賭上一切的硅谷夢 我不是天真
Learning to Play the Game
學習遊戲規則
“You’re live now, so it’s a ticking time bomb,” Penny Herscher, the executive chairwoman of FirstRain, a business software company, told Ms. Miller in July. “Can you get enough momentum to get liftoff fast enough?”
“你們已經上線，所以它就是個定時炸彈，”去年7月，商用軟件公司FirstRain執行董事長彭尼·赫爾舍(Penny Herscher)這樣對米勒說。“公司能有足夠的發展勢頭，實現足夠快的飛躍嗎？”
Ms. Herscher, who has two and a half decades of experience as a software executive, was introduced to Ms. Miller through a colleague and had agreed to become a kind of mentor. Ms. Miller had unveiled Doxa three weeks before. The site had 820 active users, and 300 companies on a waiting list to be included.
赫舍爾有二十五年的軟件行業高管經歷，她經一名同事介紹認識了米勒，並同意擔任一個類似導師的角色。三週前，米勒對外推出了Doxa。這個網站當時有820個活躍用戶，另有3000個企業用戶即將被納入。
Now it needed money. Ms. Miller had calculated that $2 million in venture capital would enable her to hire the people she needed and keep the company running for 18 months. But time was tight. She needed to start paying salaries.
現在它需要資金。米勒計算過，只要能拿到200萬美元的風險投資，就足以讓她僱到所需的員工，並讓公司持續運轉18個月。但時間很緊迫。她需要馬上開始爲員工支付工資。
She had made her pitch to three small, mission-driven funds that wanted to invest in female and minority founders. Ms. Herscher said she should be aiming instead at well-known venture capital firms.
她已經向三家以使命爲導向的小型基金做了自我推介，這些基金想投資女性和少數族裔創業者。赫舍爾認爲，她反倒該把目標對準知名風投公司。
“The thing is, no real investor is going to invest in you because of the mission,” she said. “They’re going to invest in you if they think you’ll make a lot of money.”
“問題是，沒有那個投資者真的會因爲你的使命感做出投資，”她說。“如果他們覺得你有可能賺大錢，纔會投資你。”
“The feedback we’re getting from the big guns is we’re too small now,” Ms. Miller told her.
“我們從大風投公司得到的反饋是，我們現在還太小，”米勒告訴她。
“They didn’t wait for Google to have a prototype before they invested,” Ms. Herscher said.
“他們可沒有等到谷歌(Google)做出大概的樣子才進行投資，”赫舍爾說。
The first time they met to discuss Doxa, Ms. Miller had worn jeans and a sleeveless shirt. The look was too unprofessional, Ms. Herscher told her. She should dress like Yahoo’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer (whose uniform is crew neck, knee-length dresses with cardigans). Ms. Miller said that everyone she had worked with at tech companies wore jeans and T-shirts, and surely no venture capitalist cared if Mark Zuckerberg showed up in a hoodie. Ms. Herscher was uncompromising: Like it or not, the standard is different for women.
她們第一碰面討論Doxa時，米勒穿了件無袖襯衫和一條牛仔褲。赫舍爾告訴她，這身打扮太不職業。她應該穿得像雅虎(Yahoo)首席執行官瑪麗莎·梅耶爾(Marissa Mayer)那樣（她的標準服裝是圓領及膝裙子搭配羊毛開衫）。米勒說她在技術公司的同事都是穿牛仔褲和T恤，而且顯然沒有哪個投資者在意馬克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)穿着帽衫去見他們。赫舍爾依然堅持：不管你喜歡與否，針對女性的標準是不一樣的。
This time, Ms. Miller wore a dark cardigan over a dark blouse.
這一次，米勒在一件深色襯衫外面套了件深色羊毛開衫。
Ms. Herscher asked if she had been hit on yet by venture capitalists. She hadn’t. Ms. Herscher told her own horror stories — the investor who slipped his hand under her hair and massaged her neck, the one that rubbed her knee.
赫舍爾問，有沒有投資者試圖挑逗她。她說沒碰到過。赫舍爾講了自己過去的可怕經歷——有一個投資者曾把手滑到她的頭髮裏，並撫摸她的脖子，還有一個曾經摸過她的膝蓋。
Ms. Miller was more worried about the investors’ reaction to her pregnancy. She broke the news to Ms. Herscher.
米勒更擔心的是投資者對她懷孕一事的反應。她把這個消息告訴了赫舍爾。
After congratulations, they plotted strategy. Wait until the second meeting to mention it, Ms. Herscher said. “Then say: ‘I’m pregnant. And I’m so well organized that my baby’s due on Christmas Day, which will be a slow time. I don’t expect it will faze me at all. I’m married to a man who will be a primary caregiver, and this is no different from investing in a man whose wife is pregnant.’”
在對米勒表示祝賀之後，她們一起商量了對策。赫舍爾說，等到第二次會面再提這一點。“然後就說：‘我懷有身孕。我把一切都準備好了，孩子大概會在聖誕節前後出生，那時候公司也不會太忙。我一點也不覺得這件事是個困擾。我丈夫會是孩子的主要看護者，這和投資一個妻子懷孕的男士沒什麼區別。’”
Then her tone shifted. She wasn’t talking about business anymore.
然後她話鋒一轉，開始談商業層面之外的問題。
“Having your first child is just physically hard, emotionally hard,” said Ms. Herscher, who has two children. “I would never discourage you or say you can’t do it, because you absolutely can. Just be very clear why you’re doing it and what price you’re willing to pay, because the price is time with your baby.”
“生育第一個孩子不光是生理上的考驗，精神上也是很大的挑戰，”育有兩個孩子的赫舍爾說。“我永遠不會勸阻你，或對說你不行，因爲你肯定能行。但是你要搞清楚，自己爲什麼要做這件事，以及你願意爲之付出多大代價，因爲這個代價是你和幼小的孩子在一起的時間。”
After the conversation, Ms. Miller talked with her husband, who works in advertising and was then a freelancer, about being the primary parent. He was on board. She figured she would take off a few weeks and get right back to work.
這次談話之後，米勒和她在廣告行業做自由職業者的丈夫談了這件事，表示想讓他擔起撫養孩子的主要職責，丈夫同意了。米勒打算等孩子出生後，請幾周的假，然後就馬上回去工作。
The gender issues and sexism that Ms. Miller’s generation faces tend to be different from those of earlier generations. There is still blatant bad behavior, but official reports of sexual harassment have declined in recent years. More often, the challenges are subtler.
米勒這一代女性所面臨的性別問題和性別歧視，似乎和之前幾代人不太一樣。現在依然存在明目張膽的惡劣行爲，但官方統計數據顯示，性騷擾事件在最近幾年有所下降。更常見的情況是，她們需要應對一些比較微妙的問題。
At the gender discrimination trial last year against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which the venture capital firm won, female employees said they were excluded from a ski trip, denied credit for deals they brought to the firm, and told they both didn’t speak up enough and talked too much.
在去年凱鵬華盈(Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers)的性別歧視案中，女性員工稱她們沒有獲得滑雪旅行的機會，沒有因爲給公司帶來交易而受到認可，並且被告知她們發言不夠積極，說的太少。該公司最終勝訴。
“I feel like it’s a lot more nuanced and sometimes it’s subconscious,” said Julia Hu, the founder and chief executive of Lark, which makes a health and weight-loss app. “V.C.s are pattern matchers, and they’re just used to seeing men like themselves.”
“我感覺問題更加微妙了，有時是潛意識的，”Lark創始人兼首席執行官胡念君(Julia Hu)說。“風險投資人是一些尋找匹配模式的人，他們只習慣看到跟他們類似的男性。”該公司開發了一種健康和減肥應用。
Many women convey confidence and leadership in a different way than men do, she said. As an Asian woman, she said, she was raised to be humble and quiet and felt uncomfortable promoting her skills. “To try to be who I thought they wanted me to be, which was another Mark Zuckerberg, was actually very difficult for me without feeling inauthentic.”
她表示，很多女性表現信心及領導力的方式與男性不同。她表示，作爲一名亞洲女性，她從小就被教導要謙遜、安靜，宣揚自己的能力讓她感到不自在。“我很難真心真意地去努力變成他們希望的樣子，那就是另一個馬克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)。”
Later, she realized that describing business partnerships she had made, like one to preinstall Lark on new Samsung phones, was a more effective way for her to demonstrate her leadership skills than boasting about herself.
後來，她認識到與自我吹噓相比，介紹她促成的商業合夥關係——比如在新的三星(Samsung)手機上預裝Lark——對她來說是一個更加有效地展示其領導力的方式。
Social science research supports Ms. Hu’s experience. A series of experiments by Laurie A. Rudman, a psychology professor at Rutgers, found that women who spoke directly about their strengths and achievements were considered more capable, but also less hirable. Self-promotion by men made them more hirable.
社會科學研究證實了胡念君的經歷。羅格斯大學心理學教授勞莉·A·魯德曼(Laurie A. Rudman)的一系列實驗發現，人們認爲直接說明自己的優勢及成就的女性更能幹，但同時受聘的可能性也較低。男性的自我推廣使得他們更容易被聘用。
In parenthood, too, there is a double standard. Mothers are penalized in pay and promotions because employers assume they will be less committed to work, research shows, while fathers get raises because employers think they will be extra committed to breadwinning.
在爲人父母上也存在一個雙重標準。研究顯示，母親的薪水和職位會受到影響，因爲僱主想當然地認爲她們不會那麼投入工作，而父親卻會得到提升，因爲僱主認爲他們會更加致力於掙錢養家。
People in Silicon Valley say new motherhood is particularly difficult, because competition moves at hyperspeed. Ms. Mayer, for example, felt the need to announce that she would be “taking limited time away and working throughout” her leave after giving birth to twins late last year.
硅谷人士表示，新爲人母尤其困難，因爲競爭非常激烈。例如，梅耶爾稱在去年晚些時候生下雙胞胎後，感覺自己有必要說明，她“休假時間會很有限，且會在休假期間工作”。
‘Speak in Bullet Points’
“逐條表述”
A few weeks later, Ms. Miller was back at Ms. Herscher’s office, practicing her pitch while Ms. Herscher played the part of skeptical venture capitalist.
幾周之後，米勒回到赫爾舍的辦公室，練習她的項目推介技巧，而赫爾舍則扮演持懷疑態度的風險投資人。
Ms. Miller had been working 70 hours a week managing Doxa, recruiting companies, trying to raise money and working nights with the engineers who had day jobs.
米勒每週花費70小時管理Doxa，擴大工作團隊，設法籌集資金，與那些做兼職的工程師熬夜工作。
Several firms, including 79 Studios, an investment fund focused on female entrepreneurs, had told her they would be interested in investing if another firm led the financing round. “We’re pretty positive on this from a mission point of view and even from a return on investment point of view,” said Saujin Yi, chief executive of 79 Studios — but the firm typically invested only alongside a lead investor.
包括關注女性創業者的投資基金79 Studios在內的幾家公司告訴她，如果有一家公司牽頭融資，他們也會有興趣投資。“從使命的角度，甚至從投資回報角度看，我們非常樂觀，”79 Studios首席執行官李敘稹（Saujin Yi，音）說，但該公司通常與領投方一同投資。
Though her pregnancy had been relatively easy — at one point she vomited on the sidewalk after meeting an investor, and she was down to a single professional-looking dress that was loose enough to hide her growing belly — she had not told any investors that she was pregnant, though two had obliquely asked if she was planning to have children.
雖然她懷孕期間沒有那麼難熬——有一次見完投資人後在人行道上嘔吐，只剩一件看起來比較職業的裙子可以遮掩她越來越大的肚子，但她還沒有告訴投資人她懷孕了，儘管有兩人轉彎抹角地問她是否計劃生孩子。
Ms. Miller began her practice pitch to Ms. Herscher: “Doxa is a platform to match qualified people to the right companies. Once this platform exists, we’re going to wonder how we ever found jobs before.” She talked about the team and showed a diagram of how the service worked.
米勒開始對着赫爾舍練習項目推介：“Doxa是一個幫助合格求職者找到合適職位的平臺。一旦平臺得以存在，我們將會無法想象以前是怎麼找到工作的。”她談到了工作團隊，並通過示意圖說明服務的流程。
“At this point I have no idea if this is important,” Ms. Herscher said. “You’ve told me there’s a problem but not if it could make money.”
“到目前爲止我還是不知道這是否重要，”赫爾舍說。“你已經告訴我存在一個問題，但沒說它能否賺錢。”
They ran through some more slides, including her go-to-market strategy — aiming at women in tech.
她們又看了幾張幻燈片，包括她針對科技領域女性的市場推銷策略。
“I’m immediately turned off and lost, because what you’re telling us is you have this fantastic technology and star team, and you’re going to go after this itty-bitty market and a bleeding heart cause,” Ms. Herscher said.
“我很快就感到倒了胃口，而且很迷惑，因爲你一直在說你擁有非常棒的技術和出色的團隊，你們將瞄準這種小型市場，這是一樁發善心的事業，”赫爾舍說。
Ms. Miller finished her pitch. It needed to be crisper and more confident, Ms. Herscher said: “It’s an art to speak in bullet points. It takes practice. Sit in the car and say it over and over.”
米勒完成了推介。她需要更加簡潔、自信，赫爾舍說：“逐條表述是一種藝術。這需要練習。坐在車裏，一遍一遍地練習。”
“O.K., wear cardigans, speak in bullet points,” Ms. Miller said.
“好的，穿開衫，逐條表述，”米勒說。
A week later, she met with Ms. Yuan at Cowboy Ventures. Her tone was more confident and her pitch faster, and she had broadened it beyond women in tech. “The tools can be used by anyone — the recruiting market is gigantic,” she said. “What people want is not gender-specific, it’s very millennial-specific.”
一週後，她在Cowboy Ventures見到了喬安妮·袁。她的語氣更加自信，介紹速度加快，而且擴大了目標範圍，不只針對科技領域女性。“這個平臺可以供所有人使用——招聘市場十分巨大，”她說。“人們想要的不是針對性別的服務，而是針對千禧世代的服務。”
Ms. Yuan pushed back. “There’s this inherent tension in the way we monetize,” she said. Doxa was asking companies to pay to use the service for recruiting while at the same time the site would publish potentially negative employee comments about the companies’ culture.
喬安妮·袁提出不同意見。她說，“我們的賺錢方式本身存在矛盾。”Doxa是在要求公司付錢使用他們的招聘服務，同時該網站會公佈員工對公司文化做出的評論，這些評論可能是負面的。
“It enables companies to be responsive: ‘Let’s get a maternity policy because we don’t want to be up on your platform without that,’” Ms. Miller said. Smiling, she added, “I love that you’re saying ‘we.’”
“這使得公司做出反應：‘制定產婦政策，我們不想在沒有這種政策的情況下出現在你們的平臺上，”米勒說。她微笑着說到，“我喜歡你說‘我們’。”
Her next pitch was to NEA, a global venture firm. She wore a gray, knee-length dress, cardigan and short heels. She thought the conversation flowed easily.
她接下來去全球風投公司NEA做推介。她穿着灰色及膝裙、開衫和低跟鞋。她覺得對話進展很順暢。
But a few days later, both venture capitalists declined to invest. NEA said Doxa didn’t show enough traction with users yet. Cowboy said it wasn’t clear that Doxa’s technology was different enough from that of other hiring websites.
但幾天之後，兩位風險投資人都拒絕投資。NEA稱，Doxa尚未展現出對用戶足夠多的吸引力。Cowboy稱目前尚不清楚Doxa的技術是否與其他招聘網站有很大的不同。
“I really thought it was a good idea,” Ms. Yuan said later. “But there were really well funded start-ups in this space, and it was hard to tell because it was so early.”
“我真的覺得這是一個好主意，”喬安妮·袁後來說。“但這個領域實際上已經有一些資金充足的初創企業，現在爲時過早，還很難說。”
Ms. Miller told Mr. Meder that she was scaling back her ambitions from raising $2 million and hiring a full team to raising $500,000 for just the two of them. But things had changed for him. He had been given more responsibility at his day job, and it didn’t feel fair to leave for Doxa, with its uncertain prospects.
米勒對梅德表示，她將降低目標，從籌集200萬美元並招聘一個完整團隊降至籌集50萬美元，招聘兩人。但對他來說，情況已經改變。他的正職工作被賦予更多責任，由於前景不確定，現在辭職加入Doxa感覺並不合適。
Ms. Miller canceled her coming pitches and told potential investors that Doxa was on pause. She had talked to more than 40 venture capitalists. But without her co-founder, who was building the technology while Ms. Miller built the business, venture capitalists were unlikely to provide financing.
米勒取消了接下來的推介活動，並告訴潛在的投資人，Doxa現在處於暫停狀態。她已經與40多名風險投資人交談過。但沒有她的聯合創始人，風險投資人不太可能提供資金。聯合創始人負責技術開發，米勒負責發展業務。
The flip side of overnight success in Silicon Valley is overnight failure. Start-ups can be so dependent on a single investor or partnership that a turn of events can change their fates.
在硅谷，一夜成名的另一面是一夜過後的失敗。創業公司可以十分依賴某一個投資人或合夥人，以致於事件發生轉折就帶來關乎命運的改變。
In 2011, Jason Shen helped found a start-up called Ridejoy, for connecting people who were driving long distances. For a time, it seemed as if it had the golden touch — entry into Y Combinator, $1.3 million in venture capital and traffic pouring in from Craigslist, where it posted its services. Vanity Fair did a photo shoot with the founders, and a writer profiled them for a book.
2011年，傑森·沈(Jason Shen)共同創建了一家名爲Ridejoy的初創公司，幫助長途出行的人員拼車。該公司似乎一度非常成功——進入了Y Combinator，獲得了130萬美元的風險投資，Craigslist網站帶來大量流量——公司在Craigslist上發佈服務廣告。《名利場》雜誌(Vanity Fair)爲幾位創始人拍攝了照片，一名作家在一本書中介紹了他們。
Then, Craigslist sent a cease-and-desist letter, forbidding Ridejoy to post on the site. By the time Vanity Fair came out, Ridejoy had laid off nearly all its employees and stopped working on the site.
然後，Craigslist發來一封警告信，禁止Ridejoy在該網站發佈廣告。那期《名利場》問世的時候，Ridejoy已經裁掉了幾乎所有員工，停止了網站的工作。
“Now I see companies who raised $10 million, and I’m like, did we just not have guts? Did we just not follow through? Did we just not believe in our thing enough?” said Mr. Shen, who now works at Etsy. “Funding is such a confidence game.”
“現在看到那些籌到1000萬美元的公司，我的感想是，我們那時沒有勇氣嗎？我們沒有堅持到底嗎？我們不夠相信自己的產品嗎？”目前在Etsy工作的傑森·沈說。“籌資是一場有關信心的遊戲。”
He is saving his money to try to play the game again.
他正在存錢，試圖再玩一次這個遊戲。
As her baby’s Christmas due date neared and she approached a year of living off savings, Ms. Miller began to get an unfamiliar feeling: the desire for stability.
隨着預產期的臨近，米勒靠積蓄生活的日子也快有一年了。她開始生髮出一種陌生的感覺：渴望穩定。
She was searching for a new technical co-founder. A few of the investors and companies she had met during the fund-raising process had contacted her about working for them. She began consulting at Code 2040, a nonprofit that matches black and Latino software engineers with internships at tech companies, started by Mr. Walker and Laura Weidman Powers, whom Ms. Miller knew from college.
她當時正在尋找負責技術的新聯合創始人。她在籌資期間接觸的一些投資人和公司曾與她聯繫，希望聘用她。她開始在非營利機構Code 2040做諮詢工作。這家由沃克與勞拉·韋德曼·鮑爾斯(Laura Weidman Powers)創立的機構爲黑人及拉丁裔軟件工程師尋找在科技公司實習的機會。米勒在上大學期間就認識了鮑爾斯。
A couple of months later, Code 2040 offered Ms. Miller a full-time job, as the director of partner programs. She accepted. Building a new business focused on diversity fulfilled some of the hopes she’d had for Doxa. She imagined keeping Doxa alive as a side project, once she had more time.
幾個月後，Code 2040爲米勒提供了一份全職工作，擔任合作伙伴項目的負責人。她接受了這份工作。發展以多元化爲宗旨的一家新公司，實現了她曾託付於Doxa的一些希望。她設想，一旦有更多時間，她就可以將Doxa作爲副業。
Ms. Miller’s plan was to take a month off and get back to work. Then, right on time, on Christmas Day, she gave birth to a girl, Zadie Mai, and changed her mind. The baby took over her thoughts. “I feel a mixture of intense love and protectiveness,” she said. “I want to hang out with the baby forever. There are my real physical needs and the physical dependence of the baby, all this stuff I didn’t expect to be so consuming.”
米勒計劃休一個月的產假，然後回去工作。她在聖誕節當天準時生下了女兒澤迪·梅(Zadie Mai)，然後改變了主意。她滿腦子想的都是孩子。“我感受到強烈的愛和保護欲，”她說。“我想和寶寶永遠在一起。這是我真實的生理需求，對寶寶的生理依賴。我沒有想到這些反應會如此強烈。”
She said she had an entirely new perspective on how undervalued caregivers are, and how people judge women for taking time off work for their families.
她表示自己對護理人員被低估的程度有了全新的看法，還有人們如何對女性爲了家庭減少工作時間而苛刻地評頭論足。
She decided to take at least six months off, doing some work from home after three or four months, and Code 2040 agreed. Her husband, meanwhile, had found a full-time job in advertising.
她決定至少休息六個月，三四個月後在家裏做一些工作。Code 2040同意這種做法。與此同時，她的丈夫在廣告領域找到了一份全職工作。
Ms. Miller said the transition from start-up founder to employee and mother had given her a new perspective on success in Silicon Valley and, more broadly, on what her generation wanted from work, something she wanted to address in her new job.
米勒表示，從創業者到媽媽僱員，這種身份的轉變使她對在硅谷獲取成功有了新認識，更宏觀地說，也對她這代人希望從職業生涯中獲得的東西有了新認識。她希望在新工作中解答這些問題。
“I wasn’t naïve,” Ms. Miller said. “I knew when I quit Instacart that going on this entrepreneurial journey wouldn’t be like ‘The Social Network.’ ”
“當時我不是天真，”米勒說。“我知道當我退出Instacart、走上創業之路時，過程不會像《社交網絡》(The Social Network)電影裏演的那樣。”
“But for me, this was a lesson that it’s not always a straight shot from idea to financing to taking over Silicon Valley and taking over the world,” she said. “Maybe this was just a lesson that being entrepreneurial and taking risks and jumping into new things you’re excited about sometimes is not linear at all.”
“但對我來說，這是上了一課。從提出想法到籌集資金，到掌管硅谷再到征服世界並不是直線完成的，”她說。“或許它只是說明，進行創業、冒風險、嘗試你爲之激動的新事物的過程，有時候根本不是一條直線。”
