好英语网硅谷成功创业者极少二次创业
Sean Parker, the 32-year-old billionaire and former president of Facebook — played by Justin Timberlake in “The Social Network” — was sitting on the top floor of his town house in the West Village of Manhattan last month, lamenting that too few entrepreneurs continue taking big risks after their first great success.
上个月，32岁的亿万富翁、Facebook前总裁肖恩·帕克(Sean Parker)（也就是贾斯汀·廷伯莱克(Justin Timberlake)在电影《社交网站》当中饰演的角色）坐在曼哈顿西村自家宅第的顶层，惋惜很少有创业者会在获得第一次巨大成功后继续从事高风险的行当。
“Every good entrepreneur I know ends up in the wasteland of being a venture capitalist. It’s really frustrating,” he said.
“我认识的成功创业者最后都去了风险投资这个浪费才能的行业。太令人沮丧了，”他说。
Mr. Parker was sitting, or more accurately, slouching, on a couch next to his best friend and business partner, Shawn Fanning. Together, they founded Napster in 1999, the online music service that upended the entire industry before closing and filing for bankruptcy after losing a court case over piracy.
帕克坐在那里，准确说是慵懒地靠在沙发上，旁边是他最好的朋友和商业合作伙伴肖恩·范宁(Shawn Fanning)。1999年，他们一起创建了在线音乐公司Napster。Napster曾经颠覆了整个在线音乐行业，之后却因输掉了版权官司而破产倒闭。
肖恩·帕克，Napster的创始人之一，Founders Fund基金执行合伙人之一。
“How can you as an entrepreneur that’s had success, has a reputation, ever build the courage to go and do something again?” he asked, almost rhetorically. “Most entrepreneurs don’t remain entrepreneurs. It’s just too psychologically draining to have to constantly start over.”
“作为享有盛誉的成功创业者，你怎样才能有勇气进行下一次创业？”他几乎是自问自答地说。“大多数创业者都不会再次创业。不断地重起炉灶实在是太消耗精力了。”
More than a decade later, however, Sean and Shawn are at it again. The two recently started a video chat service called Airtime. (Think Skype, mixed with Facebook and a twist of Chatroulette.)
然而，Napster倒闭十多年之后，帕克和范宁却再一次联手创业。最近，他们两个创立了一个名为Airtime的视频社交网站。（想像一下Skype和Facebook，Chatroulette混在一起的样子吧。 ）
Mr. Parker and Mr. Fanning are the exceptions to the successful-entrepreneurs-still-working theory. Sure, there are a handful of serial entrepreneurs out there in Silicon Valley: Jack Dorsey started Twitter and Square, for example, and Elon Musk, who was behind PayPal, now runs SpaceX and Tesla.
对于成功的创业者不再创业这个理论来说，帕克和范宁是个反例。当然，硅谷也有一些多次创业的创业者，比如创立Twitter和Square的杰克·多尔西(Jack Dorsey)，以及曾经联合创办PayPal、现在又在经营SpaceX 和Tesla的埃隆·马斯科(Elon Musk)。
But the career trajectory of many tremendously successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley often looks like a rocket ship that stops in midair. Less charitably, Mr. Parker suggests some could be called one-hit wonders.
但对于硅谷很多极为成功的创业者来说，他们的事业轨迹通常都与一枚停在半空的火箭相似。帕克指出，说得不客气点儿的话，有些人可以说是昙花一现。
“The list of people who have started from scratch over and over and succeeded systematically over a long period of time is incredibly short,” he said. “The only person I can think of off the cuff is Jobs who had Apple, Next, Pixar, continued doing Pixar and Next and then Apple again, which is really a different company.”
“那些一次又一次从头开始、长期以来都不断获得成功的人简直少之又少，”他说。“我随便想了一下，唯一能想到的人就是拥有苹果、Next和皮克斯(Pixar)三家公司的乔布斯。离开苹果以后，他继续创立了皮克斯公司和Next，之后又回到苹果公司，这时的苹果公司已经与以前很不同了。”
He said that the tendency of great entrepreneurs was either to become merely an operator of one company or, like Sumner Redstone, move into an investor-ownership role.
他说，伟大创业者的通常选择是成为一个公司的经营者，要么就转为投资持股人，就像萨姆纳·雷德斯通(Sumner Redstone)那样。
The Silicon Valley version becomes a venture capitalist. For example, Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal, has gone on to be a successful venture capitalist through his firm Founders Fund, investing in other companies’ businesses, like Facebook and Spotify. But Mr. Thiel hasn’t endeavored to start a new company himself. (He did start a hedge fund, but that’s still investing.) He happens to be in business with Mr. Parker, who is a partner in the fund, which also invested in his Airtime.
而在硅谷，他们往往会转入风险投资行业。比如，PayPal的联合创始人彼得·蒂尔(Peter Thiel)后来就成了一名成功的风险投资人，通过自己的Founders Fund公司投资其他公司的业务，比如Facebook 和Spotify。但是蒂尔并没有努力创建属于自己的新公司。（他确实成立了一个对冲基金，但这还是在做投资。）凑巧的是，他是帕克的生意伙伴，因为帕克是这个基金的合伙人，这个基金还投资了帕克的Airtime公司。
Marc Andreessen, a longtime star of Silicon Valley, co-founded Netscape in 1994. He started two companies after that: Loudcloud and Ning. Both had modest success, but neither was comparable to Netscape. Mr. Andreessen became one of those venture capitalists Mr. Parker dreads, but with an extremely successful track record of having invested in some of the most promising technology companies, including Facebook, Groupon, Twitter, Zynga, Pinterest and Instagram (which was sold this year to Facebook for $1 billion).
马克·安德雷森(Marc Andreessen)很长时间以来都是硅谷的明星。他于1994年与别人联手创建了Netscape公司，之后又创立了Loudcloud 和Ning两家公司。这两家公司盈利都很有限，无法和Netscape相提并论。安德雷森成为了帕克厌恶的那种风险投资人，但却有着极为成功的投资记录，曾投资一些最有前途的科技公司，包括Facebook、Groupon、Twitter、Zynga、Pinterest和Instagram。Instagram今年被Facebook收购，价格是10亿美元。
Perhaps surprisingly, Mr. Andreessen said of Mr. Parker’s theory: “I sort of agree with him.” In an interview, he said many “former entrepreneurs crossed over to be V.C.’s and it hasn’t worked out well.” He added, “You don’t want to be Michael Jordan playing baseball.”
或许让人吃惊的是，安德雷森提到帕克的理论时这么说，“我有点同意他的说法。”他在一次采访中说，很多“从前的创业者都变身为风投者，结果也不怎么样。”他还说，“你肯定不想让迈克尔·乔丹(Michael Jordan)去打棒球。”
Mr. Andreessen said he differentiated his decision to pursue investing from that of other entrepreneurs-turned-investors, because he approached it as an entrepreneurial effort to “rethink the model of venture capital.” He has sought to reimagine the way a venture capital firm works from top to bottom, and so far, it appears to working quite spectacularly.
安德雷森称，他转入投资行业的决定与其他那些曾经是创业者的投资者不一样，因为他用了创业者的方法来“重新思考风险投资模式。”他致力于从头到尾地重塑风险投资公司的工作模式。到现在为止，效果似乎惊人。
Still, to Mr. Parker, most entrepreneurs who seek out investments do so as “a total cop-out.” He explained his thinking: “You have a whole portfolio, you only focus on your successes, you ignore your failures and you get to continue looking like a player, but you’re ultimately not in control of anything.”
然而，在帕克看来，大多数创业者转行投资的的做法都是“一种彻底的逃避。”他这么解释自己的想法，“你握有整个投资组合，但却只关注成功的部分，忽略失败，你得努力保持玩家风范，事实上却已经失去了控制。”
He continued: “Everything is probabilistic, nothing is deterministic, so you never have that satisfaction of knowing that you’re in control of an outcome. So you spend all of your time managing your reputation, managing your relationships and you spend almost no time thinking creatively or doing the things that an entrepreneur is good at doing.”
他接着说，“一切都只是概率事件，没有什么是确定的，所以你从来不会有那种可以掌控结局的满足感。你一直在花时间维护自己的声誉，维护自己的关系网，几乎没有时间去进行创造性思考，也没有时间做创业者擅长的事情。”
If it sounds as if Mr. Parker is talking only about others, he’s not. He’s also talking about himself.
听上去帕克只是在谈论其他人，其实不是。他也在指自己。
After stepping down from Facebook in 2005, he joined Mr. Thiel’s Founders Fund and for several years worked on making investments, including in Spotify and Votizen.
2005年退出Facebook之后，他加入了蒂尔的Founders Fund基金，此后几年一直在做投资，投资对象包括Spotify和Votizen公司。
He also worked on Causes, a site to raise money and awareness for issues and nonprofits. That venture only muddled along, and he said he did not commit to it wholeheartedly enough.
此外，他还曾经在Causes网站工作。Causes的业务为各种问题和非营利性组织募资，提高人们对这些问题和组织的认知。这家公司只是得过且过，帕克说他并没有全身心投入。
He said the biggest challenge for any new start-up by a previously successful entrepreneur was focusing too much “on downside protection, which is just assuming failure from the outset.” Being worried about failure and its effect on one’s reputation, he said, is “very dangerous.”
他说，曾经成功的创业者要创立新的公司，最大的挑战是他们往往会过多考虑“风险防护，从一开始就假想会失败。”他说，担心失败以及它给自己带来的名誉损失是“非常危险的。”
He said he was reluctant to start a new company like Airtime until just recently.
他说，他一直不愿意开创像Airtime这样的新公司，直到最近才改变了想法。
“The expectation thing definitely weighs on me. There’s a sort of fear of launching something and failing,” he said. “I had to decide I am going to try to go the road less traveled and just be an entrepreneur that’s willing to go back and start things from scratch.”
“期望确实让我感到有压力。我有点害怕动了手又失败的局面，”他说。“我必须权衡，自己要不要尝试那条少有人走的路，做个愿意回到原点从头开始的创业者。”