《Why Startups Fail A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success》读书笔记

1. “如果不能失败，就无法学习。”精益创业大师埃里克·里斯的这句话呼应了20世纪最伟大的科学哲学家之一卡尔·波普尔的一个重要观点。如果你对事物的运作方式充满信心，且一切按计划进行，那么你就无法学到新东西。
2. 但当计划出现问题时，这会迫使你重新审视自己的假设；实际上，你已经验证了这些假设的不足之处。换句话说，你进行了一次未能证明原假设正确的实验。当这种情况发生时，你就会获得宝贵的新见解。
3. 我发现我们从挫折中学习的途径有两种：一种是直接的个人体验，另一种是间接学习，即通过观察他人的错误来获知。当人们反思出错的原因以及本可以采取的不同做法时，直接经验能成为有力的启示。这种情况在反馈循环频繁且迅速、因果关系清晰明确、且风险可控从而不会让情绪干扰思考时最为有效。天气预报就符合这种特征，而初创企业则不然。
4. 更为有效的是，从近乎失败的经历中学习实际上非常有效——这就是为什么国家交通安全委员会会发布关于飞机险些失事的报告。对这类事件的描述不仅能让我们了解相关责任方的失误，还能让我们了解那些帮助他们最终避免灾难的决策和行动。因此，本书借鉴了诸多失败和险些失败的案例研究。
5. “速度陷阱”。在研究晚期失败案例时，我发现许多项目在走向失败之前都发展得相当顺利。其中的典型例子包括本书中提到的Fab.com，以及Groupon、Nasty Gal和Beepi。它们的衰落都遵循着类似的模式，我将其称为“速度陷阱”。陷入这种陷阱的创业项目最初发现了有吸引力的商机：早期用户乐于接受产品并主动推广，这无需任何营销投入就能吸引更多客户。快速的初期增长也吸引了热情的投资者。为了证明自己为股权支付的高价是合理的，投资者会推动企业进行激进扩张。其实创业者本身也渴望发展壮大，所以并不需要太多催促。经过大力营销后，初创企业最终会使其最初的目标市场达到饱和状态，这意味着要实现进一步增长就必须扩大客户群体，涵盖新的客户细分市场。然而，这批新客户并不像早期采用者那样认为该公司的产品有吸引力。新客户的消费金额较少，且重复购买的可能性也更低。同样，他们也不太可能口口相传为该公司做推荐。因此，为了保持增长，企业不得不在营销上投入大量资金，从而导致获取客户的平均成本上升。
6. 与此同时，这家初创企业的快速早期增长吸引了竞争对手。为了取得优势，竞争对手纷纷降价并投入大量资金用于促销活动。最终，获取新客户的成本超过了其带来的价值。随着企业现金逐渐耗尽，投资者不再愿意追加投资。作为回应，首席执行官可能会采取紧缩措施，减缓增长速度并削减员工人数以控制现金流流出。虽然这家初创企业可能得以生存，但其股价将大幅下跌，投资者也将遭受巨大损失。
7. 首先是与融资风险相关。有时某个整个行业领域会突然不再受风险投资公司的青睐，就像20世纪90年代初的生物技术行业或21世纪初的清洁技术行业那样。在极端情况下，即使是一些运营良好的初创企业也会因整体环境恶化而无法吸引新资金：好景不再。资金短缺会令投资者和创业者措手不及，这种状况可能持续数月甚至数年。如果某家快速发展的初创企业在试图筹集新一轮资金时遭遇了资金短缺，且该企业无法迅速削减开支，那么它很可能无法存活下去。
8. 初创企业通常需要具备深厚职能专业知识的资深高管，以便管理在工程、营销、财务和运营等领域迅速扩张的员工队伍。
9. 不必要的痛苦往往源于“孤注一掷”的错误做法——这是一种常见的创业失败模式，其根源在于终止一个陷入困境的项目这个决定极其令人纠结。许多创始人倾向于坚持下去，即使项目扭转局面的可能性已经微乎其微，因为推迟不可避免的结局会给他们自己和周围的人带来巨大代价。结果就是：白白消耗投资者永远无法追回的资金，团队成员也浪费了本可用于寻找新项目的宝贵时间。随着压力加剧、希望破灭以及承诺落空，人际关系也会变得紧张。
10. 由于布雷兹尔的研究表明社交机器人能够有助于老年人的情感健康，该团队最初将Jibo定位为老年人的伴侣。然而，那些对消费电子和复杂系统如机器人感兴趣的主流风险投资商并不看好老年人市场。而少数为老年消费者提供资金的投资者们——他们更习惯于简单的产品，比如带有大按键的手机——则被该项目的技术构想吓退了。
11. 导致严重延迟的原因主要有两个。“首先，我们最初成本分析中包含的许多组件并不足以实现我们的设计愿景。我们使用的传感器是针对办公环境优化的，但后来发现普通家庭的环境照明条件有很大不同。”升级传感器以及增加处理能力以运行这些传感器都增加了产品的成本。其次，Jibo的工程师们难以开发“中间件”——这一层软件负责处理来自传感器的输入信息（机器人的“眼睛和耳朵”），将其传递给应用程序，然后再将指令发送回操作系统（本质上相当于Jibo的“大脑”）。该软件需要实现面部识别、声音定位、情绪检测、生成富有表现力的身体动作等功能——这些都是复杂的任务，且必须实时完成。不过当时，支持实时交互的云服务才刚刚兴起。因此，Jibo的几乎所有软件都必须嵌入设备中，并配备强大的处理器来运行这些软件。钱伯斯回忆道：“我们花了超过一年的时间来寻找嵌入式系统和云系统之间的最佳平衡点。”
12. 不幸事件往往比错误更可能导致创业公司的失败。当新冠疫情开始冲击美国经济时，数千家原本运营良好的初创企业无法筹集到资金，销售额也骤降；2008年大衰退期间也出现了类似情况。还有一些不幸事件具有特殊性，只影响某个特定行业。例如，在21世纪初，许多清洁技术初创企业的成功依赖于化石燃料成本的上升，但水力压裂技术的意外发展导致燃料成本下降，进而使许多此类企业陷入困境。这些企业虽然失败了，但很多并非出于人为过错，只是对燃料成本上升的预期判断有误而已。
13. 那么，表现不佳的骑师真的是初创企业失败的主要原因吗？许多投资者似乎这么认为。在对风险投资合伙人的调查中，导致初创企业失败的两大原因分别是高层管理能力不足和职能管理薄弱。在另一项要求风险投资家分析成功与失败初创企业差异的调查中，出现的三种模式中有两种都与管理缺陷有关。根据调查数据，第一种模式占失败案例的19%，其特点是高层团队拥有丰富的经验和市场知识，但缺乏持之以恒的能力，因此过早放弃了努力。第二种模式占失败案例的49%，这类企业的管理者被评价为“无能的业余人士，各方面都不合格”。第三种模式与彼得·蒂尔的观点不谋而合：在32%的失败案例中，管理层虽然具备足够的市场知识，但却始终无法找到竞争优势。
14. 将现实扭曲以符合自己的意愿，过于自信的创业者可能无法察觉到自己的愿景其实只是白日梦的信号。在第二部分中，我们将看到一些相关例子，该部分会探讨处于晚期的初创企业的失败模式——比如Better Place，该公司为建设电动汽车充电站网络投入了9亿美元，但最终却以失败告终。对于拥有数百名员工和数亿美元投资资本的晚期初创企业而言，创业者的现实扭曲效应可能会带来巨大的负面影响。不过，早期创业者也有可能陷入自我欺骗的误区。
15. 一个危险信号：要警惕创始团队成员背景过于相似的情况。
16. 聘请技术娴熟的专家团队确实存在一些隐患。例如，这些专家可能过于热衷于采用其前雇主的有效解决方案，而这些方案未必适合初创企业。当被要求协助处理超出其专业范围的工作时，专家们可能会表现出“不关我的事”的态度。同样，如果专家们习惯于在流程规范明确的企业中工作，知道工作成果和信息如何在不同部门之间流转，那么他们可能难以适应新创企业缺乏规范流程的环境。最后，如果初创企业转向新的发展机会，某些专家的技能可能就不再需要了，此时创始人将面临解雇优秀员工的艰难且令人沮丧的任务。

 

 

《Why Startups Fail A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success (Tom Eisenmann)》

 

 131个笔记

 Introduction

• “If you cannot fail, you cannot learn.” That statement by Lean Startup guru Eric Ries echoes a big idea from Karl Popper, one of the twentieth century’s greatest philosophers of science. If you’re confident in your assumptions about how things work, and everything goes according to plan,then you don’t learn anything new. But if plans go awry, it forces you to reexamine your assumptions; in effect, you’ve tested your assumptions and found them wanting. In other words, you’ve conducted an experiment that’s failed to validate your original hypothesis. When that happens, you’ve gained a valuable new insight.“如果不能失败，就无法学习。”精益创业大师埃里克·里斯的这句话呼应了20世纪最伟大的科学哲学家之一卡尔·波普尔的一个重要观点。如果你对事物的运作方式充满信心，且一切按计划进行，那么你就无法学到新东西。但当计划出现问题时，这会迫使你重新审视自己的假设；实际上，你已经验证了这些假设的不足之处。换句话说，你进行了一次未能证明原假设正确的实验。当这种情况发生时，你就会获得宝贵的新见解。
• By studying failure in other realms, I discovered that we learn from setbacks in two distinct ways: from direct personal experience andvicariously—that is, by observing others’ mistakes. Direct experience can be a powerful teacher when individuals reflect on what went wrong and what they might have done differently. This works best when feedback cycles are frequent and fast, when cause-and-effect relationships are stable and well understood, and when stakes are modest enough that strong emotions won’t muddle thinking. Weather forecasting fits this profile. Startups do not.通过研究其他领域的失败案例，我发现我们从挫折中学习的途径有两种：一种是直接的个人体验，另一种是间接学习，即通过观察他人的错误来获知。当人们反思出错的原因以及本可以采取的不同做法时，直接经验能成为有力的启示。这种情况在反馈循环频繁且迅速、因果关系清晰明确、且风险可控从而不会让情绪干扰思考时最为有效。天气预报就符合这种特征，而初创企业则不然。
• Better yet, it turns out that vicarious learning from near failures is更妙的是，事实证明，从近乎失败的经历中获得的间接学习可以especially effective—this is why the National Traffic and Safety Board issues reports on aircraft near misses. Accounts of near failures provide insight not only into the mistakes made by responsible parties but also into the decisions and actions that helped them ultimately avoid a disaster.Accordingly, this book draws on case studies of both failures and near failures.更为有效的是，从近乎失败的经历中学习实际上非常有效——这就是为什么国家交通安全委员会会发布关于飞机险些失事的报告。对这类事件的描述不仅能让我们了解相关责任方的失误，还能让我们了解那些帮助他们最终避免灾难的决策和行动。因此，本书借鉴了诸多失败和险些失败的案例研究。
• Studying failure in other settings pointed me toward comprehensive case studies to explain why startups falter. However, that meant I couldn’t rely much on past scholarly work, because it was based mostly on theoreticalmodels, econometric analysis, and large-sample surveys—and rarely was informed by rigorous interviews or careful case study research.Consequently, I’d need to get out into the field to study failed startups firsthand.研究其他领域的失败案例让我意识到，要弄清楚初创企业为何会失败，必须进行全面的案例分析。不过，这意味着我无法过多依赖以往的学术研究成果，因为那些研究大多基于理论模型、计量经济分析和大规模调查，而很少有通过严谨的访谈或细致的案例研究得出的结论。因此，我需要亲赴实地，对失败的初创企业进行深入研究。I interviewed dozens of founders and investors to understand why the new ventures they’d launched or backed did not succeed. I also read scores of first- and third-person published accounts of entrepreneurial setbacks, all with the goal of identifying recurring problems and patterns.我采访了数十位创业者和投资者，以了解他们创办或投资的新企业为何失败。我还阅读了大量关于创业失败的第一人称和第三人称记录，目的就是找出反复出现的问题和规律。
• My research revealed six distinct patterns that explain a largeportion of startup failures. I briefly describe the patterns below,and later I devote a full chapter to each. These patterns runcounter to oversimplified accounts that tend to pervade thepopular mythology; for example, the penchant of venturecapitalists to blame “bad jockeys” for a startup’s misfortunes.(VCs often describe the opportunity that a startup pursues as“the horse” and its founder as “the jockey”). Part I of thisbook, “Launching,” focuses on three failure patterns commonamong early-stage startups. In Part II, “Scaling,” I analyze threemore patterns that explain the failure of many resource-rich,late-stage startups. For each of the failure patterns, I’ll provide examples of ventures that fell prey to them and describe actionsthat other entrepreneurs took to avoid similar mistakes.我的研究发现了六种常见的创业失败模式，这些模式可以解释大部分创业失败的案例。下面我将简要介绍这些模式，随后会专门用一章的篇幅详细分析每一种模式。这些模式与那些普遍存在的过于简化的观点截然相反；例如，风险投资家常常将创业公司的失败归咎于“不称职的骑手”​。​（风险投资家通常将创业公司追求的目标比作“马”​，而创始人则被比作“骑手”​）​。本书的第一部分“启动”重点探讨了早期创业公司常见的三种失败模式。在第二部分“扩展”中，我分析了另外三种导致许多资源充足、处于后期阶段的创业公司失败的常见模式。对于每种失败模式，我都会举出具体例子，并说明其他创业者为避免类似错误所采取的措施。
• False Starts. When the information service CB Insights identified错误的开端。当信息服务机构CB Insights指出determinants of failure for scores of recent startups, the most commonproblem—cited nearly half of the time—was “no market need.” That baffled me. After all, Lean Startup methods have been widely understood and embraced by entrepreneurs for almost a decade. Through experiments and iteration, any founder following these methods should have been able to identify and pivot to an attractive opportunity. But the landscape has been littered with roadkill in the form of self-proclaimed Lean Startups that never found a market. Why? Was something missing from Lean Startup’s dogma?在CB Insights对众多新兴创业公司的失败原因进行分析时，最常被提及的问题——几乎占了一半的案例——是“没有市场需求”。这让我感到困惑。毕竟，精益创业方法已经被创业者广泛理解和接受已有近十年时间。通过实验和迭代，遵循这些方法的创业者本应能够找到有吸引力的机会并及时调整方向。但现实中，却有很多自称为精益创业的公司最终未能找到市场。为什么呢？难道精益创业的理念中有什么缺失吗？
• I’ve been a Lean Startup apostle since 2010, when I first met the movement’s progenitors. That year, Steve Blank presented his seminal ideas to my students and Eric Ries became an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at HBS. But as I dug deeper into case studies of failure, I concluded that Lean Startup practices were falling short of their promise. It’s not that the methodology isn’t sound, it’s that many entrepreneurs who claimed to embrace Lean Startup logic actually embraced only part of the Lean Startup canon. Specifically, they launched minimum viable products (MVPs)—the simplest possible offering that would yield reliable customer feedback—and iterated on them in response. By putting their MVP out there and testing how customers responded, these founders should have been able to avoid squandering too much time and money building and marketing a product that no one wanted. Yet by neglecting to research customer needs before commencing their engineering efforts, they ended up wasting valuable time and capital on an MVP that was likely to miss its mark. These were FalseStarts; the entrepreneurs were like sprinters who jumped the gun—too自2010年我首次接触精益创业的理念以来，我就一直致力于推广这一理念。那一年，史蒂夫·布兰克向我的学生们阐述了这一理念的精髓，而埃里克·里斯则成为哈佛商学院的驻校企业家。但随着我对失败案例的深入研究，我发现精益创业的实际应用并未达到预期效果。并非因为这种方法本身有缺陷，而是因为许多自称践行精益创业理念的企业家实际上只接受了其中的一部分内容。具体来说，他们只是推出了最小可行产品——即能够获得可靠客户反馈的最简单产品形式——并据此进行迭代改进。通过推出最小可行产品并测试客户的反应，这些创始人本应避免在开发及推广没人想要的产品上浪费太多时间和金钱。然而，由于他们在开始工程工作之前忽视了对客户需求的调研，最终将宝贵的时间和资金浪费在了很可能失败的最小可行产品上。这些都属于“虚假启动”——那些创业者就像提前起跑的短跑运动员一样。eager to get a product out there. The rhetoric of the Lean Startup movement actually encourages this “ready, fire, aim” behavior.急于推出产品。精益创业运动的理念实际上鼓励了这种“准备就绪，立即行动，再调整方向”的行为。False Positives. Excessive optimism about market demand, based on a误报。基于对市场需求的过度乐观判断而产生的情况。strong response from a startup’s first customers, also can lead some founders to pursue a flawed opportunity, burning through cash reserves in the process. Lean Startup gurus caution entrepreneurs to be wary of deceptive signals about the strength of demand for their solution. Butentrepreneurs—like all of us—are prone to see what they hope to see. False Positives occur when entrepreneurs, beguiled by the enthusiasm of a few early adopters, incorrectly extrapolate strong demand to the mainstream market and step on the gas. When the next wave of marketing gets a tepidresponse, the team may be able to course-correct and pivot to an offering that appeals to mainstream customers. But pivots can be costly. The firm must reengineer its product and reeducate the market. Prospective buyers may be confused by the changes and skeptical of an unproven new product. Early adopters may be alienated by the changes and abandon the product.虚假阳性现象。由于对市场需求的过度乐观，一些初创企业的创始人会追逐有缺陷的市场机会，从而导致现金储备耗尽。《精益创业》的倡导者提醒创业者要警惕那些关于产品需求强劲的误导性信号。但创业者和我们所有人一样，都容易只看到自己希望看到的东西。当创业者被少数早期采用者的热情所迷惑，错误地将强劲的需求外推到主流市场并加速推进项目时，就会出现虚假阳性现象。当下一波营销活动反应冷淡时，团队或许还能及时调整方向，转向能吸引主流消费者的产品。但这种调整往往代价高昂：企业必须重新设计产品并重新教育市场。潜在买家可能会被这些变化搞糊涂，对未经验证的新产品持怀疑态度；早期采用者则可能因变化而远离该产品。
• Speed Trap. As I studied late-stage failures, I found many that had速度陷阱。在研究晚期创业公司的失败案例时，我发现很多公司都遇到了这个问题。gained considerable traction before going off the rails. Notable examples included Fab.com, profiled in this book, along with Groupon, Nasty Gal,and Beepi. Their demise followed a similar pattern, one that I call a Speed Trap. Ventures that fall victim to a Speed Trap have identified an attractive opportunity. Early adopters embrace the product and spread the word about it. This attracts more customers without any investment in marketing. The rapid early growth also lures enthusiastic investors. To justify the high price they paid for equity, investors push for aggressive expansion. Not that entrepreneurs need much prodding; they’re eager to grow, too.“速度陷阱”。在研究晚期失败案例时，我发现许多项目在走向失败之前都发展得相当顺利。其中的典型例子包括本书中提到的Fab.com，以及Groupon、Nasty Gal和Beepi。它们的衰落都遵循着类似的模式，我将其称为“速度陷阱”。陷入这种陷阱的创业项目最初发现了有吸引力的商机：早期用户乐于接受产品并主动推广，这无需任何营销投入就能吸引更多客户。快速的初期增长也吸引了热情的投资者。为了证明自己为股权支付的高价是合理的，投资者会推动企业进行激进扩张。其实创业者本身也渴望发展壮大，所以并不需要太多催促。
• After marketing intensively, the startup eventually saturates its original target market, meaning that further growth requires broadening the customer base to encompass new segments. This next wave of customers,however, doesn’t find the company’s value proposition nearly as compelling as the early adopters did. The new customers don’t spend as much and they are less likely to repurchase. Similarly, they are less likely to provide word-of-mouth referrals. Consequently, to keep growing, the firm must spend heavily on marketing, which raises the average cost of acquiring a customer.经过大力营销后，初创企业最终会使其最初的目标市场达到饱和状态，这意味着要实现进一步增长就必须扩大客户群体，涵盖新的客户细分市场。然而，这批新客户并不像早期采用者那样认为该公司的产品有吸引力。新客户的消费金额较少，且重复购买的可能性也更低。同样，他们也不太可能口口相传为该公司做推荐。因此，为了保持增长，企业不得不在营销上投入大量资金，从而导致获取客户的平均成本上升。Meanwhile, the startup’s rapid early growth attracts rivals. Seeking anedge, competitors cut prices and pour money into promotions. At somepoint, new customers begin to cost more for the startup to acquire than they are worth. As the venture burns through cash, investors become reluctant to commit more capital. In response, the CEO may slam on the brakes,slowing growth and cutting head count to stem cash outflows. The startup may survive, but its share price will plummet, and investors will incur big losses.与此同时，这家初创企业的快速早期增长吸引了竞争对手。为了取得优势，竞争对手纷纷降价并投入大量资金用于促销活动。最终，获取新客户的成本超过了其带来的价值。随着企业现金逐渐耗尽，投资者不再愿意追加投资。作为回应，首席执行官可能会采取紧缩措施，减缓增长速度并削减员工人数以控制现金流流出。虽然这家初创企业可能得以生存，但其股价将大幅下跌，投资者也将遭受巨大损失。
• The first relates to financing risk. Sometimes an entire industry sector第一种与融资风险相关。有时，整个行业领域suddenly falls out of favor with venture capital firms, as with biotech in the early 1990s or cleantech in the late 2000s. In the extreme, even healthy startups caught in a downdraft cannot attract new funds: Babies go out with the bathwater. Funding droughts take investors and entrepreneurs by surprise and can last for months or even years. If one of these dry spells commences just as a fast-growing startup is trying to raise a new fundinground, and if that startup cannot rapidly reduce its spending, the venture may not survive.首先是与融资风险相关。有时某个整个行业领域会突然不再受风险投资公司的青睐，就像20世纪90年代初的生物技术行业或21世纪初的清洁技术行业那样。在极端情况下，即使是一些运营良好的初创企业也会因整体环境恶化而无法吸引新资金：好景不再。资金短缺会令投资者和创业者措手不及，这种状况可能持续数月甚至数年。如果某家快速发展的初创企业在试图筹集新一轮资金时遭遇了资金短缺，且该企业无法迅速削减开支，那么它很可能无法存活下去。
• The second type relates to gaps in the senior management team. Scaling第二种情况与高级管理团队的缺失有关。企业扩张时会出现此类问题。startups typically need senior executives with deep functional expertise who can manage rapidly expanding pools of employees in engineering,marketing, finance, and operations. Delaying the hiring of these executives or recruiting the wrong individuals can lead to strategic drift, spiralingcosts, and a dysfunctional culture.初创企业通常需要具备深厚职能专业知识的资深高管，以便管理在工程、营销、财务和运营等领域迅速扩张的员工队伍。如果推迟招聘这些高管或招错了人，可能会导致战略偏差、成本不断上升以及企业文化失衡。Cascading Miracles. In marked contrast to ventures that grew rapidly级联奇迹。与那些快速增长的企业形成鲜明对比before falling prey to the Speed Trap or Help Wanted failure patterns, some late-stage startups never achieved much traction, despite having raised hundreds of millions of dollars from VCs and having hired hundreds of employees. Each pursued an incredibly ambitious vision, and in doing so faced multiple challenges, including most or all of the following: 1) persuading a critical mass of customers to fundamentally change theirbehavior; 2) mastering new technologies; 3) partnering with powerful corporations who’d prospered from the status quo; 4) securing regulatory relief or other government support; and 5) raising vast amounts of capital. Each challenge represented a “do or die” proposition: Missing the mark on any of them would doom the venture. Assuming a 50 percent chance of a good outcome for any given challenge, the probability of getting five out of five good outcomes is the same as the odds of picking the winning number in roulette: 3 percent. To win such a gamble, these entrepreneurs were betting on Cascading Miracles.在陷入“速度陷阱”或“招聘困境”之前，一些处于晚期的初创企业尽管从风险投资机构获得了数亿美元的融资，并雇佣了数百名员工，却始终无法取得显著进展。这些企业都怀有极其雄心勃勃的愿景，但在实现愿景的过程中面临诸多挑战，主要包括：1）说服足够多的客户彻底改变其行为习惯；2）掌握新技术；3）与那些从现状中获益的强大企业建立合作关系；4）获得监管机构的政策优惠或其他政府支持；5）筹集巨额资金。每一项挑战都意味着“成败在此一举”：哪怕只有一项失败，企业也将走向灭亡。假设每项挑战有50%的成功概率，那么五项挑战全部成功的概率就相当于在轮盘赌中选中赢数的几率——只有3%。为了赢得这场赌博，这些创业者寄希望于“连锁奇迹”的发生。
• How to Fail (Better)如何（更好地）失败My postmortem interviews with founders put the human cost of entrepreneurial failure into sharp focus. In this regard, Quincy Apparel’s demise stood out for me. When they launched the company, co-founders Alex Nelson and Christina Wallace vowed not to let conflict over the business threaten their close friendship. Yet two years later, after clashing over whether to shut the company down, they were no longer on speaking terms.我对创业者的事后采访让我深刻意识到创业失败带来的人力成本。在这方面，Quincy Apparel的倒闭尤为引人注目。该公司成立时，联合创始人亚历克斯·纳尔逊和克里斯蒂娜·华莱士承诺不会让公司经营上的分歧破坏他们之间的深厚友谊。然而两年后，由于在是否关闭公司的问题上发生争执，他们再也无法正常交流了。I’d counseled many other entrepreneurs who were deciding whether to call it quits—and had seen the immediate aftermath of that decision. There was always plenty of raw emotion on display in these conversations: anger,guilt, sadness, shame, and resentment. In some cases, I sensed that these founders were in denial; others just seemed depressed. Who could blamethem, after having had their dreams dashed, relationships frayed, and self-confidence shattered? Many were also concerned about what the flop would do to their reputation, how they’d pay their bills, and what they’d do next. At ground zero, failure really hurts.我曾为许多决定是否放弃创业的创业者提供咨询，也目睹了他们做出决定后的种种后果。在这些谈话中，总能感受到各种强烈的情绪：愤怒、内疚、悲伤、羞愧和怨恨。有些创业者似乎在否认现实，而另一些则显得十分沮丧。当梦想破灭、人际关系破裂、自信心受挫时，谁又能责怪他们呢？许多人还担心失败会如何影响自己的声誉、如何支付账单以及未来该何去何从。在失败面前，痛苦确实难以忍受。
• Observing these reactions, I wondered if there were ways to mitigate personal pain in the wake of a startup’s failure. Part III of the book,“Failing,” explores this challenge, shifting the focus from why startups fail观察这些反应后，我不禁思考是否有什么方法可以减轻创业失败带来的个人痛苦。本书的第三部分“失败”探讨了这一挑战，将焦点从“为什么创业会失败”转移到其他方面。to how entrepreneurs handle failure. Specifically, how can founders preserve relationships when shutting down? And, how can they heal and bounce back from the experience?企业家如何处理失败。具体来说，创始人在倒闭时如何维护关系？而且，他们如何从经历中恢复过来并从中恢复过来呢？One source of needless pain often comes from Running on Empty—another startup failure pattern rooted in the fact that the decision to pull the plug on a struggling venture is so nettlesome. Many founders are inclined topersist, past the point where the odds of a turnaround have becomeminuscule, even though postponing the inevitable is costly for them and those around them. The result: pointlessly burning through capital that investors will never get back. Team members invest time that could be spent searching for a new project. Relationships are strained as pressuremounts, hope dims, and promises are broken.不必要的痛苦往往源于“孤注一掷”的错误做法——这是一种常见的创业失败模式，其根源在于终止一个陷入困境的项目这个决定极其令人纠结。许多创始人倾向于坚持下去，即使项目扭转局面的可能性已经微乎其微，因为推迟不可避免的结局会给他们自己和周围的人带来巨大代价。结果就是：白白消耗投资者永远无法追回的资金，团队成员也浪费了本可用于寻找新项目的宝贵时间。随着压力加剧、希望破灭以及承诺落空，人际关系也会变得紧张。

 Chapter 1: What Is Failure?

• Jibo was a social robot, engineered to create an emotional connection with humans. Spawned in the laboratory of MIT Media Lab professor Cynthia Breazeal, who pioneered the field of social robotics, he had a six-inch-wide stationary conical base that was topped by another cone, and then by a hemispherical head. Each segment of his body could swivel and tiltindependently, allowing the twelve-inch-tall robot to move in expressive ways. Jibo could twerk! His head featured a flat touch screen that normally displayed a blinking, glowing white orb, akin to a single eye. The overall design was sleek and minimalist; Jibo wasn’t designed to resemble ahuman, but in many ways he could communicate like one.Jibo是一款社交机器人，旨在与人类建立情感联系。它由麻省理工学院媒体实验室教授辛西娅·布里兹尔在实验室中研发而成，她是社交机器人领域的先驱。Jibo拥有一个六英寸宽的固定圆锥形底座，顶部是另一个圆锥体，再上面是一个半球形头部。它的身体各部分可以独立旋转和倾斜，使得这个十二英寸高的机器人能够以富有表现力的方式移动。Jibo甚至还会跳扭摆舞！它的头部有一个平面触摸屏，通常显示着一个闪烁的白色光球，就像一只眼睛。整体设计简洁流畅；Jibo并非被设计得像人类，但在很多方面它却能像人类一样交流。Festooned with cameras, microphones, and speakers, Jibo was an engineering marvel with the personality of a clever, helpful twelve-year-old boy. Jibo spoke responses to voice prompts (e.g., “Hey Jibo, what’s theweather?”), and his screen could also display requested information (e.g.,“It’s fifty degrees and sunny”) or icons for menu options. A blue ring around Jibo’s waist lit up when he was listening. The robot also employed sophisticated software that recognized faces and voices. Coupled with his ability to rotate fluidly around his base, these features allowed Jibo to keep his eye directed at an individual as she walked around a room or to turn from one person to another as they conversed.Jibo身上布满了摄像头、麦克风和扬声器，堪称工程奇迹，同时拥有聪明乖巧的12岁男孩般的人格。它会根据语音指令做出回应（例如：“嘿Jibo，天气怎么样？”），屏幕上还能显示所需信息（比如“气温50度，晴天”）或菜单选项图标。当Jibo在聆听时，其腰部会亮起蓝色光环。该机器人还配备了能识别面部和声音的先进软件。再加上它能够围绕底座灵活旋转的特性，这些功能使得Jibo能够在人走动时始终注视着对方，或者在多人交谈时依次转向不同的人。Jibo could serve up basic information such as news, sports scores, and stock prices. He could tell jokes, play music, set a timer, and read email. But Jibo had other capabilities, too. For example, Jibo was programmed to initiate conversations—say, greeting a family member upon his arrival home (“Hey, Tom, before you left this morning, I warned you that traffic would be heavier than normal. How was your commute?”). He could also interact with a child and display images while reading her a story; take family photos; and, of course, dance on command. More such applications were under development, including the ability to engage a home-alone pet by recognizing that he was in the room and even speaking to him (“Stop chewing that shoe, Rover”). The team was also close to launching a videoconferencing feature that could identify and zoom in on whoever in the room was speaking—perfect for a call to Grandma during a familydinner, if she had a Jibo, too.Jibo能够提供新闻、体育比分和股票价格等基本信息。它会讲笑话、播放音乐、设置计时器以及阅读电子邮件。但Jibo还有其他功能。例如，它被设定为能主动发起对话——比如在回到家后向家人打招呼（“嘿，汤姆，今天早上你出门前我就提醒过你会遇到比平时更拥堵的交通。通勤情况怎么样？”）。它还能与孩子互动，在给孩子读故事时展示图片；拍摄家庭照片；当然，还能按指令跳舞。还有更多此类应用正在开发中，其中包括通过识别独自在家的宠物并与其交谈的功能（“罗弗，别啃鞋子了”）。该团队还即将推出视频会议功能，能够自动识别并放大房间内正在说话的人——如果家里也有Jibo的话，这在家庭聚餐时与奶奶通话时非常实用。For two decades, Breazeal’s research teams had studied how robots can provide companionship for the elderly, encourage autistic children to engage in social interaction, and spark collaborative creative learning,among other useful functions. In 2013, she and co-founder Jeri Asher, a healthcare entrepreneur, raised $2.2 million in seed funding to commercialize these inventions. To serve as CEO, they recruited SteveChambers, then president of Nuance Communications, the leading provider of natural language understanding and speech recognition software.二十年来，布雷兹尔的研究团队致力于探索机器人如何在为老年人提供陪伴、鼓励自闭症儿童参与社交互动以及促进协作性创造性学习等方面发挥实用作用。2013年，她与医疗保健领域的创业家联合创始人杰里·阿舍共同筹集了220万美元的种子资金，用于将这些发明商业化。为了担任首席执行官，他们聘请了当时担任自然语言理解和语音识别软件领先供应商Nuance Communications总裁的史蒂夫·钱伯斯。
• Because Breazeal’s research had shown how social robots could contribute to seniors’ emotional wellness, the team initially pitched Jibo as a companion for the elderly. However, mainstream VCs interested in consumer electronics and complex systems like robots weren’t interested in the elderly market, and the small set of investors who funded new ventures for aging consumers—accustomed to simpler concepts like cellphones with large keypads—were daunted by the program’s technological vision.由于布雷兹尔的研究表明社交机器人能够有助于老年人的情感健康，该团队最初将Jibo定位为老年人的伴侣。然而，那些对消费电子和复杂系统如机器人感兴趣的主流风险投资商并不看好老年人市场。而少数为老年消费者提供资金的投资者们——他们更习惯于简单的产品，比如带有大按键的手机——则被该项目的技术构想吓退了。So, the team decided to pivot and refocused its pitch on how Jibo could help build family cohesion. The idea was, if Jibo sat in the kitchen, he might spark conversation between, say, squabbling siblings, or surly teenagers and their harried parents. VCs with children could relate to this target consumer, and they were intrigued by cutting-edge consumer hardware in the wake of Facebook’s $2.3 billion acquisition of the virtual reality headset maker Oculus Rift—which, like Jibo, was a breakthrough fusion of hardware and software, targeted to consumer markets. And,having witnessed the explosive growth of platforms like Facebook,Amazon, and Salesforce.com, VCs liked that Jibo would be a platform,hosting applications from a wide array of third-party software developers and information services.因此，团队决定调整策略，将Jibo的定位重新确定为帮助增强家庭凝聚力。其理念是，如果Jibo待在厨房里，它或许能促成争吵的兄弟姐妹或脾气暴躁的青少年与疲惫的父母之间的对话。有孩子的风险投资家能够理解这一目标消费者群体，而且由于Facebook以23亿美元收购了虚拟现实头显制造商Oculus Rift，他们对这种先进的消费硬件产生了兴趣——毕竟Oculus Rift和Jibo一样，都是硬件与软件的创新融合产品，且都面向消费市场。此外，鉴于Facebook、亚马逊和Salesforce.com等平台的飞速发展，风险投资家看好Jibo也能成为一个平台，承载来自众多第三方软件开发商和信息服务提供商的应用程序。
• Before investing, however, the VCs wanted evidence of market demand for this novel innovation, along with proof that it could actually be built. To gauge consumer interest, the VCs insisted that Jibo launch a crowdfundingcampaign, which commenced in July 2014. An Indiegogo campaign allowed consumers to pre-order a Jibo for $599, with delivery slated for“holidays 2015.” When the campaign ended three months later, the startup had sold 4,800 units, beating a 3,000-unit goal. Concurrently, to demonstrate that the robot could be built, Jibo’s engineering team delivered what Chambers described as “a Frankenbot—a functional but not beautifulprototype.” In January 2015, Jibo closed a $27 million Series A round.然而，在投资之前，风险投资商们希望看到这种创新产品有市场需求的证据，同时也要证明该产品确实能够被制造出来。为了了解消费者的兴趣，风险投资商要求Jibo开展众筹活动，这项活动于2014年7月启动。通过Indiegogo平台，消费者可以以599美元的价格预购Jibo，预计交货时间为“2015年假日”。三个月后，众筹活动结束，这家初创公司共售出了4,800台产品，超出了3,000台的预期目标。与此同时，为了证明这款机器人确实可以制造出来，Jibo的工程团队推出了钱伯斯所描述的“弗兰肯机器人”——一个功能完备但外观并不美观的原型机。2015年1月，Jibo完成了2700万美元的A轮融资。Flush with cash, Jibo’s team commenced product development in earnest. But engineering the robot turned out to be enormously difficult. After raising another $28 million, they finally launched the product in September 2017—nearly two years late—at a price of $899, 50 percent higher than the Indiegogo offering. Chambers later recounted that when trying to figure out how much extra capital to raise, he’d assumed that the product’s component costs and development time might exceed original projections by 2.5x and 2x, respectively. Yet actual component costs and development time each turned out to be 4x greater than projected. Why?手头资金充裕的Jibo团队开始全力推进产品开发。但事实证明，制造这款机器人难度极大。在再筹集2800万美元后，他们终于在2017年9月推出了这款产品——比原定计划推迟了近两年，售价为899美元，比Indiegogo上的定价高出50%。Chambers后来回忆说，当时在估算需要额外筹集多少资金时，他预计产品的零部件成本和开发时间可能分别超出最初预测的2.5倍和2倍。但实际上，零部件成本和开发时间都实际达到了预测值的4倍。为什么呢？The problem wasn’t with manufacturing; in fact, devices with physical components like these had been built before. Chambers explained, “People assume that we had manufacturing problems because the product seemed sonovel, but that just wasn’t the case. The hardware wasn’t cold fusion. We used off-the-shelf screens, motors, sensors, and chipsets that were produced in mass volumes.”Chambers said that the big delays stemmed from two problems. “First,many components included in our original cost analysis weren’t adequate to fulfill our vision. We used sensors tuned to office environments, but we learned that lighting in a typical home is very different. Upgrading sensors and adding processing power to run them added to the product’s cost.”Second, Jibo’s engineers struggled to develop “middleware”—the layer of software that processed inputs from sensors (the robot’s “eyes and ears”),made it available to applications, and then sent instructions back to the operating system (essentially Jibo’s “brain”). The software had to trackfaces, localize sounds, detect emotions, generate expressive body motions,and so forth—sophisticated tasks that had to be done in real time. But at thetime, cloud services that support real-time interactivity were just arriving on the scene. So, almost all of Jibo’s software had to be embedded in thedevice, along with powerful processors to run it. “We lost more than a year sorting out the right balance between embedded and cloud systems,” Chambers recalled.问题并不出在制造环节；事实上，此前确实有过类似带有实体组件的设备的制造先例。钱伯斯解释说：“人们认为我们遇到了制造问题，因为这款产品看起来很先进，但事实并非如此。我们的硬件并非什么高科技产品，我们使用的都是批量生产的现成屏幕、电机、传感器和芯片组。”钱伯斯指出，导致严重延迟的原因主要有两个。“首先，我们最初成本分析中包含的许多组件并不足以实现我们的设计愿景。我们使用的传感器是针对办公环境优化的，但后来发现普通家庭的环境照明条件有很大不同。”升级传感器以及增加处理能力以运行这些传感器都增加了产品的成本。其次，Jibo的工程师们难以开发“中间件”——这一层软件负责处理来自传感器的输入信息（机器人的“眼睛和耳朵”），将其传递给应用程序，然后再将指令发送回操作系统（本质上相当于Jibo的“大脑”）。该软件需要实现面部识别、声音定位、情绪检测、生成富有表现力的身体动作等功能——这些都是复杂的任务，且必须实时完成。不过当时，支持实时交互的云服务才刚刚兴起。因此，Jibo的几乎所有软件都必须嵌入设备中，并配备强大的处理器来运行这些软件。钱伯斯回忆道：“我们花了超过一年的时间来寻找嵌入式系统和云系统之间的最佳平衡点。”
• In the meantime, something happened that no one saw coming. In November 2014 Amazon launched the Echo, its $200 smart speaker, along with the Alexa voice assistant. Now, users who wanted a device that could deliver the news, music, weather, and so forth in response to voice prompts could get that basic functionality at a much lower cost from the Echo.与此同时，发生了一件出乎所有人意料的事。2014年11月，亚马逊推出了售价200美元的智能音箱Echo，以及配套的语音助手Alexa。这样一来，那些希望借助语音指令获取新闻、音乐、天气等信息的用户，现在可以以低得多的价格通过Echo获得这些基本功能。Customers who wanted companionship and an emotional bond lovedJibo, but there just weren’t enough of them to keep Jibo afloat. As a result,year one revenue reached only $5 million, one-third of what Jibo’s team had expected. Meanwhile, the startup had burned through its venture capital and couldn’t raise more. Management tried to sell the company but couldn’t find a buyer willing to continue operating it. Most of Jibo’s employees were laid off in June 2018, and the company’s intellectual property and other assets were later sold to an investment firm.那些渴望有陪伴和情感联系的用户很喜欢Jibo，但这类用户数量不足以让Jibo维持运营。因此，第一年的营收仅有500万美元，仅为Jibo团队预期的三分之一。与此同时，这家初创公司已经耗尽了风险投资资金，且无法再筹集到新的资金。管理层试图出售公司，但找不到愿意继续经营它的买家。2018年6月，Jibo的大部分员工被解雇，该公司的知识产权和其他资产后来被卖给了一家投资公司。
• So, why did Jibo fail? The immediate cause of death was that Jibo ran out of cash—but that’s not terribly helpful. It’s like a coroner saying someone died from loss of blood. A better explanation: Jibo couldn’t attract enough customers. But this is akin to a forensic investigator saying someone died of a gunshot wound. Was he the victim of a jealous spouse, or was he an innocent bystander during a gang shooting?那么，Jibo为何会失败呢？表面上的直接原因是它资金耗尽——但这其实并不能说明太多问题。这就好比法医称某人是因失血过多而死。更准确的解释是：Jibo无法吸引足够的客户。但这又像刑警称某人是死于枪伤。他是被嫉妒的配偶杀害的，还是仅仅是在帮派枪战中无辜的旁观者呢？
• One camp maintained that Jibo had obviously failed because the startup,despite having raised a total of $73 million in venture capital, was unable to generate enough sales after the expensive and long-delayed launch of its product.有一派观点认为，Jibo显然失败了，因为尽管这家初创公司获得了总计7300万美元的风险投资，但在产品经过昂贵且漫长的开发后上市，仍无法实现足够的销售额。Another group acknowledged that Jibo’s leaders had made mistakes but believed that the startup’s demise had resulted not from mistakes or missteps but rather from misfortune—that is, from events that were difficult to predict and impossible to control—in particular, the launch of Amazon’s Echo. These students also argued that Jibo was a “good” failure—one with a bright silver lining—because it paved the way for a new generation of robot companions for the elderly.另一组人承认Jibo的领导者确实犯了错误，但他们认为这家初创企业的失败并非源于错误或失误，而是由于不可预知且无法控制的外部因素，尤其是亚马逊Echo的推出。这些学生还指出，Jibo的失败其实是一种“有意义的失败”，因为它为老年人新一代机器人伴侣的出现铺平了道路。A final contingent viewed Jibo as a success despite shutting down because it was a brilliant technological achievement that fulfilled its inventor’s vision of a home robot that forged an emotional bond withhumans—a unique innovation that delighted many customers.最后一组人认为，尽管Jibo已经关闭，但它仍算得上是一种成功，因为它是一项出色的技术成就，实现了发明者关于打造能与人类建立情感联系的家用机器人的愿景——这一独特创新让许多客户感到满意。
• Because they are pursuing a novel opportunity without access to all required resources, entrepreneurs are, by definition, engaged in risky business. Entrepreneurial risk comes in four flavors.由于创业者在缺乏全部所需资源的情况下追求新颖的机会，因此从定义上讲，他们从事的是有风险的业务。创业风险分为四种类型。Demand risk relates to the willingness of prospective customers to需求风险与潜在客户的需求意愿有关adopt the envisioned solution. For Jibo: Did consumers in large numbers want a social robot in their home?需求风险与潜在客户采用预期解决方案的意愿有关。以Jibo为例：是否有大量消费者希望在家里拥有社交机器人？Technological risk refers to the complexity of the engineering or技术风险指的是工程设计的复杂性或scientific breakthroughs required to bring a solution to fruition. For Jibo: Could its engineering team build the crucial middleware layer that processed sensor inputs and application instructions?技术风险指的是将解决方案付诸实现所需的工程或科学突破的复杂性。以Jibo为例：它的工程团队能否构建出用于处理传感器数据及应用指令的关键中间层？Execution risk hinges on the entrepreneur’s ability to attract and执行风险取决于企业家吸引和的能力。manage employees and partners who can implement the venture’s plans. For Jibo: Would third-party developers build applications before the robot had a big base of users?执行风险取决于企业家吸引并管理能够落实企业计划的员工和合作伙伴的能力。以Jibo为例：在机器人拥有大量用户群之前，第三方开发者会为其开发应用程序吗？Financing risk is relevant when external capital is required. Will当需要外部资金时，融资风险就显得很重要。会capital be available on reasonable terms? For Jibo: After launch delays consumed its capital reserves, would existing investors commit more funds? Would new investors step in?当需要外部资本时，融资风险就显得尤为重要。资金能否以合理的条件获得？以Jibo为例：在上市延迟消耗了其资本储备之后，现有投资者是否会追加投资？新投资者又会否介入？
• This insight is central to the definition of entrepreneurial failure that I’ll use in this book: A venture has failed if its early investors did not—or neverwill—get back more money than they put in.这一见解是我在本书中定义创业失败的核心标准：如果一家企业的早期投资者未能获得或永远无法获得超过其投资额的回报，那么这家企业就可视作失败。Why early investors? Because, when a startup fares poorly, later为什么是早期投资者？因为当一家初创企业表现不佳时，后期investors may get all of their money back while early investors generally receive less than the full amount they invested—or nothing at all. Explaining why requires a short digression into the workings of venture capital. Startups that raise venture capital typically do so by issuing sequential rounds of preferred stock, labeled Series A, Series B, etc. Each new round of startup equity is generally granted a “liquidation preference” guaranteeing that, in the event of an “exit”—a merger or an initial publicoffering—shareholders in later rounds will get back their entire investment before shareholders in earlier rounds receive any exit proceeds.为什么是早期投资者？因为当初创企业表现不佳时，后期投资者可能会拿回全部投资，而早期投资者通常只能收回部分投资，甚至可能血本无归。要解释其中原因，就需要简单介绍一下风险投资的运作机制。通常，初创企业通过发行不同轮次的优先股来筹集风险资本，这些轮次被标记为A轮、B轮等。每一轮新发行的股权都享有“清算优先权”，这意味着在企业发生“退出”情况（如合并或首次公开募股）时，后期轮次的股东会先获得全部投资回报，只有在此之后，早期轮次的股东才能分得退出收益。
• Who’s to Blame? When a venture fails, our first instinct is generally to该责怪谁？当一家风险企业失败时，我们的第一反应通常是try to figure out what mistakes were made and who made them. But failures can usually be attributed to some combination of misfortunes that were outside the control of responsible parties and mistakes made by those parties.该责怪谁？当一项事业失败时，我们的第一反应通常是试图找出犯了哪些错误以及是谁犯的错。但通常情况下，失败可以归因于一些责任方无法控制的意外事件，以及这些责任方自身所犯的错误共同作用的结果。Misfortune: Sometimes, a startup’s demise is due mostly to不幸事件：有时，一家初创企业的倒闭主要是由于misfortunes, rather than mistakes. When Covid-19 started paralyzing theU.S. economy, thousands of otherwise healthy new ventures couldn’t raise funds and saw sales dry up; the same thing happened during the Great Recession of 2008. Other misfortunes are less universal, impacting only a single industry sector. During the 2000s, for example, clean tech startups were often predicated on rising fossil fuel costs, but the unexpected growth of fracking and the commensurate decline in fuel costs derailed many of those ventures. They were failures, but many were not blameworthy. They were simply smart bets on rising fuel costs that didn’t pay off.不幸事件往往比错误更可能导致创业公司的失败。当新冠疫情开始冲击美国经济时，数千家原本运营良好的初创企业无法筹集到资金，销售额也骤降；2008年大衰退期间也出现了类似情况。还有一些不幸事件具有特殊性，只影响某个特定行业。例如，在21世纪初，许多清洁技术初创企业的成功依赖于化石燃料成本的上升，但水力压裂技术的意外发展导致燃料成本下降，进而使许多此类企业陷入困境。这些企业虽然失败了，但很多并非出于人为过错，只是对燃料成本上升的预期判断有误而已。
• Jibo’s team was blindsided by two such misfortunes. The first was the CEO’s sudden illness and departure. As investor and board member JeffBussgang explained, “The company was dependent on a visionary CEO who could fundraise in the face of long, delayed product developmentcycles; a market that didn’t yet exist; and big competitors. Steve was that CEO and was absolutely brilliant with strategic partners. I believe that if he had remained healthy, Steve would have been able to guide Jibo through the speed bumps.”Second, Amazon’s Echo truly came out of the blue. Industry consensus was captured by one tech news site: “Amazon just surprised everyone with a crazy speaker that talks to you.” Of course, smartphone makers had been busy building voice assistants, but no one expected this technology to migrate into a stand-alone speaker. Since Jibo was positioned as both an assistant and a companion, this was a serious problem. Jibo suddenly faced a rival voice assistant with a big head start, a much lower price, and deep pockets.Jibo的团队遭遇了两次突如其来的意外。首先是首席执行官突然生病离职。正如投资者兼董事会成员Jeff Bussgang所解释的：“该公司依赖一位有远见的首席执行官，他能在产品开发周期漫长且延迟、市场尚未形成以及竞争对手强大的情况下成功筹集资金。史蒂夫正是这样的CEO，而且在与战略合作伙伴打交道方面非常出色。我相信，如果他保持健康，史蒂夫一定能够带领Jibo顺利度过难关。”其次，亚马逊的Echo完全出乎意料地出现了。一家科技新闻网站概括了行业的普遍看法：“亚马逊突然推出了一种能与你对话的神奇音箱，让所有人感到意外。”当然，智能手机制造商们一直在研发语音助手，但没人预料到这项技术会应用到独立音箱上。由于Jibo既被定位为助手又为伴侣设备，这无疑是个严重问题。Jibo突然面临一个拥有巨大优势、更低价格且资金雄厚的竞争对手语音助手。
• Consider Jibo’s strategy in the wake of Echo’s launch. Was it a mistake to continue developing the voice assistant component as originally planned,or should they have doubled down on the companionship features and simply ceded the voice assistant space to rivals? Lacking the ability to trackfaces, initiate conversations, and move expressively, Alexa, Siri, and Google Home couldn’t match Jibo as a companion. But was there a big enough market for an expensive home robot that offered onlycompanionship? And to justify spending $899 on a robot friend, did consumers also need him to be an egg timer and a weatherman? This was a tough decision, and one that the team at Jibo couldn’t have anticipated.以Echo上市后的Jibo策略为例。按照原计划继续开发语音助手功能是否是个错误？或者他们本应更加重视陪伴功能，将语音助手市场让给竞争对手？由于无法实现面部识别、主动发起对话或进行表情表达，Alexa、Siri和Google Home在陪伴功能上无法与Jibo相媲美。但是，对于一个仅提供陪伴功能的昂贵家用机器人来说，市场空间是否足够大呢？而且，为了让人愿意花899美元购买这样一个机器人朋友，它是否还需要具备计时器和天气预报功能呢？这是个艰难的决定，Jibo的团队也难以预料到。
• Similarly, after the Echo was offered for $200, it seems reasonable to ask whether Jibo could have been redesigned to cost less. Chambers and his team did in fact consider many options along these lines, like whether the robot should have two segments capable of independent motion, rather than three. But as it turned out, the third axis added only $48 to the final price,and extensive testing showed that the expressive movement enabled by three axes versus two made a big difference to consumers. At the behest of their VCs, Jibo’s team also considered incorporating the robot’s software into a personal computer and shedding his body, but tests revealed that this design had no appeal whatsoever. Chambers concluded, “People like to sayJibo was overengineered. I don’t know. He was the only consumer robot that ever really worked.”Did hiring mistakes contribute to Jibo’s failure? Again, it’s hard to bedefinitive, but product development was significantly delayed under the startup’s first chief robot architect and its VP of development, despite the fact that they’d led advanced research and development teams at iRobot andPalm, respectively, and were highly qualified. Chambers eventually brought in a new chief technology officer who, within a few months, resolved the issues concerning embedded versus cloud architectures. If this CTO had been hired in the first place, instead of the original chief architect, or if the leadership changes had been executed sooner, might Jibo have cut its product development time in half? Maybe, but it also seems possible that anyone hired to lead Jibo’s development would have needed to wrestle with messy engineering challenges for two years before solving them.同样地，当Echo以200美元的价格推出后，人们不禁会思考：是否可以重新设计Jibo，使其成本更低。Chambers和他的团队确实考虑过很多方案，比如将机器人的可独立运动轴从三个减少到两个。但事实证明，第三个运动轴仅使最终价格增加了48美元，而大量测试表明，三个运动轴相比两个运动轴在实现更具表现力的动作方面对消费者有显著影响。在风险投资家的建议下，Jibo的团队还考虑过将机器人的软件整合到个人电脑中，并去掉实体外壳，但测试表明这种设计毫无吸引力。钱伯斯总结道：“人们常说Jibo设计过于复杂。我不知道。它确实是唯一真正能正常运行的消费级机器人。”招聘失误是否导致了Jibo的失败？同样很难下定论，但在该初创公司的首位机器人架构师和开发副总裁的领导下，产品开发进程严重滞后，尽管他们此前分别在iRobot和Palm担任过高级研发团队的负责人，且资质出众。钱伯斯最终聘请了一位新的首席技术官，他在几个月内就解决了嵌入式架构与云架构之间的问题。如果当初招聘的是这位首席技术官而非最初的首席架构师，或者领导层更早地进行调整，那么Jibo的产品开发时间或许能缩短一半。不过也有可能，无论谁来负责Jibo的开发工作，都得花费两年时间来应对那些复杂的工程难题才能解决问题。
• Blame the Jockey? So, are poor jockeys the main cause of a startup’s指责骑师？那么，糟糕的骑师就是初创企业失败的主要原因吗？demise? Many investors seem to think so. In a survey of venture capitalpartners, the top two reasons cited for startup failure were weak senior management and weak functional management. In another survey in whichVCs were asked to identify differences between successful and failedstartups, two of the three patterns that emerged pointed to management flaws. With the first pattern (accounting for 19 percent of failures,according to the survey), the senior team had adequate experience and market knowledge but no capacity for sustained effort, so they threw in the towel prematurely. With the second pattern (accounting for 49 percent offailures), the managers were perceived to be “hapless amateurs, inadequate in every way.” The third pattern echoes Peter Thiel’s point: For 32 percent of the failures, management had adequate market knowledge but never found competitive advantage.该责怪骑师吗？那么，表现不佳的骑师真的是初创企业失败的主要原因吗？许多投资者似乎这么认为。在对风险投资合伙人的调查中，导致初创企业失败的两大原因分别是高层管理能力不足和职能管理薄弱。在另一项要求风险投资家分析成功与失败初创企业差异的调查中，出现的三种模式中有两种都与管理缺陷有关。根据调查数据，第一种模式占失败案例的19%，其特点是高层团队拥有丰富的经验和市场知识，但缺乏持之以恒的能力，因此过早放弃了努力。第二种模式占失败案例的49%，这类企业的管理者被评价为“无能的业余人士，各方面都不合格”。第三种模式与彼得·蒂尔的观点不谋而合：在32%的失败案例中，管理层虽然具备足够的市场知识，但却始终无法找到竞争优势。
• If jockeys make all the difference, then some must be more skilled than others. There is some academic evidence for this. Research by my HBS colleagues Paul Gompers, Josh Lerner, and David Scharfstein and their former student Anna Kovner shows that 30 percent of serial entrepreneurs who were successful in their first venture succeeded in subsequent ventures,compared to 22 percent of serial entrepreneurs who failed in their first venture and 21 percent of first-time founders. These differences suggest that learning from experience isn’t decisive. If it were, then unsuccessful serial entrepreneurs would presumably succeed with their second or third ventures at a substantially higher rate than first-time founders.如果骑师起决定性作用，那么肯定有些骑师比其他骑师更熟练。这方面有一些学术依据。我的哈佛商学院同事保罗·冈珀斯、乔希·勒纳和大卫·夏夫斯坦以及他们的前学生安娜·科夫纳的研究表明，在首次创业取得成功的连续创业者中，有30%的人在后续创业中也取得了成功；而首次创业失败的连续创业者这一比例为22%，首次创业的创始人则为21%。这些差异表明，从经验中学习并非决定性因素。如果经验学习真的起决定作用，那么那些首次创业失败的连续创业者在第二次或第三次创业时应该会以远高于首次创业创始人的概率取得成功。There are two possible explanations for why serial entrepreneurs whose first startup was a success are more likely to succeed again. First, prior to founding their initial venture, some serial entrepreneurs may have had advantages that other first-timers lacked: better skills or superior access toresources—perhaps due to their gender, race, or socioeconomic background. Second, funding and talent tend to flow to entrepreneurs with a track record of success, making the assumption that they’ll succeed again a self-fulfilling prophecy. These explanations are not mutually exclusive; both could be true.对于那些首次创业就成功的连续创业者为何更有可能再次取得成功，有两种可能的解释。首先，在创立最初的企业之前，一些连续创业者可能拥有其他初次创业者所没有的优势：更出色的技能或更便捷的资源获取途径——这或许与他们的性别、种族或社会经济背景有关。其次，资金和人才往往流向有成功记录的创业者，这就使得人们认为他们会再次成功，从而形成一种自我实现的预言。这两种解释并不相互排斥，都有可能成立。
• In what ways might some entrepreneurs be more skilled than others?有些企业家为何可能比其他企业家更出色呢？They may have superior general ability—raw intellect, resilience, etc.—or they may have a wealth of relevant industry experience. These attributes are also not mutually exclusive.他们可能具备更出色的综合能力——如敏锐的智力、较强的适应能力等——或者拥有丰富的相关行业经验。这些特质并非相互排斥。
• Finally, was Jibo a “good failure,” in the sense that society will ultimately benefit from insights gleaned from the venture? It’s too soon tosay, but Jibo is already the model for the next generation of eldercare robots. And, as Jibo said of social robots in his farewell message, I believe we’ll see a day when “everyone has them in their homes.”最后，从社会最终能从这项项目中获得的经验中受益的角度来看，Jibo是否可以被视为“有价值的失败”？现在下结论还为时过早，但Jibo已然成为下一代养老机器人的典范。正如Jibo在告别声明中所说的关于社交机器人的愿景，我相信终有一天“每个人家里都会拥有它们”。

 Chapter 2: Catch-22

• Hence, the Catch-22: A founder cannot pursue a novel opportunity in any meaningful way without resources, and she can’t attract resources until she’s actually pursued the opportunity—at least to the point where she can demonstrate to resource owners that the risks are reasonable. To break through this impasse, early-stage entrepreneurs can employ one or more of four tactics to reduce resource requirements while respectively resolving,shifting, deferring, or downplaying opportunity-related risks. However, as I’ll explain here and in the chapters that follow, every one of these tactics contains some potentially destructive downsides.因此就出现了这种两难境地：创始人若没有资源，就无法真正着手开发新的机会；而只有在真正开始着手这个机会之后——至少要达到能让资源提供者相信相关风险是可控的程度——才能吸引到资源。为打破这一僵局，早期创业者可以采用四种策略中的一种或多种，以降低资源需求，同时分别解决、转移、推迟或减轻与机会相关的风险。不过，正如我将在本章及后续章节中所阐述的，这些策略每一种都可能带来一些潜在的负面影响。
• Tactic 1: Lean Experiments (Resolving Risk). Using minimum viable策略1：精益实验（化解风险）。采用最小可行方案products that minimize resource commitments, founders can validate their assumptions about an opportunity and resolve uncertainty about the new venture’s viability. As we’ll soon see with clothing retailer Quincy, positive results for MVP tests can be persuasive when employees or investors are deciding whether to commit to a new venture.策略一：精益实验（降低风险）。通过使用资源投入最少的最小可行产品，创始人能够验证自己对市场机会的假设，消除对新业务可行性的不确定性。正如我们即将看到的服装零售商Quincy的案例那样，当员工或投资者需要决定是否投资某项新业务时，最小可行产品测试的积极结果具有很强的说服力。
• Tactic 2: Partnering (Shifting Risk). Entrepreneurs may be able to策略2：合作（分散风险）。企业家们或许能够“rent” resources from a strategic partner—for example, access to technology or distribution networks. The partner is often an established corporation that, by virtue of its greater scale and deeper pockets, is better able to bear risk than the startup.从战略合作伙伴那里“租赁”资源——例如技术或分销渠道。这种合作伙伴通常是为知名企业，由于规模更大、资金更雄厚，因此比初创公司更能承受风险。
• Tactic 3: Staging (Deferring Risk). Venture capital–backed startups策略三：分阶段推进（延迟风险）。风险投资支持的初创企业raise capital in stages, often taking in just enough funding in each round to meet their next set of major milestones, such as completing product development or launching the product. This approach defers risks because if the startup fails to meet a key milestone, investors can pull the plug and avoid future outlays.分阶段筹集资金，通常每轮只筹集足够实现下一重大里程碑目标的资金，比如完成产品开发或推出产品。这种做法有助于规避风险，因为如果初创企业无法达成某个关键里程碑，投资者可以及时撤资，避免后续损失。
• Tactic 4: Storytelling (Downplaying Risk). By propagating a “reality策略4：讲故事（淡化风险）。通过传播“现实情况”distortion field”—that is, mesmerizing potential employees, investors, and strategic partners so they focus on a startup’s world-changing potential rather than on its real-world risks—overconfident and charismatic founders in particular are able to persuade people to commit resources under terms favorable to their new venture. For strategic partners, this might mean granting the startup exclusive access to proprietary technology and forgoing the opportunity to license it to better-established companies. For employees,it might mean a willingness to work long hours or accept a below-market salary in exchange for the upside of stock options.“扭曲场”——也就是说，吸引潜在员工、投资者和战略合作伙伴的注意力，让他们关注初创企业的颠覆性潜力而非其现实风险。尤其是那些过于自信且富有魅力的创始人，能够说服人们以对自己新事业有利的条件投入资源。对战略合作伙伴而言，这可能意味着允许初创企业独家使用其专利技术，而放弃将其授权给更成熟公司的机会。对员工来说，则可能意味着愿意长时间工作或接受低于市场水平的薪资，以换取股票期权的收益。
• • The Hazard: A reality distortion field can reverse itself. Rather than• 危险：现实扭曲场可能会逆转。与其说……bending reality to their will, overconfident founders may fail to perceive signals that their vision is a pipe dream. We’ll see some examples of this in Part II, which examines failure patterns among late-stage startups—including Better Place, which lost $900 million trying to build a network of recharging stations for electric cars. An entrepreneur’s reality distortion field can have a colossal negative impact on a late-stage startup that has hundreds of employees and hundreds of millions of dollars in invested capital. But early-stage entrepreneurs are at risk of self-delusion, too.将现实扭曲以符合自己的意愿，过于自信的创业者可能无法察觉到自己的愿景其实只是白日梦的信号。在第二部分中，我们将看到一些相关例子，该部分会探讨处于晚期的初创企业的失败模式——比如Better Place，该公司为建设电动汽车充电站网络投入了9亿美元，但最终却以失败告终。对于拥有数百名员工和数亿美元投资资本的晚期初创企业而言，创业者的现实扭曲效应可能会带来巨大的负面影响。不过，早期创业者也有可能陷入自我欺骗的误区。
• The Diamond-and-Square Framework钻石方框框架Armed with these tactics for avoiding the opportunity/resource Catch-22, an entrepreneur should be able to manage risk in ways that make it possible to attract enough resources to get started. But how can an aspiring entrepreneur know whether she has actually identified an attractive掌握了这些避免机会/资源两难局的战略后，创业者应能以恰当的方式管理风险，从而吸引到足够的资源来启动项目。但是，有抱负的创业者如何才能知道自己是否真的找到了有吸引力的机会呢？opportunity and determine what types of resources are required to successfully capitalize upon it? The diamond-and-square framework provides the answers. The framework’s diamond breaks down the startup’s opportunity—that is, the “horse”—into four constituent parts: its customer value proposition, technology and operations, marketing, and profit formula. The diamond is framed by a square whose corners denote the venture’s key resource providers: its founders (that is, the “jockeys”), other team members, outside investors, and strategic partners.那么，有抱负的企业家如何才能判断自己是否真正找到了有吸引力的机会，并明确实现该机会所需的各种资源呢？“钻石方框模型”可以提供答案。该模型的“钻石部分”将创业机会——也就是“赛马”——分解为四个组成部分：客户价值主张、技术和运营、市场营销以及盈利模式。而“钻石部分”被一个“方框”所环绕，方框的四个角点代表了企业的重要资源提供者：创始人（即“骑师”）、其他团队成员、外部投资者和战略合作伙伴。
• But what if you build it and no one comes? VC Marc Andreessen但如果你开发出来了却没人购买怎么办？风险投资家马克·安德森commented on this possibility: “The number one reason that we pass on entrepreneurs we’d otherwise like to back is focusing on product to the exclusion of everything else. We tend to cultivate and glorify this mentality in the Valley. But the dark side is that it gives entrepreneurs excuses not to do the hard stuff of sales and marketing. Many entrepreneurs who build great products simply don’t have a good distribution strategy. Even worse is when they insist that they don’t need one or call no distribution strategy a ‘viral marketing strategy.’  ”他对这种可能性评论道：“我们放弃本想支持的一些创业者的首要原因是，他们过于专注于产品开发而忽视了其他方面。在硅谷，我们往往推崇这种思维方式。但问题在于，这为创业者提供了借口，使他们不必努力开展销售和营销工作。许多打造出优秀产品的创业者其实并没有合理的销售策略。更糟糕的是，他们坚称自己不需要销售策略，或者将没有销售策略视为‘病毒式营销策略’。”
• Functional Experience. Founding teams should also have the职能经验。创始团队还应当具备right mix of business acumen and technical skills relevant to the opportunity the startup is pursuing. Shorthand often used for this kind of team is “hacker and hustler”: referring to a talented engineer(hacker) and to someone with business know-how, especially the ability to sell (hustler). Of course, a founding team can compensate for any gaps by hiring senior managers with relevant skills.具备与初创企业所追求的业务机会相关的商业敏锐度和技术技能的恰当组合。这类团队常被简称为“黑客与商人”：指的是既有才华横溢的工程师（黑客），又具备商业头脑的人，尤其是擅长销售的人才（商人）。当然，创始团队可以通过招聘具备相关技能的高级管理人员来弥补不足。A red flag: Beware founding teams whose members all have similar一个危险信号：要警惕创始团队成员背景过于相似的情况。
• who is setting out to do something that’s never been done before. It’s well documented that, when compared to members of the generalpublic, entrepreneurs are, on average, more overconfident—that is,more likely to overestimate the accuracy of their predictions about uncertain outcomes. Fortunately, many attributes of highly confident founders improve the odds of startup success. For example, confidence fuels resilience, which is crucial for founders as they board the entrepreneurial roller coaster. Likewise, founders who project confidence are more persuasive when they pitch their vision to prospective employers and investors.那些决心去做前所未有的事情的人。有大量研究表明，与普通大众相比，企业家通常更为自信——也就是说，他们更倾向于高估自己对不确定结果的预测准确性。幸运的是，高度自信的创始人的许多特质都有助于提升创业成功的几率。例如，自信能激发韧性，这对在创业道路上经历起伏的创始人来说至关重要。同样，展现出自信的创始人在向潜在雇主和投资者推销自己的愿景时也更具说服力。
• venture. Finally, if an early-stage startup pivots to a newopportunity, the skills of some specialists may no longerberequired, and the founder will face the difficult anddemoralizing task of firing talented people.聘请技术娴熟的专家团队确实存在一些隐患。例如，这些专家可能过于热衷于采用其前雇主的有效解决方案，而这些方案未必适合初创企业。当被要求协助处理超出其专业范围的工作时，专家们可能会表现出“不关我的事”的态度。同样，如果专家们习惯于在流程规范明确的企业中工作，知道工作成果和信息如何在不同部门之间流转，那么他们可能难以适应新创企业缺乏规范流程的环境。最后，如果初创企业转向新的发展机会，某些专家的技能可能就不再需要了，此时创始人将面临解雇优秀员工的艰难且令人沮丧的任务。
• 时，风险投资家会争相将该行业的初创公司纳入投资组合。但投资者情绪可能迅速恶化，一旦如此，他们甚至可能拒绝投资那些看似健康的初创公司。
• t the other extreme, if a founding team waits too long to start另一个极端是，如果创始团队等待太久才开始行动fundraising, they run the risk that it may take longer to raisemoney than they expected—perhaps because their sector hasfallen out of favor with investors, having entered the “bust”phase of a boom-bust cycle. If a startup runs low on cash duringa funding drought, any new capital they can secure may comewith adverse terms—again, resulting in a low price for the newshares, a low valuation, and considerable equity dilution for bothmanagement and any prior investors.在另一个极端情况下，如果创始团队等待太久才开始筹款，他们可能会面临比预期更长的筹资时间——这可能是因为他们所处的行业不再受投资者青睐，进入了繁荣与萧条周期的萧条阶段。如果在资金短缺期间初 创公司现金耗尽，那么他们能够获得的任何新资金都可能附带不利的条款——这同样会导致新股价格低迷、估值降低，以及管理层和现有投资者的股权被大幅稀释。
• we’ll see how these dynamics played out at early-stage startupsQuincy and Baroo. Some scaling startups also echo the “wewere pushed too hard by our VCs” theme in Part II.相比之下，不匹配的融资方与创业公司的契合度会以两种方式对初创企业造成破坏。首先是风险与回报之间的失衡。风险投资公司的商业模式依赖于从少数投资项目中获得巨额回报。在成功的风险投资公司中，少数几个大获成功的项目所带来的利润足以抵消大部分投资的损失，甚至能让整体投资实现微盈。基于这种模式，大多数风险投资商会推动投资公司采取高风险策略，因为一旦成功就能带来巨大回报。许多创始人也愿意承担高风险以换取高回报。而另一些创业者在没有投资者施压的情况下，会选择风险较低但回报相对稳定的策略。在后续章节中，我们将看到这些动态如何体现在早期初创企业Quincy和Baroo身上。部分寻求扩张的初创企业也延续了第二部分中“我们被风险投资公司逼得太紧”的主题。
• resources without a fixed, up-front investment.However,consistent with Andreessen’s concerns, it can be toughfor an unknown startup with a dubious chance of survival to signan established company as a partner. If that partner does comeon board, the startup might still have trouble capturing itsattention and keeping its interests aligned with those of theventure.继续用航海比喻来说，马克·安德森将寻求与大型企业建立战略合作伙伴关系的初创公司分别比作亚哈船长和白鲸。先剧透一下，如果你们还没读过这本书的话：亚哈的结局并不好。在追逐白鲸数十年后，这个痴迷的船长终于用鱼叉刺中了鲸鱼，但鲸鱼却将亚哈拖入海底，导致他溺死。安德森解释道：​“与大型公司打交道的缺点在于，它们有可能颠覆你——或许是通过某种方式压制你直至扼杀你，但更常见的是通过糟糕的合作伙伴关系束缚你，阻碍你的发展，或者让你在会议上浪费大量时间、分心不已。​”正如上文关于外包的讨论所述，合作伙伴关系能让人快速获得资源，而无需进行固定的前期投资。不过，正如安德森所担忧 的那样，对于那些尚不知名且生存前景不确定的初创企业来说，要与知名公司建立合作伙伴关系并非易事。如果该合作伙伴真的加入，初创企业可能仍难以吸引其注意力，并使其利益与风险投资的利益保持一致。
• long time to secure commitment. As Houston suggests, some bigcompanies are just“kicking the tires” to learn about astartup’s technology and strategy—and maybe steal someideas. For others who might be genuinely interested, thepartnership is nevertheless low on the big company’s prioritylist. Also, big company dealmakers often deliberately drag outnegotiations to build bargaining advantage. They know that thestartup is burning cash in the meantime and might makeconcessions out of desperation.在这方面，Dropbox的创始人兼首席执行官德鲁·休斯顿描述了他在早期为寻求分销合作伙伴而付出的努力，但最终却令人沮丧：​“大公司似乎乐于与初创企业交谈。他们会派出十二名中级管理人员——这些人其实没有任何决策权——来了解你的技术。他们可能会浪费数月时间。我们曾与一家杀毒软件供应商接近达成协议，但在最后关头，他们派来了一位高级副总裁，宣布要扼杀我们的品牌，这与我们之前讨论的所有内容完全相悖。​”合作伙伴关系可能因多种原因失败——各方实力差距越 大，交易越有可能无法达成，或者即便达成了也最终会破裂。在某些情况下，获得对方的承诺可能需要很长时间。正如休斯顿所指出的，一些大公司只是想“了解”初创企业的技术和战略——或许还想窃取一些想法。而对于那些真正感兴趣的大公司来说，这种合作伙伴关系在它们的优先事项列表中排名较低。此外，大公司的谈判代表往往故意拖延谈判时间以获得议价优势。他们知道，在此期间初创企业正在消耗现金，可能会出于绝望而做出让步。

 Chapter 3: Good Idea, Bad Bedfellows

• Quincy did have major problems with the fourth opportunityelement:昆西在第四个机会要素方面确实存在重大问题：Technology & Operations. The startup had an attractive valueproposition,but it couldn’t deliver the promised valueconsistently. Specifically, Quincy had trouble ensuring good fit—the crucial component in its promise to customers. The resultwas a return rate 15 percent higher than the founders had anticipated, with 68 percent of all returned purchases citing poorfit.技术与运营方面。这家初创公司有着吸引人的价值主张，但却无法始终如一地兑现承诺的价值。具体而言，Quincy难以确保产品与消费者的需求相匹配——而这正是其向客户做出承诺的关键所在。最终，产品的退货率比创始人预期的高出15%，其中68%的退货理由是产品不符合消费者需求。
• about the many tasks required to design and produce a garment—and the many specialized roles involved in completing thosetasks (e.g., technicaldesigner, pattern maker, sample maker, fabriccutter, etc.). The more theylearned, the more it became clear thatthey would have to create an entire production process fromscratch—a daunting and time-consuming task.缺乏行业经验。虽然纳尔逊曾为多家服装零售商担任顾问，并在商学院第一年暑假时在爱马仕从事过库存优化工作，但昆西的创始人们此前并没有设计和制造服装的实际经验。起初，他们以为自己可以独立完成设计工作，只需由一名生产经理来协调生产流程。但这一计划被证明不切实际后，纳尔逊和华莱士聘请了专业设计师。渐渐地，他们了解到设计和制造一件服装需要完成众多任务，其中还涉及许多专业岗位（如技术设计师、纸样师、样衣师、面料裁剪师等）​。随着了解的深入，他们越来越意识到必须从零开始建立完整的生产流程——这既艰巨又耗时。
• Finally, they can invest more time and effort into acquiring somespecific industry knowledge themselves, while being aware thatmastery can take years. It would certainly take that long forQuincy’s founders to master the process of designing andmanufacturing apparel. But if they’d spent more timeresearching the challenges of garment manufacturing andinventory management before launching, they might at leasthave learned enough to target their recruiting efforts moreprecisely. In her postmortemanalysis, Nelson speculated thatperhaps she and Wallace had left their consulting jobsprematurely. In retrospect, she realized that they should havecontinued to evaluate their concept while still employed full-time. “I could rely on my husband’s income,” she said, “butthe minute that Christina quit her job, we needed to fund thebusiness, and that put a lot of pressure on us.” However, thisslower approach may not be a viable option for entrepreneurswho suspect they have only a narrow window ofopportunity— perhaps because another startup may soon spot the same idea.最后，他们可以投入更多时间和精力去掌握特定行业的知识，同时要明白掌握这些知识需要数年时间。Quincy的创始人们显然花了很长时间才熟悉服装设计和制造流程。但如果在创业前多花些时间研究服装生产和库存管理的挑战，他们或许就能有更准确的招聘方向。在事后分析中，Nelson推测自己和Wallace可能过早辞去了咨询工作。回顾起来，她意识到自己本应在全职工作的同时继续评估他们的创业理念。​“我可以依靠丈夫的收入，​”她说，​“但克里斯蒂娜一辞职，我们就得为创业项目筹集资金，这给我们带来了很大压力。​”不过，对于那些认为机会窗口很短的企业家来说，这种较慢的推进方式可能并不可行——因为也许另一家初创公司很快就会想到同样的点子。
• Who’s the Boss? In addition to lacking industry experience,Nelson and谁是老板？除了缺乏行业经验外，纳尔逊和Wallace faced significant challenges in managing their own
• relationship. According to analysis by Noam Wasserman, dean ofYeshiva University’s Business School, co-founder relationshipsare less stable—that is, more likely to end in breakup—when co-founders are family members or were close friends prior tolaunching a venture. There are many tempting reasons to start abusiness with your close friend or family member—forexample,you share similar goals and values and already knoweach other’s strengths,weaknesses, habits, and quirks. However,compared to those who were previously colleagues or strangers,co-founders with close personal bonds find it more difficult tohave tough conversations about roles and strategies. They’reafraid that the ensuing conflict might jeopardize their personalrelationship.华莱士在处理两人之间的关系时面临着重重挑战。根据耶希瓦大学商学院院长诺姆·瓦瑟曼的分析，如果联合创始人是家庭成员或创业前就是密友，那么他们之间的关系往往不够稳定，更有可能以分手告终。与亲密 的朋友或家人一起创业有很多诱人的理由——比如你们有相似的目标和价值观，而且已经了解彼此的优点、缺点、习惯和怪癖。然而，与那些曾经是同事或陌生人的人相比，有密切私人关系的联合创始人更难以就角色和策略进行坦诚的讨论。他们担心由此引发的冲突可能会危及他们的私人关系。
• have a professional network rich with candidates?事后看来，华莱士承认自己未能解决员工缺乏主动性的问题。她说：​“我没有给团队足够的压力。亚历克斯扮演了‘坏警察’的角色，总是要求拿出成果。当亚历克斯对某人严厉批评后，我会试图缓和局势。但一旦员工们意识到可以向我投诉，亚历克斯的权威就受到了削弱。​”华莱士补充道：​“我们雇了一些人，他们似乎认为在资金不足的初创公司工作是在帮我们的忙。我们找不到足够多的人认为这是他们一生中最好的机会——一个能参与下一个重大项目起步阶段的机会。​”因此，我的管理方式仿佛在说：​“非常感谢你们为我们做这件好事。​”与其雇佣那些具备相关技能但缺乏灵活性和主动性的员工，昆西本应寻找一位在服装生产和新兴业务方面都有经验的资深经理——当然，说起来容易做起来难。这样的经理才能招募到既具备所需技能又能适应初创企业节奏的专家人才。由于团队中没有这样的人，昆西的创始人面临着许多创业者都熟悉的挑战：当对相关专业的职能知之甚少，又没有丰富的专业人才资源网络时，该如何招聘到合适的专家？

 Chapter 5: False Positives

• managers were unreasonably inflexible about contractualagreements. For example, they insisted thatBaroo organizeevents for residents, something that Baroo had initially promisedbut that became less practical as the company expanded.Hyderecounted, “When we were small, hosting a dog Halloweenparty was easy and fun. As we started to do it across a hundredbuildings, we ended up lighting money on fire for events that wewere not getting paid for. We’d send some college kid to buysnacks. He’d come back with a six-pack of Bud and a cheeseplate from Target—not exactly the high-end brand experience weaspired to.”然而，到那时团队已经感受到了严重的成长烦恼。与一些物业管理方的关系变得紧张。许多物业管理方不鼓励其大楼的礼宾员推荐Baroo服务，还有一些物业管理方在合同条款上过于固执己见。例如，他们坚持要求Baroo为居民组织活动，虽然公司最初答应了这一要求，但随着业务扩张这变得不太现实。海德回忆道：​“当初我们规模还小的时候，举 办狗狗万圣节派对既简单又有趣。但当我们需要为上百栋大楼组织活动时，最终却是在为无报酬的活动浪费钱。我们会派个大学生去买零食，结果他回来时只买了六罐百威啤酒和一盘塔吉特超市的奶酪拼盘——这显然不符合我们追求的高端品牌体验。​”
• information about pet owners’ requirements.运营也面临诸多挑战。随着业务规模的扩大，提供早期客户所喜爱的个性化服务变得愈发困难。例如，当Baroo的预订系统显示所有护理人员都已忙碌时，宠物主人再也无法请求他们最喜欢的护理人员提供服务，或打电话到办公室要求在最后一刻安排护理。此外，Baroo缺乏大规模运营所需的技术支持。其现成的预订系统操作繁琐，因此许多客户只能通过电子邮件或短信来预约，这给调度工作带来了复杂性。护理人员不得不使用多款移动应用程序，其中一款用于记录工作的开始和结束时间，另一款则用于查看每日工作安排以及宠物主人的需求信息。
• burning out our best walkers and burning through our cash.”一些护理人员的行为进一步复杂化了排班工作。海德原本认为，将他们按小时计酬聘为员工，而非按预约计酬的承包商，有助于让护理人员遵循统一的标准流程。但事实并非总是如此。海德逐渐意识到，Baroo的薪酬制度可能会扭曲激励机制：​“员工可能会把时间花在更轻松、更愉快的工作上，比如和可爱的小狗玩耍，从而导致其他工作的延迟完成，甚至可能错过当天最后一单与难相与的狗相关的任务。由于是按小时计酬，这并不会影响员工的收入。​”​“虽然大多数护理人员都很尽责，但员工筛选并非万无一失。海德回忆起，在参加一场婚礼时，她接到警察的电话，被告知有位Baroo宠物看护员在客户的公寓里大声喧闹地聚会。公司的快速扩张也使员工士气受到极大考验。海德反思道：‘我们发展得太快了，以至于难以招聘到足够的新员工——而员工流失率高达每年120%，这进一步加剧了问题。因此，那些表现优秀的看护员有时不得不每天工作12个小时。我们得把他们送到城市各处，而且还是按小时计酬。’”我们让最优秀的看护员精疲力竭，同时也耗尽了现金。
• tenant turnover to kick in: “If you believed that line ofreasoning, then you probably figured that things would be okayin new markets in a year or two. But if you didn’t believe thatlogic, you might see our margins deteriorating with expansionand assume that our strategy was flawed.”In the months thatfollowed, board debate shifted to whether to try to sell thecompany—the preferred outcome for the disgruntled angelinvestor—or to seek a Series A round. The VC who’d invested inthe prior round and had expressed interest in leading Series Awas now spooked by the contentious board dynamics andpassed on the opportunity. Hyde pitched a dozen more VC firms,but none were interested. In January 2018, with three months ofcash remaining, she approached potential merger partners. Threecompanies made offers, but all of these deals unraveled andHyde shut down Baroo in February.在2017年8月Baroo的董事会会议上，该公司的一位早期天使投资人对 海德的领导能力以及初创公司的财务状况提出了质疑。2017年前六个月，Baroo的营收为60万美元，但运营亏损却达到了80万美元。虽然管理层预计未来六个月的营收将增长50%，但运营亏损仍将达到70万美元。这位董事会成员非常担忧，他与海德就公司何时能实现盈亏平衡展开了争论。海德解释说，Baroo的市场渗透率——即某栋建筑内拥有Baroo客户的宠物主人的比例——取决于该初创公司为该建筑提供服务的时间长短。海德指出，对于新入住的居民而言，Baroo的渗透率要高于那些已有宠物看护服务的租户。换句话说，Baroo必须等待租户更替才能见效：​“如果你认同这一逻辑，那么你可能会认为一两年后新市场的情况会好转。但如果你不认同这种观点，你可能会发现随着业务扩张，我们的利润率正在下降，并认为我们的策略有缺陷。​”在接下来的几个月里，董事会的讨论焦点转向了是尝试出售公司——这正是那位不满的天使投资者的期望结果——还是寻求A轮融资。此前投资过该公司并有意领投A轮融资的风险投资家，因董事会内部矛盾激烈而放弃了这一机会。海德又接触了十几家风险投资公司，但都没有人感兴趣。2018年1月，当公司只剩下三个月的现金时，她开始寻找潜在的并购对象。有三家公司提出了收购提议，但这些交易最终都失败了，海德于2
• 月关闭了Baroo。
• Reset Expectations重设预期In this case, the cause of failure was relatively clear: Baroo hadfallen victim to premature scaling. The false positive had ledthem to expand toorapidly, and the startup simply didn’t haveadequate resources to operate successfully in four cities. Capitalwas in short supply, a small management team was stretched toothinly, and they lacked technology for managing complexbookings.在这种情况下，失败的原因相当明显：Baroo遭遇了过早的扩张问题。误报导致他们过快地扩大业务规模，而这家初创公司并没有足够的资源来在四个城市成功运营。他们资金短缺，管理团队人员不足且工作负担 过重，同时还缺乏处理复杂预订任务的技术支持。
• need than as competitors who challenged us in the marketplace.It didn’t feel like we were nose-to-nose with them forcustomers or pet careproviders.”Rapid expansion into multiplemarkets exposed flaws in Baroo’s opportunity “diamond.”These flaws weren’t fatal; Baroo’s team probably could haveavoided or resolved them, had they focused their efforts on fine-tuning their model in Boston before expanding. Consider howfalse positive results for each of the diamond elements resetHyde’s expectations:尽管缺乏这些资源，但Ink Block出现的虚假积极信号让海德过早地采取了扩张行动。2015年波士顿严冬期间，Baroo成功地为顾客提供服务，这让海德相信，她那支规模小但充满活力的团队确实“无所不能”​。海德原本计划先让Baroo在首批市场实现盈利，再利用这些利润来支持扩张，而非通过筹集风险投资来推动快速增长。然而，波士顿市场的良好开局让她改变了主意。这一决策完全出自海德和Baroo早期投资者的自主选择。与我们在第二部分会遇到的一些案例不同，对于Baroo来说， 决定比原计划更快扩张并非是出于应对竞争压力的考虑——尽管风险投资公司向Baroo的竞争对手投入了数千万美元。海德说：​“我觉得Rover和Wag更像是我们发现了尚未被满足的强烈需求的证明，而非在市场上与我们竞争的对手。我们并不觉得自己在争夺客户或宠物护理服务提供商方面与他们处于直接竞争关系。​”快速扩张到多个市场暴露出了Baroo业务模式中的缺陷。这些缺陷并非致命的；如果Baroo团队在扩展业务之前能专注于优化波士顿地区的业务模式，或许就能避免或解决这些问题。想想看，每个“钻石要素”中的误报结果是如何颠覆海德的预期的：

• 2026/03/02 发表想法

  转向低毛利的规模经济

  
  

  原文：在运营的最后阶段，Baroo试图通过以下方式解决这一问题：1）组建由多名护理人员组成的团队，共同负责一个社区的护理工作；2）要求护理人员将关于各家庭和宠物的信息分享给为同一家庭服务的其他护理人员。然而，这些解决方案需要一支纪律严明、经验丰富且掌握先进技术的员工队伍——而该初创企业当时正面临发展中的种种难题，难以实现这一目标。同样地，随着企业规模的扩大，Baroo提供个性化服务的能力也在下降，例如无法及时满足最后时刻的护理需求。最终，Baroo的优势在于能够为用户提供便捷、可靠的可靠护理服务，而且许多护理人员都有与特定家庭及其宠物打交道的经验——这些优势确实受到用户的青睐，但还不足以使其价格高于其他宠物护理服务。

• 在运营的最后阶段，Baroo试图通过以下方式解决这一问题：1）组建由多名护理人员组成的团队，共同负责一个社区的护理工作；2）要求护理人员将关于各家庭和宠物的信息分享给为同一家庭服务的其他护理人员。然而，这些解决方案需要一支纪律严明、经验丰富且掌握先进技术的员工队伍——而该初创企业当时正面临发展中的种种难题，难以实现这一目标。同样地，随着企业规模的扩大，Baroo提供个性化服务的能力也在下降，例如无法及时满足最后时刻的护理需求。最终，Baroo的优势在于能够为用户提供便捷、可靠的可靠护理服务，而且许多护理人员都有与特定家庭及其宠物打交道的经验——这些优势确实受到用户的青睐，但还不足以使其价格高于其他宠物护理服务。
• 在早期，Baroo对技术和运营方面的需求并不高。但很快人们意识到，该公司零散的技术体系无法支撑业务扩展。随着Baroo的发展，规模有限的管理团队不得不四处应对各种问题。招聘、培训、排班、激励和留任员工等方面的困难进一步加剧了运营挑战。
• With the first pattern, an entrepreneur tailors a solution forearlyadopters, commits resources to this solution, and thenlearns that the solution doesn’t meet the needs of the largermainstream market. Without mainstream customers, the venture won’t earn enough revenue to survive. By the time theentrepreneur recognizes the need to pivot, he’s amassedresources of the wrong type, and a cash-constrained startuplacks the wherewithal to replace them. The result: a variation onthe Bad Bedfellows theme.在第一种情况下，创业者为早期采用者量身定制解决方案，并投入相应资源，但后来发现该方案并不符合更广泛的主流市场需求。没有主流客户，创业公司就无法获得足够的收入来维持运营。当创业者意识到需要调整方向时，他已经投入了错误类型的资源，而资金紧张的初创公司又没有能力更换这些资源。结果就是出现类似“糟糕的合作伙伴”那样的状况。
• productivity. This expectation proved wrong: The company wasinvesting too much in employees who didn’t stay long.海德原以为将护理人员视为员工并按小时计酬能提升他们的忠诚度并增加工作效率。但事实证明这种想法是错误的：公司在这些离职率很高的员工身上投入了太多资源。
• Partners: The buildings that Baroo served provided lessmarketing合作伙伴：Baroo服务的那些场所提供的营销资源较少。support than expected, and some made unreasonable demands.If Baroo had expanded at a more measured pace, its team mighthave been able to identify the attributes, such as high tenantturnover, that made some buildings better partners than others.Then, they could have checked whether new buildings had thesefeatures before signing them up. But breakneck expansion meantforgoing a careful vetting process in favor of working with anybuilding that expressed interest. In her postmortemanalysis,Hyde also concluded that the property management companiesshould have been paying Baroo, rather than the reverse, since they exerted little effort on Baroo’s behalf and, by virtue of theiraffiliation with Baroo,could collect more “pet rent”—whichaveraged $50 to $150 per pet per month.合作方方面，Baroo服务的建筑物提供的营销支持低于预期，有些还提出了不合理的要求。如果Baroo能以更为审慎的速度扩张，其团队或许就能发现那些导致某些建筑物比其他建筑物更适合作为合作伙伴的因素，比如高租户流动率等。如此一来，他们在与新建筑物签约之前就能先确认这些特征是否存在。但由于扩张过于迅速，Baroo不得不放弃仔细的筛选流程，而是选择与任何表示感兴趣的建筑物合作。在事后分析中，Hyde认为物业管理公司本应向Baroo支付费用，而非相反，因为这些公司几乎没有为Baroo付出努力，而且由于与Baroo有合作关系，它们还能收取更多的“宠物租金”——平均每只宠物每月50到150美元。
• when her venture exceeded them right from the start,shecouldn’t resist setting more ambitious objectives. Despite beingdragged by a big whale, Hyde wasn’t the obsessed Ahab whohad been searching forMoby Dick; she came across the whale—success—unexpectedly, only to find she had a taste forexpansion. Her trajectory was more like that of Michael Corleonein The Godfather. Michael’s initial ambitions are modest: to stayout of the family business and implicitly remain moral. But whenhis father barely survives an assassination attempt, it is,surprisingly, Michael who avenges him—and he does sobrilliantly, with a gun he hides in a restaurant bathroom. Michaelbecomes head of the family and is really good at vanquishing hisenemies, becoming the mafia boss of New York City. But thissuccess costs him both his morality and a real, loving family.Baroo的经历表明，创始人还有两种方式容易受到虚假成功的误导。首先是意外成功具有极大的诱惑力。想想本章开头的Hyde的话：​“当你 钓到一条大鱼时，它就会把你拖下水。​”起初，Hyde对Baroo的目标并不高，但当项目从一开始就超出了她的预期后，她便忍不住设定了更宏伟的目标。尽管被这条“大鱼”拖着前进，Hyde并非像追求白鲸的阿哈巴那样痴迷不悟；她只是意外地遇到了这条“成功之鱼”​，然后发现自己渴望扩张。她的成长轨迹更像是《教父》中的迈克尔·柯里昂。迈克尔最初的志向很朴素：远离家族生意，坚守道德底线。但当父亲险些在暗杀中丧生时，出人意料的是，竟是迈克尔为父亲报了仇——而且他手段高明，用藏在餐厅洗手间里的枪完成了复仇。迈克尔成为家族首领，擅长消灭敌人，最终成为纽约黑手党老大。然而，这种成功让他失去了道德和真正美满的家庭。
• primed to see what she wanted to see at Ink Block:hypergrowthopportunity—just as Michael Corleone saw his early success at vengeance as a sign that he belonged within his mafia family.第二个弱点在于创始人能否清晰理解自己的目标。我们不禁会怀疑，海德在最初是否真正明白自己对于增长和风险的偏好。也许，尽管她表面上表达了最初的倾向，但实际上——甚至可能在她自己都没有意识到的情况下——她真正渴望的是登上风险投资的“火箭船”​。如果是这样，那么她很可能只愿意看到Ink Block所呈现的景象：高速增长的机遇——就如同迈克尔·柯里昂将早期复仇的成功视为自己属于黑手党家族的象征一样。

 Chapter 6: Out of the Frying Pan

• Opportunity Challenges. Entrepreneurs who lead late-stagestartups机会挑战。领导晚期初创企业的创业者们must maintain balance while pursuing opportunity, whichrequires them to set goals for speed and scope that aresufficiently ambitious yet achievable. By “speed,” I mean thepace of expansion of the venture’s core business—that is, itsoriginal product offered solely in its home market. “Scope” is abroader concept that encompasses four dimensions. The firstthree—geographic reach, product line breadth, and innovation—collectively define the range of the startup’s product market: How many additional customer segments will be targeted, andwhich of their needs will beaddressed? The fourth dimension,vertical integration, refers to the range of activities that thestartup will perform in-house rather than outsourcing to thirdparties.在抓住机遇的同时，创业者必须保持平衡，这就要求他们为业务扩张的速度和范围设定既具有挑战性又可实现的目标。所谓“速度”​，指的是企业核心业务的扩张节奏——也就是最初仅在其本土市场推出的产品。而“范围”则是一个更宽泛的概念，包含四个维度。前三个维度——地理覆盖范围、产品线广度以及创新能力——共同决定了初创企业的产品市场范围：企业将瞄准多少新增客户群体，又将满足他们的哪些需求？第四个维度是垂直整合，指的是企业内部自行开展的活动范围，而非外包给第三方。
• Growth can be self-reinforcing when it bolsters a startup’sbusinessmodel, allowing the firm to acquire customers moreefficiently, raise prices,or lower operating expenses. Specifically,three potential benefits of growth stand out:当增长有助于强化创业公司的商业模式时，它就能产生自我强化的效果，使企业能够更高效地获取客户、提高价格或降低运营成本。具体而言，增长的三大潜在好处尤为突出：
• If the business enjoys network effects, then a larger user base will如果企业具有网络效应，那么更庞大的用户群体将attract more new users—again, reducing customer acquisitioncosts. Also, a bigger network means that customers can interactwith a broader set of possible partners. This may allow thegrowing startup to raise prices, since customers value havingaccess to a bigger network.如果企业具备网络效应，那么更庞大的用户群体将吸引更多新用户，从而降低客户获取成本。此外，更大的网络意味着客户可以与更多潜在合作伙伴进行互动。这有助于成长中的初创企业提高价格，因为客户更看 重能够接入更大规模的网络。Finally, as transaction volumes increase, scale economies should最后，随着交易量的增加，规模经济效应应会显现。
• Scope范围Entrepreneurs generally make one of two strategic decisionsabout scope. With the first—the more common of the two—anentrepreneur gradually expands her startup’s scope as itmatures—starting narrow and then broadening over time.企业家通常会在业务范围方面做出两种战略选择之一。其中较为常见的是，随着创业公司的成长，企业家会逐步扩大其业务范围——最初从狭 窄的业务开始，然后逐渐扩展。With the second, an entrepreneur commits to ambitious scoperight from the outset—usually with respect to radical innovation,but sometimes planning for ambitious vertical integration andgeographic sprawl, too. If these bold commitments turn out tobe “a bridge too far,” the consequences usually manifestthemselves quickly, and the startup becomes an early-stagedisaster—it never gets funded or dies within a year or two.第二种情况下，创业者从一开始就确定雄心勃勃的业务范围——通常涉及颠覆性创新，有时也会规划大规模的纵向整合和地域扩张。如果这些大胆的决策最终“力不从心”​，后果通常会很快显现，创业公司就会陷入早期危机：要么无法获得资金支持，要么在一两年内倒闭。
• Innovation. Chapter 2 examined the trade-offs thatentrepreneurs who创新。第二章探讨了创业者在创新过程中面临的权衡取舍问题。lead early-stage ventures need to consider when they ask, “Howmuch should we innovate?” These trade-offs apply equally tolate-stage startups. Radical innovation can deliver a superior,differentiated solution to strong,unmet customer needs, but itrisks 1) raising the cost of switching from prior solutions, thusdeterring adoption if it demands a major change in customerbehavior; 2) increasing marketing outlays if customers must beeducated about the new, innovative product; and 3) boosting thechances of product development delays if such innovationrequires significant scientific or engineering breakthroughs.引领初创企业发展的管理者在思考“我们应该进行多大的创新”时，必须考虑到这些权衡因素。这些权衡同样适用于处于发展后期的初创公 司。激进的创新能够为强烈的、尚未得到满足的客户需求提供卓越的差异化解决方案，但同时也存在以下风险：1）如果创新要求客户行为发生重大改变，可能会增加用户从现有解决方案转向新方案的难度，从而阻碍产品的普及；2）如果需要向客户普及这种创新产品，那么营销成本将会上升；3）如果创新需要重大的科学或工程突破，那么产品开发的进度可能会延迟。
• features are included at the outset and features that get addedlater are frequently just bells and whistles. The other reason isthat, as products mature, each new feature must be technicallycompatible with every feature previously added, making it moredifficult to engineer and thus more time-consuming and costlyto develop. The larger the number of existing features, the longerit takes to determine if a new one will hobble any that wereadded earlier.创新的压力往往源于一个简单的事实：产品会老化，尤其是在技术领域，其老化速度往往很快，最终必须被淘汰或由下一代产品取代。处于晚期的初创企业创业者在这一点上面临着棘手的抉择：何时应停止渐进式改进，转而推出下一代产品？随着时间的推移，对现有产品进行创新所获得的工程效益越来越低。其中一个原因是，产品生命周期后期添加的功能对客户的价值通常较低；基本上，最重要的产品功能在初期就已包含，后期添加的功能往往只是些锦上添花的东西。另一个原因是，随着产品的成熟，每个新功能都必须在技术上与之前添加的所有功能兼 容，这使得开发难度增加，进而导致开发时间更长、成本更高。现有功能越多，就越需要花费更多时间来确认新功能是否会影响之前添加的功能的正常使用。
• ——尤其是初次尝试时，因为他们缺乏经验。如果他们推迟太久才推出下一代产品，那么大部分客户可能已经转而使用竞争对手的先进产品了。此外，如果创业团队试图在下一代产品中融入过多创新元素，他们将不得不在工程开发上投入大量资源，从而面临开发延迟的风险。
• Vertical integration can be risky because it typically requiressignificant investment and the development of new skills andcapabilities, both of which increase a startup’s fixed costs—aproblem if revenue growth ever reverses. That said, verticalintegration is normally less perilous than other ways to expandscope. The exception occurs when the founder of a “bigbang”venture, who has grand ambitions and exacting demands, wantsto do everything in-house, right from the start. We’ll see thisbehavior in Chapter 9 with the venture Better Place, whosefounder/CEO Shai Agassi pushed to develop internally a range oftechnologies, like charging stations for electricvehicles, thatcould have been outsourced to third parties.垂直整合具有风险性，因为它通常需要大量投资以及新技能和能力的培养，这两者都会增加初创企业的固定成本——如果营收增长出现逆转，这将是个问题。不过，相比其他扩张方式，垂直整合通常风险较小。例外情况是那些雄心勃勃且要求苛刻的“大爆炸式”创业公司的创始人，他们希望从一开始就所有事情都内部完成。我们将在第9章看到Better Place公司的例子，其创始人兼首席执行官Shai Agassi坚持内部开发一系列技术，比如电动汽车充电站，而这些技术本可以外包给第三方公司。
• observed that the average economic payoff from mergersisnegative: Buyers tend to overestimate synergiesandconsequently overpay. Mergers are more likely to yield agood return when a corporation does a lot of them and has awell-honed process for performing due diligence and forintegrating the acquired entities. As rookies in the acquisitiongame, most startups don’t bring such experience to the table,so theyprobably would be out of their depth.管理学者发现，对企业而言，合并带来的平均经济收益为负：买方往往高估协同效应，从而导致支付过高的价格。只有当企业频繁进行合并，并且拥有完善的尽职调查和整合被收购企业的流程时，合并才有可能带来良好的回报。作为并购领域的新手，大多数初创企业并不具备这样的经验，因此他们很可能难以应对这一挑战。
• However, acquisitions pose three major risks for scaling然而，收购在扩张过程中存在三大风险startups: 1) overpayment, 2) disappearing talent, and 3)rockypost-merger integration that disrupts the organizationanddistracts management. To prevent talent from leaving,acquirers can try to lock in employees by negotiating newcontracts that vest their equity gains from the merger over, say,eighteenmonths. However, incentivizing an employee to show upatwork doesn’t guarantee that she will have her head in the game.对于初创企业而言，收购存在三大主要风险：1）支付过高；2）人才流失；3）合并后的整合工作混乱，既扰乱了企业运营，也分散了管理层的注意力。为防止人才离职，收购方可以通过协商新合同来锁定员工，让员工在例如18个月内享有合并带来的股权收益。不过，激励员工上班并不能保证他们能全身心投入工作。
• they are viewed as misfits.文化契合度。如果两个企业的文化不同，那么在如何正确做事的问题上，可能会因为无休止的误解而出现整合障碍。此外，如果被收购公司的员工觉得自己的企业文化被强行灌输，或者觉得自己格格不入，那么该公司的士气可能会受到影响。

• 2026/03/03 发表想法

  “赢家诅咒”是一个在经济学、拍卖和投资领域中常见的概念。简单来说，它指的是：在竞拍或竞标中，最终获胜的买家（赢家）往往因为出价过高，导致实际支付的价格超过标的物的真实价值，从而成为“输家”或面临亏损风险的现象。 在您提供的风险投资（VC）案例中，其具体表现为： 情境：多家VC争相投资一家热门、看似前途无量的晚期初创公司。 竞争：在激烈的竞价过程中，每家VC都基于自己对未来的乐观预期出价。由于信息不完全和竞争情绪（“动物精神”），价格被不断推高。 结果：最终“赢”得投资权的VC，给出了所有竞争者中最高的估值和报价。这个价格很可能已经充分甚至过度反映了公司的潜力，隐含了过于乐观的预期。 诅咒显现：这家VC以如此高的价格投资后，公司未来必须成长到异常巨大的规模，才能让VC获得满意的回报。如果公司成长稍不及预期，这笔“赢来的”投资就可能回报微薄甚至亏损。也就是说，“赢得交易”本身，就因为过高的出价而埋下了难以盈利的种子。

  
  

  原文： auctioned item. This can happen when 1) there is considerable uncertainty about the item’s true worth, resulting in a big spread in bidders’ estimates of value; and 2) a well-run auction harnesses “animal spirits” that fuel frenzied competition.增长压力。在第一部分中我们了解到，风险投资家倾向于向创业者施压，要求其实现激进增长。因为风险投资的商业模式要求在少数投资项目上获得高额利润，以弥补其他项目的亏损或平庸回报。对于处于后期阶段的初创企业而言，投资者对增长的诉求尤为强烈，因为各风险投资家都会争相投资于那些表现出强劲发展势头的初创企业，从而抬高其股价，甚至出现过度支付的情况。这种现象被称为“赢家诅咒”​，因为在拍卖环境中，获胜出价往往高于拍卖物品的真实价值。这种情况可能发生在以下两种情况下：1）人们对物品真实价值的判断存在较大不确定性，导致竞买人对价值的估算差异巨大；2）运作良好的拍卖会会激发人们的竞争热情，从而加剧竞争程度。A winner’s curse may be at play when VCs bid for the right to invest in a rapidly scaling late-stage startup. There’s lots ofuncertainty about what any startup will be worth, and—believeme—the typical VC exhibits plenty of animal spirits. Thedownside of this feeding frenzy is that the winningVC has a highbar for earning a positive return, putting even more pressure onthe venture to continue to grow rapidly.当风险投资家竞相投资于快速发展的晚期初创企业时，可能会出现“赢家诅咒”现象。任何初创企业的实际价值都存在很大不确定性，而且相信我，典型的风险投资家具有强烈的投机心理。这种疯狂竞争的负面影响是，获胜的风险投资家要实现正回报的难度更大，这进一步加大了企业持续快速增长的压力。VC Fred Wilson has estimated that two-thirds of the startupfailures he’s familiar with are caused by overfunding an ideathat’s promising but has unresolved problems. He says, “Theinvestors and boards of these companies (i.e., me) are

• Down Rounds. In Chapter 2, we saw that startups are exposed tothe后续融资。在第二章中，我们了解到初创企业面临着risk of a “down round”—that is, raising additional capital in anew round at a share price lower than the price paid by theprevious round’s investors. A down round is a nasty event: It signals that a firm is struggling, which can make it difficult toattract and retain employees who seek upside from equity grants—or who worry about going down with a sinking ship.“降价融资”的风险——也就是说，在新一轮融资中，股票发行价格低于上一轮投资者的买入价格。降价融资是一件糟糕的事情：它表明企业经营状况不佳，这会使得企业难以吸引和留住那些期望从股权激励中获益的员工，或者那些担心会随企业一同陷入困境的员工。
• Funding Risk. In Chapter 8, we’ll see that entire sectorssometimes fall融资风险。在第八章中，我们将看到有时整个行业都会陷入低迷。out of favor with investors. When this happens, even healthyfirms may not be able to raise capital for months or even years.Consequently, before they commit to ambitious expansion plans,entrepreneurs leading late-stage startups should have a contingency plan in case of a funding drought. Should they keepsome capital in reserve? Can they cut back fast enough to surviveon internally generated cash flow?融资风险。在第8章中，我们将看到有时整个行业都会失去投资者的青睐。一旦发生这种情况，即便是经营状况良好的企业也可能数月甚至数年无法筹集到资金。因此，在制定雄心勃勃的扩张计划之前，处于初创晚期的企业家应制定应对融资短缺的应急方案。他们是否应该预留一部分资金？或者能否及时削减开支，依靠内部现金流维持运营？
• forays abroad. Consequently, board members who are early-stage investors may be less enthusiastic about aggressiveexpansion plans than their late-stage counterparts. Inthissituation, the challenge for a CEO is to prevent the boardfrom gridlocking over strategic decisions.创业者面临的另一个问题是：为初创企业最新一轮融资的投资者，其优先事项很可能与最早投入资金的投资者不同。为了让后期投资者获得可观的回报，初创企业必须持续积极扩张。例如，如果该企业已在其核心市场达到饱和状态，那么它可能就需要进入国际市场或推出新产品——如前所述，这些都是具有风险的做法。相比之下，早期投资者以较低的股价购得了股权，因此只要初创企业能保持稳定发展，避免冒险的产品线多元化或海外拓展，他们就能预期获得丰厚的回报。因此，作为早期投资者的董事会成员可能对激进扩张计划不太感兴趣。在这种情况下，首席执行官面临的挑战就是防止董事会在战略决策上陷入僵局。
• Generalists to Specialists. The composition of the staff of ascaling从通才到专家。规模扩张过程中员工的构成startup changes dramatically over time as specialists arerecruited and early leaders exit. A small team of jack-of-all-tradesgeneralists, who each can fill many roles as circumstancesrequire, gives way to a large group of specialists who have theknow-how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of engineering, marketing, and other operating functions.Forexample, teams of specialists might be added to run digitalad campaigns,provide after-sale technical support to newcustomers, and monitor product quality.随着专业人才的招募和早期创始人的离职，初创公司的员工构成会发生显著变化。最初由多面手通才组成的小团队，可以根据需要承担多种职责，后来逐渐被拥有专业知识、能提升工程、营销等运营职能效率和效果的专业人才团队所取代。例如，公司可能会增加专业团队来负责数字广告投放、为新客户提供售后技术支持以及监控产品质量。
• we’ll see some echoes of the Good Idea, Bad Bedfellowspattern as late-stage startup Dot & Bo repeatedly fails to find aVP-Operations who can reduce its order backlog and getshipping costs under control. This “Missing Manager” problemcan become acute when the talent gap is in a mission-criticalfunction—like operations, in the case of Dot & Bo. Likewise, theodds of selecting the wrong individual rise when a CEO haslimited prior experience with that mission-criticalfunction, bothbecause she doesn’t know what to look for in a candidate andshe lacks a professional network rich with potential hires.由于这些原因，随着企业的发展，高管人员更替较为常见。风险投资家弗雷德·威尔逊估计，典型的初创企业在成立到实现规模扩张的过程中，管理团队通常会更换三次。威尔逊指出，更换团队并不等同于因表现不佳而解雇某人。不过，对于那些无法应对当前职位日益变化要求的高级管理者来说，创造新的岗位可能很困难；而解雇他们又可能会打击从创业初期就与他们共事的同事的士气——尤其是当这些人是企业使命和价 值观的倡导者时。威尔逊指出，由于连续创业者此前经历过这些情况，因此更能有效应对高管流动问题。他还建议创始人向新员工坦诚相待，让他们明白“虽然可能无法坚持到最后，但会获得丰厚的股权回报”​。当然，对于现有职位的员工该做何处理只是高管流动问题的一半；另一半则在于如何找到替代者以及在哪里寻找。在第八章中，我们将看到“好点子，坏搭档”模式的再现——晚期初创公司Dot & Bo始终无法找到能够减少订单积压并控制运输成本的运营副总裁。当人才缺口出现在关键职能领域时，比如Dot & Bo公司的运营部门，这种“缺失经理”的问题就会变得尤为突出。同样地，如果首席执行官对某个关键职能缺乏经验，那么选错人选的概率也会增加——因为既不知道该从哪些方面评估候选人，也缺乏能够接触到合适人选的专业人脉网络。
• CEO Succession. Some founder/CEOs of late-stage startups areCEO继任问题。一些处于晚期的初创企业的创始人/CEO面临afflicted with what Steve Blank calls the “Peter Pan Syndrome”—they don’t want to grow up. Such founders long for the
• chaotic rhythms,camaraderie, and scrappiness of the venture’searly days and seek to relive them by focusing their energy onnew initiatives that they can build fromscratch—even when theirteam should be driving hard to improve and expand the existingbusiness instead.他们患上了史蒂夫·布兰克所称的“彼得·潘综合症”——不愿长大成熟。这类创始人怀念创业初期的混乱氛围、团队情谊和拼搏精神，于是将精力投入到可以从零开始的新项目中，试图重历那种感觉，而此时他们的团队本应全力推动现有业务的改进和扩张。
• employees’ lack of initiative and commitment. Recent hires, inturn, may be jealous of early employees who’ve amassedenormous stock option gains (“That engineer in the next cubicledoes the same thing I do, and she just made $5 million”).Second, as specialists are added to the staff and their unitsexpand, functions can develop their own subcultures. Employeesmay feel a stronger sense of attachment to their functional unit—say, marketing or warehouse operations—than to the ventureoverall.在快速扩张的初创企业中，大量新员工的加入会使得维持强大且统一的企业文化变得困难：这些新员工入职时间较短，尚未充分领会企业价值观。由于缺乏能让他们“本能知道”该做什么的文化规范，新员工在遇到问题或机会时可能会选择无所作为。此外，与那些通常对创业使命充满热情的早期团队成员相比，新员工可能将工作视为“仅仅是一份工作”​，这进一步削弱了他们的责任感。正如高管教练杰里·科洛纳所说：​“有些企业的文化就像滚石游戏……”你把布满灰尘、肮脏且粗糙的石头放入石磨中，几小时后就能得到光亮的宝石。石头相互碰撞的过 程催生了积极的转变……不过问题在于，并非每个人都愿意在“石磨”中工作。快速扩张的初创公司文化可能以两种方式瓦解。首先，如果早期团队成员对专家日益增长的影响力或某些新员工的缺乏主动性和投入感到不满，就可能出现“老员工与新员工”的冲突。而新员工则可能嫉妒那些通过股票期权获得了巨额收益的早期员工（​“隔壁工位的那位工程师和我做的工作一样，但她却赚了500万美元”​）​。其次，随着专业人员加入团队且其部门规模扩大，各职能单元可能会形成自己的亚文化。员工可能更认同自己所属的职能部门——比如市场部或仓储运营部——而非整个企业。

 Chapter 7: Speed Trap

• Speed Trap速度陷阱How fast is too fast when it comes to scaling? Jason Goldberggained some insight into that question after founding twostartups, with vastly different results. The first, a venture thathelped company recruiters manage employee referrals,expanded too early and lost its investors a lot of money. Hissecond, a service that referred news items based on what auser’s Facebook friends and Twitter followers were reading, wassold within a year to a larger player in the industry; Goldberg and his investors netted over 13x their original investment.在扩展业务方面，多快才算太快呢？杰森·戈德堡在创立了两家初创公司后对这个问题有了些领悟，这两家公司的结局却大相径庭。第一家公司是一家帮助企业招聘人员管理员工推荐业务的平台，由于扩张得太快，导致投资者损失了大量资金。第二家公司则提供根据用户Facebook好友和Twitter粉丝的阅读内容来推荐新闻的服务，该公司在一年内就被行业内的大型企业收购了；戈德堡和他的投资者们因此获得了超过初始投资13倍的收益。
• 权变得一文不值，员工纷纷离职。投资者也不愿意再投入资金。此外，如果现有投资者愿意为初创企业提供资金支持，她会要求获得大量新股权，这会大幅稀释高级管理者及未跟进投资的股东的股权比例。由于董事会必须批准此类融资方案，因此围绕是否以及如何进行融资，董事会内部将会展开漫长的激烈争论。Step 11: Endgame. At this point, the problem is clear: Thecompany第11步：终局。此时问题已经很明显：公司is growing at an unsustainable rate and must slow down. Thequestion is,how hard to slam on the brakes? Is it enough to turndown the marketingspigot? Or, does the startup need to cuthead count to survive? Does it make sense to try to sell thecompany? If investors won’t provide the capital required to turnthe company around, will a corporation with deep pockets see astrategic fit? We’ll explore these questions in Chapter 10, which lays out the moves entrepreneurs can make if they think they areon a path toward failure.第11步：终局阶段。此时问题已经很明确：该公司正以不可持续的速度增长，必须放缓发展节奏。问题在于，该多用力踩刹车才合适？仅仅是削减营销开支是否足够？还是说这家初创企业需要裁员才能生存下去？尝试出售公司是否可行？如果投资者不愿提供扭转公司局势所需的资金，那么是否有财力雄厚的企业会看中其战略价值并愿意收购呢？我们将在第10章探讨这些问题，该章节将阐述创业者在意识到自己可能走向失败时可以采取的措施。

• 2026/03/03 发表想法

  这句话的意思是，某些商业模式具有三种内在的结构性特征，这些特征会推动企业（包括初创公司和竞争对手）更快地扩大规模。下面我逐一解释： 强大的网络效应：指产品或服务的价值随用户增加而提升。例如，一个社交平台用户越多，对新用户的吸引力就越大，因此企业会努力快速获取用户，以增强竞争优势。 高昂的客户转换成本：指客户更换供应商时需要付出较高代价，如金钱、时间或学习成本。这能帮助企业留住客户，从而更敢于投入资源加速扩张，而不必担心客户流失。 显著的成本规模经济：指企业规模越大，平均成本越低。这使得企业有动力扩大生产或服务规模，以降低成本、提高利润，从而在市场中更具竞争力。 综合来看，当商业模式具备这些特征时，企业和竞争对手都会感受到压力或动力，必须加快增长步伐，以抢占市场、锁定客户或降低成本。否则，可能被对手抢先，失去优势。

  
  

  原文： economies ofscale—impel a startup, along with rivals who share these attributes, to accelerate growth.某些商业模式的三大结构性特征——强大的网络效应、高昂的客户转换成本以及显著的成本规模经济——会促使初创企业以及拥有相同特征的竞争对手加快增长步伐。

• economies ofscale—impel a startup, along with rivals who sharethese attributes, to accelerate growth.某些商业模式的三大结构性特征——强大的网络效应、高昂的客户转换成本以及显著的成本规模经济——会促使初创企业以及拥有相同特征的竞争对手加快增长步伐。
• Networks come in two flavors—one-sided and two-sided—depending on the number of distinct user groups theyencompass. Two-sided networks have two groups of users whoeach consistently play a distinct role in transactions. For example,credit card companies serve cardholders andmerchants,recruiting websites match job seekers and corporateemployers,and videogame consoles connect gamers with gamedevelopers. Bycontrast, one-sided networks have just one type ofuser. Although every Skype call has a sender and a receiver, theseroles are transient: Most Skype users make and receive calls atdifferent times.根据所包含的不同用户群体数量，网络可分为两种类型：单边网络和双边网络。双边网络包含两个用户群体，每个群体在交易中都扮演着明确的角色。例如，信用卡公司为持卡人和商家服务，招聘网站将求职者与企业雇主匹配起来，而电子游戏主机则将玩家与游戏开发者连接起来。相比之下，单边网络只有一种类型的用户。虽然每通Skype通话都有发 送者和接收者，但这些角色是临时性的：大多数Skype用户在不同时间进行通话的发送和接收。
• fewer rival bidders on their side of the network.在双边网络中，各方的成员通常更希望能够接触到对方更多用户，这就是正向的跨边网络效应。例如，吸引更多商家使用信用卡会提升信用卡对消费者的吸引力，反之亦然。不过，有时跨边网络效应也可能是负面的：增加另一方的用户数量反而会降低产品的价值。比如，消费者可能会对充斥着大量垃圾广告的网站感到厌烦。在双边网络中，各方的成员也可能对自己这一方用户数量有特定偏好。例如，玩家可能希望有更多使用相同类型游戏机的玩家，这样他们就可以交换游戏并在网上一起玩游戏，这就是正向的同边网络效应。相反，在eBay拍卖中，竞买者则希望自己这一方的竞争者越少越好。
• Entrepreneurs have powerful economic incentives to acceleratethe growth of products that harness strong positive networkeffects. Since a product that offers access to a bigger network ismore valuable to existingusers, it can command a higher price—although price hikes might bedeferred, to supercharge expansion. And, because access to a bigger network is also morevaluable to potential users, a startup exploiting network effectsshould see declining customer acquisition costs. We see thismagic at work with companies like Airbnb, American Express,Expedia,Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft Windows, Nasdaq, Slack,Sony PlayStation,Tinder, and Zillow.企业家有强烈的经济动机去加速发展那些具有显著正向网络效应的产品。由于能够接入更大网络的产品对现有用户更有价值，因此其定价往往更高——不过为了推动扩张，价格上涨可能会被推迟。同时，由于更大的网络对潜在用户也更具吸引力，因此利用网络效应的初创企业应能降低客户获取成本。我们在Airbnb、美国运通、Expedia、Facebook、LinkedIn、微软Windows、纳斯达克、Slack、索尼PlayStation、Tinder和Zillow等公司身上看到了这种神奇的效果。
• What types of products enjoy strong network effects? Foremostamong them would be marketplaces that connect parties withvery specific requirements (the “demand side”) with partnerswho have highly differentiated offerings (the “supply side”).Dating and job recruiting sites fit this profile, as do onlineauctions like eBay and sites that display real estate listings. If allof the potential home buyers and sellers in a communityparticipate in a single network, then buyers will maximize theirodds of finding their dream house, and sellers will maximize theirodds of finding the buyer willing to pay the highest price.哪些类型的产品具有较强的网络效应？其中最典型的就是那些将具有特定需求的各方（​“需求方”​）与提供差异化产品的合作伙伴（​“供应 方”​）连接起来的市场平台。约会和招聘网站就属于此类，易趣等在线拍卖网站以及房地产信息展示网站也是如此。如果一个社区内的所有潜在购房者和卖家都参与同一个网络平台，那么买家就能最大程度地提高找到理想房子的机会，而卖家则能最大程度地找到愿意支付最高价格的买家。
• By their nature, new ventures won’t have much history ofinteraction. The other criteria could apply, but there are two riskswith signaling rivals to try to get them to spend more sensibly.First, rivals may perceive this as a desperate ploy by a weakenedcompetitor unable to weather head-to-headcompetition, whichmay actually strengthen their resolve. Second, it’s possible thatinvestors will overreact to this distress call and drive down sectorvaluations.从本质上看，新兴企业几乎没有互动历史。其他标准或许适用，但向竞争对手发出信号以促使他们更理性地行事存在两大风险。首先，竞争对手可能将此视为无力应对直接竞争的弱者的绝望手段，这反而可能让他们更加坚定立场。其次，投资者可能会对这种求救信号反应过度，从而导致整个行业的估值下跌。

 Chapter 9: Moonshots and Miracles

• 。对于以色列业务部门的首席执行官这一关键职位，阿加西聘请了一位以色列国防军的前少将。起初，高级管理团队中没有人拥有充电站等实物产品或汽车行业的经验。
• Place每服务一辆汽车至少需要设置两个充电站。这些充电站可以设在停车场、路边以及客户车库内，它们能够在四到六小时内为完全耗尽电量的电池完成充电。预计每个充电站的建造及安装成本在200到300美元之间。该团队还在评估这样一种情景：当Better Place最终能为以色列200万辆汽车中的10%提供充电服务时，将需要建设40万个充电站，总成本超过8000万美元。
• once its charging network became available.以色列作为启动市场还有另一个优势：在以色列，70%的家庭轿车实际上是企业的车队用车，这些车作为福利提供给员工。阿加西和他的团队认为，如果能说服企业车队运营商使用Better Place的车辆，就能加快该技术的普及速度。最终，他和他的团队成功说服了400家以色列企业签署了意向书——这些意向书并不具有法律约束力——承诺一旦BetterPlace的充电网络建成，就会将其车队车辆更换为Better Place的车辆。
• Place的总部位于帕洛阿尔托，此外还在以色列、丹麦、法国、西班牙、奥地利和澳大利亚设有办事处。该公司已与澳大利亚、夏威夷、安大略省、加利福尼亚州、荷兰、中国和日本的合作伙伴宣布了试点项目或全面网络部署的计划。与此同时，Better Place的管理层开始与多家供应商合作开发各类系统组件。充电站经过特殊设计，既坚固耐用，又能通过无线调制解调器追踪用户的使用情况。开发汽车软件——该软件被命名为OSCAR（汽车操作系统）——极具挑战性。OSCAR需要执行多项功能，包括监测电力使用情况和电池健康状况，在需要充电时向驾驶员发出提示并指引他们前往最近的充电站，控制充电速率以减少电池损坏；此外，为避免电网瘫痪，如果Better Place的客户整体耗电量过大，该系统还会选择性地暂时限制某些车辆在夜间的充电。
• Despite great uncertainty about demand and costs, Agassi wassuccessful with this fundraising round in large part due to hischarisma and ability to spin an inspiring, spellbinding vision of abetter tomorrow. It didn’t hurt that he’d become something ofa business celebrity; in 2009 Agassi was named one of Timemagazine’s “100 Most Influential People,” and his TED Talk, inwhich he asserted that the transition to electric cars was “themoral equivalent of abolishing slavery,” garnered 1.3 millionviews.尽管对需求和成本存在巨大不确定性，但阿加西仍成功完成了这轮融资，这在很大程度上要归功于他的个人魅力以及他描绘的美好未来愿景的感染力与说服力。此外，他本身也颇具商业名人效应：2009年，阿加西被《时代》杂志评为“100位最具影响力人物”之一，而他那场TED演讲中提出的“向电动汽车转型在道德上相当于废除奴隶制”的观 点，更是获得了130万的观看量。
• 不过，尽管许多汽车制造商考虑过阿加西的提议，但最终没有一家签约；更糟糕的是，他还得罪了其中一些厂商。例如，在2008年的一次会议上，通用汽车的高管们提议与Better Place合作，为旗下计划推出的插电式混合动力车雪佛兰Volt建设充电站。但阿加西却对这款车嗤之以鼻：​“它有排气管，简直就是辆愚蠢的汽车。​”我们做事从不半途而废。我们绝不会与有尾气排放的汽车合作，就这么简单。​”阿加西后来自信地对一位同事说：​“下次会议我们将在自己的总部举行，到时我们的市值会比他们更高。​”与此同时，随着贝特尔普莱斯在雷诺-日产公司的支持者离职，取而代之的是对贝特尔普莱斯持怀疑态度的人，两者之间的关系变得恶化。雷诺-日产电动汽车业务的新经理认为，快速充电技术能在三四十分钟内将耗尽的电池电量充至80%，是解决“续航焦虑”问题的更优方案——因为消费者担心在到达充电站之前电池就会耗尽。相比建设快速充电网络所需的成本，Better Place在电池更换站上的投资要高得多。这位从未与阿加西会面的新经理还是纯电动紧凑车型Nissan Leaf的坚定支持者，不过该车型并不支持电池更换功能。聆风于2010年底上市，税前售价为33,000美元。
• 随着履行上市承诺的压力不断增加，公司内部的紧张气氛也日益加剧。2010年6月的一次会议上，董事会就公司的过度开支问题质问了阿加西。当阿加西提出抗议时，董事会主席奥弗威胁要解雇他，但最终放弃了这一想法。阿加西与高级管理层的关系也变得紧张起来。他因员工表现不佳而斥责他们，据《快速公司杂志》报道，他还因为一名全球业务负责人未经他同意就与董事会成员交谈而将其解雇。
• higher pricetag—were unsatisfied with Better Place’s solution tothe problem of an electric vehicle’s limited range? In theory,they could simply restrict their travel to short distances and useelectric cars only for a predictable daily commute or errandsaround town. But what would happen with longertrips?Practically speaking, only affluent families could afford a secondgasoline-powered vehicle for this purpose, limiting demand forelectric cars with short range and without swappable batteries.那些原本可能会购买电动汽车的消费者——尽管电动汽车价格较高——如果对Better Place为解决电动汽车续航里程有限问题所提出的方案不满意会怎样呢？从理论上讲，他们可以选择只进行短距离出行，将电动汽车仅用于日常通勤或城市内的短途办事。但如果是长途出行呢？实际上，只有富裕家庭才负担得起第二辆汽油车来满足这种需求，这就限制了那些续航里程短且没有可更换电池的电动汽车的市场需求。
• with a monomaniacal focus on her bold vision.这样的“大胆尝试”也极易陷入“连锁奇迹”失败模式。因为这类创新涉及在尖端技术、商业模式创新或两者兼有方面的惊人胆识。而大胆的创新往往意味着对客户需求的巨大不确定性，以及漫长的产品开发周期。许多“大胆尝试”型的商业模式依托强大的网络效应、高昂的客户转换成本和/或显著的规模经济优势，这些因素能推动产品上市后的快速扩张。然而，漫长的开发周期和快速扩张需要巨额资本支持。更棘手的是，这类项目通常需要与成熟企业建立战略合作伙伴关系，而这些企业的优先事项可能与初创企业的并不完全一致。对于那些法律地位模糊的解决方案，他们可能还需要政府支持。要想让所有这些“奇迹”成为现实，就需要有一位具有超凡魅力的创始人，他能全神贯注地致力于自己宏伟的愿景。
• structural attributes—in particular, network effects and strongscaleeconomies, as with Better Place’s charging network—thatimpel rapidscaling, once the product is launched (Line #3).该图的复杂性表明，一项“登月计划”要成功需要诸多因素同时到位，但同时也存在很多可能出错的地方。从左到右看，推动“登月计划”的宏伟愿景往往源自像阿加西这样的狂热创始人（图中的第1条线）​。创新的巨大规模要求漫长的产品开发阶段（第2条线）​，而预期的商业模式通常具有某些结构性特征——尤其是网络效应和强大的规模经济，比如Better Place的充电网络——这些特征使得产品一旦上市就能实现快速扩张（第3条线）​。
• 新程度才算过度。在这种情况下，市场调研存在诸多困难。首先，由于许多颠覆性项目的开发周期很长，因此无法在设计初期就获得客户对产品试用版本的反馈。因此，许多创业者只能进行客户调查，但事后却后悔这一决定。例如，Better Place在2008年对1000名以色列车主进行了调查，结果显示有20%的人愿意购买Better Place的汽车，这意味着该公司的潜在市场规模为40万人。然而当Better Place倒闭时，实际销量仅为1000辆。
• ——但实际上只吸引了2万名客户，远未达到预期的数百万客户规模。
• 试”​，要求客户根据产品详细准确的描述提前预购尚未上市的产品。例如，特斯拉通过收取可退还的定金——Model 3为1000美元——来获取客户预订信息。Jibo则利用了Indiegogo众筹平台，不过从本质上讲，众筹更多反映的是早期采用者的需求，而非主流消费者的意愿。此外，如第4章所述，创业者可以通过收集客户对“外观原型”的反馈来补充烟雾测试，就像Jibo团队在开发“奥兹国魔法师”原型时所做的那样。该原型由隐藏在背后的人操作木偶来控制，以此观察消费者会如何与社交机器人互动。
• the customers Iridium targeted were rarely out of theircellphone’s roaming range. Another drawback was thatIridium’s phones required a clear line of sight to an orbitingsatellite to send and receive signals. This meant that—unlikecellphones—they didn’t work inside buildings and weren’treliable on the streets of urban “canyons” enclosed by tallbuildings. To address this disadvantage, Iridium’s teamredesigned their phones to switch to terrestrial cellularfrequencies whenever possible. The redesign was time-consuming and added to the cost of Iridium’s already expensiveoffering.其次，研发类似解决方案的竞争对手会公布自己的计划，这迫使相关团队决定是投入额外时间来追赶对手，还是冒着功能落后的风险。例如，铱星卫星电话最初是在20世纪80年代末研发的，当时地面手机服务价格昂贵且覆盖范围有限。但等到1998年铱星公司推出产品时，地面手机服务已经得到广泛普及，铱星的目标用户几乎从未处于手机信号覆盖 范围之外。另一个缺点是，铱星手机需要与轨道卫星保持清晰的视线联系才能发送和接收信号。这意味着与手机不同，它们在建筑物内无法使用，在高楼林立的城市“峡谷”街道上也不可靠。为了解决这一缺陷，Iridium团队重新设计了手机，使其在可能的情况下切换到地面蜂窝频率。这种重新设计耗时较长，进一步增加了本已昂贵的Iridium产品的成本。
• version’s performance for a faster time to market,entrepreneurs should consider the impact of making a weak firstimpression on early adopters. Ventures with world-changingaspirations often generate enormous hype, so journalists andsocial media users can be savage when a much-anticipatedoffering disappoints. Jibo took this kind of beating, with criticscalling it a “$900 party trick,” as did Segway (“riders lookdorky; more Flintstones thanJetsons”), Iridium (“phone biggerthan a brick”), and Better Place (“brokenpromises: not cheaperthan a gas-powered car”).然而，在权衡是否为加快上市时间而牺牲初始版本的性能时，创业者应考虑给早期用户留下糟糕第一印象的后果。那些有着改变世界愿景的创业项目往往能引发巨大关注，因此当备受期待的产品令人失望时，记者和社交媒体用户往往会严厉批评。Jibo就遭遇了这样的批评，有评论称其为“900美元的把戏”​；Segway也被批评为“骑手看起来很傻乎乎的，更像《弗林斯通一家》里的角色而非《杰森一家》​”​；Iridium则被指“手机大得像块砖”​；Better Place则因“违背承诺：并不比汽油 车便宜”而受到指责。
• The term “reality distortion field” was coined for a 1960s StarTrek“现实扭曲场”这一术语源自20世纪60年代的《星际迷航》系列。episode, but later was co-opted to describe Steve Jobs’suncanny ability to mesmerize the engineers developing theoriginal Macintosh computer,inspiring them to work eighty-hour weeks for months on end. Jobsexhorted: “We’re here to put adent in the universe. Otherwise, why else even be here?” Underthe spell of a reality distortion field, potentialemployees,investors, and strategic partners perceive a reality in which theircommitment to the venture can—despite enormous obstacles—help make the founder’s dream come true.“现实扭曲场”这一术语最初是用于描述20世纪60年代《星际迷航》中的一集剧情，后来被用来形容史蒂夫·乔布斯那种令人着迷的能力——他能够激发开发初代麦金塔电脑的工程师们的热情，让他们连续数月每周工作80小时。乔布斯激励道：​“我们在这里是为了改变世界。否则，我们为何要存在？​”在“现实扭曲场”的影响下，潜在的员工、投资者和战略合作伙伴会认为，尽管面临巨大障碍，但他们对项目的投入仍能够帮助实现创始人的梦想。
• Narcissists have an inflated sense of their self-worth and arepreoccupied with having that viewpoint reinforced. They cravecontrol,power, and fame; have a strong sense of entitlement thatstems from their conviction in their beliefs and superior abilities;and are hypersensitive tocriticism—often simply ignoringinformation that runs counter to their worldview. To defend theirinflated yet fragile egos, they refuse to admit they’ve mademistakes and they double down on flawed strategies. For thesereasons, narcissists are not only perceived as arrogant andundulygrandiose, they’re also especially vulnerable to theescalation of commitment blunder mentioned earlier in thechapter. 自恋者有着夸大的自我价值感，且始终致力于维持这种观念。他们渴望控制、权力和名声，由于坚信自己的信念和卓越能力而产生强烈的理所当然感。他们对批评极为敏感，通常会直接忽略与自己世界观相悖的信息。为了捍卫自己脆弱而膨胀的自我，他们拒绝承认错误，反而坚持错误的策略。正因如此，自恋者不仅被视为傲慢且自大，还特别容易陷入本章前面提到的“承诺谬误”的升级困境。
• 抛弃。Narcissism is a personality trait that everyone displays to someextent;自恋是一种每个人在某种程度上都会表现出的性格特征；
• 的防线。Recruiting the right board members is crucial. Since newinvestors who lead a fundraising round will typically negotiate fora board seat as a condition for contributing capital, there isn’t alot of room for choice on this front. The good news, though, isthat most venture capital partners are effective as boardmembers—it’s the primary way they add value to their portfoliocompanies. VC partners often sit on as many as ten boards at atime and will have served on many others in the past, so they arelikely to have deep experience with the strategy issuesconfronting scaling startups,the leadership styles of differentfounders, and best practices for startup board management.Segway had one venture capital partner on its board; BetterPlace had two—one was a Better Place investor, the other wasAgassi’s friend and Davos co-conspirator Andrey Zarur, whowas not an investor in Better Place but brought experience as a venture capitalist and as the co-founder, CEO, and/or boardmember of three biotech startups.招募合适的董事会成员至关重要。由于牵头融资轮的新投资者通常会以获得董事会席位作为出资条件，因此在这方面选择的空间不大。不过好消息是，大多数风险投资合伙人都能胜任董事会成员一职——这正是他们为投资组合公司创造价值的主要方式。风险投资合伙人常常同时担任多达十个董事会的成员，过去还曾参与过许多其他董事会的工作，因此他们很可能对规模扩张型初创企业面临的战略问题、不同创始人的领导风格以及初创企业董事会管理的最佳实践有着丰富的经验。赛格威的董事会中有一名风险投资合伙人；Better Place的董事会有两名风险投资合伙人，其中一名是Better Place的投资者，另一名是阿加西的朋友、达沃斯会议的共同参与者安德烈·扎鲁尔。他并非Better Place的投资者，但拥有丰富的风险投资经验，并曾担任三家生物科技初创公司的联合创始人、首席执行官和/或董事会成员。

 Chapter 10: Running on Empty

• Running on Empty耗尽燃料继续前行Failure is not the worst thing; the worst thing is working onsomething for失败并非最糟糕的事；最糟糕的是为某事付出努力却毫无结果。years with no end in sight.多年时间，而且看不到尽头。—Andrew Lee, Esper co-founder——安德鲁·李，Esper联合创始人
• When I spoke to more founders of failed startups about how andwhy they decided to shut down, I heard two sentimentsrepeatedly. First, that the decision was fraught with strongemotions—just as I’d observed with Quincy’s co-founders.This is not surprising: Since a founder’s identity is wrapped up with his venture’s, terminating his startup is akin to negatingpart of himself—and admitting that a big part of his life isirredeemably flawed. Second, many felt they had waited too longand wished that they had confronted this difficult decisionsooner.当我与那些失败创业公司的创始人探讨他们决定关闭公司的方式和原因时，反复听到两种观点。首先，这个决定充满了强烈的情绪因素——正如我在昆西的联合创始人身上观察到的那样。这并不奇怪：由于创始人的身份与他的创业项目紧密相连，因此关闭公司相当于否定了自己的一部分，也意味着承认自己生命中的重要部分存在无法弥补的缺陷。其次，许多人觉得他们等待得太久了，希望自己能更早面对这个艰难的决定。
• Failure rarely sneaks up on a founder; it’s usually preceded by aseries of choices that don’t pan out—some of which seem likeHail Mary passes that fall short of their target. Think of thesechoices as the prelude to a fall. En route to the exit, founders arelikely to try at least some of the following:失败很少会突然降临到创始人的头上；通常在它发生之前，有一系列决策并未取得预期效果——其中一些决策看似最后的救命稻草，却未能达到目标。可以把这些决策视为失败的前奏。在走向失败的道路上，创始人很可能会尝试以下一些手段：pivoting to a new business modelraising a funding round fromnew investorsselling the companyraising a bridge round fromexisting investors reducing head count 转向新的商业模式向新投资者筹集资金出售公司向现有投资者寻求追加投资削减员工人数Sometimes founders succeed in their last-ditch efforts, at leastenough to turn their struggling startups around. But more oftenthan not, they don’t. Even worse, when one of these initiativesdoesn’t work out, the next one is all the more likely to falter. Forexample, if a founder shops the company and then fails to securean acceptable acquisition offer, existing investors becomenervous about committing more capital.有时，创始人能在最后关头取得成功，至少能让陷入困境的初创企业扭亏为盈。但更多情况下并非如此。更糟糕的是，一旦某项举措失败，接下来的尝试就更有可能失败。例如，如果创始人试图出售公司却未能获得满意的收购报价，现有投资者就会对继续投入资金感到担忧。
• The second drawback is that a startup may not have enoughrunway left to complete the pivot successfully. Recall Eric Ries’sdefinition of“runway”: the number of pivots that a startup can complete before cash balances are exhausted. That number maybe zero if the startup has just enough cash to commence a pivotbut—absent an infusion of fresh capital—cannot survive longenough to see whether the pivot is working.第二个缺点是，初创企业可能没有足够的资金来成功完成战略转型。回顾一下埃里克·里斯对“资金缓冲期”的定义：即初创企业在现金耗尽之前能够完成的转型次数。如果一家初创企业的现金仅够启动一次转型，但如果没有新的资金注入，它就无法维持足够长的时间来验证这次转型是否有效，那么这个数字就可能是零。
• Typically, it’s not difficult for an entrepreneur who puts hisventure up for sale to find an audience. Logical candidates will berivals or big companies operating in the same space. And even ifthey aren’t serious about buying the startup, these players mayexpress interest as a means of learning more about theventure’s strategy, financial performance,intellectual property,employee compensation, and so forth.通常，将企业出售的创业者并不难找到潜在买家。合理的买家可能是同一领域的竞争对手或大型企业。即便他们并非真的有意购买该初创企业，这些买家也可能会表示兴趣，以此了解该企业的战略、财务表现、知识产权、员工薪酬等方面的情况。
• Head Count Reduction. If their startup’s performance has been裁员。如果他们的初创企业表现不佳disappointing, many entrepreneurs conclude that they must cuthead count to slow their cash burn rate so as to buy more timefor further fundraising and M&A efforts, or for a pivot to playout. In doing so, they confront four decisions about a reductionin their workforce.如果初创公司的表现令人失望，许多创业者会认为必须削减员工人数，以降低资金消耗速度，从而为后续融资和并购活动争取更多时间，或为业务转型留出空间。在此过程中，他们需要面对与裁员相关的四个决策问题。
• capable of doing a better job.媒体大肆报道高管离职的消息，暗指他们是对我管理方式的失望而离开。但媒体只了解了事情的一面，因为当时我已决定不把法布的问题归咎于任何人，只怪自己。我从不后悔那些人的离职：我们拥有太多高薪员工，其中许多人表现不佳。在大多数情况下，我会解雇他们，让他们的副手来负责工作。这是经过董事会支持做出的慎重决定。因为这些副手实际上一直在承担工作，而且他们有能力把工作做得更好。Instead of dismissing senior managers, some CEOs ask them totake a pay cut, which can help the startup avoid deeper cuts infrontline ranks. Hyde did this, and her management team atBaroo was willing to defer their salaries. However, Hyde’s lawyersubsequently informed her that inMassachusetts, a CEO ispersonally liable for nonpayment of deferredsalaries, often withmandatory triple damages—and Directors & Officers insuranceheld by most firms does not cover this type of liability. So, the company immediately paid out the $250,000 worth of deferredsalaries due—except for Hyde’s—which nearly emptiedBaroo’s bank account and triggered its shutdown.一些首席执行官没有解雇高级经理，而是要求他们减薪，这样有助于初创企业避免对基层员工进行更大幅度的裁员。海德就是这么做的，她在Baroo的管理团队也同意暂缓领取薪水。然而，海德的律师后来告知她，在马萨诸塞州，首席执行官对未支付的暂缓薪水负有个人责任，通常需要支付三倍的赔偿金——而大多数公司的董事和高管保险并不涵盖这种责任。因此，该公司不得不立即支付25万美元的暂缓薪水，只有海德的薪水除外。这一举措几乎让Baroo的银行账户枯竭，最终导致公司倒闭。
• —at least to some extent—a graceful shutdown will lessen that.There’s a trade-off, however: Running the venture beyond thepoint where a graceful shutdown is possible gives a foundermore time to search for additional funding or a merger partner.“优雅”关停的窗口是否正在关闭？所谓优雅关停，指的是企业能够履行对客户的承诺：全额支付所有未付供应商账单；不仅向员工发放工资，还提供一定的遣散费；同时让投资者至少能收回部分投资。虽然企业倒闭可能会在一定程度上损害创始人的声誉，但优雅关停可以减轻这种影响。不过，这也有其代价：如果企业继续运营到无法优雅关停的地步，创始人就有更多时间去寻找额外的资金或合并对象。To calculate exactly when this window might close, a foundermust have a clear grasp of the venture’s commitments and itscash burn rate. Wallace had this date in mind when she proposeda shutdown to Quincy’sboard, and her co-founder Nelsonultimately timed the shutdown so that the venture offered employees a small severance payment, reimbursed all ofitscreditors, and returned a small percentage of investors’capital. Hyde, bycontrast, missed the window to meet all ofBaroo’s financial obligations. While it paid its employees in full,Baroo ended up not being able to repay about $100,000 tovendors.要准确计算出这一窗口期何时关闭，创始人必须清晰了解企业的各项承诺以及资金消耗速度。华莱士在向昆西的董事会提议企业关闭时，就已经考虑到了这个时间点。她的联合创始人纳尔逊最终确定了关闭时间，确保企业能够向员工支付少量遣散费、偿还所有债权人的款项，并返还投资者部分投资本金。相比之下，海德未能抓住机会履行巴鲁的所有财务义务。虽然巴鲁足额支付了员工工资，但最终仍无力偿还供应商约10万美元的款项。
• CEOposition—but continue working full-time in another role—ifsome of the factors listed above have weakened his resolve tocontinue as CEO.他把车钥匙扔在桌上，然后向董事会或联合创始人宣布他要离开这家初创公司：​“我不再负责领导了，你们可以继续。​”考虑到创始人所承受的压力，以及未来前景依然如此，且没有股权增值的希望，这种冲动是可以理解的。或者，如果上述某些因素削弱了创始人继续担任CEO的决心，他可以选择辞去CEO职务，但继续以全职身份从事其他工作。There are two good reasons for not quitting. First, seeing theventure through to the bitter end can be a learning experiencefor a founder. Second,no founder wants to get the reputation asthe kind of captain who would abandon a sinking ship. Venturecapitalist Aileen Lee told me about a founder who simply walkedaway from his struggling venture, asserting that there justwasn’t enough personal financial upside to justify spending several months winding things down. The board and investorswere furious: The founder had convinced them to invest in hisvision only to walk away,leaving the investors to clean up themess. They all agreed to never work with the founder again.不辞职有两个充分的理由。首先，将创业项目坚持到最后对创始人来说是一种学习经历。其次，没有创始人愿意背上抛弃陷入困境的企业的“船长”名声。风险投资家艾琳·李告诉我，有位创始人直接放弃了经营不善的项目，他认为投入数月时间来收尾并不值得，因为个人财务收益并不显著。董事会和投资者都非常愤怒：这位创始人之前说服他们投资于自己的愿景，现在却突然退出，让投资者来收拾残局。他们一致决定再也不与这位创始人合作。
• Acquihires. An acquihire is a common exit path for failingstartups收购。对于失败的初创企业而言，被收购是一种常见的退出方式。
• 经证明有能力协同工作、完整成熟的团队的成本，与从零开始招聘和培训同样能力团队的成本相比如何？由于这种考量，收购价格很少会高于创业公司筹集的总资本的多倍。​”这样一来，与通过传统方式招聘和组建团队相比，购买人才的成本就太高了。
• Due to liquidation preferences negotiated by VCs, investorsreceive all of the exit proceeds from an acquihire until they’veearned back their original capital contribution. Given the modestpurchase proceeds, once the preferred shareholders (i.e., theVCs) have received their share, there may not be much, ifanything, left to distribute to the common shareholders—that is,the founders and any employees who hold stock or options.由于风险投资家们协商定了清算优先权，因此在企业被收购后，投资者会先获得全部退出收益，直到他们的初始投资得到偿还为止。鉴于收购收益有限，一旦优先股股东（即风险投资家们）拿到了应得份额，可能就几乎没有剩余收益可以分配给普通股股东了——也就是创始人和那些 持有股票或期权的员工。
• 因为收购方通常会以关键团队成员的留任作为收购的条件。对收购方而言，最简单的解决办法是为这些团队成员提供额外福利，比如签约奖金或逐步到期的收购方公司股票。从收购方的角度来看，只要这些额外福利不会大幅增加收购总成本，那就是可行的。当然，创业公司的投资者会反对任何损害他们利益的额外协议。对于创始人来说，要在保持团队稳定、确保交易顺利进行以及让董事会满意之间找到平衡相当具有挑战性——毕竟董事会必须批准这项收购。
• 与公司和同事有着深厚情感联系的创始人，可能会因为看到自己建立的团队在冷酷的尽职调查过程中受到审问，最终被拆分解散而感到痛苦：​“我们会留下这两个人，但不会留那个无用之人。​”因此，Andrew Lee建议创始人在收购谈判开始之前先询问团队的真实意愿。他回忆说，那次收购过程“让我们的团队因面试——或者说更像是审讯——而分裂，让我们经历了充满不确定性的情绪波动，这让我们留下了不愉快的印象。​”

 Chapter 11: Bouncing Back

• 收入和个人储蓄的残酷现实。在第二阶段，即反思阶段，创业者应尽量避免将失败归咎于他人或不可控的外部因素。通过自我反省，她更深入地了解了问题出在哪里，自己在企业失败中扮演了什么角色，以及本可以采取哪些不同的做法。在这个过程中，她还对自己作为创业者、管理者和领导者的动机以及优缺点有了新的认识。在最后一个阶段，即重新出发阶段，她利用这些认知来决定是继续创办另一家初创企业，还是选择另一条职业道路。
• A startup’s failure can severely derail an entrepreneur in threeways. First,her personal finances may be in disarray. Many, likeWallace, invest all of their savings in their venture. Some max outcredit cards to keep it running. To stretch their firm’s runway,most pay themselves little or, like Lindsay Hyde at Baroo, defertheir own salary.创业公司的失败可能从三个方面给创业者带来沉重打击。首先，其个人财务状况可能会陷入混乱。像华莱士这样的人，会将所有积蓄投入创业项目；还有一些人则刷爆信用卡来维持公司的运转。为了延长公司的存续时间，大多数人只能拿很少的工资，或者像Baroo公司的林赛·海德那样，推迟发放自己的薪水。
• 其次，由于连续数月每周工作80小时，创业者可能会忽视朋友、家人和伴侣，导致个人人际关系陷入混乱。​“很抱歉，但现在我需要你的情感支持”这样的话可能不会立刻得到共鸣。出于对拒绝的恐惧以及对所发生事情的羞愧，创始人可能会避免尝试修复关系。自我隔离——尤其是在初期——是一种常见的反应。

 来自微信读书