创业公司规模化道路上的四条拦路虎

    3. 人力资本策略：聘请老手vs.只招新人。创始团队同进同退，随着公司发展不断扩容，无疑极具吸引力，而且有很多好处：公司文化的核心将得以维持不变，有才干的年轻员工将获得发展机会，外来者加入带来的干扰将被降至最低程度。然而，才能卓越、帮助你一路走到规模化入口处的创始团队却常常并不适合引领接下来的规模化之路。我把创业公司的生命期分为三个阶段，分别是“丛林”、“土路”和“高速公路”。擅于在丛林中开辟道路的团队，常常并不适应找出一条土路之后的迅速加速。但在有资历更深、经验更丰富的高管加入时，保留创始文化和保持团结又至关重要。最好的公司会为了规模化而提早打造团队（比如，在部门成长时，聘用可同时有效担任执行者与指导者角色的优秀副总），努力挑选契合公司文化的人【谷歌（Google）公司数一数二的招聘主管迈克•加戈曾就招聘最佳攻略接受了美国私募股权新闻网站peHUB的采访，题为《好人有好报》（Why It Pays To Be Nice），非常精彩】。

    4. 创始人的两难选择：是否引入职业经理人？一间资历尚浅的公司在规模化进程中要作的一项最为重大的决策便是：应该由什么人担任CEO？创始人或许会是一个具备独特才能、可将公司从丛林中一路带上高速公路的人，但在更多的时候却并非如此，人们需要聘请资深的职业经理人，协助引领公司发展至下一阶段。这一决策是真正的不成功便成仁。一切要看创始人的意愿，以及董事会是否相信，职业经理人有能力使公司从以产品为中心、寻找产品市场匹配度的阶段转入以营销为中心、找到产品市场匹配度之后的阶段。投资者总是希望由创始人来实现这一转变，可如果创始人并不具备这种能力，通过对外求助、实现有序过渡就成了关键所在。哈佛大学商学院（HBS）的诺姆•沃瑟曼教授曾就这一话题撰写过一系列案例，阐明了这个转变过程中该做和不该做的事情。这种转变从来都不轻松。

    上述决定每一个都教人费尽思量，都等同于拿公司命运作赌。听说在这些问题上的决定有可能导致功败垂成的悲惨结局。进展顺利时，你会想让上述决策发生得自然而然，而且取得某种程度的成功，即使只是小小的胜利。这可能意味着沿用最初的领导团队、实行适当的产品策略以及早日脱手。

    为什么上述的决策每一项听来都效果有局限性呢？这是因为，伟大的企业家都是些不畏竞争、雄心勃勃的人，他们会招徕雄心勃勃的管理团队、顾问和投资者。一旦设想中的产品市场匹配性得到了验证，他们就会下意识地积极行动，实现规模化。但在规模化的过程中，务必请保持明智。要让营收从100万美元增长到1,000万美元，其难度并不亚于达到最初100万美元的水平。而达到1亿美元甚至更多的时候，你便真正开始跻身于大公司的行列。这会让你周围的人激动不已，同时也会使众人的期望值飙升。

    本文作者杰夫•巴斯冈是风投公司飞桥资本合伙公司（Flybridge Capital Partners）的一般合伙人。

    译者：千牛絮

    3. Human Capital Strategy: Hire Grownups vs. Stay Young. There is a certain charm and many benefits to the founding team sticking together and scaling with the start-up. The culture remains true to the founding core, the young talented employees get growth opportunities, and there's an appeal to minimizing the disruption that outsiders bring. Yet, frequently, the talented founding team that gets you to the point of scaling is not the right team to lead the scaling process. I refer to the three stages of a start-up's life as "the jungle," "the dirt road" and "the highway." The team that is skilled at hacking its way through the jungle is often not as well-suited to accelerate rapidly once a dirt road has been discovered. Yet when more senior, experienced executives arrive, preserving the founding culture and maintaining alignment is critical. The best companies build teams for scale early on (e.g., hiring great VPs who can be both effective players and coaches as their department grows) and work hard to select for cultural fit (Google's top recruiter, Mike Junge, had a great interview on hiring best practices in peHUB, "Why It Pays To Be Nice").

    4. Founder's Dilemma: Bring in a Professional CEO? One of the biggest decisions a scaling young company makes is - who should be the CEO? The founder may be one of the uniquely talented individuals who can scale from the jungle all the way through the highway but, more often than not a senior, professional CEO is hired to help take the company to the next level. This decision is truly make or break. It rests on the founder's desires as well as the board's confidence in their ability to transition from a product-centric, pre product-market fit world to a sales and marketing execution-centric, post product-market-fit world. Investors would always prefer to see the founder make that transition, but if the skillset isn't there, having an orderly transition with open communication is key. HBS Professor Noam Wasserman has written a series of cases on this topic that show some of the do's and don'ts of navigating this transition. It's never an easy one to embark on.

    Each of these decisions can be gut-wrenching, bet the company moves. There's a nasty image I hear used in the board room about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. If things are going well, you want to let them evolve naturally and achieve some measure of victory, albeit a small one. This may mean sticking with a founding leadership team, a niche product strategy and selling early.

    Why should each of these decisions sound limiting? Because great entrepreneurs are competitive, ambitious types who attract ambitious management teams, advisors and investors. There's a natural allure to moving aggressively to scale once the initial product-market fit assumptions become validated. Just scale wisely. Going from $1 million to 10 million in revenue is no easier than achieving that initial $1 million. And getting to $100 million and beyond, well now you're really in the rarified air that gets the people around you excited - and sets expectations soaring higher.

    Jeff Bussgang is general partner at venture capital firm Flybridge Capital Partners. You can follow him on Twitter @bussgang