名川资本

      霍华德1968年从康奈尔获得“Operation Research”的博士学位，他毕业后留校康奈尔计算机系当讲师。没几年他就去到世界首屈一指的沃顿商学院里教“决策科学”和莫尔电气工程学院教“计算机科学”。1974年他在“用户界面技术”和“计算机网络优化”的研究，给费城带来了“阿帕网”（ARPAnet），这是美国国防部高级研究计划署开发的第一个运营的“封包交互网络”，是全球互联网的始祖。它不仅才高八斗，在风险投资上也颇有建树。他是Idealab的首席投资官，孵化很多独角兽公司：Overture、Citysearch、Cardirect、Cityserch、Snap等。2004年他创立了自己的VC基金－First Round Capital，给科技公司投种子轮，单个项目也就投25～50万美金，霍华德自创了一套投资策略［下文会提到，卖个关子先］，这让基金的回报率很高。基金投的项目主要有：Uber、Mint、myYearbook、Square、Warby Parker、Wikia、Odeo……。

     本文译自Tarang Shah& Sheetal Shah写的《Venture Capitalists at Work》书中第六章，是通过作者Tarang访谈霍华德后编写的访谈笔录，我从中间甄选了几个非常有意思的问答，我自己很“涨姿势”，希望大家也喜欢。

Tarang Shah: Why do startups fail?

初创公司为什么会死掉？

      Howard Morgan: Well, [there are] two reasons why they fail … people do not buy their product, that’s number one. Number two is being undercapitalized. They do not have enough money to sell it after they have it built. I think much more rarely they cannot build it. In today’s world, that is less common, mainly because we usually do not see the product until they have built a pretty good prototype. Certainly in the software side of the world that is true. In the hardware side, it is a little tougher. Then of course, [there are] people issues.

      有两个主要原因。首先，消费者不买单。其次，公司储备的资金不足。钱都花在开发产品上了，可惜最后没钱把产品卖出去！其实产品不太可能开发不出来，尤其在今天，这就更加少见了。只不过公司一般会先做一个精致的样品，才会向市场公开销售。这对软件公司来说很平常，但对硬件公司，难度加大不少。另外，团队如果出问题也会导致公司失败。

Shah: What is your ideal startup?

你心目中理想的创业公司是怎么样的？

     Morgan: The ideal startup is a startup with an entrepreneur who has done it before, a serial entrepreneur. A startup where people come first. A startup attacking a very large, established market—and the way we say it is, “making a dollar by taking ten away from the leaders.” [A startup that is] shrinking markets. Think of the media industry. You take ten dollars away from television advertising and make one dollar in internet advertising and it can be just as effective, so it is shrinking markets.

       创始人必须有行业经验，最好是一个连续创业者。团队对初创公司太重要了！创业公司是在攻击一个成熟的市场，换句话说“创业公司每赚到1块钱，就让市场老大们损失10块钱。”难以置信，但创业公司真会压缩市场。大家一起回想下传媒行业，以往电视上花10元打的广告，现在在网上只需要花1元，同样达到效果，这不就是在压缩整个广告市场嘛！

       And that is because you are making it more efficient? Making the markets more efficient, taking the middleman out of the markets, taking cost out of the markets, and doing it in a way that will make money for you where the existing market leaders cannot do the same or have not seen how they can do the same.

      是因为创业公司提高了效率？对，他们让市场更有效，去除中间商，降低营销成本。创业公司能为客户节约成本，这是行业内的成熟企业做不到或者不知怎么做的。

Shah: So how do you pick the markets you want to go after?

你是怎么挑市场的？

     Morgan: Two ways. First of all, need. You see a problem and find a solution. The problem could be, in the case of Citysearch, trying to find a local merchant and seeing what the need is and how to solve it. Most recently it was “my tweets keep falling off the search” because it is last-in first-out. What if somebody wants to pay to keep their tweet up there for a longer period of time? We created a solution. So we pick the markets, first by need and secondly by size. If you want to make a billion-dollar company, you better go after a market that has a billion dollars in it. So need and size.

     两个指标，最重要的是“需求”。你发现市场痛点，并且解决它。拿Citysearch举个例子，你可以找几个本地商人唠唠嗑，问他们有什么需求，接着满足他们就行。 我听到的最近的一个需求是：“我发的信息很快就搜不到了”，那时因为页面显示规则是“后进先出”。假如有人愿意付费让自己的信息保留更长时间呢？我们可以做到。挑市场的第二个指标是“天花板”。如果公司营收是奔着10亿美金去的，那么你至少也要进一个总规模10亿美金以上的市场吧。重要的话重复下，要选“有需求”和“天花板高”的市场！

     Then, we slightly prefer to disrupt existing markets—because they already have a lot of sales channels and a lot of awareness of problem—than creating completely new markets. But we will do both. You know the size already.

       另外，和开拓新市场相比，我们更倾向于切存量市场，因为存量市场已经有完善的销售渠道，另外很多问题也都暴露了。但我们并不排斥新市场，至少你是知道市场天花板的。

       When going after the automobile market, we know the size of that market. With solar energy, we do not know the size yet. It is a newer market. Or a robotics scenario where we have created a couple of companies and they are doing well and then the issue is we do not know what the size is because people did not know they needed these products. You are sitting here with an iPad, but nobody knew they needed an iPad or iPhone. The tablets and phones are not quite new markets, but they are really disruptive because they are providing a feature function that is so different.

       我们进军汽车市场前，已经摸清了它的规模。但是太阳能市场的规模，我们就弄不太清楚，因为这是一个新的市场。机器人市场呢？我们孵化过几家公司，经营的也都不错，但是问题是我们还是不知道它的市场容量，因为这不是刚需。你拿个IPad坐在那玩，但其他人不知道他们需要IPad还是iPhone。药品和手机市场并不算新市场，但是它两也都很难预测规模，因为不同产品的功能差异极大。

Shah: How do you go about identifying such promising unmet needs?

你是如何挖掘新需求的？

      Morgan: A lot of it is talking to potential users and getting a sense of whether there is a very quick reaction or nod [to], “Yes, I would use that,” or, “No, I would not use that.” Obviously, it is your own gut reaction after a while, particularly when it is consumer-related. So whether it is Bill Gross, or my partner Josh Kopelman at First Round Capital, we have a lot of experience in the consumer markets and we have a sense if something will work or not work. Not always perfect. Obviously, we started eToys here at Idealab and it worked for a while but ultimately didn’t because the toy market was not a great one for being online at that time.

       其实很多时候都是靠和潜在客户聊天，看他们是激动回应，还是就淡定的点点头，“太棒了，我肯定会用它”或者“额，我暂时不需要”。很多时候这要凭自己的直觉，因为客户各有不同。无论是Bill Gross 还是我在First Round Capital的合伙人Josh Kopelman，我们对消费者市场理解很深，我们能感觉出来一件事能成，还是不能成，但也不会百发百中。Idealab曾经孵化过一个网络玩具平台，刚开始运行顺利，可惜最终失败了，主要因为当时玩具市场还没有大到要借助网销。

      Another thing is timing. There were ideas that a lot of people came up with in the mid and late nineties that did not work. They are working now because of broadband everywhere and wide adoption of the internet as a marketplace. There is trust that you can use credit cards online. So with things that may look good, you may be too early. I have always said I invest in two stages, too early and way too early. Sometimes ideas have to be right for the time as well as for the market size.

       时机也很重要。在九十年代中后期，很多人提出了一些好的想法，但是最后却没实现。现在这些想法都奏效了，因为宽带技术普及了，互联网市场也被广泛接受了。人们开始放心在网上使用信用卡了。所以有些看起来很美的想法，但是生不逢时，没有市场。 我一直说我只投两个阶段，早期和更早期。总的来说创业需要抓住时机和瞄准市场。

Shah: Is the first mover advantage overrated?

先发优势是不是被吹过火了？

      Morgan: Absolutely. Google was not first, Facebook was not first. There is no question in the internet-related space [that] you do not have to be first, but you cannot be too late either. There is a time frame between the first mover and being way too late in the process. Fast followers can easily win. People seeing a trend and jumping on it a year late maybe can win, but if this huge network effect is involved, then it is harder. Foursquare has a million users now. Can you beat it? Yes. Twitter has several hundred million. Can you beat that? Hard. Not impossible, but hard. The first mover advantage is overrated. It depends on how big and how much is related to the network effect.

      绝对是这样！ Google不是最早，Facebook也不是最早。 在互联网相关的领域，你不必起太早，但也不能睡懒觉。 在过早和太迟之间有一个时间窗口期。快速跟风者能借势，所以容易赢得轻松。 人们嗅到一个趋势，一年后开干也可能成功，但如果对手已经形成一定规模效应，这就有挑战性了。 Foursquare现在有100万用户，你能超过它吗？ 没问题。Twitter有几亿，你能打败吗？ 额….难。不是不可能，而是很难！先发优势确实被夸大了，它的重要性取决于是否能借助先发形成规模效应。

Shah: How do you determine if the market is early vs. nonexistent?

你怎么区分一个市场是“没成熟”还是“伪需求”？

      Morgan: That again is where we do the prototyping and a very rapid test to see whether or not you can force the market. We did that with CarsDirect when we started selling cars on the internet. We were not sure that people would pay $20,000 to $50,000 for a product they would buy on the internet. We did a test where we got pricing information so we could put up a test to see whether or not people would buy a car.

       很简单，我们做个样品，然后扔到市场上快速测试一下，看看市场如何反应。CarDirect（美国一个互联网汽车平台）就是一个成功案列，它是我们当时进军汽车互联网销售平台时做的试验品。我们当时不确信消费者是否愿意在网上花2万刀～5万刀这么多钱。所幸我们做一个测试，我们把与汽车价格相关的信息都列在了网上，看有没有人愿意来买。

       We put it up on a Thursday night, we drove traffic to it with Go To/Overture at the time, and the next morning we had sold five cars. We were selling the cars at invoice price, which was a cheap price. It turns out in California you cannot say invoice price, but we sold a few cars and we delivered them, which was relatively expensive to us. But the focus group said yes, people will buy a $20,000 car this way. It was not asking people if they would, it was seeing if they actually did. We made that work. That is what we try to do, to see if it is a nonexistent market. You put up something and try to offer it for sale and see what the behavior is. Do people actually take the action?

       我们周四晚把这个模型扔到网上，同时我们用Overture帮助导流，没想到第二天早上我们竟然成交了5辆车！虽然我们是以发票价格出售的（发票价格便宜），在加洲一般没人以发票价格卖车，我们卖出了一些，我们送货上门，这样我们的成本就较高了。但是被消费者用行动证明了，他们能接受网购一辆2万刀的汽车。所以，你并不是去问消费者买不买，而是去看他们是否真的会买。当我们需要分辨一个市场是否是伪需求时，最简单就是测试一下。做一个产品，然后把他投入市场，看看消费者的反应。看消费者真的买单吗？

Shah: Can startups create trends or do they just ride them?

创业公司能造风口吗，还是他们靠风口起飞？

      Morgan: Twitter certainly created a trend, if you will. They were very small. I do not think you are too small to create trends if you are creating something brand new. You can do it even if you are small. We are seeing that with foursquare. I think you can create some trends. You may not be the ultimate winner, very often the person who started the trend is not the ultimate winner.

      Twitter就是自己造了一个风口。这些企业曾经都是小公司。对于创新产品，我不认为公司规模小会阻碍他们掀起新潮，即便你小你也能创新。Foursquare就是另外一个成功例子，我想创业者能掀起新潮。创造风口的企业往往不是行业最后赢家，这已经屡见不鲜了。

   For instance, Myspace vs. Facebook. Andrew Weinrich started it all with SixDegrees back in the late nineties, but again, there was no broadband or a lot of people on the ’net. So social networks really did not take off then, although all the concepts were there. Myspace really took off with a certain group. You can still slice that market. So we have, at First Round Capital, myYearbook, which is the third largest one, but it is focused on the high-school demographic. You can slice it in other ways, but I think it created the trend in the high schools, which was not the same as what was happening with Myspace vs. Facebook.

       再来举个例子，Myspace和Facebook都是社交网站。Andrew Weinrich 在90年代末期创建了Myspace，但是当时没有宽带技术，网民也少。因此虽然理念都很先进，但社交网络还是没有火起来。后来Myspace确实在相当一部分人中反响热烈，但进入这个市场还有机会，比如我们First Round Capital 投资的My Yearbook，现在美国社交网络中排名老三，它瞄准高中学生这个群体。你可以用其它的方式切这块市场，但是在高中生中My Yearbook掀起了新潮，这与Myspace与Facebook的竞争不太一样。

       I think the answer is you can create trends even if you are small. I think that once there is a huge player in there, then it is harder to get people away. The question is, what is that scale? Well, Facebook started in a controlled way. It went after a slightly different audience than Myspace. As that audience matured, it got them away from those who were on Myspace, moved away, and spent more of their time on Facebook. By starting these close communities at the high-end universities, they got a lot of strong usage patterns. Then expanding out of that is what got them to expand beyond Myspace.

        回答简单点，即便你是初创公司，你也可以成为弄潮儿。但是一旦市场有“巨无霸”玩家了，你想从他们手上抢走用户就更难了。问题来了，“巨无霸”怎么衡量？Facebook创建的时候很谨慎，但是它逐渐开始瞄准一些和Myspace有差异的用户。待这批用户成熟后，Facebook开始让这部分成熟用户从Myspace中脱离出来，花更多的时间在Facebook上。Facebook从最高端的大学着手，获得了很多用户规律信息。随后它从这个群体极速向外扩张，最后超越了Myspace。

Shah: There is no billion-dollar idea, but just a billion-dollar execution. What is your definition of great execution?

没有价值千金的项目，只有价值连城的执行力，你是如何定义完美执行力的？

      Morgan: I like to quote Stephen Sondheim from one of his songs—“Having just the vision is no solution. Everything depends on execution.” We see that over and over again. Again, the same vision, the same company idea comes to several people and the ones that execute the best are the ones who win. Executing best to me means speed, great design, and a real marketing plan. A real understanding of how to reach the customer base and get them in there. A go-to-market strategy, in the technology world, is sort of the “influencer strategy.” How do you reach the influencers very quickly?

      有首歌是这么唱的“光有视野也无济，万事都依赖执行”。这个理论屡试不爽。具备相同的视野和思路的几个人，一定是执行力最强的人最终获胜！对我来说最好的执行力是：速度、好的设计、接地气的市场计划。真正理解如何抵达客户和如何与客户做生意。在科技领域，市场策略就是“影响力策略”，你如何快速抵达最有影响力的人？

    With Tweet Up, we orchestrated a campaign which got us in twenty-one major publications on the first day. New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, TechCrunch. By the end of the day, everyone inside the industry knew about it and were telling all their readers and followers about it. So we reached thousands of key people really quickly with that strategy.

      依靠Tweet，我精心策划了一个活动，让它一天之内在21家主流媒体曝光，《纽约时报》、《华尔街期刊》、《福布斯》、《财富》、TechCrunch。一天后，媒体行业内所有的人都知道这个活动，接着他们会影响他们的读者和粉丝。依靠这个策略，我们很快抵达了几千个目标人群。

      Of course, Steve Jobs is the master of all this by creating suspense and trying very hard to maintain the level of suspense prior to the actual product launch or announcement. He has great go-to-market strategy. Being ready to sell something when you actually announce it, it is very difficult. Sometimes you cannot do that. If you are selling through a retail channel, then the buyers have to see it so you have to get them excited and that may be months before the product is physically in the stores.

     Steve Jobs是市场策略的大师，他每次都“故布疑阵”，并且把悬念一直保持到产品发布会。他有很好的市场开拓策略。当你宣布产品时，一般很难完全准备好销售。有时你借助零售渠道销售，消费者需要看到产品，但你必须让消费者在上货前的几个月都保持高度期待。

    One of our companies, Evolution Robotics, is starting up with a new cleaning system called Mint. Mint uses a Swiffer pad, so it is really meant for hardsurface floors. It is not a vacuum, it is a cleaning tool. Because it is square, it actually gets into corners and because of the way its robotics systems work, it does not do random coverage, it actually does complete coverage. It knows where it has been, it maps the room.

        我们曾孵化的一家公司“创新机器人”，是靠一个名叫“薄荷”的清洁机器人发家的。“薄荷”不是吸尘器，它使用抹布，是专为硬地板清洁设计的。它外形是方的，这样清洁做到无死角，它的系统指挥它有规律移动，确保没有遗漏的地方，而并非随机运动。我甚至知道它去过什么地方，因为它记录了路径。

      We started showing that at CES and then at the housewares show and now we have huge sets of partners in the retail chain who are going to take this when it actually gets into the delivery cycle later in the summer. But the go-to-market strategy was to make sure all the key buyers get to see it early so they can put it in their plans for the fall. That means that we have been on a number of the top TV shows that focus on housewives, etc. There is a lot of pent-up demand now for the product, before it is released. We have a lot of buzz going. It looks great. We have done videos and so on, so we are doing things to get that strategy there. You want to mine the social networks. People trust their friends more than they trust an ad. First they trust their friends, then they trust editorial coverage, finally they trust advertising.

       我们在两个电视节目中做了广告，当时很多零售渠道方反响热烈，争先恐后地要在夏天出厂后订货。市场策略是确认目标客户能尽早关注产品，并且提前做好“剁手”准备。所以我们要上一些家庭主妇爱看的电视节目。这样在产品正式销售前，就能积累很多潜在消费者。我们还有其他的营销手段。我们也拍摄产品视频等方式，目的是让市场策略能落地。我们也提前铺了社交渠道，和广告比起来，人们更愿意相信朋友的推荐。信任度由高到低是这么排的：朋友推荐、媒体、硬广告。

Shah: When do you know that there is no Plan B? That is a tough decision for investors to make. What is your experience?

你如何判断一个公司没救了？

      Morgan: Because of the way that we invest at the very early stage, we are actually pretty brutal about it. We try to set the proper expectation with the entrepreneurs that these are the milestones that we have agreed on. If you are not making them, we are not going to keep investing. We do have the money to do A rounds, B rounds, and so on, but what we are really focused on saying is, this is the contract. We would rather fail cheap.

      我们投早期项目，所以投资人还是想对强势的。我们和企业是有业绩对赌。如果企业没有达标，我们不会继续投资。我们当然有钱去投A轮、B轮……, 但是我们一直强调，投资本身就是契约。我们宁可止损，也不继续投资不达标的公司。

      First round of our model is to do twenty $500,000-investments a year and then to follow on heavily on the ones that met their milestones, but not to follow on the ones who have not. We can fail if we only lose $500,000, whereas if we succeed, we may have millions in the company, which is exactly what we want. We want the percentage of our capital in the successes to be very high. We are not as focused on the percentage of our successes. We are trying to be a little tougher on that than the classic A-stage venture capitalists are.

       我们基金的第一轮投资策略是，一年投20个项目，每个项目投50万美金，然后第二轮再重仓那些业绩达标的公司，反之不达标的那些我们就不追加投资了。如果公司失败了，那我们只会损失50万美金，但是如果公司成功，那我们确保投了几百万美金在里面，这正是我们想要的。我们并不关注整个投资组合的成功率，但是我会重仓成功的项目，确保我大部分资金是投在了成功项目上。我们会比一般的A轮基金更严格一些。