ongoing content marketing strategy to improve search engine rankings, and developing a marketing strategy to increase visibility and attract users to the website.

                Budgeting for Ongoing Maintenance and Support in Web Development Services

                Website maintenance is essential to keeping your online presence up to date and running smoothly. The cost of website maintenance can vary greatly depending on your website type and the level of maintenance required. In this case, we will explore the different types of websites and the corresponding maintenance costs you can expect to incur.

                1. Basic websites: These are simple websites that typically consist of a few pages, such as a home page, about us page, and contact page. The maintenance cost for these types of websites is usually low, averaging around $30 to $50 per month.
                2. E-commerce websites: These types of websites allow customers to purchase products or services online. The cost of maintenance for e-commerce websites is typically higher than basic brochure websites, averaging around $50 to $100 per month.
                3. Custom websites: Custom websites are tailored to a specific business or organization and often require more complex features and functionality. The cost of maintenance for custom websites can range from $100 to $200 per month.
                4. Content Management System (CMS) websites: CMS websites are built using platforms such as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. The maintenance cost for these types of websites can range from $50 to $100 per month.
                5. Social media websites: Websites that are focused on social media interactions, such as forums and message boards, require regular updates and maintenance to keep content fresh and users engaged. The maintenance cost for these types of websites can range from $50 to $150 per month.

                It is important to note that these costs are approximate and can vary depending on the specific needs of your website. Additionally, getting a quote from a website maintenance company is always recommended before committing to a contract. By understanding the different types of websites and the corresponding maintenance costs, you can make an informed decision when it comes to maintaining your online presence.

                Sum up

                In conclusion, the cost of web development services can vary greatly depending on several factors, including the development team’s location and experience, the project’s complexity and scope, and the specific technologies and tools required. In 2025, the average hourly rate for web development services can range anywhere from $20 to $150 per hour. Basic websites can often be built for as little as $1,000 to $5,000, while complex websites can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000 or even higher. 

                To save money on web development costs, businesses can consider outsourcing to cost-effective locations, using open-source software and pre-designed templates and themes, and avoiding customizing unnecessary features. It is also essential to have a clear plan and scope of work before beginning development and use a project management tool to keep track of progress and timelines.

                Stopwatch on laptop keyboard. Deadline concept.

                Technologies

                How to improve the website loading speed

                Many people know that improving the website loading speed by 0.5 sec is invisible to the users. But it’s still one of the essential search engine factors they use in their ranking algorithms. Also, many web users may use a slow Internet connection, even in the USA and Europe. That is why improving website loading speed is a high-priority task for web development teams. How to improve the website speed?

                What is website speed?

                Technically the term website loading speed is incorrect because it is about page loading speed. 

                In short, website loading speed refers to how quickly the content and UI elements of the specific page load when a user visits it. 

                Several factors can influence specific page speed: 

                • The amount and size of the images and videos are contained on the page
                • UI animations
                • Themes and plugins are installed on the site
                • Front-end and server-side technologies are used
                • The code quality
                • Hosting or server

                But you must know that the user’s Internet connection also affects the web page speed.

                Start with website speed testing

                You may start the website speed test with your smartphone and mobile Internet connection. Does your site load quickly enough? Does your site look mobile-friendly? This test helps you to identify critical speed issues and how responsive the design of your website is.

                But using a smartphone test can’t tell about a website’s score in terms of the website loading speed. Also, it can’t help to identify the causes of slow website loading. That is why you should use tools to test and measure your website’s loading speed.

                The most used tool is Google Pagespeed Insights. It is easy to use and provides you with the most critical information. Look at the snapshot for our website.

                AHN’s team developed this site. You can see good scores and no critical issues that could affect the website loading speed.

                If Google Pagespeed Insights identifies issues, it will provide recommendations for increasing the website’s performance.

                This free tool allows testing the site’s mobile and desktop versions. You can use the Lighthouse tool that is built-in Chrome browser—Press F12 to run web developer tools and choose the Lighthouse tool to test the page.

                Also, web developers may use other tools like GTmetrix, Pingdom, or Performance Budget Calculator. 

                Some tools are free, but other tools can be payable. Many web professionals use Lighthouse and Core Web Vitals reports because it is usually enough.

                Guidelines to improve the website loading speed

                The Lighthouse tool (Google Pagespeed Insights) assessed your site as poor (score is less than 50) or as a website that needs improvements (score from 50 to 89). A web developer must look at the tool’s recommendations and fix issues. 

                This guide will help you to understand which factors influence website speed and how to increase it.

                Optimize the images

                Surprisingly, images are one of the most common issues affecting website loading speed. The main reason is that content managers do not pay attention to the size and format of the images when uploading them to the website.

                There is a typical image optimization process.

                Reduce the image size.

                Photos, images, or graphics on the web pages improve engagement. But if you use large files, the images slow down a website.

                Compressing images using tools is one way to reduce image size without affecting quality. Another way to reduce the image size is to adjust the image size based on user display properties.

                Choose the right image format.

                Look at this image. It shows the difference between a zoomed-in vector image L and a raster image R.

                As you can see, vector images are preferable options as they are resolution-independent and always deliver excellent results.

                If you use raster images, a web developer should serve different image sizes to other devices. But bear in mind that serving desktop-sized images to mobile phones can use 2–4x more data than needed.

                Use WebP images

                When Facebook switched to WebP, they noticed a 25-35% filesize savings for JPEGs and an 80% for PNGs.

                How to convert images to WebP? Usually, web developers use the cwebp command-line tool (for simple projects) or the Imagemin WebP plugin(for complex projects).

                Replace animated GIFs with video.

                GIFs aren’t a good choice when you need a fast website because their size can be 10-15 MB.

                It takes a lot of time to upload a GIF file. That is why web professionals convert GIFs into video files (MPEG or WebM).

                Use image CDNs to optimize images.

                Image content delivery networks (CDNs) specialize in transforming, optimizing, and delivering images. They are excellent at optimizing images and can yield a 40–80% savings in image file size. Image CDNs work like API, making it easy to create variations of an image for different use cases by indicating parameters like size, format, and quality.

                Use lazy loading

                Lazy loading is a technique that defers the loading of non-critical resources while the web page loads. In practice, the image lazy loading loads lightweight placeholder images at page load and replaces them with lazily-loaded images when they’re scrolled into the viewport.

                Using lazy loading makes sense if you use many media files on your site.
                Web developers can use a variety of ways to implement lazy loadings, such as browser-level lazy loading, Intersection Observer (JavaScript), or CSS. If your website is built on WordPress, you can use plugins.

                Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

                Content delivery networks (CDNs) improve site performance using web servers distributed across various locations. These servers retrieve content from the website server and provide website content to users with regard to their location. CDNs reduce server load and handle traffic spikes. 

                Also, CDNs allow caching resources on their servers. As a result, the resources are delivered more quickly. Cashing also reduces the load on the website server.

                To choose a good CDN, you should focus on its performance, security, analytics features, support, and pricing. 

                You need to know that CDN performance can vary significantly depending on geography, time of day, and different events. That is why predicting the exact performance you’ll get from a CDN is difficult.

                Choosing a good CDN depends on the type of your site (e-commerce, corporate website, blog), user locations, and your budget.

                Prioritize loading resources

                Not every website resource has the same degree of importance, which is why browsers attempt to make a guess at the most important resources to load first. The problem is browsers could use the wrong priority for website resources. For example, loading scripts before CSS.

                Web developers can use different ways to influence browsers’ priority-making process.

                If a web developer adds the <script> tag in the page’s <head>, Chrome will load at a high priority. But using the async attribute changes it to low priority.

                Also, a web developer can use <link rel=”preload”> (informs the browser that a resource should start getting fetched as soon as possible), <link rel=”preconnect”> (informs the browser that you’d like the process to start as soon as possible), and <link rel=”prefetch”> (it tries to make something non-critical happen earlier if there’s a chance) for other resources.

                To make everything right, a web developer should know the browser’s priority for each resource. For example, to know Chrome’s priority, you need to press F12 to run DevTools and find the Network panel.

                These priorities help to understand how much relative importance the browser attributes to resources. A web developer can influence the browser to assign a different priority. For example, if an image is a part of the initial render, a web developer prioritizes it higher than an image that starts offscreen.

                Optimize CSS code

                CSS code must be loaded before the browser renders the website page because it is a render-blocking resource. If these web pages contain unnecessarily large CSS code, it takes longer to render them.

                There are two main techniques that web developers use.

                The first is deferring non-critical CSS. Many non-critical styles apply to content that’s not immediately visible, for example, paragraphs inside the accordions. A web developer can defer this non-critical code.

                The second is minifying CSS. Minification CSS files is a technique that reduces unnecessary code, comments, whitespaces, and indentation in CSS files. A professional web developer can safely remove unnecessary characters and reduce CSS file size without affecting website rendering. 

                If web developers minify CSS files, you will see that recommendation “Minify CSS” moved to the “Passed Audits” section of the Lighthouse report.

                Optimize JavaScript code

                JavaScript code is a critical part of modern website design. On the other hand, using JavaScript code may slow down a website’s loading speed.

                A web developer should analyze the Lighthouse report to fix JavaScript issues and speed up a website. There are most common issues and solutions.

                First, the JavaScript code used on the website is a significant source of tasks. What is a task? A task is any discrete piece of work that the browser does and impacts the website’s performance. It can be rendering, parsing HTML and CSS, and running JavaScript code.

                Some tasks can be too long (that take more than 50 milliseconds), and a web developer should break up such tasks. In other words, a web developer needs to divide a long task into smaller tasks that take less time using one of the task management strategies like the async attribute, manually defer code execution, yield only when necessary, and others. Choosing a strategy depends on the main website features you’d want to consider when managing tasks because it is about usability and how users interact with a website.

                Minification JS code is another way to improve a website’s speed. To minify JS code a web developer should remove whitespace and any code that is not necessary to create a perfectly valid code file.

                JS code compression is the process of modifying data using a specific algorithm. Most web developers use Gzip for server and client interactions, but Brotli is a newer compression algorithm that helps to achieve even better compression results than Gzip.

                Also, we recommend using modern JavaScript to avoid reducing the website’s loading speed.

                Modern JavaScript means syntax supported by all modern browsers such as Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari. But using modern Java Script requires high-skilled web developers who have experience in advanced front-end and web app technologies.

                Move a website to better hosting.

                In some cases, the leading cause of slow website speed is hosting. A website owner must choose fast hosting to optimize the website’s performance.

                Several solutions can be used to host a website.

                Shared hosting is the most popular solution because it is cheap. But shared hosting means that you share the server’s CPU and RAM with many other sites that are also hosted on this server. If you need more RAM and CPU because your site attracts many visitors or use one of the modern frameworks, you need Virtual Private Servers (VPS) hosting or a dedicated server.

                Virtual Private Servers (VPS) and dedicated servers are faster than shared hosting. VPS  is fit needs of many business and e-commerce sites because it uses multiple servers for content distribution and provides your own part of the virtual server.

                Using a dedicated server is the most expensive solution because you need to rent or buy a server and pay for the system administrator’s services.

                Now alternative solutions are also available for website owners. You can use cloud solutions like Microsoft Azure, Google, or AWS. Cloud providers provide quality services that can scale on demand for your needs.

                Another alternative option is the serverless approach.

                Choosing a hosting provider is not easy but worth the effort.

                Conclusions

                Currently, a website’s loading speed is a vital factor that search engines assess, affecting website traffic and, as a result, business revenue.

                You can test your website speed using one of the tools to know if improvements are needed. 89 score and below means your site’s performance needs to be improved. Image optimization and minification of CSS and JS can speed up a website. But as you can see, it is not an easy task. 

                Also, hiring skilled web developers who can write quality, optimized code is important. Because it is an almost impossible job to optimize a website that was created by low-skilled web specialists. Re-developing the website from scratch becomes easier, faster, and cheaper in this case.