Zuora创始人兼首席执行官 成功三分靠自身七分靠环境

Companies go through different phases. We’re about 350 people now, and I’d say the first $10 million in revenue, the first 150 or so employees, it’s about trying to figure out this company. What is the product market? What is your value proposition? How do you price? How do you sell the thing? How do you get customers to use it? Our next big milestone is $100 million in revenue, so at this size and scale, it winds up really being about people. How do you bring people into the organization? Where are the great players that see your company as the place where they can grow and develop themselves to the best that they can be? How do you keep them all aligned? How do you make them work more independently?
公司的发展有不同的阶段。现在我们有大约350人。我要说，收入第一次达到1000万美元以及员工人数第一次达到150人左右是公司的摸索阶段。产品的市场在哪里？你的价值主张是什么？怎样定价？怎么销售产品？如何才能让顾客使用它？我们的下一个重大里程碑是收入达到1亿美元。在这样的体量和规模之下，公司才会真正进入和人有关的阶段。怎样让别人进入你的公司？那些认为自己能在你的公司里获得最充分成长和发展的高端人才在哪里？你如何让他们同心协力？怎样让他们更独立地工作？

We have this phrase in the company: We have one CEO, but we have 350 “ZEOs.” We like putting “z” in front of everything. But how do you have 350 ZEOs who feel empowered, and point them all in the same direction? That’s one of the big challenges of our scale. We hope we can continue on a track to keep doubling every 12 to 18 months. We want to be 1,000 people in the near future. But how do we put in a structure to have us all work together so that we don’t cave in on ourselves? That’s the biggest challenge we have right now.
我们的公司处在这样一个阶段：我们有一名CEO，但有350名ZEO。我们喜欢在所有的东西前面都加一个“z”。但你怎么才能让这350名ZEO都觉得充满动力，同时引导他们朝着同一个方向迈进呢？这是在当前规模下我们面临的最大挑战之一。我们希望自己能保持每12-18个月规模翻番的速度。我们想在短期内拥有1000名员工。但我们要建立怎样的机制才能让所有人都携手努力，以免功亏一篑呢？这就是目前我们面临的最大挑战。

7. If you could have done anything differently in your career, what would it have been?
7. 如果你的职业生涯中有件事可以重头来过，它会是什么？

I do a lot of international travel now, and I always thought it would be good to work overseas for a couple of years. I had a couple of opportunities to do so in my career, and for various reasons, usually personal ones, I didn’t choose to take it. But I think in today’s world, where the world is much smaller, technology is spreading much faster, and you have to have an international perspective. I just did this trip through Asia, and their use of mobile phones and mobile apps actually exceeds what we have here, even in our Silicon Valley bubble. So I would encourage people today to move around internationally. Try to work in different places because I think you need perspective going forward as opposed to have a U.S.-centric view of the world.
现在我总是往国外跑，而且我总觉得在国外工作一、两年挺好。在我的职业生涯中有几次出国工作的机会，但我都放弃了。原因有很多，通常都和个人有关。但我觉得，现在的世界已经小了很多，科技传播的速度也快了很多，一个人必须具有国际化的眼界。我刚刚从亚洲出差回来。在那里，人们对手机和移动应用的使用实际上已经超过了美国，甚至超过了硅谷泡沫时期的美国。因此，我想鼓励现在的人们到国外去。试着在不同的地方工作，因为我觉得今后人们看世界的角度不应该再以美国为中心。

8. What was the most important thing you learned in school?
8. 你在学校学到的最重要的东西是什么？

I’d say there are two things. I was an electrical engineering major. I can’t say that I liked it, and that’s why I’m not an electrical engineer today. I remember learning this while having to take weed out courses in my sophomore and junior years: What it taught me was that you can do anything if you put your mind to it. That was a really important lesson. You become less daunted about things. I think as we grow, we get so used to being in our comfort zone that we lose the ability to tackle new things.
我要说两点。我学的专业是电气工程，说不上喜欢，这也是今天我没有成为电气工程师的原因。我记得在大二和大三，我在修专业课的同时还得去上筛选课程。我从中学到的是，如果专心致志，就能做成任何事情。这一课真的很重要。这会让你变得不那么容易气馁。我觉得随着年龄的增长，我们会习惯于待在让自己舒服的环境里，这会让我们失去接纳新事物的能力。

Now that I have a 4-year-old, and I see the opposite, where she’s tackling everything, I think the idea that you can learn anything is really important. The second thing is that when you go to business school and you learn about accounting and such, that’s all nice, but the big lesson in business is that at the end of the day, it’s all about people. It’s the organizational behavior classes are really important. Stanford has this class called “Touchy-Feely,” which is all about interpersonal dynamics. You learn about how you impact people and how people perceive you. It was a great class because in the end, it’s all about people; it’s all about relationships.
现在我有了一个四岁的女儿，她让我看到了截然相反的情况，什么东西她都会去探索。我觉得自己能学会任何东西的观念真的很重要。第二点是，进入商学院后会学到会计等课程。这些课程都很好，但我在经营方面的重要经验是，最终发挥作用的还是人。真正重要的是组织行为课程。斯坦福大学（Stanford）有一门课叫“Touchy-Feely”，内容就是人际关系。学生们学的是自己如何影响别人以及别人怎么看待自己。这门课很棒，因为最终起作用的还是人，是人际关系。

9. What is one goal—either personal or professional—that you would like to accomplish during your lifetime?
9. 你在有生之年希望实现的个人目标或职业目标是什么？

I’d like to change the software industry. I feel like we did that once at Salesforce, but I’d like to do it again. I’d like to change it for the better and create something that the enterprise software industry can learn from.
我想改变软件行业。我觉得在Salesforce我们做到了这一点，但我还想再来一次。我想让这个行业变得更好，我希望自己创造出的东西能成为企业软件行业的学习对象。10. 你怎样保持平衡的生活？

10. What do you do to live a balanced life?
10. 你怎样保持平衡的生活？

I’m actually very different in my personal life than in my professional live. At work, I’m very directed, very goal-oriented. When I’m not focused on work, I prefer to go with the flow, go where things take me. These days I have fun hanging out with my daughter. What I try to do is to let go, not dictate structure or goals, and just hang out with her. Whatever she wants to do, we’ll go do.
实际上，个人生活中的我和工作时的我大相径庭。在工作中，我的方向非常明确，非常集中于自己的目标。不把注意力放在工作上时，我更愿意顺其自然，随遇而安。最近我一直陪着我女儿，而且过的很快乐。我的做法是无为而治，不设置条条框框或者目标，就是跟她待在一起。她想做什么，我们就一起去做。