压力之下保持激情的3个诀窍

Slidejoy刚刚创建的时候，我们的团队只有五名成员，而且五个人分散在纽约、费城、旧金山和首尔等地。Slidejoy可以说是后发制人，当时它的竞争对手都拥有比它更大的团队和更多的资金。虽然当时机遇之神似乎并不青睐我们，但我们深信（现在也仍然相信），我们一定会把锁屏广告带到这个世界上。

经历了一系列波折，我们仍然能保持激情，主要归功于以下几点：

1、好队友

我爱我的团队，这不仅仅是因为他们的业务能力超强，还因为我知道不管在什么情况下，他们都是值得信赖的。去年夏天，为了节省成本，我们团队里的三个人一起住在纽约字母城的一套两室的小公寓里。当时我们的公司还有很大的不确定性，我们甚至不知道公司能否存活下去，所以我们夜以继日地工作，以确保Slidejoy项目的进展。我也因此树立了对我的团队的信心，它直至今日仍在继续激励我。

2、小成就

过去两年里，我们在创业过程中幸运地获得了一些小小的成就，这些小成就也激励着我们继续前行。第一个小成就是招募到了几名优秀的创始人，其中有沃顿商学院的MBA毕业生，有斯坦福大学计算机科学专业的硕士，还有曾创下几亿次下载记录的应用开发者。

几个月后，我们成功地谈下了第一个客户——梅西百货，它也是美国最大的零售商之一。不久之后，我们又在谷歌的Google Play正式上线，并获得了主流刊物的报道，甚至还上了《今日秀》。我们还赢得了沃顿商业计划竞赛大奖。今年年初，我们又拉到了120万美元的种子融资。自从本轮融资后，我们的用户群和营收入都增长了五倍以上。

运营一家企业是很艰难的，但是这些小的成就能让你在艰苦的工作中保持热情，因为它们使你知道，你正在朝着正确的方向前进。

3、大愿景

这些小成就虽然很不错，但一个个小成就所铺成的道路，必然要指向一个大的愿景。Slidejoy的愿景就是使手机、应用和服务免费。在获得一个个小的成就的间隙，我经常会反思，自己为什么要这样努力地去做Slidejoy。我会思考我们是如何将超过100万美元的现金分发给我们的用户的，而它又是如何提高了他们的生活品质（和经济状况）。我会思考在不远的将来，我们如何能让人们只需下载Slidejoy就能免费购买到手机。

虽然我们还有很长的路要走，但我们共同的愿景却激励着我不断前行。

在你运营一家公司的过程中，有很多种方法让你自己保持激情。对我来说，这个方法就是与优秀的人共事、在创业过程中幸运地获得一些小的成就，并且拥有一个我甘愿为之奋斗的大愿景。（财富中文网）

本文作者罗伯特•徐是Slidejoy公司的联合创始人兼CEO。Slidejoy是一款手机应用，可以将你的锁屏壁纸换成新闻动态和广告，而且该应用还能向你付钱。罗伯特•徐是一名沃顿商学院的MBA毕业生，也是一名铁人三项运动员，他曾在美国海军陆战队服役，还是一名金融家。

译者：朴成奎

When Slidejoy started out, we were a team of five with members scattered in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seoul. Slidejoy was a second-mover, facing competitors with bigger teams and more money. The odds weren’t stacked in our favor, but we believed (and still do) that we were going to bring lock-screen advertising to the world. Here’s how we’ve stayed inspired through the crazy ups and downs:

Great teammates

I love my team, not just because they’re great at what they do professionally, but because I know they will be there through thick and thin. To save on costs last summer, three of us lived and worked out of a small, two-bedroom apartment in New York City’s Alphabet City. At the time, there was a lot of uncertainty around our business and we didn’t know if we would survive. So we came together by working day and night to keep Slidejoy going, and I gained confidence in my team that inspires me even today.

Small wins

Over the last two years, we’ve been lucky to achieve small wins along the way that inspire us to keep going. The first win was recruiting amazing founders. We’re talking about guys with Wharton MBAs, Masters in Computer Science from Stanford, and developers of apps with hundreds of millions of downloads. A couple of months later, we closed our first client, Macy’s M -0.02% , one of the largest retailers in the U.S. Shortly thereafter, we launched officially on Google Play, received press coverage in major publications, and were even featured on The Today Show. We won the Wharton Business Plan Competition Grand Prize, and earlier this year, we raised a $1.2 million seed round. Since closing the round, we’ve grown over five times in both users and revenues.

Running a business is tough, but small wins keep you inspired through the grind because they let you know you’re headed in the right direction.

Big vision

While small wins are great, there has to be a big vision that the small wins are building toward. Slidejoy’s vision is to make mobile phones, apps, and service free. In between the small wins, there are times when I take a step back and think about why I work so hard on Slidejoy. I think about how we’ve distributed over $1 million to our users and how it’s improved their lives (and the economy). I think about how in the not-too-distant future, we will enable people to pay for their phones simply by having Slidejoy on it.

Although we still have a ways to go, our shared vision inspires me to keep going.

There are multiple ways to stay inspired as you run a company. For me, it’s about having great people to work with, being lucky enough to have small wins along the way, and a big vision to work toward.

The author，Robert Seo，is cofounder and CEO of Slidejoy, the app that replaces your lockscreen with trending news and ads and actually pays you for it. He’s a Wharton MBA alumnus, Ironman Triathlete, US Marine and a reformed financier.