假如乔布斯活着，他会给独角兽公司什么建议？

一众估值超10亿美元的独角兽公司现在都在比拼烧钱率，但它们最好还是“数着硬币过日子”。要知道，苹果公司之所以能够生存下来，在很大程度上是因为乔布斯等创始人，能够非常有效，并节俭地利用他们募集到的少量外部资金。

最近几个月，硅谷传奇风投家、红杉资本董事长迈克尔•莫里茨一直在给估值直冲云霄的“独角兽”初创公司敲警钟。他甚至搬出了已故的苹果公司创始人史蒂夫•乔布斯，来批评这些独角兽企业。

莫里茨恳请这些估值超过10亿美元的独角兽要“数着硬币过日子”。他说，这些公司如果想要模仿苹果创始人的成功轨迹，就应当学习乔布斯对于成功的渴望。

“我们很容易忘记，这位给我们带来Mac电脑、iPhone、iPad以及皮克斯动画工作室的人物，曾在学生时代靠捡瓶盖来维持生计。那些想要模仿史蒂夫•乔布斯的人，需要仔细研究他在这段时间的经历，而不是他在获得成功之后的伟岸英姿。”

1976年4月，年仅21岁的乔布斯与好友史蒂夫•沃兹尼亚克在自家车库内成立了苹果电脑公司。当时，他们“卖掉了所有最值钱的东西”，乔布斯卖掉了大众小巴，沃兹尼亚克则卖掉了惠普电脑，一共筹到了1300美元。

莫里茨表示，回想一下，苹果在1980年上市时的估值为12亿美元（按照如今的标准来看，大约是36亿美元）。乔布斯与联合创始人史蒂夫•沃兹尼亚克，以及当时的首席执行官迈克尔•斯科特，拥有公司大约40%的股份，“主要是因为他们能有效并且节俭地利用募集到的少量外部资金。”

初创者们应当更加努力，因为“至少在硅谷，比起20世纪70年代末和80年代初，现在建立一家公司的难度和成本都会更高”。莫里茨一边肯定乔布斯努力工作的价值，一边警告如今的初创公司。

“如今的科技巨头，比如亚马逊、苹果、谷歌、Facebook、微软，比以往任何时候都要多，这让初创公司的生存变得更加艰难。与其他许多发展迅速、盈利可观的小型公司（还有几家已经在硅谷设立前哨站的中国公司）一样，这些公司的领导者都是一群渴望占领新前沿的企业家。这会对初创公司的劳动力成本产生惊人的影响。”莫里茨列举了一连串困难，例如激烈的人才竞争、高昂的租金等。

实际上，自2015年1月以来，又有59家新创企业获得了独角兽的那只角——即估值达到或新增数十亿美元，其中只有三家公司挂牌上市，没有一家企业被人并购。

我们并不是谈论风投资本应当如何运作。即便你假定10亿美元的估值对于零营收的公司意义重大，但对其投资的目的依然是获得回报。

此外，独角兽公司等待上市的时间越长——这是由乔布斯法案（JOBS Act）以及像共同基金这样的短期风投旅游者所导致的—投资机构所承担的风险就越多。到了某个节点上，风投基金的投资人就会要求收回资金。

网上调查公司Qualtrics的首席执行官瑞安•史密斯（Ryan Smith）在《财富》杂志举办的“科技头脑风暴大会”（Brainstorm Tech conference）上说，因为举行大规模集资活动而获得称誉就像“祝贺某人拿到了抵押一样。”况且，我们都知道，签署太多的抵押凭据，却又不太关心它们如何得到偿还，其结果会怎样。（财富中文网）

译者：严匡正

审校：任文科

The legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist Michael Moritz has been sounding the alarm about high valuations of “unicorn” startups for months, and this week he even invoked the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs to take those companies to task.

In a post on LinkedIn, which originally ran as an op-ed in the Financial Times, Sequoia Capital chairman Moritz implored the unicorns—private companies with valuations of $1 billion or more—to “count the nickels,” and to demonstrate the Apple AAPL -2.90% founder’s scrappy hunger for success if they hope to follow in his footsteps.

“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,” Moritz wrote. “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.”

Consider, Moritz wrote, that Apple was valued at $1.2 billion when it went public in 1980 (or about $3.6 billion in today’s dollars). Jobs, along with his co-founder Steve Wozniak and then-CEO Michael Scott, owned roughly 40% of the company “largely because they had been so efficient (and parsimonious) with the small amount of outside capital they had raised.”

While praising the value of hard work as illustrated by Jobs, Moritz also warned that today’s startups will have to work even harder, because “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.”

Moritz cited a slew of obstacles, from intense competition for talent to the high cost of rent. Here is an excerpt:

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.

Since January, 59 new startups got their unicorn horns—with brand-new billion-dollar valuations. Only three went public, and none were acquired.

This isn’t how venture capital is supposed to work. Even if you assume that $1billion valuations for zerorevenue companies make sense, the purpose of funding them is still to generate a return.

And the longer unicorns wait to go public—enabled by both the JOBS Act and VC tourists like mutual funds—the more risk funds assume. At some point investors in VC funds are going to demand their money.

Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith said at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference this year that getting kudos for a large fundraise is “like congratulating someone for taking on their mortgage.” And we all know what happens when too many mortgages are written without paying enough attention to how they’re going to be paid off.