Steve Blank：每个人须决定两件事
Steve Blank被《哈佛商业评论》誉为当代的“创新大师”，而《圣何塞水星报》则将他评为硅谷最有影响力的 十大人物之一。他曾经先后8次创业，现在在斯坦福和伯克利教书，致力于传播创新文化。他的《硅谷秘史》被公认是研究硅谷历史的最佳著作，此外，他的《顿悟的四个步骤》也是创始人和VC的推荐丛书之一。
本文是Steve Blank 2013年在明尼苏达理工大学毕业致辞。他在演讲之末讲到：“每个人须决定两件事：
第一，是替人打工，还是独立创业。第二，是为生活而工作，还是为工作而生活。
”
We’re delighted to have Mr. Blank with us this evening, to present his commencement address title.why your parents will be happy, 3 of you will make 100 million dollars。Please join me and welcoming Mr. Steve Blank.
欢迎Steve Blank博士今晚莅临致辞，题目是“父母为什么高兴？因为你们可能成为亿万富翁”有请Steve Blank博士。
Thank you.
谢谢
I’m honored to be with you as we gather to celebrate your graduation.As you know, this school has distinguished roster of graduates…Earl Bakken, the founder of Medtronic, was an Electrical Engineering grad,and Bob Gore of Gortex, and your current president are both alums of your Chemical Engineering program.In fact, I feel very connected to another one of your grads.I’m sure you all have heard of Seymour Cray. He built a supercomputer company in Chippewa Falls that made the fastest computers in the world.
很荣幸出席今晚的毕业典礼，明尼苏达理工大学培养了众多杰出人才。Medtronic创始人Earl Bakken毕业于贵校电子工程系、Gortex创始人Bob Gore和贵校现任校长都毕业于化学系、我与贵校另一位校友颇有渊缘，他就是大名鼎鼎的Cray的超级计算机公司生产过世界上最快的计算机。
My startup never recovered and soon after went out of business.Now fast-forward 15 years, now retired,I noticed that the Pittsburg Supercomputer Center had put their Cray for sale on eBay. Yep, that 35 Million dollar machine was now on sale for 35,000 dollars.I bought that Cray, Honest… you can Google “Cray on eBay” and there I am… I had it shipped to my ranch and kept it in the barn next to the cows and manure.It was closure. Thank you.
这些超级计算机体积巨大，售价昂贵，那时我的公司生产台式工作站，是Cray的竞争对手。我们一起参加了匹兹堡超级计算机中心的采购竞标。最后Cray先生赢了。匹兹堡斥资3500万购买了一台Cray计算机，这件事我终生难忘。
These were very expensive supercomputers. They cost 10 of millions of dollars and filled into 2 tractor-trailers worth of space.Back in Silicon Valley, I co-founded a company that built desktop workstations to compete against Cray. In fact, we bid against them in a sale to the Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center and we lost. I never forgot that loss because instead of buying hundreds of our small computers they spent 35 Million dollars on that Cray.
我的公司从此一蹶不振，很快就倒闭了。多年后，我偶然发现，匹兹堡计算机中心在eBay上出售这台Cray，原价3500万，现在只要3.5万。我买下了这台Cray。真的，不信你上eBay搜索Cray，我把它运到我的农场，扔在奶牛和肥料中间。终于出了这口气！
But the story about Cray is also a story about success and failure. So if I can keep you awake, I’m going to tell you why – while you may have thought today was the end of your education. it’s really only the beginning. And while you might be moaning about that thought, pay attention because what I’m about to share could make a few of you very, very successful.For most of you, college was the first day of your own life,the morning you stepped onto campus you were no longer just a child of your parents ,college was the first place you could taste the freedom of making your own decisions,and in some of those mornings-after – learn the price of indulgence and the value of moderation.Here at school you had your first years of taking responsibility for yourself. While it may not be obvious to you, your college years were a transition from having your parents making decisions for you to making decisions for yourself. But now you face a new chapter that if you’re not careful, could result in having companies making decisions for you.It might turn out that graduating from college and getting a job may be just an illusion of independence. If you’re not careful you’ll simply end up having others tell you what to work on, how to spend your time, when to show up and when to go home. In fact, working in a company could be an adult version of listening to your parents tell you what to do… Only the pay is usually a whole lot better than your allowance.For some of you, that may be exactly what you are looking for.
不过这都是往事了，你们也许觉得学习生涯终于结束了，其实才刚刚开始。别急着埋怨，否则某些人有可能错过最宝贵的建议。对你们而言，大学是独立的第一步。踏进校园的一刻，你们就不再是父母的孩子了，你们开始自由决定要做什么、同时学习自律，不再任性。你们第一次对自己负责。
大学生活是一种过渡，是从父母替你们做决定到你们自己做决定的过渡
。现在你们进入新的人生阶段，如果不小心，你们可能落到公司替你们做决定的地步。毕业找到工作，并不代表真正的独立。因为公司替你决定了你该做什么，如何安排时间、何时上班，何时回家。实际上，公司很可能继续扮演父母的角色。只不过公司给的生活费更高罢了。也许这就是某些人追求的生活。
Many of you are going to take what you learned here, get a good job, get married, buy a house,have a family, be a great parent, serve your community and your country, hang with friends and live a good life and that’s great. Minnesota is a wonderful place to hunt, fish, canoe, raise kids,and pursue lots of interests other than just your job.But all of you will ultimately make a choice… a choice about whether you “work to live” or whether you gonna “live to work.” That should be a conscious choice. Don’t get trapped into the daily routine of showing up and just getting by While you’re excited about your first “real” job, recognize that your interests and those of your employer are probably not the same. Having your employer tell you what a great job you’re doing and rewarding you for it is not the same as discovering your passion, and figuring out who you are, and what’s rewarding for you.What I am saying is, “Don’t let a career just happen to you.” And more importantly, as much you love, respect and honor your parents, don’t live their lives. Your obligations to meet their expectations ended the day you became an adult.At the end of the day, you can decide whether you want to be an employee with a great attendance record, getting promoted to ever better titles and working on interesting projects or whether you want to attempt to do something spectacular this choice between be or do should be a question you never stop asking yourself — for the next 20 years. Be? or Do?
他们毕业，找工作，结婚，买房，为人父母，回馈社会和国家，结识朋友，享受人生。这很好！明尼苏达是个好地方，适合打猎、钓鱼、探险、生儿育女，享受各种业余爱好。但是所有人都无法回避一个问题——
是为生活而工作，还是为工作而生活
。你们必须清醒地做出选择，千万不要得过且过，浪费光阴。找到工作是件好事，但是别忘了你想做的工作，老板并不一定感兴趣。让老板决定你的工作价值和酬劳远不如做自己想做的事，认清自己的价值，自己决定酬劳，我想说的是，不要盲目接受任何职业。尽管你们尊重父母，但没必要重复他们的生活。你们已经成年，没有义务再取悦父母。今晚你们应该考虑，究竟是找一份工作。成为一名勤奋、受信任的员工还是独立做自己想做的事。今后二十年，你们都不该忘记这个问题究竟是替人打工，还是独立创业？
Let me share with you the day I faced the Be or Do question.Out of the military, my first job in Silicon Valley was with one of the most exciting companies you never heard of. By the time I joined it was a decade old, and no longer a startup. Our customers were the CIA, the NSA, and the National Reconnaissance Office. Our CEO, Bill Perry eventually became the Secretary of Defense.In the 1970’s and ‘80’s the U.S. military realized that our advantage over the Soviet Union was in silicon, software and systems.These technologies allowed our country to build weapons previously thought impossible or impractical. he technology was amazing, and in my 20’s I found myself in the middle of it.Building these systems required resources beyond the scope of any single company. A complete system had spacecraft and rockets and the resources of ten’s of thousands of people from multiple companies.If you love technology, these projects are hard to walk away from. It was geek heaven.
我说说自己的经历。退伍后，我在硅谷赫赫有名的公司找到一份工作。我进公司时，它已经经营了十多年，公司的客户包括中情局、国家安全局、国家侦察局，公司的CEO后来成为国防部长。上世纪70~80年代，军方已经明白我们对苏联的优势是半导体、软件和系统集成这些技术可以生产前所未有的武器。我二十岁时，从事的就是这样激动人心的事业我们拥有的资源是任何一家公司无法企及的。我们拥有宇宙飞船和火箭以及数以万计的人才，喜欢科技的人很难拒绝这样的诱惑，这简直是极客的天堂！
While I worked on these incredibly interesting intelligence systems,my friends were in startups working on new things called microprocessors. They’d run around saying, “Hey look, I can program this chip to make this speaker go beep.” I’d roll my eyes, comparing the toy-like microprocessors to what I was working on which was so advanced you would have thought we acquired it from aliens.But before long I realized that at my company, I was just a cog in a very big wheel. A small team had already figured out how to solve the problem and ten’s of thousands of us worked to build the solution. Given where I was in the hierarchy, I calculated that the odds of me being in on those decisions didn’t look so hot anytime.In contrast, my friends at startups were living in their garages fueled with an energy and passion to use their talents to pursue their own ideas, however unexpected or crazy they sounded.
我为这些智能系统工作时，我的朋友则忙于创业，研发微处理器。他们常常炫耀“瞧，我的芯片可以让音箱哔哔叫”我对这种小玩具不屑一顾，与我的工作相比，微处理器太小儿科了。但是，不久我就发现自己的工作无足轻重。公司核心研发团队早就设计好系统方案，我们上万人做的只是按要求进行生产。我的职位不高，几乎不可能进入核心团队。与此同时，我的朋友正在车库里充满激情地追求梦想，尽管他们的想法令人发笑，而且前途未卜。
“Really, you’re building a computer I can have in my house?”For me, the light bulb went off when I realized that punching a time clock is not the way to change the world.I chose the path of entrepreneurship and never looked back.Engineers used to be the people who made other peoples ideas work. Today, they change the world..We live in a time where scientists and engineers are synonymous with continuous innovation.
“你要制造在家里用的计算机？”我终于认识到，按部就班的工作不可能改变世界，从此我走上了创业的道路。以往工程师只能替别人实现梦想，今天工程师可以改变世界。在这个时代，工程师已成为持续创新的代言人。
We don’t think twice as our phones shrink, our computers fit in our pockets, our cars run on batteries, and our lives are extended as new medical devices are implanted in our bodies. Scientists and engineers no longer work anonymously in backrooms. Today we celebrate them for improving the quality of peoples’ lives.
手机越来越小巧，计算机可以塞进口袋。电动汽车出现了，人们的平均寿命延长了。科学家和工程师不再是默默无闻的幕后人物。人们感激他们改善了我们的生活。
Engineers like you have the capacity to move the world forward by continually asking “why not?” It’s your special “doing” gene that empowers us to do better. You invent. You imagine. You see things that others don’t. Where others see blank canvases, you’ll see finished paintings. You hear the music that’s not written, you see the bridges that have yet to be built. You envision the products and companies that don’t exist yet.
不停追问“为什么不”的工程师将改变世界。你们体内的行动基因是源源不断的动力，
你们发明，你们梦想，你们憧憬着他人不曾见过的未来
。旁人只看到空白画布，你们却看到了完成的作品。你们听到了尚未谱就的乐章，你们看到了尚未竣工的桥梁，你们酝酿着未来的公司和产品。
University of Minnesota Science and Engineering alumni like you have founded more than 4,000 active companies, employing over half million people and generating annual revenues of $90 billion. These alums chose not to take the safe road but instead to push beyond their boundaries and DO.At some time you might decide that you want to become the master of your own destiny that you want to take an idea, and start your own company.And all of you sitting here just earned a degree that gives you choices that very few other professions have.
明尼苏达理工大学的校友创办了4000多家企业，提供50多万个就业机会，每年创造900亿的产值。这些校友不满安逸的生活选择挑战自己极限。每个人都希望掌握自己的命运。许多人有好点子，想创办自己的公司。更何况在座各位有着其他专业学生不具备的优势。
Entrepreneurship is not something foreign it’s built into the DNA of this country. America was built by those who left the old behind.Not too many generations ago your family packed up what they had, got on boat and came to America. They struck out across the country and ended up here in Minnesota.And what’s great about the United States is that no other country embraces innovation and entrepreneurship quite like we do. You don’t have to stay in one job, and it’s really, really hard to starve to death.Now I predict that this season 78% of all commencement speeches are gonna have advice about “pursuing your passion and doing stuff you love.” But no one actually tell you why. Well here’s the secret – if you’re going to spend your career in a company, doing stuff you enjoy will help you keep showing up. But if you want to do something, something entrepreneurial, just loving what you do is isn’t enough. You’re pursuing ideas you can’t get out of your head.Ideas that you obsess about. That you work on in your spare time.Because that fearless vision and relentless passion are what it takes to sustain an entrepreneur through the inevitable bad times.The times your co-founder quits, or when no one buys, or the product doesn’t work. The time when everyone you know thinks that what your doing is wrong and a waste of time. The time when people tell you that you ought to get a “real” job.By the way, every year I remind my students that great grades and successful entrepreneurs have at best a zero correlationn and anecdotal evidence suggests that the correlation may actually be negative.
创业精神并非舶来品，它是我们的民族精神。自开国以来，美国人民就勇于创新，几百年前，你们的祖先扛着行李，远渡重洋。横穿美国，来到明尼苏达。没有哪个国家像美国这样尊重创新和冒险。美国不会饿死人，你没必要守着一份工作不放。我估计八成的毕业致辞会鼓励大家追逐梦想但是他们却不曾说明原因。如果你只想给公司打工，找一份热爱的工作就够了，但
如果你想创业，仅仅热爱工作远远不够。只有那些为了梦想茶饭不思，愿意放弃业余生活的人才具备弃而不舍的创业激情和动力，才有勇气面对重重难关
。合伙人可能反目成仇，产品可能无人问津，每个人都怀疑你在浪费时间。劝你找一份正经的工作。此外，我要提醒你们，
优秀的学生不一定能成为优秀的企业家。
实际情况可能恰恰相反。
Now we tell the truth.There’s a big difference between being an employee at a great company and having the guts to start one.You don’t get grades for resiliency, curiosity, agility, resourcefulness, pattern recognition and tenacity. But you do get successful.The downside of starting something new is that it’s tough,because unlike the movies – you fail a lot. For every Facebook and Google, thousands never make it.Like Rocket Science Games, which was my biggest failure. 90 days after showing up on the cover of Wired Magazine I knew the game company where I raised 35 million dollars was going out business.We’d believed our own press, inhaled our own fumes and built lousy games. Customers voted with their wallets and didn’t buy our products. The company went out of business. Given the press we had, it was a very public failure.We let our customers, our investors, and our employees down. I thought my career and my life were over.But I learned something important, that in Silicon Valley, honest failure is a badge of experience.All of you will fail at some time in your career…or in love, or in life. No one ever sets out to fail. But being afraid to fail means you’ll be afraid to try. Playing it safe will get you nowhere.As it turns out, rather than run me out of town, the two venture capitalists that had lost $12 million in my failed startup actually asked me to work with them again.And during the next couple years…and much humbler… I raised more money and started another company that we were ultimately able to take public, and those patient investors more than made up for their earlier loss – about billion times more.
这是实话。能进入优秀的公司，并不代表你有胆量创办公司。因为学校无法给毅力、机智、好奇心、观察能力打分，但这并不妨碍你们毕业。创业的风险很高，这不是电影，不可能一帆风顺。Facdbook和Google背后是无数倒闭的公司，就像我那失败的游戏公司一样。尽管筹集了3500万，还上了《连线》杂志的封面，公司最后还是倒闭了。我们过于自负，以为用户会买媒体的账，结果开发的游戏无人问津。我不仅失败了，而且还“声名扫地”。公司员工、投资者、用户大失所望。我几乎以为自己无路可走了。但是我吸取了教训，接受失败才能积累经验，每个人都会遇到挫折。生活挫折、事业挫折、感情挫折，大家都不愿意失败。但是
害怕失败意味着害怕尝试，畏首畏尾终将一事无成
。后来，我的两位投资人坚持继续与我合作，尽管我让他们损失了1200万美元。几年后，我创办的另一家公司成功上市，为投资者带来了丰厚的回报。
As scientists and engineers, you know about failure. You know that virtually no experiment works the first time. And here is the news, a new company all you have is a series of untested hypotheses. You learned something vital in school,to test your hypotheses by designing experiments, getting accurate data, analyzing the results, and then modifying those hypotheses based on those results. This is the scientific method, and surprisingly we just discovered the exact same method works for startups.Because failure is a part of the startup process. In Silicon Valley, we have a special word for a failed entrepreneur – it’s called experienced. Our country and our entrepreneurial culture is one of second and third chances.It’s what makes us great. You don’t have to change your name or leave town. Entrepreneurs in America know that they get multiple shots at the goal.Now someday several of you in this graduating class will be worth a $100 million dollars. And a few of you might change the way the world works.
作为理工科学生，你们对失败并不陌生，没有哪个试验第一次就能成功。新公司除了创意和假设，什么都没有。你们在学校学会了很重要的东西，设计实验来验证假设，收集数据，分析结果，根据结果修正假设。这种科研方法正是创业者必备的。因为创业公司必须在失败中学习。在硅谷，失败是宝贵的经验。我们的文化对失败者特别宽容。这是我们的优势，失败者不必隐姓埋名、远走他乡。失败了可以卷土重来，要知道你们当中有些人会成为亿万富翁，有些人会改变世界。
I want you to look around. Seriously …Go ahead. Take a few seconds and take a look… Go ahead, I’ll wait.While most of you were looking around wondering who were the three people was going to be worth 100 million dollars, I hope a few of you were feeling sorry for the rest of your classmates, knowing that the most successful person in the audience is going to be you.These days I write a blog about entrepreneurship. At the end of each post, I conclude with “lessons learned”a kind of Cliff Notes of my key takeaways.
请大家看看周围的同学，仔细观察一下。还有时间，大多数人都在猜谁会成为亿万富翁。但是少数人会暗自窃喜。他们知道那个人就是自己。我一直坚持写有关创业的博客。每篇博客结尾都有一个小结，就像要点回顾。
So that’s how I’ll finish up today.Here are the two lessons that I’d like to pass on to you.Your science or engineering degree gives you tremendous choices you, and no one else gets to decide two things:
这里我也做个小结，作为今天的结尾。理工科教育背景为你们提供了更多选择，但你们必须决定两件事
one, whether you choose to be or you choose to do
第一，是替人打工，还是独立创业
and whether you “work to live” or whether you “live to work”
第二，是为生活而工作，还是为工作而生活
Remember… live your life with no regrets. There’s no undo button.
记住，世上没有后悔药，不要让生命留下遗憾
And Congratulations — you’ve earned it!
恭喜你们顺利毕业
Thank you very much.
谢谢大家。