【原】Day 27: What will the world look like 10 and 20 years from now

英语共读 2020-12-04

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Wednesday

各位书友，今天我们一起阅读《Zero to One》第十三章SEEING GREEN。

Consider how conventional it had become by 2006 to be bullish on solar. That year, President George W. Bush heralded a future of “solar roofs that will enable the American family to be able to generate their own electricity.” Investor and cleantech executive Bill Gross declared that the “potential for solar is enormous.” Suvi Sharma, then-CEO of solar manufacturer Solaria, admitted that while “there is a gold rush feeling” to solar, “there’s also real gold here—or, in our case, sunshine.” But rushing to embrace the convention sent scores of solar panel companies—Q-Cells, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, and even Gross’s own Energy Innovations, to name just a few—from promising beginnings to bankruptcy court very quickly.

想想2006年以前，关于太阳能的这种乐观看法是如何的盛行。那年，布什总统预言“太阳能屋顶能使美国家庭自己发电”。投资者和清洁技术业者比尔.格罗斯声称“太阳能潜力无限”。太阳能制造商Solaria当时的首席执行官苏维.夏尔马承认虽然投资太阳能产业“有淘金的热情，也确实有金子——或者说阳光”，但是匆匆追赶潮流使许多太阳能电池板公司——Q-Cells公司、常青太阳能公司、Spectra Watt公司，还有格罗斯自己的能源创新公司（Energy Innovations）——迅速从光明的开端走向破产。

思考问题

What will the world look like 10 and 20 years from now?

10年20年之后，世界会是什么样子？

欢迎各位书友留言，文字语音都可以，中文英文均不限。

您的每一条留言对于我们都很重要！*3

英语共读编辑团队在后台等您来！在后台等您来！等您来！

01 THE ENGINEERING QUESTION

工程问题

A great technology company should have proprietary technology an order of magnitude better than its nearest substitute. Only when your product is 10x better can you offer the customer transparent superiority.

优秀的技术公司，其拥有的专有技术应该比最相近的技术高一个数量级。只有10倍的改进，你的产品才能给客户带来明显的优势。

Companies must strive for 10x better because merely incremental improvements often end up meaning no improvement at all for the end user. Suppose you develop a new wind turbine that’s 20% more efficient than any existing technology—when you test it in the laboratory. That sounds good at first, but the lab result won’t begin to compensate for the expenses and risks faced by any new product in the real world. And even if your system really is 20% better on net for the customer who buys it, people are so used to exaggerated claims that you’ll be met with skepticism when you try to sell it.

公司必须力争做到10倍的改进，稍有改进对终端用户来说就是毫无改进。假设你开发了新的风力涡轮机，比现在技术的效率高20%—这是实验室数据——咋一听很好，但实验数据还要扣除新产品在实际市场中面临的生产成本以及风险。而且即使你的产品确实给顾客带来20%的改进，由于人们习惯了夸大其词的广告宣传，销售该产品时，你也一定会受到质疑。

02 THE TIMING QUESTION

时机问题

When he announced his new company in 2008, SpectraWatt CEO Andrew Wilson stated that the solar industry is akin to where the microprocessor industry was in the late 1970s. There is a lot to be figured out and improved.” The second part was right, but the microprocessor analogy was way off.

清洁技术公司的企业家努力工作，以说服自己他们的时代已然到来。SpectraWatt的首席执行官安德鲁·威尔逊2008年宣布建立新公司时，表明“太阳能产业就像是20世纪79年代末的微处理器，还有很多有待解决和改善的地方”。后半句是对的，但是关于微处理器的类比却错得离谱。

Ever since the first microprocessor was built in 1970, computing advanced not just rapidly but exponentially. Look at Intel’s early product release history:

自从1970年第一台微处理问世，计算技术不仅是飞速发展，而是呈指数级发展。Intel早期产品发行历史如图：

The first silicon solar cell, by contrast, was created by Bell Labs in 1954—more than a half century before Wilson’s press release. Photovoltaic efficiency improved in the intervening decades, but slowly and linearly:.

相比之下，1954年贝尔实验室发明的第一块硅太阳能电池，比威尔逊发布新闻稿的时间早了半个多世纪。相差的这几十年间，光电的转换效能虽有进展但速度缓慢。

03 THE MONOPOLY QUESTION

垄断问题

Cleantech executives emphasized the bounty of an energy market big enough for all comers, but each one typically believed that his own company had an edge.

清洁技术公司的高管们强调能源市场很大，足以满足所有的进入者，但是每个人都认为自己的公司自有优势。

Suppose you’re running a solar company that’s successfully installed hundreds of solar panel systems with a combined power generation capacity of 100 megawatts. Since total U.S. solar energy production capacity is 950 megawatts, you own 10.53% of the market. Congratulations, you tell yourself: you’re a player.

夸大独特性并不能解决垄断问题。假设你经营一家太阳能公司，成功地安装了成百上千的太阳能电池板系统，其总产能为100兆瓦。由于整个美国的太阳能总产能为950兆瓦，你自身就占有10.53%的市场份额。祝贺你，你可以告诉自己：你是个玩家了。

But what if the U.S. solar energy market isn’t the relevant market? Or what if the appropriate measure isn’t global solar, but rather renewable energy in general? Annual production capacity from renewables is 420 gigawatts globally; you just shrank to 0.02% of the market. And compared to the total global power generation capacity of 15,000 gigawatts, your 100 megawatts is just a drop in the ocean.

如果美国太阳能市场不是相关市场会怎样呢？或者比价标准不是全球太阳能市场，而是整个再生能源市场又会怎样呢？全球再生能源市场的总产能是420千兆瓦，你的市场份额跌落到了0.02%。相较于全球全部能源的总产能15000千兆瓦，你的100兆瓦仅仅是沧海一粟。

Cleantech entrepreneurs’ thinking about markets was hopelessly confused. They would rhetorically shrink their market in order to seem differentiated, only to turn around and ask to be valued based on huge, supposedly lucrative markets.

清洁技术公司的企业家对市场的认识简直是无药可救的混乱。他们故意把市场形容得比较小，所以看起来有所区分，但又反过来要求基于利润可能丰厚的巨大市场来对其进行估值。

04 THE PEOPLE QUESTION

人员问题

Energy problems are engineering problems, so you would expect to find nerds running cleantech companies. You’d be wrong: the ones that failed were run by shockingly nontechnical teams.

能源问题属于工程问题，因此你可能以为工程技术人员在经营清洁技术公司。你错了，失败的公司是由非技术人员经营的。

At Founders Fund, we instituted a blanket rule: pass on any company whose founders dressed up for pitch meetings. Maybe we still would have avoided these bad investments if we had taken the time to evaluate each company’s technology in detail. But the team insight—never invest in a tech CEO that wears a suit—got us to the truth a lot faster. The best sales is hidden.

关于创始人基金公司，我们设定了一个基本规则：排除那些创始人西装革履地参加销售会议的公司。如果我们花时间来仔细评估每个公司的技术，或许我们能避免不良投资。但是团队洞见——绝不给首席执行官西装革履的技术公司投资——让我们更快地明白了真相。最佳销售总是深藏不露。

05 THE DISTRIBUTION QUESTION

销售问题

Cleantech companies effectively courted government and investors, but they often forgot about customers. They learned the hard way that the world is not a laboratory: selling and delivering a product is at least as important as the product itself.

清洁技术公司权力迎合政府和投资者，却忽略了消费者。它们吃过苦头才明白现实跟实验室不一样：销售的物流至少和产品本身一样重要。

Just ask Israeli electric vehicle startup Better Place, which from 2007 to 2012 raised and spent more than $800 million to build swappable battery packs and charging stations for electric cars.

问问以色列电动汽车初创公司Better Place就知道，它在2007--2012年筹集并花费了8亿多美元，打造电动汽车的可更换电池组和充电站。

Reflecting on the company’s failure：

反思公司的失败：

The Better Place board of directors stated upon selling the company’s assets for a meager $12 million in 2013, “The technical challenges we overcame successfully, but the other obstacles we were not able to overcome.”

Better Place董事会于2013年仅以1200万美元变卖公司资产时宣称：“我们成功地攻克了技术难关，而未能跨越其他障碍。”

Better Place thought its technology spoke for itself, so they didn’t bother to market it clearly.

Better Place认为其技术本身就可以打开销售渠道，因此没有认真去推销其产品。

06 THE DURABILITY QUESTION

持久问题

Every entrepreneur should plan to be the last mover in her particular market. That starts with asking yourself: what will the world look like 10 and 20 years from now, and how will my business fit in? Few cleantech companies had a good answer. As a result, all their obituaries resemble each other.

每个企业家都应该计划做自己特定市场的坚守者。一开始就要先自问：10年、20年后世界会是什么样的？我的公司如何才能与之相适应？很少有清洁技术公司能给出好答案，结果它们的结局相似。

07 THE SECRET QUESTION

秘密问题

Every cleantech company justified itself with conventional truths about the need for a cleaner world. They deluded themselves into believing that an overwhelming social need for alternative energy solutions implied an overwhelming business opportunity for cleantech companies of all kinds. Great companies have secrets: specific reasons for success that other people don’t see.

所有的清洁技术公司都用“我们需要一个清洁的世界”这一传统真理来证明自己的价值。它们自欺欺人地认为社会对可替代能源势不可当的需求，意味着各种清洁技术公司巨大的商机。但是伟大企业是构筑在秘密之上，这是它们取得成功的独特原因，而别人对此却一无所知。

拓展

In 2006, billionaire technology investor John Doerr announced that “green is the new red, white and blue.” He could have stopped at “red.” As Doerr himself said, “Internet-sized markets are in the billions of dollars; the energy markets are in the trillions.” What he didn’t say is that huge, trillion-dollar markets mean ruthless, bloody competition. Others echoed Doerr over and over: in the 2000s, I listened to dozens of cleantech entrepreneurs begin fantastically rosy PowerPoint presentations with all-too-true tales of trillion-dollar markets—as if that were a good thing.

2006年，技术投资家、亿万富翁约翰·杜尔宣称：“绿色是新的红、白、蓝。”（红、白、蓝为美国国旗的颜色，开发绿色能源为爱国表现。）他这句话应该以代表流血牺牲的“红色”结束。正如杜尔自己所说：“如果网络市场的规模是10亿美元级别，那么能源市场的规模就是万亿美元级别。”他未提及这个巨大的万亿市场还意味着残酷无情、血腥残忍的竞争。其他人不断对杜尔的观点进行附和：仅21世纪的前10年，我就听过几十个清洁技术公司的企业家怀着难以置信的乐观态度用精美的PPT展示这个万亿市场看似真实的故事——好像这是好事一样。