乔布斯、拉里·佩奇和比尔·盖茨对商业的理解

看看世界上最有价值的科技公司，大家就会发现一件有意思的事：没有任何一家公司发明了它们所定义的那一类产品，而且它们的巨额利润中的绝大多数都来自并非由它们创造的市场。

无论是苹果之于智能手机，谷歌之于网络搜索，微软之于操作系统，Facebook之于社交网络，还是亚马逊之于电子商务，这些公司成立时，没有任何人预见到它们脚下的道路最终通往何方。

这说明什么呢？比如，你不必成为第一个，不过这一点大家可能已经知道了。远比这个重要的是，就传统观点而言，这些公司的创始人选择的道路都荒谬得可笑。

“相信自己的直觉，就算所有人都说你疯了。”这条建议说起来容易，做起来很难。挑战堪比磐石的现状，去做那些专家说不可能的事可不适合胆小之辈。而这恰恰是那些公司创始人的所作所为——无视众人建议，相信自己关注的那一件或两件事。

专家认为，史蒂夫·乔布斯一定是疯了才会进入竞争激烈的手机行业。2007年，约翰·德沃夏克写出了人人心中所想：“苹果应该让iPhone项目下马，”原因是它成功的可能性“为零”。后来，德沃夏克又把iPad称为市场影响将微乎其微的“巨型iPod Touch”。

现在，iPhone无疑已经成为历史上最成功的产品之一，它创造的收入几乎超过了所有标普500指数企业。iPad主导的平板电脑市场在2015年超越了PC市场——此时距iPad诞生只有短短五年。

我要告诉大家，2001年第一家苹果零售店开张时，所有人都觉得苹果疯了。

如今，苹果零售店已经成为美国最赚钱的零售业务。

1998年，斯坦福大学毕业生拉里·佩奇和谢尔盖·布林把他们的搜索引擎推荐给了几乎所有愿意听一听的风投人士和互联网公司，但他们得到的答复始终是：这个世界不需要一家只做互联网搜索的公司。

最终，太阳微系统联合创始人安迪·贝托谢姆拿出了10万美元，谷歌就此诞生。但在一段时间里，其他人看起来好像是对的——谷歌在搜索市场中的份额很小，1999年时只有7.8%。

然后到了2000年10月，谷歌推出了AdWords。当时谁能想到搜索引擎加广告平台的组合会带来一种真的能赚钱的商业模式呢？而且这种商业模式会把谷歌变成世界上最有价值、最强大的公司之一呢？

1980年，一些西装笔挺的IBM成员找到了一位名叫比尔·盖茨的年轻程序员，请他为个人计算机开发一款操作系统。由于盖茨的专长是编程语言，他向这些人推荐了别人。但被推荐者没做成这件事，盖茨最终同意基于修改后的QDOS来开发这款操作系统。他买下QDOS时花了5万美元。

不过，盖茨并没有简单地用这款操作系统换钱了事，相反，他把DOS以非独家形式授权给了IBM，按销量收取授权费。微软联合创始人保罗·艾伦说，这种新颖的授权模式是他的主意，但这并不重要。DOS变成了Windows，成了一款无处不在的操作系统，成了逾10亿台PC和无数应用程序的基础。

当然，并非所有成功的企业创始人都有类似的故事。但有一部分创业者建立的公司确实改变了我们平常的生活和工作方式，原因很简单，那就是在那样的级别上具备颠覆市场所需的眼光是一件罕见的事。而且它是如此的罕见，以至于如果不是有强烈的自信心，这些创业者的公司就绝不会成功。

可别理解错了。把初创公司变成强大企业所需要的可不仅仅是传统观点所认为的韧性。在周围的人都说你傻时，你的勇气、自信和相信自己直觉的毅力本身并不会让你成为下一个马克·扎克伯格。不过，如果你的才能可以撑起这份勇气、自信和毅力，那就绝对是个好的开始。 （财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

审稿：夏林

If you look at the world’s most valuable technology companies, you’ll notice something interesting. Not a single one invented the category of products they’ve come to define. The vast majority of their enormous profits come from markets they did not create.

Whether it’s Apple in smartphones, Google (GOOGL, +0.24%) in search, Microsoft(MSFT, +0.49%) in operating systems, Facebook (FB, +0.71%) in social networks or Amazon (AMZN, +0.24%) in ecommerce, when these companies launched, nobody could have predicted their eventual path to domination.

What does that tell us? For one thing, you don’t have to be first to be number one. But you probably already knew that. Far more important is that every one of these companies’ founders chose a ridiculously improbable path that flew in the face of conventional wisdom.

“Trust your instincts even when everyone else says you’re crazy,” is advice that’s easy to give and hard to follow. Challenging the almighty status quo to do what experts say can’t be done isn’t for the faint of heart. But that’s exactly what these founders did, ignoring the advice of the many and trusting their own focus group of one — or two.

The pundits thought Steve Jobs was absolutely insane to get into the dog-eat-dog cellphone business. In 2007, John Dvorak put into words what everyone was thinking: “Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone,” he wrote, as “there is no likelihood” it would be successful. He later called the iPad tablet a “giant iPod Touch” that would have nominal market impact.

Today, the iPhone is undoubtedly among the most successful products ever, generating more revenue than nearly every S&P 500 company. The iPad-dominated tablet market surpassed PCs in 2015, just five years after its introduction.

And let me tell you — everyone thought Apple was crazy when it opened its first retail stores in 2001.

Today, Apple stores are the most lucrative retail space in the U.S.

In 1998, Stanford graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin shopped their search engine to just about every venture capitalist and Internet company that would listen. They were repeatedly met with the same response: The world doesn’t need a stand-alone Internet search company.

Finally, one man, former Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, wrote a check for $100,000 and Google was born. But for a while, it looked like everyone was right;Google’s share of the search market was a dismal 7.8% in 1999.

Then, in October of 2000, the Silicon Valley startup launched AdWords. Who knew that the combination of search engine and advertising platform could create a business model that practically mints cash — and turn Google into one of the most valuable and powerful companies on Earth?

Way back in the summer of 1980, some suits from IBM approached a young software developer named Bill Gates about an operating system for a personal computer. Since Gates’ specialty was programming languages, he referred them to someone else. When that didn’t work out, he finally agreed to do it using a modified version of QDOS, which he bought for $50,000.

But instead of simply selling it outright for a quick profit, Gates licensed DOS to IBM on a non-exclusive per-unit royalty basis. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen said the innovative licensing model was his idea, but that’s neither here nor there. DOS became Windows and more than a billion PCs and countless apps would be built on top of that ubiquitous operating system.

Of course, not every successful founder has a comparable story. But the select group of entrepreneurs who have built companies that truly change the way we live and work usually do, for one simple reason: The kind of vision required to disrupt markets on that scale is a rare thing. So rare that if these founders did not believe strongly in themselves, their companies would never have made it.

Don’t get me wrong. It takes a lot more than perseverance in the face of conventional wisdom to turn a startup into a business powerhouse. And having the courage, self-confidence and tenacity to trust your own instincts when everyone around you says you’re nuts will not, in and of itself, make you the next Mark Zuckerberg. But if you’ve got the talent to back it up, it’s a damn good start.