欧洲科技创业方兴未艾

    2. 另外，欧洲实行强制的遣散费制度，这一制度根本没有意识到初创企业的高风险性质。初创企业很难拨出资金，为将来可能支付强制遣散费预留一部分钱，但如果不提前准备，很可能终生都要追究你的责任。欧洲需要为天使支持的企业建立一个特殊的体制。我提议，所有成立不足3年、雇员不满10人且尚未盈利的公司无需支付就业税或强制遣散费。

    3. 最后，创业者不应因创办这些公司而承担个人债务，应赋予个人宣布破产的权利，就像美国一样。

Facebook刚刚开设了第一家海外技术开发中心，他们把它设在了伦敦。谷歌也在东伦敦开了一家初创企业孵化中心，包括TechHub等4个不同的孵化器，TechHub将入驻几十家初创公司。伦敦是不是正在超越其他城市成为初创企业地区制高点？

    卡梅伦政府至今尚未在宏观层面打开经济增长和就业局面，英国经济正在承受痛苦。但唐宁街10号在吸引顶尖科技公司前往英国设立分支机构方面做得非常出色。我自己就被邀请参加了好几次活动，英国财政大臣乔治•奥斯本、英国首相戴维•卡梅伦，甚至安德鲁王子都亲自到场，向来自全球的创业家发表讲话，鼓动他们到英国投资。

    就这一点而言，我认为，伦敦是在欧洲创立新公司的最佳城市。不好的一面是，伦敦是一个非常昂贵的城市，经营成本很高。

    虽然英国提供一种创业签证，非欧盟创业者可以迅速移居英国开办企业，但其余的雇员却并不享有简便的签证政策。因此，美国的创业家可以很容易地移居伦敦，但要将他们的高级经理们带到英国来就没那么方便了。

你与硅谷公司和华尔街银行都保持着联系——你怎么看目前的市场变化？特别是在最近很多IPO股票上市后走低的情况下？

    最近，在Allen and Company于美国太阳谷召开的会议上，我得以亲眼见证了硅谷与华尔街之间的脱节，最近的科技股估值就是这种脱节的反映。出席太阳谷会议的顶尖硅谷创业者，像马克•安德森、雷德•霍夫曼、马克•扎克伯格、谢尔盖•布林、蒂姆•库克等等，都有这样一种感觉，华尔街根本“不懂科技”。

    硅谷领导人们感到不满的是，像苹果、谷歌这些公司的市盈率目前都处于历史低位，特别是，如果剔除这些公司以惊人速度累积的现金之后，它们的市盈率会更低。比如，拥有1,000亿美元现金的苹果。在利率接近于零的情况下，为什么这些每年盈利增长20%的公司获得的市盈率只有11倍？这在硅谷创业者看来完全没有道理。他们说的有道理。

    与此同时，出席太阳谷会议的一些全球最大的投资公司（其中大部分总部都在纽约）的高管似乎来自另一个星球。就好像硅谷创业者来自火星，而华尔街投资者来自金星。华尔街投资者的反应是：“科技就是流行一时的风潮”，谁知道苹果、谷歌的利润增长能维持多久。他们现在看着Facebook，心里想的却是接下来谁将是明日之星，就像当初Facebook超越Myspace一样。硅谷创业者相信自己永远地改变了世界，但华尔街看着他们说：“今天是你，明天就会冒出下一颗新星：苹果，我们不会给你高市盈率。因为明天就会有人把你变成下一个诺基亚（Nokia），你的利润率很快就会下降，你的创新精神也将消失殆尽。”华尔街说的也许没错。

很多创业者关注社交媒体初创公司——有很多重大的挑战，没有受到那么多关注——这种趋势会继续下去吗？

    社交媒体的吸引力在于这是一个不断增长的巨大业务，而且进入门槛相当低。想想雅虎（Yahoo）、谷歌、甚至Youtube起步时的投资规模吧，再把它们跟Instagram极低的启动资金比比看。因此，创业者都梦想组建下一支12人团队，打造一款应用软件，然后在几年内建立一家公司，再以10亿美元的价格卖出去。但问题是，成百万的人都拥有同样的梦想，但却只有12个人能美梦成真。

    为iPhone和安卓手机开发应用软件，还能培育出很多的10亿美元级企业吗？可能不会了，我同意，社会在这方面浪费了很多的聪明才智。社交媒体应用软件领域已经拥挤不堪，很多企业都会倒闭。

    2. Furthermore, Europe has a forced severance pay system that fails to recognize the high risk environment in which startups operate. It is hard to provision for forced severance payments but if you don't you can end up indebted to the government for the rest of your life. What Europe needs is a special regime for angel backed companies. I propose that all companies with less than 10 employees, that are not profitable and that are younger than 3 years, do not pay employment taxes nor forced severance pay.

    3. Finally, there should truly be no personal liability for the entrepreneurs of these companies and an ability to declare personal bankruptcy as there is in USA.

Facebook just opened its first non-US engineering office and they did so in London. Google just opened a startup incubator in East London hosting four different incubators including TechHub who in turn will host dozens of startups. Is London rising to the startup challenge more than other cities?

    The Cameron administration so far has not cracked the growth and employment situation at the macro level and UK is hurting as an economy. But 10 Downing is doing an amazing job at attracting top tech companies to set up shop in the UK. I have been invited to quite a few events in which George Osborne the Chancellor, David Cameron the PM and even Prince Andrew personally entertained and addressed global entrepreneurs to convince them to invest in the UK.

    At this point I would say that London is the best city in Europe to start a new company. On the negative there are the high costs with London being a very expensive city.

    While the UK offers an entrepreneur visa in which non EU entrepreneurs can quickly move to the UK to start a business there is no easy visa system for the remainder of the employees. So a US-based entrepreneur can move to London easily but can't easily bring her top managers to the UK.

You interact with both Silicon Valley firms and Wall Street banks -- how do you see this dynamic unfolding right now? In particular, given the recent downturn in many of the recent IPOs?

    Recently, at the Allen and Company conference in Sun Valley I had a chance to observe on a first hand basis the disconnect that exists between Silicon Valley and Wall Street and recent tech valuations demonstrate this. For people like Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Tim Cook and other top SV entrepreneurs present in Sun Valley there is a sense that people in Wall Street just "don't get tech."

    Silicon valley leaders are frustrated that companies such as Apple and Google are trading at historical low P/E especially when you strip these companies of cash which they accumulate at astonishing rates. A case in point Apple with its $100 billion in cash. Why should companies that grow earnings at 20% a year be given P/E ratios of 11 when interest rates are close to 0? This makes no sense to the SV entrepreneurs. And they have a point.

    At the same time, the heads of the largest investment firms in the world, mostly based in NYC, also present in Sun Valley seem to be from another planet. It's as if Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are from Mars and Wall Street investors are from Venus. Wall Street investors reaction is that "tech is a fad" and who knows for how long Apple and Google will sustain their earnings growth. They look at Facebook and they wonder who will MySpace them next. While SV entrepreneurs believe they are there to change the world for good, Wall Street looks at them and say, "today is you, tomorrow is the next star: we are not giving you a high P/E Apple, tomorrow somebody will turn you into the next Nokia, your margins will shrink, your innovation spirit will disappear." Wall Street may be right.

Many entrepreneurs focus on social media startups -- yet there are grand challenges that get less attention -- will this continue in this way?

    The attraction of social media is that it is a huge growing business with very low barriers to entry. Think of the investment that took Yahoo (YHOO) to get started, that took Google to get started, that even took Youtube to get started and compare that to the tiny amount of money that took Instagram to get started. So the dream is that the next 12 guys with an app can build a company in a few years and sell for a billion. But the problem is, there are a million guys with the same dream and only 12 can win the prize.

    Can many new billion dollar businesses build as apps for iPhone and Android? Probably not. I agree that a lot of talent is being wasted this way. The field of social media apps is overcrowded and there will be a lot of write-offs.