28-比光鲜利润更重要的，是公司的本质特征

英文原版

The overwhelming importance of futureprofits is counterintuitive even in Silicon Valley. For a company to bevaluable it must grow and endure, but many entrepreneurs focus only onshort-term growth. They have an excuse: growth is easy to measure, butdurability isn’t. Those who succumb to measurement mania obsess about weeklyactive user statistics, monthly revenue targets, and quarterly earningsreports. However, you can hit those numbers and still overlook deeper,harder-to measure problems that threaten the durability of your business.

For example, rapid short-term growth atboth Zynga and Groupon distracted managers and investors from long-termchallenges. Zynga scored early wins with game like Farmville and claimed tohave a "psychometric engine " to rigorously gauge the appeal of newreleases. But they ended up with the same problem as every Hollywood studio:how can you reliably produce a constant stream of popular entertainment for afickle audience? (Nobody knows). Groupon posted fast growth hundreds ofthousands of local businesses tried their product. But persuading thosebusinesses to become repeat customers was harder than they thought.

If you focus on near-term growth above allelse, you miss the most important question you should be asking: will thisbusiness still be around a decade from now? Numbers alone won’t tell you theanswer, instead you must think critically about the qualitative characteristicsof your business.

词

Overwhelming: adj. 压倒性的；势不可挡的

Counterintuitive：adj. 违反直觉的

Durability: n.耐久性；坚固；耐用年限

Zynga：星佳公司，社交游戏服务提供商，于2007年6月成立，总部在美国加利福尼亚州的旧金山市。

Groupon：高朋网，全球最大的团购网站，每天都有超杀折扣的低价优惠购物平台并每日提供不同的优惠券供客户集体选购。2008年创立于芝加哥。

Psychometric adj.心理测量的

Gauge vt. 测量；估计；给…定规格

Fickle adj. 浮躁的；易变的；变幻无常的

Near-term： 短期的

Qualitative：adj. 定性的；质的，性质上的

中文

这种对未来利润的看重即使在硅谷也违反常理。一个公司要想有价值,不但必须成长,还必须能持续发展,但是许多企业家只看到短期发展。他们有自己的理由:增长很好量化,但是没人知道一个公司能持续多久。热衷于量化的人痴迷于周活跃用户、月收益目标和季度收入报告。但是,你虽然可以得到这些数字却忽视了更深层、更难量化的问题,而这些问题会威胁你公司的持久性。

例如,星佳( Zynga,一家社交游戏公司)和Groupon(一家全球性的团购公司)短期的快速增长使管理者和投资者忽视了长远的挑战。星佳很早就在虚拟农场软件上获得优势,而且自称有“心理引擎”可以严格测评新版本的受欢迎程度,但是它们最后破产了,原因和每个好莱坞制片厂一样:你怎么能确定你创造的流行文化可以一直满足变幻无常的观众口味?(没人知道。)Groupon的产品被当地成百上千的企业试用,因此得到了飞速发展,但是让这些企业成为回头客比想象中要难得多。

如果你把短期增长看成重中之重,就会错过最重要的问题:10年之后,你的公司还能存在吗?仅凭数字不能告诉你答案:你必须认真思考公司的本质特征。