硅谷公司之死 生於富貴毀於奢華
The first thing you notice when hanging around technology startups is the cultural importance that Silicon Valley ascribes to snacking, with a company's snack bar often standing as a rough proxy for the scope of its ambitions.
光顧科技創業公司時，你注意到的第一件事就是硅谷賦予零食的文化重要性。一家公司的小吃吧通常可以粗略地體現出它的雄心壯志。Square, Jack Dorsey's payments business, boasts a gleaming coffee bar with a barista who hosts classes on the best ways to brew. On one trip to Facebook, I was treated to an otherworldly bag of popcorn. And just about every company has a refrigerator or two stocked with Hint, a subtly flavored brand of bottled water that seems to flow as freely in San Francisco as the tears of the people who were evicted to make room for the incoming software engineers.
傑克·多爾西(Jack Dorsey)創辦的支付業務公司Square擁有一間閃亮的咖啡吧，那裏的咖啡師會宣講調製咖啡的最佳手法。有一次去Facebook，迎接我的是一袋妙不可言的爆米花。而且幾乎每家公司都有一兩臺裝滿Hint的冰箱。這是一種口感特殊的瓶裝水，似乎在舊金山肆意流淌，就像爲給將來的軟件工程師騰出空間而被趕走的人們的眼淚一樣。Even when a startup's dreams are deferred, the snacks hang on, as I learned during a recent visit to the buses that were once owned by Leap Transit, a startup that once had aspirations of revolutionizing urban transportation.
即使一家創業公司的夢想受挫，零食卻會堅持下去，就像我最近去看Leap Transit曾經擁有的大巴車時瞭解的那樣。這家創業公司一度懷揣徹底變革城市交通的夢想。
Leap, which raised $2.5 million from some of the industry's best-known investors, charged riders $6 to get across San Francisco, nearly three times the price of a city bus. Its primary draw was luxury. Each bus had a wood-trimmed interior outfitted with black leather seats, individual USB ports and Wi-Fi. The buses also offered a steady stream of gourmet snacks, sold via app.
Leap從一些赫赫有名的行業投資者那裏融資250萬美元，向穿越舊金山的乘客收取6美元車費。這幾乎是市政公交車三倍的價格。它的主要吸引力是奢華。每輛車內部都有木質內飾，並配備黑色真皮座椅、專享的USB端口和Wi-Fi。這些車還提供大量的精美小食，通過應用程序出售。I'd come to the see the buses to find out what it looks like when a startup bites the dust. The luxury vehicles were up for auction; Leap filed for bankruptcy in July. The end for Leap apparently came so suddenly that its founders didn't have time to remove much from the vehicles. Inside each bus sitting in an out-of-the-way parking lot near Oakland, California, was a state registration form pinned to the wall, a bundle of iPhone and HDMI cables, and a display case full of snacks. Among the choices were packages of That's It — vegan, gluten-free, non-GMO fruit bars — and organic, paleo Simple Squares.
我來看這些車，是想了解一家創業公司一敗塗地會是什麼樣子。所有的豪華車都被拿出來拍賣；Leap在7月份申請破產。Leap的末日顯然來得極爲突然，它的創始人甚至沒有時間從車上拆掉多少東西。這些車停放在加州奧克蘭附近一座偏僻的停車場裏，每輛車內部有釘在車上的州級註冊表、一束iPhone和HDMI線，以及一個滿是小吃的展示櫃。其中有幾包“That’s It”——素食、無麩質、非轉基因的水果棒——和遵循遠古飲食法的有機Simple Squares零食。Leap is one of at least several dozen tech companies that have failed this year. Their deaths are illuminating; dead startups show us which investors' theories are bogus, which technologies aren't ready for prime time, and which common ways founders overextend themselves. They also outline the frontiers of what the current market for tech products and services will bear.
Leap是今年以來至少數十個失敗的科技公司之一。他們的死亡頗具啓發性；倒閉的創業公司告訴我們，投資者的哪些理論是泡沫的，哪種技術還沒有準備就緒，以及創始人通常用哪種方法透支自己。它們也勾勒出了高科技產品和服務目前的市場能承受的邊界。In particular, Leap's death suggests one emerging cause of startup doom, a problem that also did in the anonymous social-network Secret: too-close an association with Silicon Valley's tech-bro sensibilities.
特別是，Leap的倒閉啓示了創業公司遭受厄運的一種新興理由，一個也出現在匿名社交網絡Secret身上的問題：與硅谷的高科技兄弟氛圍糾纏太深。Leap, in retrospect, was a bold idea that might have had legs. Muni, San Francisco's public bus system, is overloaded and underfunded, and the success of ride-hailing apps like Uber suggests a public willingness to try new tech-enabled options. But in its design and marketing — in its full-frontal embrace of the easily pilloried paleo-snack-bar techie lifestyle — Leap exuded a kind of bourgeoisie exceptionalism that fed into the city's fears of gentrification and won it few fans. As I stood inside the abandoned buses, it became obvious why the startup failed: Leap was created by and for tech bros. It was born inside the bubble, and it could never escape.
現在回想起來，Leap是一個可能大獲成功的大膽想法。舊金山的公交系統Muni的運載能力不足且缺乏資金，而優步(Uber)等叫車軟件的成功表明公衆願意嘗試新的高科技交通方式。但在設計和營銷上，那種對容易被人嘲笑的返樸零食吧技術的生活方式的徹底接納，讓Leap流露出一種資產階級卓異論，恰好觸碰了舊金山擔心生活成本上升的神經，沒有爲其贏得多少支持者。當我站在廢棄的車裏時，Leap爲什麼會創業失敗就變得很明顯：Leap是由高科技兄弟幫創建的，目標羣體也是這幫人。它誕生在泡泡裏面，永遠無法逃脫。Tech deaths often go unstudied. Silicon Valley stands out for the way it embraces failure, and it's true that the “We Failed!” startup post-mortem note has become a staple on publishing sites like Medium. Still, there's a natural disinclination among entrepreneurs and investors to discuss the deaths of their companies in much depth.
科技企業的死亡往往未得到深究。硅谷以其擁抱失敗的方式脫穎而出，而“我們失敗了！”這類的創業事後總結也的確成爲了Medium等網站中的主要內容。不過，創業者和投資者之間天然存在一種不願深層次探討自家企業之死的傾向。Kyle Kirchhoff, the co-founder and chief executive of Leap, was among several founders of dead companies who did not respond to my requests for interviews. Thanks to such reluctance, no one quite knows how many tech startups are dying, or why.
Leap聯合創始人兼首席執行官凱爾·基希霍夫(Kyle Kirchhoff)，不是唯一一個沒有迴應我的採訪請求的倒閉公司創始人。正是由於這種不情願，沒有人確切知道有多少科技初創企業正在消亡，或者其中的原因何在。“There's a lot of fanfare when companies get funded or acquired, but people bury the dead pretty quietly,” said Anand Sanwal, the chief executive of CB Insights, a firm that keeps stats on the startup market. He added that the task is complicated by the fact that many failed startups don't actually die — they limp along for years, underperforming.
“企業在獲得融資或收購要約時會大張旗鼓地宣傳，但埋葬死者時卻很安靜，”阿南德·桑瓦爾(Anand Sanwal)說道。他是追蹤創業市場數據的CB Insights公司的首席執行官。他還說，很多失敗的創業公司並沒有真正死去——它們表現不佳卻苟延殘喘多年——這一事實讓任務變得更加複雜。Sanwal estimated that the number of startup failures increased in 2015, but he believed the uptick was most likely because many more companies were founded and funded a few years ago, as the tech market began heating up.
桑瓦爾估計失敗創業公司的數量在2015年有所增加，但他相信這種上揚很可能是因爲許多企業是在幾年前科技市場開始升溫的時候成立並獲得融資的。“There were companies that went in at the top of the funnel, so a lot more of them are meeting that fate,” he said.
“有不少公司是在漏斗的頂部進入的，所以遭遇這種命運的也要多得多，”他說。By the time of its bankruptcy auction earlier this month, which attracted only a handful of bidders, Leap was all but forgotten. In its bankruptcy filing, Leap reported that it made nearly $21,000 in the two months during which it offered service. That turned out to be less than two of its buses — which officials told me could no longer start — fetched at auction: One sold for $11,100, and another for $12,100. The buyers were anonymous.
到了本月早些時候Leap進行破產拍賣時，只有極少數競標人蔘加。它那時基本上已被人們遺忘了。在破產申請文件中，Leap報告說，在它提供服務的兩個月期間取得了近2.1萬美元的收入。這竟然還不到它兩臺大巴車的拍賣會成交價格：一臺1.11萬美元，另一臺1.21萬美元。買主是匿名的。據說這兩臺車已經無法啓動。Could Leap have fared better if it had a taken a less outwardly oppositional stance in its conduct and its branding? It seems likely that would have helped. The company had entered the thicket of San Francisco regulatory and civic debate without spending much time to win over fans in the community. Its onboard aesthetics and services lit up every gentrification warning sign, such that, from the start, Leap seemed designed only for those people — the tech people who give everyone else a bad name.
如果Leap在其行爲和品牌上採取了較不明顯的對立立場，它是否能有更好的表現？這看似會有所幫助。破產前，公司已經卷入了舊金山的監管和公民辯論的糾纏中，卻沒有花太多的時間來在社區中贏得支持者。其車輛內部的設計和服務觸動了所有高檔化預警信號。它們從一開始就表明，Leap似乎只是爲那些人設計的，那些給所有從業人員都帶來了壞名聲的科技業人士。Some companies can escape their image. Uber, a company whose endless run-ins with authorities have covered its brand in an ethical haze, is still experiencing growth because the product remains truly useful to riders and drivers. But the winners are the exceptions. Most companies can't repeat unlikely success.
一些公司可以逃避自己的形象問題。例如優步，它與有關當局無休止的爭執與對抗已讓其品牌蒙上一層道德陰霾，但卻仍在不斷髮展，因爲它的產品對乘客和司機確實有用。但贏家是例外。大多數公司無法重複這種不太可能的成功。Leap tried. Despite the snacks, it failed.
Leap嘗試了。儘管提供了零食，它還是失敗了。
