倫敦金融城 初創企業的葬禮

The sombre tones of Chopin’s funeral march is the soundscape to the gathering scores of people, some in suits, most in jeans and trainers, in a room on the fringes of the City of London. At the front, a tall wiry man in a dog-collar speaks to the assembled crowd. “Dearly beloved, we are here today … to show our sympathy and to give our comfort to those who feel the loss most and for ourselves to meditate on the brevity of life.”

伴隨着肖邦葬禮進行曲陰沉的調子，人羣逐漸聚集在倫敦金融城(City of London)邊上的一個房間裏，其中有些人身着西裝，絕大多數人則穿着牛仔褲和運動鞋。一個高瘦結實、圍着牧師式白色硬領的男子站在前面，向聚集起來的人羣發表講話。“親愛的各位，今天我們來到這裏……以表達我們的感同身受，並將我們的安慰帶給那些因爲它的離去而承受了最大傷痛的人，這也將促使我們自己沉思人生的短暫。”

“Vicar” Adam Hawley holds up a copy of the “good book”, Eric Ries’s The Lean Start-up. He reads aloud to the congregation: “When we fail, as so many of us do, we have a ready-made excuse: we didn’t have the right stuff. We weren’t visionary enough or weren’t in the right place at the right time.” The reading continues: “After more than 10 years as an entrepreneur, I came to reject that line of thinking. I have learned from both my own successes and failures and those of others that it’s the boring stuff that matters the most.”

扮演“牧師”的亞當•霍利(Adam Hawley)拿在手中充作《聖經》的，是埃裏克•里斯(Eric Ries)所著的《精益創業》(The Lean Start-up)一書。他面向人羣大聲朗讀道：“當我們失敗時——我們當中的很多人都會失敗——我們已經有了現成的藉口：我們不具備正確的要素。我們不夠有遠見，或者我們沒有在正確的時點出現在正確的地方。”朗讀還在繼續：“在經歷了超過十年的企業家生涯之後，我開始排斥這種思維套路。我從自己以及他人的的成功和失敗中學到，看起來枯燥平凡的東西纔是最關鍵的。”

So begins the Start-up Funeral, a gathering of start-up employees and would-be entrepreneurs, here at TechHub, the co-workspace and community of tech entrepreneurs, on Google’s Old Street campus. Overseeing the evening’s proceedings is not a real vicar but TechHub’s director of global projects. Two entrepreneurs — Sophie Newman-Sanders and Amit Rai — are here to discuss the deaths of their respective ventures, to be picked over by the assembled crowd in a kind of postmortem.

初創企業葬禮就這樣開始了，這是一個在TechHub舉行的初創企業員工和未來企業家的集會。TechHub是一個面向科技企業家的共同辦公場所和社區，位於英國首都倫敦的老街(Old Street)的谷歌園區。負責主持今晚活動的並不是一位真正的牧師，而是TechHub的全球項目總監。兩位企業家——索菲•紐曼-桑德斯(Sophie Newman-Sanders)和阿米特•拉伊(Amit Rai)也來到這裏討論他們各自企業的失敗教訓，以一種事後剖析的方式接受在場人羣的仔細審視。

Mr Rai addresses the gathering on Trylista, a “start-up I murdered three years ago”. The engineer devised a website and app to enable people to pick clothes online which they could try on at home and return without paying upfront. The epiphany that this business was doomed came when someone in a meeting asked for his opinion on a fashion show. He realised he had no interest in fashion. “It dawned on me I didn’t care about this industry.”

拉伊向人羣介紹了Trylista，“這是一家三年前被我謀殺的初創企業”。當時作爲工程師的拉伊設計了一個網站和應用，以幫助人們在網上挑選服裝，人們可以在家中試穿這些衣服並退回，而無需提前支付任何費用。他對這項業務註定失敗的頓悟來自於有人在一個會議上詢問他對一場時裝秀的看法。他意識到自己對時尚沒有絲毫興趣。“我突然發現，我根本不喜歡時尚行業。”

Taking part in the funeral presentation, he says, has helped him draw a line. “There is a difficulty as a sole trader knowing when to throw in the towel.” He wondered whether he was being lazy or defeatist.

他表示，在此次葬禮活動上做展示幫助他劃清界限。“作爲一名個體經營者，很難想清楚什麼時候應該認輸。”他曾思考過自己是否過於懶惰，或者是一個失敗主義者。

Writing the presentation was a useful way of distilling the reasons. After he wound up his business, he found that applying for jobs meant he was putting a positive spin on his company’s failings. “In a job interview you say things that won’t make you look bad — you’re not brutally honest.”

撰寫展示文稿是一個提煉放棄理由的有效方式。在關閉了自己的企業之後，他發現申請工作意味着他將要用一種積極正面的方式來講述自己企業的失敗。“在工作面試當中，你會說那些不會讓你看起來糟糕的東西——這意味着你並不完全誠實。”

Today he has started another company, Coo, an app for parents to share information. “I care about this. I’m a parent. It’s a thing I want to fix for myself.”

現在他成立了一家名爲Coo的新公司，這是一個給家長用來分享信息的應用。“我對這方面非常關注。我自己就是一名家長。這是一件我希望爲了自己而做成的事。”

Such events are not new. TechHub first ran a start-up funeral in 2014; since then it has held them in Madrid and will run one in Warsaw next month. Before that, there was FailCon, a one-day conference started in San Francisco in 2009, to analyse entrepreneurial failure. At that time the topic was rarely discussed. Today, however, failure has come out of the shadows and “fail fast, fail often” has become a Silicon Valley mantra.

諸如此類的活動並不新鮮。TechHub在2014年第一次舉辦了初創企業葬禮，此後又在馬德里舉行了多次同類活動，6月還在華沙舉行了一次。在初創企業葬禮出現之前，還有名爲FailCon的會議，這是最早於2009年開始在舊金山舉行的爲期一天的會議，會上主要分析創業失敗的案例。在當時，創業失敗還是一個人們很少討論的話題。而如今，創業失敗已經從陰影中走了出來，“快速失敗，經常失敗”已成爲硅谷的一條準則。

Steffan Bankier, who ran a similar event to the Start-up Funeral in New York last year, was taken aback by the enthusiastic response from entrepreneurs willing to talk publicly about their failures. He believes that people put on a front at networking events and are “itching for the opportunity to break through it”. However, he concedes that the people who were willing to speak did so because they had turned their careers around. “It’s far easier to talk about failure once you’ve succeeded,” he says. In his own case, he ran the nights after winding down his wine business before moving on to a senior sales job at Alice, a hospitality management start-up.

斯蒂芬•班吉爾(Steffan Bankier)去年在紐約組織了一項與初創企業葬禮類似的活動，當時不少企業家都願意公開講述自己的失敗經歷，他們熱情洋溢的迴應讓他吃了一驚。他認爲人們在交流聚會的活動中都會戴上面具，同時又“渴望有機會能夠打破面具”。但他也承認，願意站出來講述失敗的人之所以會這麼做，是因爲他們已經扭轉了自己的職業生涯。他說，“一旦你取得了成功，講述失敗經歷就會變得容易很多”。以他自己爲例，他在放棄了自己的紅酒業務以後上過夜班，之後轉到了一家名爲Alice的酒店管理初創公司從事高級銷售工作。

For Ms Newman-Sanders, co-founder of Synnapps, which connects businesses in the developing world using mobile technology, the purpose of speaking at Tuesday’s start-up funeral was to share her experiences of the failings of the UK operation, which was her baby, and to warn others against making the same mistakes. Also important was finding common ground. “Ninety per cent of the time being an entrepreneur is ultra lonely. Employees have lunch without you. I craved a feeling of camaraderie.”

紐曼-桑德斯是Synnapps的聯合創始人，這家公司將發展中國家的企業通過移動互聯網技術聯繫起來。對於她來說，在星期二的初創企業葬禮上演講是爲了分享她在這家英國企業失敗過程中收穫的經驗——這家企業就像她的孩子一樣——並告誡其他人不要再犯同樣的錯誤。對她來說同樣重要的還有找到共同點。“作爲一個企業家，有90%的時間都是極其孤獨的。你的員工不會和你一起午餐。我渴望找到一種志同道合的感覺。”

Putting the presentation together helped her take responsibility: “If I hadn’t been preparing for this I wouldn’t have looked at the mistakes I made so closely.” It has been cathartic, she says, to face up to her own failings. With hindsight she can see that she forced her own vision of the company on to her former business partner and refused to see that he had not fully bought into it.

整理展示材料的過程有助於她擔起責任：“如果我沒有爲此次活動做準備，我不會如此仔細地審視我曾犯過的錯誤。”她表示，直面自己的失敗讓她的情緒得到了宣泄。在事情過去之後她能認識到，她將自己對於公司的願景強加給了她曾經的商業夥伴，並拒絕看清對方並未完全接受她的觀點。

Before, she did not have time to reflect. “I was so desperate to sell the idea that whenever it looked like the funding might stop I would add more bells and whistles.” Now she can see she was blind to the problems. “I heard what I wanted to hear … I didn’t listen.”

在參加初創企業葬禮之前，她沒有時間反思自己。“我是如此迫切地想要推銷自己的創意，以至於一旦融資有了可能停止的跡象，我就會給自己的創意加上更多華而不實的東西。”現在她已經意識到自己當時對問題視而不見。“我只聽得進去自己想要聽到的東西……我沒有靜心傾聽。”

Start-up funerals serve a purpose, says Henry Kressel, co-author of If You Really Want to Change the World: “They can be useful if case histories are discussed and the discussion highlights where key decisions made were faulty.”

《如果你真的想要改變世界》(If You Really Want to Change the World)一書的聯合作者亨利•克雷塞爾(Henry Kressel)表示，初創企業葬禮確實能夠發揮一定作用。“如果參加者對案例的發展過程進行討論，並且在討論中重點關注了關鍵決策出現錯誤的地方，這種活動可以很有幫助。”

Brad Feld, a US venture capitalist based in Colorado, has held informal wakes for companies. The key, he says, is to celebrate the life of the company rather than obsess about the failure. “It’s like a normal wake — celebrate the person’s, or the company’s, life. And then move on and get back to work.”

美國科羅拉多州的一位風險投資家布拉德•費爾德(Brad Feld)也曾爲企業舉辦過非正式的守靈活動。他表示，活動的關鍵在於讚頌企業的發展歷程，而不是過於執迷於企業的失敗。“這就像一個正常的守靈活動一樣——歌頌一個人或者一家企業的一生。然後繼續向前，重新開始工作。”

John Mullins, associate professor of management practice at London Business School, says it is important for entrepreneurs to give themselves a version of an exit interview on their business. “You need to step back and try to be objective and bring other people’s point of view as we’re often too close.”

倫敦商學院(London Business School)的管理實踐副教授約翰•馬林斯(John Mullins)表示，對於企業家而言，對自己的企業給自己一個類似於離職面談的總結非常重要。“由於我們通常離得太近，你需要退後一步，試着變得客觀，並聽取其他人的觀點。”

Travis Lee Street presented his own lessons about Style Gauge, a fashion analytics company at a previous start-up funeral. He points out that broadcasting your failures if you have spent your own money is different from having burnt through investors’ funds: “I certainly wouldn’t be so forthcoming if my venture was VC or angel funded because there are strong relationships behind the scenes.” He would worry that divulging decisions when in¬vestors were involved would be indiscreet, disrespectful and could burn bridges.

特拉維斯•李•斯特里特(Travis Lee Street)在以前一次初創企業葬禮活動上分享了自己從Style Gauge得到的教訓，這是一家時尚分析初創公司。他指出，在公開講述自己失敗創業經歷時，你在創業過程中花的是自己的錢和燒投資者的錢是不一樣的：“如果我是依靠風險投資或者天使基金來爲我的創業項目融資，那我肯定不會如此坦誠，因爲私底下存在着深厚的關係。”他擔心，透露那些牽涉到投資者的企業決策會過於輕率、不尊重對方，並可能破壞雙方關係。

However, he believes there is a place for venture capitalists to speak at such events about why they funded the business and what went wrong from their perspective: “It all has to do with hearing from the true risk-taking individual, the person with the most to lose.”

但他認爲，在此類活動中也應有風險投資家的一席之地，以講述他們爲什麼會給企業提供融資，以及從他們的角度來看是哪裏出了問題。“這種做法關鍵在於傾聽來自真正承擔風險的個人的意見，此人在企業失敗時損失最多。”

After an evening of jokes and practical lessons at Tuesday’s TechHub funeral, a member of the audience asks about the emotional fallout. Ms Newman-Sanders confesses that she did not let on to friends and family how bad things were until it was too late. She recommends counselling.

在TechHub於星期二舉行的初創企業葬禮活動上，在聽了一整晚的各種玩笑和實用的經驗教訓以後，一名聽衆提出了有關情緒受到影響的問題。紐曼-桑德斯承認她當時並沒有向朋友和家人透露情況有多麼糟糕，直到爲時已晚。她建議尋求心理諮詢。

For Mr Rai, the answer was meeting other failed entrepreneurs. “We did lots of drinking. We would sit for two hours discussing our failures.” But ultimately it was finding a corporate job and getting busy, before starting another business — despite his pledge to stay off the entrepreneurial life.

在拉伊看來，解決這個問題的辦法在於和其他經歷失敗的企業家會面。“我們會喝很多酒。我們坐在一起討論我們的失敗，往往一談就是兩小時。”但最終的辦法是去其他公司找一份工作，讓自己忙碌起來，然後再開始創立另一家企業——雖然之前已經發誓再也不過企業家的生活了。