The guest post below was written by Reid Hoffman, CEO and Founder of LinkedIn. Reid, who’s been a prolific writer lately, is a strong advocate of entrepreneurism and the startup mentality. See his recent Washington Post article Let Our Start-Ups Bail Us Out, and the guest post he wrote here on TechCrunch, Stimulus 2.0: It’s The Startups, Stupid. Reid has recently appeared on Charlie Rose, and we had a chance to sit down with him earlier this year for a video interview as well. Reid is an investor in over 60 web ventures including Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, FunnyOrDie, Ning, Last.fm, Six Apart and Technorati. He is also a member of the nominating committee of our upcoming TechFellow Awards with Founders Fund.
上面是个人背景资料部分。
TechCrunch and Founders Fund announced the first annual TechFellow Awards last week. This is a great time to stimulate investment and recognize and encourage tech entrepreneurs –starting up is cheaper, talent is more fluid, and people are more inclined to take calculated risks. If we can find more ways to spur investment, it will be good for the entrepreneur now and good for society later.
As a serial investor, I’ve enjoyed backing some good Web 2.0 companies, and it’s helped me develop a shortlist of criteria to cut the wheat from the chaff. After five minutes of a pitch, I know if I’m not going to invest, and after 30 minutes to an hour, I generally know if I will. Many entrepreneurs are product-focused, which leads them to pitch the brilliance of the product. Others are money-minded, so they can over think the business plan. But neither of these approaches answer the first few questions I want to know as an investor:
上周TechCrunch和创始人基金刚刚宣布了第一届TechFellow Awards。这是一个刺激投资、嘉奖和鼓励技术创业者的好时候 - 创业的成本更低了，人才流动性加强了，人们更愿意冒一些险。如果我们可以找到更多刺激投资的方式，这对于目前的创业者和未来的社会都将是好事。
作为一个项目众多的投资人，我一直很喜欢支持一些Web 2.0公司，而且这帮助我发展了几条标准来去芜存菁。听了5分钟的推介宣讲，我就已经知道这个项目我不会投资；30分钟到一小时以后，我会投资的项目也知道了。很多创业者过分聚焦于产品，这时候他们通常会热衷宣讲产品的优越之处；另外一些人对钱很敏感，所以他们常常会过度考虑商业计划书。但这些都不能回答我作为一个投资者最关注的几个最初的问题：
1. How will you reach a massive audience?
In real estate the wisdom says “location, location, location.” In consumer Internet, think “distribution, distribution, distribution.” Thousands of products launch every month on hundreds of thousands of new Web pages. How does a company rise above the noise to attract massive discovery and adoption? YouTube did it through existing channels like MySpace, which already reached millions. Yelp had strong SEO, which found them a mass audience searching for restaurants and nightlife. Facebook’s University-centric approach landed them 80% adoption across a campus within 60 days of launch. Every Net entrepreneur should answer these questions: How do we get to one million users? Then how do we get to 10 million users? Then how will you get deep engagement by your users.
你如何达到一个相当规模的用户数量级？
在房地产投资中，人们常说“地段、地段、地段”。在消费类互联网中，我们要想“渠道、渠道、渠道”。每个月有上千个产品在成千上万个网站上发布。任何一个网站，如何有机会超越者这所有噪音而被大规模的用户发现和使用起来呢？YouTube是通过已经有数百万用户的现成渠道如MySpace。Yelp通过超强的SEO让大量搜索饭馆和夜生活场所的人们搜到它。Facebook聚焦于大学这一做法使他们在发布60天内覆盖到80%的（美国）校园。每一个互联网的创业者都应该问这些问题：我怎样达到100万用户？然后我怎样达到1000万用户？之后是如何让你的用户在网站上的参与不断深入。
2. What is your unique value proposition?
The Internet space is crowded. A product needs to be sufficiently innovative to distinguish itself from the pack, but not so forward thinking as to alienate the user. Many entrepreneurs create incremental improvements on existing products. This can be big – Google revolutionized search when AOL and Yahoo! were presumed to have it locked up – but more often, the pitch sounds like, “It’s a dating site, but for senior citizens…” I want to see innovation that is categorically distinct from existing propositions. Digg lets users decide which headlines are newsworthy. Last.fm tracks music listening with an iTunes plugin and buffer great music discovery. Flickr enables users to share and tag photos in new ways.
你的独特价值什么？
互联网是一个拥挤的空间。一个产品要足够与众不同，但不能超前到让用户感到间离感。很多创业者是在一些现有的产品上做一些改进深化。这个想法有可能做大 - 例如Google在AOL和雅虎看起来已经坐稳江山的时候将搜索革了命。但更经常的情况是，公司的推广点为："这是一个交友网站，但是是给老年人的..." 我希望看到的是与现有的各种提议在根本类别上的不同。Digg让用户决定哪一条新闻是值得关注的，last.fm用一个iTunes的插件跟踪都有哪些音乐被倾听从而提供优秀的音乐发掘能力， 而Flickr让用户用全新的方式是分享和标记照片。
3. Will your business be capital efficient?
This may be the most important of the three. Even if you have a mass audience and unique value prop, a business fails without cash flow. An initial round of financing is important, but how reliable is later financing? Will investors see the right elements in the next stage? Your product must scale intelligently – this is why I like software. A well-coded site can adapt to mass demand without its capital expenditures scaling out of control. A product like TypePad can grow to 10 million users without half the growing pains of a service like WebVan, the Web 1.0 startup that attempted to deliver groceries to users’ doorsteps. Try reaching Facebook scale with a service like that.
你的业务会很耗资本吗？
这可能是上述三个问题中最重要的一个。即使你有大规模的用户和独特的价值定位，一个企业挣不到钱就是要失败关门。最初的一轮投资是重要的，但后期的投资是不是可靠？投资者会在你的下一个成长阶段中看到该看到的元素吗？你的产品必须要能够聪明地扩展规模 - 这就是为什么我很喜欢软件。一个程序写的很好的网站，可以很好地适应更大规模的需求，而同时又不使资本花销完全失控。一个TypePad那样的产品可以支持到1000万用户，而不承担像WebVan那样的公司一半的成长之痛 - 后者是一个Web1.0的创业公司，本来要尝试将蔬菜水果等生活品递送到用户门口的。你想想，这样的公司做到Facebook那样的规模，将需要什么样的资本。
With these three elements in place – mass audience, unique value, stable funding – a startup has time to discover where it can make money. Few business plans ever pan out like their owners intend. PayPal started as a plan to beam payments between Palm Pilots. Google raised funds with a vision to capitalize on enterprise search and ended up in advertising. The formula is to build an audience with a great product – then secure enough funding to figure out how to make it pay.
有了这三样 - 大规模用户、独特价值、稳定的投资 - 一个创业公司就有时间去发现它将怎样挣到钱。没有几个商业计划后来呈现出当初作者最早的意愿。PayPal的开始是为了在Palm Pilots无线发送付款，Google融资的时候是为了做企业级搜索但最后成了一个广告业务。（他们的）公式就是用一个很棒的产品吸引用户，然后吸引到足够的投资来支持到公司摸索出怎么赚钱。
Since I’m focused on building LinkedIn, I’m not currently investing in new projects, but I firmly believe now is the time to take smart risks as entrepreneurs and investors. I hope these criteria help startups make better pitches as they fundraise, and maybe even encourage others to take the plunge. Good ideas need good strategy to realize their potential, and if these criteria help a few more companies find capital, it’s a win for everyone.
因为我在做LinkedLin, 我现在并没有在投资新项目。但我坚信，现在正是创业者和投资者冒聪明的风险的时候。我希望这些标准帮助创业公司在融资过程中更好地推销自己。好的想法需要好的策略来帮助它实现潜能，如果这些标准可以帮助一些公司成功融资，这对大家都是好事。
相关阅读：《Linkedin创始人霍夫曼：成功的三个秘诀》
相关文章
