亞馬遜與推特 成功背後的男人
摘錄自：天下雜誌 經濟學人電子報 2013/11/22
2013-11-19 Web only 作者：經濟學人
 |
| 圖片來源：flickr.com/photos/quintanomedia/ |
這是高科技世界的美好時代。推特成功上市，首日交易結束後，市值約達250億美元。野心勃勃的學生加入默默無名的科技新創企業，對華爾街不屑一顧。URL策略（Ubiquity
first，worry about Revenue Later：「先求普及，再談營收」）再次躍居舞台中央。創投為羽翼初生、仍在虧損的企業送上了數十億美元的價值評估，希望這些新公司有一天能像推特、亞馬遜一樣成功。
推特和亞馬遜十分不同，但它們從默默無名走向全球霸主的故事也證明，出色想法和網際網路結合，真的可以創造驚人的業務。它們的故事也提醒眾人，位元的背後仍舊是人類，人的洞見和自負，可以創造、也可以毀掉他們渴望建立的矽谷帝國。
推特在上市之前，差點就要毀於數次內鬥。比爾頓（Nick Bilton）所著的《孵育推特》（Hatching
Twitter），就以如同電影一般的筆法，描述那引發了數次董事會大戰的個人爭鬥。
推特創始於2006年，時為播客（podcasting）企業Odeo的子計畫。等到推特起飛，威廉斯（Evan Williams）、多爾西（Jack
Dorsey）、史東（Biz Stone）等共同創辦人之間的緊繃關係立刻浮現；第一個被趕出公司的，則是推特的命名者葛拉斯（Noah Glass）。隨後，創投和威廉斯策動政變，拉下了首任執行長多爾西，並由威廉斯接掌公司。接下來的密謀，則趕走了威廉斯，讓多爾西回籠擔任執行董事長，也帶來了新任執行長柯斯多羅（Dick Costolo）。
比爾頓筆下的高層內鬥精彩無比，他也生動描繪了推特服務吸引知名人士時的興奮之情。前副總統高爾不斷向威廉斯和史東灌酒，希望他們能將推特的股份賣給他（但沒有成功）；知名饒舌歌手史努比狗狗也來到推特辦公室，還辦了場即興表演。
《孵育推特》的唯一缺點，就是中傷多爾西。比爾頓顯然十分同情威廉斯，將他描述為受人喜愛的老闆，認為是他的洞見帶領推特邁向偉大。另一方面，多爾西則是個搶走功勞、滿懷怨恨之人。不過，推特創生的靈感，正是因為多爾西提及，眾人會交換簡短的狀況更新；他的熱情也一直帶著推特前行。此書諷刺多爾西對賈伯斯十分著迷，還模仿賈伯斯的習慣。不過，模仿扭轉科技地景的絕佳商務人士，到底有什麼不對？
如果賈伯斯在破壞革新方面有個後繼者，那人應該就是亞馬遜的老闆貝佐斯（Jeff Bezos）了。史東（Brad Stone）的《萬物之店》（The Everything Store），描述亞馬遜從小型線上書店轉型為電子商務巨人的過程；如今，亞馬遜已將觸角伸入出版、銷售雲端運算服務、平板電腦和電子書等領域。
史東看見了貝佐斯與賈伯斯的相似之處。貝佐斯就和賈伯斯一樣，他要求極高、處處皆管且無法忍受愚蠢。股東極為信任貝佐斯，願意忍受一季又一季的薄利（或虧損），讓這間1,600億市值的企業不斷擴張。亞馬遜不像推特，近20年來的老闆都是貝佐斯──而且他還抽空創立太空船公司Blue Origin和收購《華盛頓郵報》。
因此，這本書沒有辦法靠董事會大戰增加精彩度。不過，它還是在網路上引發了一場爭鬥；貝佐斯的妻子在亞馬遜網站上給了這本書最低評價，指控此書含有諸多錯誤事實。史東亦提出辯護，聲稱他為這本書訪談了「超過300人」，其中包括「現任和前亞馬遜員工、競爭對手、合夥人和客戶」。這類爭議無疑有益銷售，讀者也知道他們可以去哪裡買這本書。（黃維德譯）
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2013
The Economist
Amazon and Twitter
#hatchingwinners
By The Economist
From The Economist
Published: November 19, 2013
Nov 16th 2013 |From the print edition
Two very different leadership sagas have produced titans of tech.
Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and
Betrayal. By Nick Bilton. Penguin Portfolio; 304 pages; $28.95. Sceptre;
£14.99. Buy fromAmazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. By Brad Stone.
Little Brown; 384 pages; $28. Bantam Press; £18.99. Buy from Amazon.com,
Amazon.co.uk
THESE are heady times in the world of high technology. Twitter's recent
stockmarket debut has been a success, earning it a market capitalisation of
about $25 billion after its first day of trading. Ambitious students are
shunning Wall Street and joining obscure tech startups. URL strategies—Silicon
Valley shorthand for "Ubiquity first, worry about Revenue Later"—are
all the rage again. And venture capitalists are bestowing multi-billion-dollar
valuations on fledgling firms bleeding red ink. The hope is that these nascent
companies will one day become as wildly successful as firms such as Twitter and
Amazon.
These two internet icons are very different from each other, but the
stories of their rise from obscurity to global prominence show how the power of
a great idea coupled with the power of the internet can produce extraordinary
businesses. Their tales are also a reminder that behind the bits and the bytes
are human beings, whose vision of the future and outsized egos can make or
break the silicon empires they are striving to build.
In Twitter's case, infighting nearly tore the microblogging company
apart on more than one occasion before it finally made it to the stockmarket.
"Hatching Twitter" by Nick Bilton, a writer for the New York Times,
is a made-for-the-movies account of the personal rivalries that fuelled several
epic boardroom battles at the fast-growing startup.
The company began in 2006 as a side project at Odeo, an ailing
podcasting business bankrolled by Evan Williams. Once Twitter started to fly,
tensions quickly emerged between some of the outfit's co-founders, who include
Mr Williams, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone. Noah Glass, who gave Twitter its name,
is the first prominent figure to be defenestrated. Mr Dorsey, who became
Twitter's first chief executive, is subsequently deposed in a coup engineered
by the venture capitalists funding Twitter and by Mr Williams, who took the
helm. Later, after more secret plotting, Mr Williams gets the boot and Mr
Dorsey returns in triumph as Twitter's executive chairman alongside a new chief
executive, Dick Costolo.
Mr Bilton is at his best when describing this turmoil at the top of
Twitter. He also captures the thrill of being at a startup whose 140-character
messages captivate high-profile people. Al Gore, a former American
vice-president, plies Messrs Williams and Stone with alcohol as he tries
(unsuccessfully) to get them to sell him a stake in Twitter. Snoop Dogg, a
rapper and one of the firm's "VITs" (Very Important Tweeters), drops
by the company's office and stages an impromptu concert.
The only thing that mars "Hatching Twitter" is the hatchet
job it does on Mr Dorsey. Mr Bilton's sympathies clearly lie with Mr Williams,
who is portrayed as a much-loved boss whose vision of Twitter as a tool for
talking about what is happening in the world spurs it to greatness. Mr Dorsey,
on the other hand, comes across as an embittered soul who unjustly claims
credit for the company's success. Having supposedly alienated friends on his
way to the top, he lives alone in San Francisco, his home "an empty glass
castle in the sky". Yet it is his notion of people swapping brief status
updates that inspires the creation of Twitter in the first place, and it is his
passion that helps drive it forward.
The book also mocks Mr Dorsey's obsession with Steve Jobs, whose habits
he copies. But what is wrong with trying to emulate an extraordinary
businessman whose achievements at Apple before his untimely death in 2011
transformed the technological landscape?
If Jobs has a successor as disrupter-in-chief it is arguably Jeff
Bezos, the boss of Amazon. In "The Everything Store" Brad Stone, a
reporter at Bloomberg BusinessWeek, recounts Amazon's transformation from a
small online bookseller into an e-commerce behemoth, which has spread its
tentacles into new areas such as book publishing, selling cloud-computing
services to other firms and producing tablet computers and e-readers.
Mr Stone sees the similarities between Mr Bezos and Jobs. Like Jobs,
Amazon's boss is a demanding taskmaster and micromanager who does not suffer
fools gladly. He also commands such faith from his shareholders that they are
willing to tolerate wafer-thin profits (or losses) quarter after quarter as the
$160 billion company continues its relentless expansion. Unlike Twitter, Amazon
has had the same boss since its inception almost 20 years ago—one who has found
time on the side to build his own spacecraft company (Blue Origin) and to
acquire a prominent newspaper (the Washington Post).
So there is little boardroom drama to liven up Mr Stone's pages. But
his book has triggered a bust-up online. MacKenzie Bezos, Mr Bezos's wife,
posted a review on Amazon giving it the lowest possible rating, and alleging
that it contains a number of factual errors. Mr Stone has published a defence,
claiming he spoke to "more than 300 people" for his book, including "current
and former Amazon employees, rivals, partners, and customers". Such
controversy will no doubt be good for sales of a tome that paints a fascinating
picture of a remarkable tech entrepreneur just coming into his (Amazon) prime.
Readers know just where they can get their copy.
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2013
沒有留言:
張貼留言