时下流行的“科技泡沫”观点不值一信

    驱动因素之三：市场广阔

    如今的高科技公司瞄准的是巨大的市场，它们的规模令前几代科技公司相形见绌。简而言之，如今成功科技公司的前景比过去要广阔得多，因为它们面对的终端用户市场极为广阔。

    原因何在？我的合伙人马克•安德森经常提到的数据很能说明问题。安德森1998年将自己创办的网景公司（Netscape）出售给了美国在线（AOL）。彼时，浏览器市场的用户总数约5500万，几乎所有人都是通过拨号上网。

    而如今，随着宽带的普及以及智能手机和平板电脑的发展，有25亿人几乎随时都能联网。而且这个人数很快将超过50亿。

    这样看来，1999至2000年泡沫期间的互联网公司纷纷倒闭也就不足为奇了。说到底，这些公司面向的市场太小了，而获取新用户以及为新用户提供技术基础设施的成本过高（还记得那会儿Sun公司售价高达5万美元的服务器么？）。

    相比之下，如今不仅终端用户市场要大得多，而且支撑这些市场所需的技术成本要低得多【比如亚马逊网络服务（Amazon Web Services）、开源软件组件等】。规模经济终于发挥效力了。

    当然，不是每家在大学宿舍中捣鼓出的高科技公司都能像Facebook那样大获成功。也不是说风险投资家和公众投资者不可能失去理智，盲目地将所有网络公司的市盈率都炒到15到20倍。

    泡沫当然有可能出现。但现在还没有。（财富中文网）

    本文作者斯考特•库柏是安德森•霍洛维茨风投公司的管理合伙人兼首席营运官。这家公司致力于投资科技行业。此前，斯考特•库柏曾在惠普担任副总裁，全面负责全球客户支持及软件即服务部门。

    译者：项航

    Driver No. 3: These are massive markets

    Today's technology companies are going after massive markets, the value of which dwarfs that of previous generations of tech companies. Simply put, the winners in tech today can become massively larger than the winners of yesteryear because the end-user markets into which they can sell are enormous.

    Why is that? My partner, Marc Andreessen, likes to recount a simple stat that sums it up quite nicely. When his company Netscape was sold to AOL (AOL) in 1998, the total size of the browser market was roughly 55 million users, nearly all were accessing the Internet via those ear-screeching dial-up connections.

    Fast-forward to today, largely as a result of broadband penetration and the growth of smartphones and tablets, and there are 2.5 billion people with virtually ubiquitous Internet access. And that number is likely to exceed 5 billion in short order.

    Is it really any wonder then why so many of the 1999-2000 bubble-era Internet companies failed? The markets into which they were selling were simply too small compared with both the costs of acquiring customers and the costs of the technology infrastructure (remember that $50,000 box called a Sun server?) required to support these customers.

    By contrast, not only are the end-user markets today vastly bigger, but the technology costs required to support these markets (think Amazon Web Services (AMZN), open source software components, etc … ) have plummeted. The economics finally work.

    This isn't to say that every new technology company being incubated at a university dorm will achieve the success and scale of Facebook. Nor is it to say that venture capitalists and public investors may not ultimately lose their minds and blindly pay 15 to 20 times revenue multiples for any dotcom company.

    Bubbles can, of course, happen. But we simply aren't there yet.

    Scott Kupor is the managing partner and chief operating officer at Andreessen Horowitz, which focuses all its investments in the technology industry. Previously, he was VP/GM of Global Customer Support & Software-as-a-Service at Hewlett Packard.