高新科技的生意赚大钱

书中摘录+自己的的笔记
跟作者政见不同的人可能读这个会读的很生气。政治不谈，生意点子是很不错的

Eat people - 实际是说去掉那些低效冗余的职位，创造高效高科技的新企业 ，作者所说的应该是IT方面或者biotech方面的创新，而鄙视传统行业无法scale的特点。

作者给了12条特性，说facebook就符合里面10条，如果还能做到其他2条将会更加成功。
Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook has embraced ten of the Rules; I leave it to you to figure out the ones he has missed, so far anyway.

12 rules:
1. scalable, 可扩展，可“近乎无限”扩展。创新出新东西，根据learning curve，不断降低成本降低价格，极大的扩大“销路”，不要涨价来扩大profit margin，反面例子是ebay，老是涨价，结果现在生意就没有办法扩大，只好靠买买别人来扩张。
I ask myself, if this were cheaper next year, would I buy more? Or would other people buy more? Or will it show up in something new that we all have to have? Does it scale to a million people using it? Or maybe a billion people using it?

2. wasteful,浪费那些新科技给普及的几乎不值钱的东西，来节省珍贵的东西，比如人的时间，注意力，
“Today the cheap resources are bandwidth and computation. The scarce resource is time, which always becomes scarce as other things become abundant, and the human genius that can transcend the scarcity of time.”

3. horizontal, 不要想着从上到下的垄断这个市场跟自己产品相关的所有方面，专业的做好自己的那一个横向的切片，更加容易上手和成功，
Horizontal really means doing something better than anyone else and inserting yourself into a product or process by having someone else do everything else.

4. edge-hugging, Tom Sawyer-ish, 在人机交互的地方创新，这部分给了一些挺不错的点子。豆瓣，人人，wiki 甚至google都不是自己提供内容，而是提供一个让用户自己创造内容的地方。
NURTURE THE EDGE. If you don’t want to think about it as Tom Sawyer getting his fence painted by providing paint and brushes to his friends, think about it as a sandbox. Free Radicals create a sandbox for others to play in. Sit back. Add more sand when necessary. Once everyone is playing in the sandbox, then it’s time to harvest what they do.

There are real human beings at the edge, let them do a lot of the work for you.

“‘And instead of trying somehow to figure out what’s going on with them, you just create a set of tools that allows them to share whatever information they want and then the solution just becomes apparent, because everyone shared what’s going on with them and now I can just go to the site easily and just absorb what’s going on with all these people.

Wasting storage and bandwidth and using data to lower the cost of communications, in ways never before possible.

5.productive, 极大的提高生产力。不光是要doing things right 小规模的提高效率，而是要选择做真正的创新。作者的意思是不要在改进老科技上面浪费时间，直接去领先下一代新科技最划算。这个其实其他人有其他看法。真正开创新领域的人里面能从自己的创新里面获利的其实不是特别多，大部分还是失败的或者科技虽然成功了但是无法从中获得经济利益。真正获利的反而是看着别人摔跤然后知道绕道走的后来人。作为做风投的人，当然他应该去追最新最先进的科技，只要有成功的他就可以获利，但是作为开发人员，自己要注意了。Timing is the trickiest part. figuring out where technology is along that cost curve will both keep Free Radicals out of trouble

One way to look at it is like this: efficiency is about inputs while productivity is about outputs. Or maybe something like this: input/efficiency is the amount of effort put in while output/ productivity is how much of something is produced and how often.

Effectiveness is how outputs compare with what was planned or desired—doing the right things, while efficiency is the ratio of the amount of actual outputs to actual inputs—doing things right.

Productivity is really just doing the right things while doing things right. In other words, productivity is more or less the sum of effectiveness (doing the right things) and efficiency (doing things right).

Efficiency is a by-product—the world may get excited about it, but efficiency should never be the goal of a Free Radical. Google searches made looking stuff up extremely efficient, since you don’t have to drive to the library, but that’s secondary to the business of connecting advertisers and users, which is “the right thing to do” in addition to being a case of “doing things right.”

6. human-adapting, 让科技适应人的使用，不要让人去适应科技。记得10多年前刚刚来美国的时候，经常在staples(office supple store)里面转悠，惊叹为什么人家在简单的文具上面都能有那么多那么“人性化”的设计，好多东西真是替人想的周到，好用啊。当然如今国内这些方面也追上来了，不过就是在有些表面上看不到的地方还有欠缺。
True adaptive technologies are things that adapt to how you think. 让科技想人之所想，比如最近想买个洗碗机，发现从网上找信息一点都不方便，要单独从n个retailer的online store查到底要什么款，彼此直接不好直接做比较，价格不好做比较，比如shop discover 这个black friday在sears, home depot lowes的discount分别是15%, 10%, 5%，然后installation kit在三家店的售价不同，税按什么标准折价不清楚，谁负责安装，安装多少钱也不清楚，我当然会按计算器一个个计算，但是为什么要我去浪费宝贵的时间做这么低效的事情呢，电脑就不能直接计算好了告诉我么？这个货品的review也是分散在n个不同的地方，每家店有自己顾客留的评论，但是没有其他家的对同一款机器的评论。如果是书，还可以去amazon or google books统一查，但是洗碗机就没有了。需要自己去查。
当然我理解，让比较变得不容易，是商家discriminate pricing的策略，但是如果谁能做出个shopping guide，做出信誉，我宁可花点钱从它们网站直接去查了直接买，而这个整合网站也可以从洗碗机制造商那里直接提成拿钱么。

OK作者提的几条：我的google search之后，应该直接给我推荐我应该买什么书来读，干嘛还要我再去amazon搜呢？
google你应该直接猜出我下面三条搜索要搜索什么。
根据我过去的搜索记录，我朋友的记录推荐我应该读什么书，看什么电影，穿什么衣服，吃什么餐馆。As Doug Engelbart points out, augment me.
当然这里面有privacy 问题。
这些都已经有人在做了吧？anyway，喜欢这个方向，希望快点被人实现。

7. people-eating, 科技来去掉人做那些低效的工作。比如这个时代，要去美国驻中国大使馆签证，你需要：1 亲自去中信银行交签证费，如果你不幸人不在国内，请找人去交钱，2 顺手买电话卡，当然这个也可以在网上买，但是，鬼在是个整数额的，任何你用不完的，很多人当然也懒得或者没有渠道transfer给别人，就被吞了嘛，那么点小钱，谁会bother to argue about it, right? 3 要去网站上填一个表，查各种eggache的姓名码，手工写在某地方，打印出来签证的时候带去。4 最eggache的地方出现了，你需要电话打进去，人对着人，念出所有个人信息，然后电话那边的人再给你找合适日期和地点。如果没有合适的，那么对不起了，你等等再打进去。老天那，还可以更低效一点吗？？这都什么时代了，做个web 界面，从付费到输入个人信息到选择合适时间地点，哪里有那么难？是的，提高效率会让部分人失业，但是让社会让人人生活质量提高的不是full employment而是full productivity，stupid的 make work在资本主义国家早就实验多少年了，何必步人家后尘，人家犯过的错误自己楞是要亲自sb 兮兮犯过才肯学习？（btw这个作者还真是右派无比）
哪怕暂时不被政策支持吧，取代低效无用功的科技进步，最终肯定会被大众接受。

8. market-driven, 市场决定而不是领导决定。这个，不用多说。关键是要figure out能合理聚合群众意见的工具
create a market price for everything you do—for your products and services, for your employee ratings and raises, for customer service, everything. Have enough information, some definition of profit, so that everything can trade. Your little minimarkets will allocate resources better than any other method.

9. exceptional, 这个有点 精英主义。牛人能力是挫人的n倍，能做的事情根本就不是n个挫人加起来能做的。不要假惺惺说什么人人都有长处，人人都牛了。（这点在美国现在的确是非常流行，另外一本书 willpower里面有涉及，结果就是造出一堆自大狂narcissists，Smart and Gets Things Done里面也是完全一样的态度）。当然我觉得不同人在不同的地方，可能都能算这个单方向的牛人，这个是可能的，但是选定自己要做的方向，还要说什么人人都在这个方向都牛就是自欺欺人。高薪请牛人好好做事，不要跟挫人浪费时间。比方软件公司当然就要请大牛程序员，非要说某小弟EQ挺高的会跟人打交道因此也招来做程序员，这个是跟自己公司过不去。觉得EQ高，弄出去拉关系做销售就好了，表因为人家也喜欢写两行程序就一定认为人定胜天。
哪里找牛人？因为美国公司雇佣的时候需要避免显得歧视，所以只能靠大学给把门了，这个对中国不适用，不提。微软google等面试的那些智力题就是用来找聪明人的。咱这些不一定要去google工作的，没事做题来训练智力也不错，如The brain that changes itself所说的，大脑的可塑性如果是真的，多多训练可以提高的话，那还是多训练自己吧，万一有用呢？

10. market-entrepreneuring,
靠政治资本发家的不算牛人。。。自己这个看国情吧。不评论
作者举例美国的铁路大亨Vanderbilt 的发家简史。

11 zero-marginal, 新科技让每添加一个用户产生的费用为0，这样就可以无限扩展。
the easiest, but certainly not the only, businesses to scale have zero marginal costs.
Ideas and business processes are the ultimate zero marginal cost product—you have to be creative on how you sell them. 如果从可以无限扩展的产品里面获利？好好定义自己到底是一个什么行业：音乐电视其实是娱乐行业，铁路不是光铁路，而是运输行业。那些可能被盗用的东西从自己开始就免费提供，然后从周边赚钱。当然如何做到，这里作者没有仔细讲，他另外一本书how we got here里面据说有，等读了再说。
Give it away and build some other business around it. Index it, package it, slice and dice it, write opinions on it, just don’t be in the business of selling it.
The best advice is to go upstream. I wrote about an old upstream story in my book How We Got Here, which incidentally was both sold and given away free off my Web site—and still is!
The lesson being: if someone can copy your stuff, they will, so you might as well be the one to do the copying. If it can be digitized, it can be given away. Like it or not, piracy rules.
Google just sells ads against these illegal download links. Now, that’s an upstream business, closer to the final product!
New services—from alerts to social networking to finance to sports fan participation—need to do things paper versions can’t do. Stuff that is hard if not impossible to copy and steal.

12 virtual-pipe controlling 锁定用户
EPI-LIT. Entertainment (or Editorial) and Perishable Information Leading Indirectly to a Transaction. 娱乐和暂时有用的信息*间接*导致去买某东西。
老的方式是ebay让买卖双方在这里交易，apple也不需要卖给所有人东西，只要有部分人肯买就够，im过去是个封闭系统，facebook到处在网站上都让人做了like和评论键，极大扩大了自己的影响。
eBay created a closed community of buyers and sellers, locked in via feedback ratings, creating a layer of trust amid the chaos of anonymity on the Web.
Apple’s advantage—they don’t have to sell you everything, just enough.
for a long time, instant messaging was a closed system. You had a buddy list and you went where your buddies hung out.
新系统利用“朋友”的交互功能锁定用户
There are virtual pipes made from scratch that lock you in, like social networking sites MySpace and Facebook, or the insanely addictive and profitable FarmVille from Zynga. But what separated these folks from the Web of old was the addition of the concept of friends, interlinks within the closed system.
Same with a twist—EPI-LIT: entertainment and perishable information leading to an impulse transaction. - 这个有趣，是娱乐和暂时有用的信息导致*一时冲动的*去买某东西。
Facebook is selling virtual goods, virtual currency, and virtual gifts in their virtual pipe, leveraging the Zero Marginal Cost Rule.
这个在游戏世界里面似乎更加常见，卖虚拟物品也一样挣钱。
It’s the ability to both run programs inside the browser window and allow for applications to pass information to each other that allows media on the Web to organize into horizontal layers instead of the fat and mogul-owned pipes we are used to.
Twitter was built this way. No need to build a browser or even do that much work in the cloud. Just create a closed system that logged, posted to followers, and allowed for searching of 140-character messages.
Be productive or provide tools for others to be productive and you’ll command huge profits.

最后作者说他看要不要投钱，经常问Is it a Feature, an Application, or a Business?
如果一个点子只是提供某种特性的服务，那么很容易被仿造，没有吸引力。如果是一个应用，里面整合了一套的特性服务，就稍微好点，但是如果能已经找到通过这个应用来赚钱的生意，那就最好了。
Entrepreneurs fall into this trap all the time. They come up with a great idea, and maybe it’s just a feature. Store photos on the Internet? Flickr? Wow, that’s cool. But it’s just a Feature. Edit photos, share them, e-mail them to friends. Ofoto? Put enough features together and you have an Application. Now we’re getting somewhere. Add words and print out two hundred holiday cards with my photo and personal greetings in it, even addressing envelopes and mailing them with my signature, like Shutterfly? Now, that’s a Business. By now, all these sites have implemented this business. But being first usually helps bring the highest return.
It could change fifty times from the time you start, but don’t build just features or just applications or you’ll never generate the highest returns.