泡沫破裂时，“独角兽公司”该怎么做

    “创业101” 在线课程指出，聪明的创业者会储备现金，特别是当他们正打算开辟一个全新市场时。明智的投资者将奖励坚持这一原则的创业者，那些上市公司的投资者就更是会关注资金去向。那么，为什么会有这么多钱涌向所谓的“独角兽公司”呢？这样的企业有90多家，其价值均在10亿美元以上，有的超过100亿美元，甚至500亿美元。

    以从事办公室共享业务的初创公司WeWork为例，它刚刚宣布了新一轮融资计划，完成后其估值将超过100亿美元。和同样从事办公室租赁的波士顿地产公司相比，WeWork的市值已超过后者一半以上。波士顿地产拥有的房产面积超过4500万平方英尺（418.5万平方米），而且以高端写字楼为主。WeWork则正好相反，它出租的办公室面积为350万平方英尺（32.55万平方米），散布于美国各地，还有几处在国外。显然，投资者的预期是WeWork将改变人们的工作方式，进而可能让他们的生活方式发生变化，甚至还有可能改变公司的组织形式。

    这样的预期也许不会成真。

    预示市场泡沫可能萎缩（甚至直接破裂）的早期危险信号有很多。“创业101”法则普遍遭到无视就是其中之一。一些获得风险投资的公司烧钱速度非常快。目前情况还好，前提是投资者继续撒钱。但这种情况可能给WeWork这样的公司留下软肋，原因是它放弃了成本固定的长期租赁业务，只把办公场地短期租给小公司。如果此类需求枯竭，WeWork就会陷入困境。而“创业101”的黄金法则就是尽量降低固定成本，以便应对这种局面。

    那么问题来了，如果那些基本上不会成为客户的投资者停止“输血”，这些公司就得开始从真正的用户那里获取相当大的一部分资金。按照以往的经验，此时它们就会“原形毕露”，而且这也将成为一个转折点，此后这些公司可能会相当快地陷入现金断流的境地。这就说明，它们的经营模式依赖于大量资金的持续投入，就像许多所谓的独角兽公司一样。在投资者变得小心谨慎后，这些公司要么“忽悠”前者继续投资，要么就会遇上大麻烦。

    另一个早期警示是一些投资者开始质疑初创公司的会计方法。就像对新业务模式的直观印象和宣传推广支撑起了上一次科技泡沫，最终，这些公司也得使用人们信得过的衡量标准。投资者已将某些行业整个列为禁区，比如约会网站。

    观察人士已经注意到，股市无法一下子消化所有的“独角兽公司”。此外，硅谷风险资本家马克•安德森发现，如今的初创公司创始人从未在资金紧张的情况下进行过决策。他形象地说，这些创始人有可能“蒸发”。

    那么，了解上述情况有什么用呢？预测赢家和输家的难度非常大，但推断其后果就容易得多。

    对准备充分的老牌企业来说，初创公司崩盘带来的机会可能令人咋舌。大批非常出色的人才将会失业，或者他们所在的公司可能出现亏损并陷入停滞。这些人对于到大型传统企业工作的兴趣将陡然上升。此前处于疯狂水平的薪资和股权报酬要求将更贴近历史正常水平。办公场地租金将下跌（嗯哼，WeWork会怎样可想而知）。尚未大量应用的优良技术将变得唾手可得，获取成本也会大幅下降。

    在这些初步影响的基础上再略微延伸一下大家就会发现，向科技公司提供服务的行业将出现连锁反应，这种情况将再次创造以可接受成本进行收购或实施行业整合的机会。不过，只要有精明的头脑和充分的准备，从中获得好处的就不仅仅是大公司。确实用心学习过“创业101”的创业者也可能成为受益者。（财富中文网）

    译者：Charlie

    校对：詹妮

    In entrepreneurship 101, the golden rule is to keep your fixed costs as low as possible to ride out the lean times.

    Entrepreneurship 101 suggests that smart startups conserve their cash, particularly if they are the kinds of startups that are trying to create entirely new markets. Savvy investors are supposed to reward the founders who adhere to this principle, and investors in public companies are even more likely to ask questions about where their money is going. Why then, is so much money sloshing around the so-called unicorns, the 90-plus firms worth more than a billion … more than 10 billion … more than 50 billion …?

    For perspective, consider that office-sharing startup WeWork just announced a financing round that would put the company’s market capitalization atover $10 billion, more than half the market capitalization of Boston Properties, Inc., an office leasing competitor. Boston Properties owns more than 45 million square feet of real estate, with a focus on high-priced areas for offices. WeWork, in contrast, leases 3.5 million square feet scattered around the U.S. and in a few global locations. Clearly, investors’ expectations are that the small firm is going to revolutionize the way people work, then later maybe the way they live, and then perhaps even the form corporations will take.

    Or maybe not.

    The early warning signs of a bubble potentially deflating (if not popping outright) are many. One is the widespread disregard of Entrepreneurship 101—burn rates at some of these venture-backed companies are very high. So far, so good, if investors keep pouring in cash. But it can leave a company like WeWork vulnerable, because it takes out long leases at fixed cost and rents out spaces to small players in the short term. If demand dries up for those spaces, WeWork is still stuck with the leases. The golden rule in entrepreneurship 101 is to keep your fixed costs as low as possible to ride through any such scenario.

    Here’s the problem: Once the cash stops coming in from people who are basically not customers, money has to start coming in at a pretty good clip from people the companies actually sell things to. If history repeats itself, the arrival of an “emperor has no clothes” moment is a tipping point which can shut off the fund flows pretty quickly. That in turn means that companies whose business models depend on continued, significant investment—like many of the so-called unicorns—will either be able to sweet talk now-wary investors into continuing the party, or they are going to run into serious trouble.

    A few other early warnings—some investors are starting to question startups’ accounting practices. Like the eyeball-counting and talk of new business models that fueled the last tech bubble, eventually these companies have to agree on numbers people can trust. Some entire sectors are being declared off-limits by investors, such as dating websites.

    Observers are already noting that the public markets can’t absorb all those unicorns at once. Moreover, as Marc Andreessen has observed, today’s startup founders have never made decisions in a tight-money environment. They are likely, as he picturesquely observed, to be “vaporized.”

    All right, knowing all this, what does it mean? What is very hard to predict is who the winners and losers will be. What is much less hard to predict is the aftermath.

    For the established organization that is well prepared, the opportunity presented by a crash is potentially staggering. An awful lot of very talented people, facing an actual loss of their jobs or the prospects of working for a money-losing venture that isn’t getting traction, are going to suddenly get a lot more interested in talking to the recruiters from Big Old Company X. Crazy salary levels and demands for equity will come back to more historical norms. Office space prices will drop (ahem, WeWork?). Good technologies that have not yet been scaled will be far more readily available, and at far better prices.

    Moving a little further away from the immediate impacts, you’ll see the ripple effects in the services provided to the tech companies, which can again create affordable opportunities to make acquisitions or consolidate a sector. But not only big companies can benefit if they are smart and well-prepared. The entrepreneur who did heed the lessons of Entrepreneurship 101 is also likely to be among the beneficiaries.