Zuora创始人兼首席执行官 成功三分靠自身七分靠环境

In the 1970s, Tien Tzuo’s parents immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan and promptly settled in Brooklyn. He recalls the place differently from the hipster paradise that it is today: It was a borough of mostly immigrants and some gangs. (As a child, Tzuo was mugged twice.) But he found his way to Cornell University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. While in school, Tzuo realized that he had a passion for building software applications. He went to work for Oracle ORCL -0.09% for the next six years.
20世纪70年代，左轩霆的父母从台湾移民到美国，而且很快就在布鲁克林安顿了下来。在左轩霆的记忆中，当时的布鲁克林还不是如今的潮人天堂，聚居在此的主要是移民和一些黑帮（小时候他被抢过两次）。但他还是考上了康内尔大学（Cornell University），还拿到了电气工程学士学位。在学校里，左轩霆发现自己对应用软件开发很感兴趣。随后，他在甲骨文公司（Oracle）工作了六年。

Tzuo left Oracle to earn his MBA from Stanford. He eventually landed at Salesforce.com CRM 2.61% , where he stayed for nine years and became the company’s chief marketing officer and chief strategy officer. In 2007, he set off to start his own enterprise software company, and today, he runs 350-person-strong Zuora, which aims to help businesses like Boz, Zendesk, Dollar Shave Club, and Docusign manage their subscription-based services. Naturally, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff is an angel investor.
为了到斯坦福（Stanford）大学念MBA，左轩霆离开了甲骨文。后来，他在客户关系管理解决方案供应商Salesforce.com工作了九年，成为这家公司的首席营销官兼首席策略官。2007年，左轩霆组建了自己的企业软件公司。今天，他的计费和支付系统公司Zuora有350多名员工，业务内容是帮助Boz、Zendesk、Dollar Shave Club和Docusign等公司管理它们的订阅式服务。Salesforce.com首席执行官马克o贝尼奥夫自然是Zuora的天使投资人。

Tzuo, 46, spoke with Fortune.
46岁的左轩霆接受了《财富》（Fortune）杂志的采访。

1. Who in technology do you admire most? Why?
1. 在科技界你最欣赏的人是谁？为什么？

It’s not one person. I try to draw inspiration from any number of people, but one of the people who has influenced me is Marc Benioff. I worked with him for nine years. He taught me a lot of what I know today about strategy and marketing. To be able to be at his side as we built Salesforce.com was an amazing experience, and I learned quite a bit. Marc is also just a genuinely good person. A lot of founders just aren’t that nice; but Marc is generous and has a great big heart.
我欣赏的不是某一个人。我会试着从每个人那里汲取灵感。对我有影响的一个人是马克o贝尼奥夫。我和他共事了九年。现在我对策略和营销的了解有很多都是拜他所赐。能在他构建Salesforce.com的过程中跟他一起工作是一次很棒的经历，也让我学到了相当多的东西。马克是个大好人。许多企业创始人都不是那么友善，但马克很慷慨，心胸也非常宽广。

2. Which area of technology excites you most?
2. 哪个科技领域最让你激动？

If I were to start a company today, it would definitely be a mobile-only application. I look at the way my kids interact with technology. My 4-year-old’s ability to use smart phones and tablets far, far exceeds her ability to use a computer. The future is going to be these devices. It’s hard for those of us who are adults to imagine what will happen if we don’t have devices with keyboards anymore, but that’s where innovation is going and that’s where technology is going to be in five years.
如果现在让我去组建公司，那一定会是一家纯粹的移动应用开发商。我观察过我的孩子们和科技的互动。我女儿今年4岁，使用智能手机和平板电脑的能力远远超过电脑。未来属于这些产品。我们这些大人很难想象如果这些东西没了键盘会出现什么样的情况，但这恰恰是创新的方向，也是今后五年科技的发展方向。

3. What advice would you give to someone who wants to do what you do?
3. 如果有人希望像你一样干一番事业，你对他们有什么建议？

People think that success and innovation comes like a flash. You’re Isaac Newton, and you’re sitting below a tree. An apple falls on your head and boom: You have all these ideas about physics. Or you’re sitting around your house and have the idea for Dropbox, and the next thing you know it’s worth $1 billion. People seem to look for that “flash,” and it doesn’t work like that. We’ve all been with some friends, perhaps sitting around a diner, saying how about this idea, or that idea, and they’re hoping that during the course of a meal, they’ll come up with the next Dropbox. It just doesn’t work like that. You have to go and pursue an idea, and you have to work it out. It takes a long time. You plod away at something, and you try to go deep, immerse yourself, and learn. You try to take these leaps, and eventually, you hit upon your breakthrough.
人们都觉得成功和创新来自于灵机一动。就像牛顿坐在苹果树下。苹果砸在头上就立即掌握了所有的物理定律。或者在家里坐着的时候想到了Dropbox这样的云存储业务，接下来就发现它价值10亿美元。他们寻找的似乎就是这样的灵光闪现，但实际情况不是这样。我们都会跟朋友见面，比如一起吃顿饭，席间大家会讨论这样或那样的主意，都盼望着吃完这顿饭之后马上就能建立起另一个Dropbox。但实际情况确实不是这样。你必须去寻找和追踪某个想法，必须让它成为现实。这需要很长时间。你得为了某个目标而艰苦跋涉，深入钻研，让自己沉浸其中并进行学习。你得设法完成这样的跨越，然后才能实现突破。

My biggest advice is to find the environment where you can immerse yourself and work it out. Our idea for Salesforce came because we were all in the enterprise software industry, and we were all struggling with the limitations of software in the age of the Internet. So we spent the next decade figuring out what that really meant. We’re trying to do same thing with Zuora with a business model built on the subscription economy. In fact, I believe success is only 30% based on you and 70% based on the environment you work in. People don’t think that way–most people think success is 100% due to themselves. So, pick your environment, pick the company, pick the people you work with, pick the neighborhood, and pick the area. Because that’s where you’re going to get the opportunity to submerge yourself and to work out your big ideas.
我最重要的建议就是找一个环境，能让自己沉浸在这样的目标之中，把它变为现实。我们想到Salesforce的原因是我们都从事企业软件工作，而且我们都因为互联网时代软件的局限性而苦苦挣扎。随后，我们用了十年时间才弄明白这到底意味着什么。在Zuora，我们也想这样做，想把我们的商业模式建立在订阅式经济的基础上。实际上，我相信成功只有30%来自人本身，另外70%则来自人所处的环境。但人们并不这样想——大多数人都认为成功完全来源于自身。因此，要选择环境，选择公司，选择同事，选择邻里街坊，选择自己所在的区域。因为在那里，你才有机会让自己沉下来，把高明的想法变成现实。

4. What is the best advice you ever received?
4. 你收到过的最佳建议是什么？

I remember way back in ’07, when I was toying around with ideas, I went to a few mentors of mine. Now, I wasn’t one of these guys that said, “I’m going to be a CEO one day.” But I had this idea that was going to require me to leave my company to be a CEO. So I sought out my mentors and asked, “Do you think I’m ready?” A good mentor of mine said, “You’re absolutely ready.” Seeking mentors that give you advice to push you beyond your comfort zone is the best way to go.
记得在2007年，我在一些想法之间游移不定，这时我去拜访了几位导师。那时我并不像别人那样，怀揣着“总有一天我会当上CEO”的想法。但当时我所想到的东西需要我辞职，成为一名CEO。因此，我问这些导师：“你觉得我准备好了吗？”一位高明的导师说：“你绝对准备好了。”让导师的建议把自己推出温室是最好的办法。

5. What’s the next big project you want to tackle?
5. 接下来你想进行什么样的大项目？

We make it really easy for companies to do what they want to do in a subscription economy. We make it easy for them to set a price and to participate in commerce. The next thing I would love to tackle is giving them more intelligence. We’ve been [running our subscription platform] for six years, and we have a lot of transactions in our system. We haven’t been taking advantage of it yet. We’re in a day and age where it’s all about big data and analytics. We have all the data and give it to customers so that they can do they’re own analytics, but I think we can do a much better job telling people, “Hey, based on our analysis, here’s a pricing plan that would suit you better.” Or, “Hey, based on our analysis, we think that these are the customers that you can upsell and increase your revenues by 10%.” I think we can do a much better job of that, and our customers would find that really valuable.
我们让其他公司非常轻松地在订阅式经济中做自己想做的事。我们让它们很轻松地定价和做生意。接下来我想做的是给它们更多的情报。我们（的订阅平台）已经运行了六年，我们的系统中记录了很多交易信息，但一直没有加以利用。我们处在一个大数据和分析起决定作用的时代。我们掌握着所有的数据，把这些数据提供给客户，他们就能自行加以分析。但我觉得我们能做的比这好得多，我们可以告诉客户：“嘿，根据我们的分析，这样的定价方案更适合你们。”或者，“嘿，根据我们的分析，我们认为这些客户有消费升级潜力，他们能让你的收入提高10%。”我想在这方面我们的工作成果会好得多，而且我们的客户也会发现这确实有价值。