退学、创业：中国的科技IPO大潮初涌
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在所谓的TMT（科技、媒体、电信）界，从电子商务、社交媒体到平板电脑的移动应用和智能手机，来自中国的科技公司正在全面开花地进行IPO。其频率之快，让人应接不暇，从遥远的美国来看更是如此。所以美国投资者和媒体采用了以一个以美国为中心的方法对它们进行分类，比如说中国的某某某就相当于美国的某某某。 以下是一些近期的例子：人人网上个月在美上市，通过5月4日的 IPO募集到了7.434亿美元。人人网就是“中国的Facebook”。此后没几天，交友网站世纪佳缘也在美上市，它被称为“中国的eHarmony”。世纪佳缘在美募集了8，000万美元，尽管今天该股的交易价格高于上市价格，但世纪佳缘IPO未能破亿的事实仍足以引发路透社的猜测，称所谓的“中国IPO疲劳”已经初露端倪。 然而，这也许只是美国媒体的感觉。从最近在北京举办的一次科技企业家和风投家的聚会——第七届全球高科技创新者峰会的“中国科技明星”会议——来看，中国的创业大潮还在后头。 参加这次会议的那些有权有势的风投家们基本上都同意启明创投（Qiming Venture Partners）的执行董事童士豪的观点。童士豪表示，大家都对“中国公司的估值感到一丝惶恐，担心那是泡沫”。不可否认，部分中国公司的估值过高，有些中国科技公司只赚到了很少的钱，有些则压根没有赚到钱。不过童士豪补充道：尽管如此，但那些“在中国待得时间更长的投资者们仍然在大量投资。” 对于童士豪来说，原因是显而易见的。童士豪是硅谷的一员老将。他毕业于斯坦福大学，既是企业家，也在硅谷做了多年的风投。童士豪最近搬到了北京，理由很简单：“这里的速度更快。”他说，美国每出现一个知名的团购、视频或交友网站，“中国就会有1,000到2,000家公司开始从事差不多同样的业务。”但凡是能够达到IPO地步的中国公司，都已经在激烈的竞争环境中杀出了一条血路，最终才得以“修成正果”。 中国科技繁荣背后的另一个问题是，许多成功的中国公司已经存在了很长时间，比如所谓的中国互联网三巨头——百度、阿里巴巴和腾讯，因此他们的不少员工已离开公司自立门户。再加上许多外国公司纷纷进入，希望在中国占有一席之地，结果就是像童士豪说的那样，“中国企业家的素质在过去几年里显著提高。”他的公司最近投资了10家初创公司，其中三家公司的创始人来自百度，一家公司的创始人来自淘宝（阿里巴巴），还有一家公司的创始人来自雅虎中国，另外两家公司的创始人来自谷歌（中国）。 中国的创业大潮想要更进一步，只剩唯一一个要塞尚未攻克。现在风投家们希望中国精英大学里的学子们相信：一毕业就创业——乃至在校创业——是个既“酷”又明智的选择。但中国的问题是，中国人最痴迷的两件事一是赚钱，二是尽可能接受最好的教育，而这二者之间存在着固有的矛盾。 毫不夸张地说，从小时候开始，这些精英大学的学生们只要醒着，就几乎把每一分钟的时间都花在了学习上，目的就是为了在高考中考出一个好成绩，因为每所大学都要求学生的高考成绩。即便是大学毕业之后，绝大多数的学生也只是单纯地想在一家好公司里找到一份体面的工作，拿着体面的薪水。这样一来，他们才能实现职业生涯早期阶段排在第二位的目标——买房。在房地产价格高得离谱的北京和上海，买房绝不是一件小事。 有了工作和房子，他们才能实现排在首位的目标：忽悠一个门当户对的姑娘当老婆。（记住，在中国，男女比率大概在1.7：1左右，一部分原因是因为中国的“独生子女政策”。所以中国的青年男子择偶时面临着很大的竞争压力：一个男人如果不能在大公司里找到工作、拿份体面的薪水并且名下拥有房产，那他基本上就“杯具”了。） 让中国孩子（和他们的父母）考虑IPO而不是学位 这就是为什么在今年的全球高科技创新者峰会上，来自Trilogy Ventures公司的美国风投家史蒂夫•贝尔成了最令人感兴趣的人物之一。贝尔尽其所能，在中国的五所大学里花了大量时间约见拥有好创意的学子们，鼓励他们创业。（他选择的五所大学是：北京大学、清华大学、北京航天航空大学、上海交通大学和浙江大学。） 贝尔的这一招学自贝宝（Paypal）的创始人彼得•泰尔。泰尔曾经承诺向20个拥有好创意的大学生提供10万美元的创业资金，支持他们退学创业。贝尔的做法没有那么极端。他说：“我并没有逼孩子们退学，不过我也并不反对这样的决定。” 眼下，泰尔正在向学生们灌输创业精神。他每个月都会抽出时间为学生们做几次演讲，告诉他们如果有好点子，Trilogy公司愿意提供投资。每次演讲结束后，都有20个左右的大学生自告奋勇地提出他们的创意。 其中一些拥有最佳创意的学生已经获得了Trilogy公司的种子资金。（贝尔说，该公司提供的启动资金一般在10万美元左右。）不过在中国，人们多少觉得创业有些不靠谱。为了消除这种社会压力，贝尔演讲时通常会邀请一位嘉宾一同前往，此人能为大学生树立榜样，打消他们父母心中的疑惑。北京国双科技公司的创始人兼CEO祁国晟就是一个例子。他在2003年创立了这家搜索引擎优化公司，并且取得了极大的成功。[北京国双科技公司的创业融资来自美国迪斯尼旗下的风投机构——思伟投资公司（Steamboat Ventures）]祁国晟毕业于清华的计算机科学专业，在创立北京国双之前就曾两次创业——不过他当时并没有选择退学。 因此，贝尔所称的“比尔•盖茨、拉里•佩奇、谢尔盖•布林和马克•扎克伯格式的创业”，正在缓慢但稳扎稳打地在中国诞生。正因如此，本次全球高科技创新者峰会结束之后，贝尔又连夜马不停蹄地赶到北大在郊区的一个校区演讲。在那里，300多名学生正翘首以盼，等待聆听他的教诲，其中既有工科生，也有MBA学生。中国的创业热远远没有“疲劳”，一切才刚刚起步。 译者：朴成奎 |
IPOs from Chinese tech companies -- in e-commerce, social media, mobile applications for tablets and smart phones -- in just about anything in the so-called TMT (technology,media, telecom) universe have been coming with such relentless frequency that they're hard to keep track of, especially from afar. So American investors and media are using US-centric formula to keep them sorted: X is the Y of China. Some recent examples: Ren Ren (RENN), which went public last month, raising $743.4 million in May 4 IPO, is the "Facebook of China." And Jiayuan International (DATE), a dating site, is the "eHarmony of China." Listing just days after Ren Ren, it raised about $80 million, and though the stock today trades above where it opened, the fact that it failed to raise $100 million with its IPO was enough for Reuters to suggest there is now such a thing as Chinese IPO fatigue. Maybe that's the feeling in the U.S. media. But a recent gathering of China's technology entrepreneurs and the venture capitalists who fund them here in Beijing -- at the 7th annual Chinict "Tech stars of China" conference -- suggests that we probably haven't seen anything yet. Oh, to be sure, the high powered money guys at the conference pretty much all agreed with Hans Tung, managing director of Qiming Venture Partners, who said everyone is "a little bit scared of China valuations now; worried that it's a bubble." That valuations are high for companies that either make only a little money now or none at all is undeniable. But, Tung added, the [investors] "who have been here longer are still ponying up." For Tung, it's easy to see why. A veteran of Silicon Valley -- he graduated from Stanford and has worked as both an entrepreneur and a VC in the Valley for years -- Tung relocated to Beijing recently for a simple reason: "the pace here is faster." He says for every Groupon, video site, or eHarmony emerging the United States, "you'll have 1,000 to 2,000 companies [in China] doing pretty much the same thing." The companies in China that get to the IPO stage have already battled through fiercely competitive circumstances to get to the promised land. The other thing behind the gathering tech boom in China is that a number of successful of domestic companies -- think Baidu (BIDU), Alibaba and Tencent, China's so called "BAT" triumvirate -- have been around long enough that people are leaving those companies to start out on their own. Mix in the foreign players that have tried to establish a major presence in China, and the result is "that the quality of entrepreneur in China has improved significantly in the last few years," says Tung. Of the last ten deals his firm has done, he says, three founders came from Baidu, one from Taobao (Alibaba), one from Yahoo (YHOO) China and two from Google [China] (GOOG). The evolution of the start up phenomenon in China has only one more significant barrier to get beyond: Venture capitalists are now hoping to convince students at elite universities that starting up businesses when they graduate -- or even while they're still in school -- is both cool and financially smart. But the problem in China has been the inherent tension between two things this country is obsessed with: making money, and getting the best possible education. It's not exaggeration to say that students at elite universities here have spent pretty much every waking moment since they were small children studying in order to score well on the all-critical college entrance exam, which every university bound student must take. Even after graduating, the vast majority of students simply want to get a decent paying job at an established company. That kind of job lets young men do the 2nd most important thing of their early working lives: buy an apartment, no small feat in absurdly overpriced real-estate markets like Beijing and Shanghai. Once they have the job and the apartment, they can then get around to the 1st most important thing: snaring an eligible young woman as a wife. (Remember, in China, the ratio between men and women is roughly around 1.7 to 1, a legacy in part of the "one child policy." Talk about competitive pressure: if a young male does not have a good, decent paying job at a reputable company and own his own apartment, he's pretty much chump change.) Getting Chinese kids (and their parents) to think about IPOs instead of degrees All this is why one of the most interesting figures at this year's Chinict conference was American venture capitalist Stephen Bell, of Trilogy Ventures. Bell is spending as much time as he can on five college campuses around China, to meet kids with bright ideas and convince them to start up a business. (His chosen five: Beijing University, Tsinghua, Beihang -- the Beijing University of Aeronautics -- Shanghai Jiaotong University, and Zhejiang University in Hangzhou). Bell is taking a page out of Paypal founder Peter Thiel's playbook: Thiel has famously promised to give 20 college kids with promising ideas $100,000 to drop out of school and pursue their businesses. Bell doesn't go that far -- "I'm not urging kids to drop out, though I'm not really against it, either," he says. But he is proselytizing for entrepreneurship. Several times each month, he'll speak in front of groups of college students, telling them that Trilogy has money to invest in smart kids with good ideas. After his spiel, at most such sessions, around 20 such kids get up and pitch their ideas. The best ones have earned seed capital from Trilogy (a typical investment, Bell says, will be about $100,000 to start.) To counteract the societal pressure that going the startup route is somehow irresponsible, Bell often invites a speaker along who can be a role model to the kids and their skeptical parents -- someone like Qi Guosheng, founder and CEO of Beijing based Gridsum, a hugely successful search engine optimization company that he started in 2003. (Gridsum received startup financing from Steamboat Ventures, Walt Disney Company's (DIS) VC arm.) As a computer science student at Tsinghua, Qi started two previous businesses -- though he did not drop out to do so. Thus, what Bell calls the "Bill Gates-Larry Page-Sergey Brin-Mark Zuckerberg model," is slowly but surely being born in China. It's why, after the Chinict conference, Bell trekked out in the evening to the suburban campus of the famed Beida (aka Beijing University), where some 300 students, from undergrads in engineering to MBA students, awaited him, and hung on his every word. Far from being "fatigued," it appears the China start up boom is only just beginning. |
