投资高手：恐惧与勇气仅一线之隔

    “如果你是个吓破胆的孬种，就去教堂吧。”

    ——艾斯•库伯

    “我告诉孩子们，英雄和懦夫的区别是什么？胆小如鼠和勇敢无畏的区别是什么？其实二者没有区别。区别只在于你怎么做。这两种人的感受是一样的。他们都怕死，怕受伤。但胆小的人拒绝直面他必须面对的东西。英雄则更为自律，他能打消这些情绪，做他应该做的事。但这两者，不管是英雄还是懦夫，他们的感受没有差别。人们是通过你的所作所为而不是你的感受来评判你的。”——库斯•德阿马托，传奇拳击教练

    与创业企业家们会晤时，我们所看重的两大关键品质分别是才智和勇气。从我担任首席执行官的切身经验来看，我发现，最重大的决定对勇气的考验远超对才智的考验。

    正确的决定往往显而易见，但决策失误所带来的压力则可能是难以承受的。这种压力往往源于一些小事。

    当创始人们——一位是首席执行官，另一位是总裁——来我们公司寻求投资时，我们的对话往往是这样进行的：

    “你们俩谁掌管这家公司？”

    “我们俩共同掌管，”他们不约而同地回答。

    “最后拿主意的是谁？”

    “我们俩共同决定。”

    “你们估计这种管理方式延续多久？”

    “我们希望始终如此。”

    “那么，你们决意要员工的工作更加棘手，这样你们就不必决定到底由谁掌舵了，是这样吗？”

    这么问的结果往往是对方无言以对。

    理智地看，很显然，对员工来说，向一个决策者请示要比向两个请示来得容易。这确实并不是有多复杂的一件事。然而不幸的是，当前清晰可见的社会压力往往淹没了正确组织公司所带来的长期好处。因为创始人们没有勇气决定该由谁执掌大权，结果员工只得忍受请示双重批准的麻烦。

    更重要的是，当公司成长起来时，做决定只会变得更让人胆战心惊。当我们决定将收入只有200万美元的Loudcloud公司（Loudcloud，苹果手机应用及云服务开发商——译注）上市时，这在理智上并不是个艰难的决定——大不了备选方案就是破产而已。如果多数员工、媒体人士以及投资人都不看好时，要做点什么就足以令人胆寒了。

决策正确需要才智与勇气

    有时候，决策本身就十分复杂，致使勇气遭遇的挑战更加艰巨。首席执行官拥有的数据、知识和视角与公司里任何人都不同。而经常会发生的情况是，某些员工和董事会成员比首席执行官更有经验也更聪明。而首席执行官能做出更好决策的唯一原因就在于她超凡的见识。

    有时首席执行官面临的抉择格外困难，因为两个选择中，她可能只是对其中一个略有偏向——比如说54%倾向于要砍掉产品线，46%倾向于要保留它，此时事情会更难办。如果董事会和员工队伍中那些真正聪明的人意见和她相左，那她的勇气就会受到严峻的考验。当每个人都反对她，以致她都无法确定自己是否做出了正确决定的情况下，她又怎么能砍掉产品线呢？如果她错了，那就意味着她无视自己最好的参谋所提供的建议。而如果她对了，又有谁会知道呢？

    最近，一家大公司愿意出价收购我们投资的一家公司。鉴于这家公司截至目前的发展状况和收入水平，这个交易的金额很诱人，也让人很有兴趣。该公司的创始人兼首席执行官（我在此称他为哈姆雷特——并非其真名）认为，考虑到公司目前正在开发的巨大的市场机会，出售公司并不明智，但他仍希望确保自己的抉择对投资人和员工来说最有利。哈姆雷特想过拒绝这一收购要约，但意愿并不强烈。复杂是，管理团队和董事会的大部分人跟他的想法完全相反。董事会成员和管理团队比哈姆雷特经验更老道这一点于事无补。结果，哈姆雷特因为对自己的观点是否正确忧心忡忡而度过了许多不眠之夜。更糟糕的是，他意识到不可能判断自己到底是否正确。这一认识无助于他缓解失眠。最后，哈姆雷特做出了个人认为是最佳，同时也是最需要勇气的决定：不出售公司。我相信，这会是他职业生涯中具有决定性意义的时刻。

    有趣的是，哈姆雷特刚刚做出这个决定，整个董事会和管理团队就立刻表示拥护。这是为什么？如果他们本来是非常希望出售公司，还要劝首席执行官放弃梦想的，他们怎么能这么快就来个180度大转弯呢？原来，导致他们最初有意出售公司最重要的信息正是哈姆雷特一开始的举棋不定——以至于整个团队认为他们是在支持首席执行官心中的决定。哈姆雷特对此毫无意识，反而认为他们要出售公司的想法是他们深思熟虑的结果。所幸哈姆雷特有勇气最终做出了正确的决定。

    常见问题如下图社会信用矩阵所示。在群体的影响下做出的决策所带来的预期社会回报要比自行决策的回报要好：

    "If you a scared mutherfucker, go to church."

    - Ice Cube

    "I tell my kids, what is the difference between a hero and a coward? What is the difference between being yellow and being brave? No difference. Only what you do. They both feel the same. They both fear dying and getting hurt. The man who is yellow refuses to face up to what he's got to face. The hero is more disciplined and he fights those feelings off and he does what he has to do. But they both feel the same, the hero and the coward. People who watch you judge you on what you do, not how you feel."

    - Cus D'Amato, legendary boxing trainer

    When we meet with entrepreneurs, the two key characteristics that we look for are brilliance and courage. In my experience as CEO, I found that the most important decisions tested my courage far more than my intelligence.

    The right decision is often obvious, but the pressure to make the wrong decision can be overwhelming. It starts with small things.

    When founders come in to pitch our firm -- one as the CEO and the other as President – the conversation often goes like this:

    "Who is running the company?"

    "We are," they both say.

    "Who makes the final decision?"

    "We do."

    "How long do you expect to run that way?"

    "Forever."

    "So you've decided to make it more difficult for every employee to get work done so that you don't have to decide who is in charge, is that right?"

    That usually results in silence.

    Intellectually, it should be clear that it is easier for employees to go to one decision maker than two. It's not really very complicated at all. Unfortunately, the clear and present social pressure often overwhelms the long-term benefits of organizing the company properly. Because the founders do not have the courage to decide who is in charge, every employee suffers the inconvenience of double approval.

    More importantly, decisions only get scarier as a company grows. When we decided to take Loudcloud public with only $2 million in revenue, it was not a hard choice intellectually -- the alternative was to go bankrupt. It was nonetheless terrifying to do something that most employees, everyone in the press, and many investors thought was nuts.

When Making the Right Choice Requires Intelligence and Courage

    Sometimes the decision itself is rather complicated which makes the courage challenge even more difficult. CEOs possess a different set of data, knowledge and perspective than anybody else in the company. Frequently, some of the employees and board members are more experienced and more intelligent than the CEO. The only reason the CEO can make a better decision is her superior knowledge.

    To make matters worse, when a CEO faces a particularly difficult decision, she may have only a slight preference for one choice over another -- say 54% kill a product line, 46% keep it. If the really smart people on the board and on her staff take the other side, her courage will be severely tested. How can she kill the product when she is not even sure if the she is making the right decision and everyone is against her? If she's wrong, she will have been wrong in the face of advice from her top advisors. If she is right, will anybody even know?

    Recently, a large company offered to buy one of our portfolio companies. The deal was lucrative and compelling given the portfolio company's progress to date and revenue level. The Founder/CEO (I'll call him Hamlet – not his real name) thought that selling did not make sense due to the giant market opportunity that he was pursuing, but still wanted to make sure that he made the best possible choice for investors and employees. Hamlet wanted to reject the offer, but only marginally. To complicate matters, most of the management team and the board thought the opposite. It did not help that the board and the management team were far more experienced than Hamlet. As a result, Hamlet spent many sleepless nights worrying about whether or not he was right. To make matters worse, he realized that it was impossible to know whether or not he was right. This did not help his sleep. In the end, Hamlet made the best and most courageous decision that he could and did not sell the company. I believe that will prove to be the defining moment of his career.

    Interestingly, as soon as Hamlet made the decision, the entire board and executive team immediately embraced the choice. Why? If they wanted to sell the company enough to advise the CEO to give up his dream, how could they reverse themselves so quickly? It turns out that the most important data point driving their earlier preference for selling the company was Hamlet's initial ambivalence – the team supported the decision they thought the CEO wanted. Hamlet did not realize this and interpreted their desire to sell to be the result of a thorough analysis. Luckily for everybody involved, he had the courage to make the right decision.

    The general problem can be seen in the social credit matrix described below. The expected social rewards for making the crowd-influenced decision appear better than those for making the decision that you think is right:

    从表面上看，似乎如果所作决定侥幸成功了，那么随大流要安全得多。实际上，如果你掉进这个陷阱，群体就会影响你的思考，并使70%对30%的决定显得像是个51%对49%的决定。这就是为什么勇气至关重要。

勇气如性格，培养可得之

    “每个拳手都会感到害怕。如果一个孩子走到我跟前，跟我说他不害怕，如果我信了他，我得说他要么是在撒谎，要么是脑子有毛病。我会送他去看医生，看看他到底哪儿出了问题，因为这不是正常的反应。走上拳台却从未感到害怕的拳手要么是个骗子，要么就是个精神病。”

    ——库斯•德阿马托

    在经营Loudcloud公司和Opsware公司（Opsware，服务器及网络服务供应商——译注）的过程中我所做的所有艰难决策里，我没有一次是大胆无畏的。实际上，我常常怕得要死。这种感觉从未消失过，不过，经过多次练习后，我学会了忽略它。这一学习过程也许可以叫做培养勇气的过程。

    在日常生活中，每个人都要面临抉择：是做普遍认可的、容易的但也是错误的事情，还是做特立独行、困难但也是正确的事情。经营公司时，这些决定的强度会大大加剧，因为其结果往往会放大上千倍。和生活中的情形一样，首席执行官决策失误时的托辞也是数不胜数。

    On the surface, it appears that if the decision is a close call, it's much safer to go with the crowd. In reality, if you fall into this trap, the crowd will influence your thinking and make a 70/30 decision seem like a 51/49 decision. This is why courage is critical.

Courage, Like Character, Can Be Developed

    "Every fighter that ever lived had fear. A boy comes to me and tells me that he's not afraid, if I believed him I'd say he's a liar or there's something wrong with him. I'd send him to a doctor to find out what the hell's the matter with him, because this is not a normal reaction. The fighter that's gone into the ring and hasn't experienced fear is either a liar or a psychopath…"

    -Cus D'Amato

    In all the difficult decisions that I made through the course of running Loudcloud and Opsware, I never once felt brave. In fact, I often felt scared to death. I never lost those feelings, but after much practice, I learned to ignore them. That learning process might also be called the courage development process.

    In life, everybody faces choices between doing what's popular, easy, and wrong vs. doing what's lonely, difficult, and right. These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified 1,000 fold. As in life, the excuses for CEO's making the wrong choice are always plentiful.

    每次做出艰难但正确的决定时，人就变得更有勇气一些，而每次做出容易却是错误的决定时，人就变得更怯懦些。如果你是首席执行官，这些决定就将导致你的公司变得富有勇气还是畏缩怯懦。

    文末遐思

    过去10年中，技术进步大大降低了创业的金融门槛，但是，打造一家伟大公司必须跨越的勇气门槛却从未降低过。

    ——本•霍洛维茨是风险投资公司Andreessen Horowitz公司的联合创始人和一般合伙人。该公司通过天使投资和大规模融资支持今天的技术导向型公司的各种需求。本现在是Okta, Nicira, Proferi 和Skype等多家科技公司的董事会成员。

    译者：清远

    Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company.

One Last Thought

    Over the past 10 years, technological advances dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.

    -- Ben Horowitz is co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm created to support the needs of today's technology-focused entrepreneurs through angel investments to large-scale funding. Ben currently serves on the board of Okta, Nicira, Proferi and Skype.