蘋果魔力的奧祕 Imitators take note — Jobs was more than
It is easy to forget that, when he was a student, the man who brought us the Macintosh, iPhone and iPad (and, with his little finger, Pixar) collected bottle caps to make ends meet. The need to stretch every nickel informed the way Apple was run during the early days. It is on that spell, rather than the enormous public profile commanded by Steve Jobs in his later years, that would-be emulators should dwell.
人們很容易忘記，那個帶給我們蘋果電腦(Macintosh)、iPhone和iPad（以及其“副業”皮克斯(Pixar)）的人，曾經靠收集瓶蓋來維持生計。錙銖必較的宗旨貫穿着蘋果公司(Apple)早期的經營方式。這纔是準效仿者們應該細細思索的魔咒，而不是史蒂夫(Steve Jobs)後期的高大公衆形象。
Lost in the millions of words devoted to Jobs since his sad and untimely death is what established Apple in the first place — an approach to business far removed from the techniques employed by the managers of the three- or four-year-old subprime “unicorns” that command billion-dollar valuations today.
自喬布斯令人遺憾地英年早逝以來，從人們緬懷他的千言萬語中找不到當初讓蘋果立足的經營之道——與如今成立三四年就估值超過10億美元的次優級“獨角獸”公司的經理人使用的手法大相徑庭。
Peruse Apple’s initial public offering prospectus, and the numbers are startling. In the year preceding its flotation in 1980 Apple recorded sales of $117m, and pre-tax income of $24m. It did this in a market cluttered with dozens of companies making personal computers and with a payroll of about 1,000 — almost half of whom, believe it or not, were engaged in manufacturing. Apple’s initial public offering, which raised $90m, valued the company at about $1.2bn. (Multiply these numbers by three if you are comparing them with current dollars). Apple’s two founders and their chosen chief executive owned about 40 per cent of their creation, largely because they had been so efficient (and parsimonious) with the small amount of outside capital they had raised. Apple became a public company in a month when the prime rate stood at 21.5 per cent (yes, the decimal point is in the correct position) and the capital markets were bruising.
細細研讀蘋果首次公開發行(IPO)招股說明書，其中的數字令人瞠目結舌。在1980年上市的前一年，蘋果錄得1.17億美元的銷售額，稅前利潤爲2400萬美元。在數十家個人電腦公司混戰的市場中，蘋果以1000人左右的員工——信不信由你，其中將近一半從事製造——取得了這一成績。蘋果IPO（融資9000萬美元）對公司的估值約爲12億美元。（如果你想與現在的美元進行比較的話，可以把這些數字乘以3）。蘋果的兩位創始人及其挑選的首席執行官擁有蘋果約40%的股份，這主要是因爲他們對所籌的少量外部資本的使用非常高效率（而且非常吝嗇）。蘋果成爲上市公司的那個月，基準利率高達21.5%（是的，小數點的位置沒錯）、資本市場遭受重創。
All this is most germane in the era of the subprime unicorn because the habits adopted during the formative years of a company have such an influence on its eventual operating performance. Apple’s tone in its early years was influenced not just by Jobs but by a management team composed of several alumni of the semiconductor industry — a milieu where the consequences of an operating mistake are harsh.
在次優級獨角獸當道的時代，這一切都正中要害，因爲一家公司在成長期養成的習慣，對其最終的經營表現具有巨大影響。蘋果的早期基調不僅受到了喬布斯的影響，還受到由幾個半導體行業老將組成的管理團隊的影響。在半導體行業，經營失誤的後果是無情的。
Some will argue that Apple’s lineage is irrelevant and, in some respects, they are right. Open source software and Amazon Web Services make it far easier and cheaper to start a company, or at least build a product, than it was when Jobs co-founded his business. On the flip side, at least in Silicon Valley, it is also more difficult and expensive to build a company up than it was at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s.
一些人會認爲蘋果的出身並不重要，從某些方面而言，他們是對的。開源軟件和亞馬遜網絡服務(Amazon Web Services)使得如今創辦公司——至少就打造新產品而言——要遠比喬布斯當初與其合夥人共同創辦蘋果時更容易，也更便宜。另一方面，至少在硅谷(Silicon Valley)，創辦一家企業要比1970年代末和1980年代初更加困難而昂貴。
The fact that there are more technology behemoths — Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft — than at any time in history makes life tougher for the start-ups. These companies, together with a raft of smaller, rapidly growing, profitable ones (and, increasingly, several Chinese businesses with Silicon Valley outposts) are run by people eager to conquer new frontiers. That has had a dramatic effect on the cost of start-up labour.
如今的科技巨頭——比如亞馬遜(Amazon)、蘋果、谷歌(Google)、Facebook和微軟(Microsoft)——比以往更多，這使得初創企業的日子更加難熬。這些企業，再加上一批規模較小、快速增長的盈利企業（以及——在越來越大的程度上——在硅谷落地的數家中國企業），如今都由渴望征服新前沿的人經營。這對初創公司的用工成本產生了巨大影響。
Every capable person, whether their forte is engineering or sales and marketing, will be keenly fought over; and the large companies, with their ample profit margins and huge cash-flows, are prepared to pay king’s ransoms to retain their best and brightest or recruit the smart graduates. Add to that a large rise in the cost of property and the look-a-like companies sprouting up all over the world, and it is clear Silicon Valley is more expensive, in real dollars, than 40 years ago.
企業競相爭奪每一個有能力的人，無論他們的專長是工程還是銷售和市場營銷；而擁有充足利潤空間以及巨大現金流的大公司，願意爲留住最優秀的頂尖人才或是招募聰明的畢業生支付高薪。再加上房地產成本的大幅攀升，以及相似的公司在全球範圍到處涌現，就不難理解按美元實際購買力計算，如今在硅谷開公司比40年前更昂貴。
None of this means that the laws of business have suddenly been reversed. That Apple is now the world’s mightiest company is because its principal founder (and re-inventor) was always aware that his large public profile rested atop a meticulous operating machine — something that those who aspire to replicate his success might bear in mind.
這些並不意味着商業規律突然間被顛覆了。蘋果之所以成爲全球最強大的公司，是因爲其主要創始人和再造者始終明白，他的高大公衆形象有賴於一絲不苟的經營體系——那些渴望複製喬布斯成就的人應該記住這一點。
The writer is chairman of Sequoia Capital and co-author with Sir Alex Ferguson of ‘Leading’. The views expressed are his own.
本文作者爲紅杉資本(Sequoia Capital)董事長，與亞歷克斯弗格森爵士(Sir Alex Ferguson)共同著有《領導力》(Leading)一書。本文僅代表作者個人觀點
