Exposing Myth of Start-Up Founders
打破新創企業創辦人的迷思
By Claire Cain Miller

Many people think they know what the founder of a tech start-up looks like: a 20-something man who spent his childhood playing on computers and who later dropped out of college to become a billionaire entrepreneur.
很多人認為自己知道一家科技新創企業的創辦人是何種模樣：一個20來歲的男人，童年都在玩電腦，後來大學時輟學，成了身家超過十億美元的企業家。

That describes Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. But there’s just one thing: They are anomalies.
這說的正是馬克．祖克柏、史蒂夫．賈伯斯和比爾．蓋茲。但還有一點：他們都不是一般人。

Most tech start-up founders who have raised venture capital have much less unusual résumés, according to data analysis by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business. The average founder is 38, with a master’s degree and 16 years of work experience.
柏克萊加州大學哈斯商學院的研究人員分析資料後發現，成功募集到創投基金的科技新創公司的創辦人，大多數履歷遠不如前述的特別。這些創辦人平均38歲，有碩士學歷，16年工作經驗。

Yet if someone like that came to a top venture capitalist’s office, he or she could very well be turned away. Start-up investors often accept pitches only from people they know, and rely heavily on intuition and what’s worked before.
然而如果有這麼樣樣的一個人去一位頂級創投基金經理人的辦公室，他/她很有可能被拒絕。新創企業投資人往往只接受認識的人的推薦，很仰賴直覺和以往的成功經歷。

Bloomberg Beta, Bloomberg’s tech investment fund, teamed up with the Haas researchers to use the data about successful founders to try to predict who in the tech industry might someday start companies. The aim of the program, called Future Founders, was to find a broader group of people who might someday have a billion-dollar idea, since venture capital still relies heavily on referrals.
彭博集團科技投資基金Bloomberg Beta和哈斯商學院研究人員合作，運用成功創辦人的資料，試圖預測科技業誰可能自己創業。這個「未來創辦人」計畫目標是在更廣的範圍內，發現來日可能冒出價值十億美元點子的人，因為現在的創投基金依然非常依賴舉薦。

“Show me another industry where the way you find your customers is to wait for your friends to introduce them to you,” said Roy Bahat, who run Bloomberg Beta. It also had another effect: identifying a much more diverse group of people.
「告訴我還有哪一行是等朋友介紹來找客戶的，」Bloomberg Beta負責人羅伊．巴哈特表示。計畫還有另一個效應：找到更多元的群體。

While only 12 percent of current founders are women, when they searched for potential founders, 20 percent of the people they found were women.
雖然現在的創辦人中只有12%是女性，但當他們尋找潛在的創業者時，找到的人裡有20%是女性。

“If you look at just the professional histories of the people who got funded, then it suggests people who share those histories are much more diverse than the people who get funded,” Mr. Bahat said.
「如果你僅關注獲得融資者的專業背景，就會發現擁有這些背景的人比真正得到融資的人更加多樣，」巴哈特說。

Only 53 percent of founders have technology backgrounds, indicating that a computer science degree is not a requirement. Of potential founders, 8 percent of those with technology backgrounds are women.
在創辦人中，只有53%的人有科技背景，顯示電腦科學的文憑並非必要條件。在可能創業的人中，有技術背景的8%有是女性。

The average founder has a master’s degree. College dropouts were “statistically negligible,” said Weiyi Ng, a Ph.D. candidate. The average age is 38, and 38 percent of venture-backed founders are over 40.
創業者一般都有碩士文憑。哈斯商學院博士候選人吳惟一（音譯）說，大學中輟生的占比「在統計上沒啥意義」。創業者平均年齡為38歲，獲得創投基金支持的創業者有38%超過40歲。

The single most predictive factor determining whether someone started a company was perhaps less surprising: whether they had worked for a venture-backed company in the past. Working at Google was likely to turn someone into an entrepreneur. People who stayed at the same job a long time were unlikely to start companies, while people who had tried and failed to start one were more likely to succeed in raising venture capital on another try.
在判斷某人是否會創業時，最具預測性的指標或許不太出人意料：此人過去是否在有創投基金資助的公司工作過。任職於谷歌可能有助於培養一個創業者。同一分工作做很久的人，不大可能去創業。而曾經試圖創業但失敗的人，更有可能在下一次創業時募資成功。

Start-up investing will never be a science. It depends too much on timing, luck and human judgment. But a more diverse set of founders might be financed by doing more than waiting for a kid in a hoodie to show up at the door.
新創投資永遠都不會是一門科學。它太依賴時機、運氣和人的判斷。只要我們採取更多措施，不要乾等一個穿套頭衫的毛頭小子找上門來就能找到背景更為豐富，值得投資的創業者。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/02/upshot/the-next-mark-zuckerberg-is-not-who-you-might-think.html

2015-07-28聯合報/G9版/UNITED DAILY NEWS 張佑生譯 原文參見紐時週報七版下