Software is eating the world.
软件正在吞噬世界。
More than 10 years after the peak of the 1990s dot-com bubble, a dozen or so new Internet companies like Facebook and Twitter are sparking controversy in Silicon Valley, due to their rapidly growing private market valuations, and even the occasional successful IPO. With scars from the heyday of Webvan and Pets.com still fresh in the investor psyche, people are asking, “Isn’t this just a dangerous new bubble?”
互联网泡沫在90年代达到顶峰后的十多年里，一批如 Facebook 和 Twitter 这样的新兴互联网公司在硅谷引发了争议，原因是它们在私募市场的估值快速增长，甚至偶尔还会有成功的首次公开募股（IPO）。投资者对 Webvan 和 Pets.com 等公司昔日辉煌后的惨淡结局记忆犹新，不禁要问：“这不会又是一个危险的新泡沫吗？”
I, along with others, have been arguing the other side of the case. (I am co-founder and general partner of venture capital firm Andreessen-Horowitz, which has invested in Facebook, Groupon, Skype, Twitter, Zynga, and Foursquare, among others. I am also personally an investor in LinkedIn.) We believe that many of the prominent new Internet companies are building real, high-growth, high-margin, highly defensible businesses.
我和其他一些人一直在为此辩护。（我是风险投资公司 Andreessen-Horowitz 的联合创始人和普通合伙人，该公司投资了 Facebook、Groupon、Skype、Twitter、Zynga 和 Foursquare 等公司。我个人也是 LinkedIn 的投资者。）我们相信，许多著名的新兴互联网公司正在建立真实的、高增长、高利润、高度可防御的业务。
Today’s stock market actually hates technology, as shown by all-time low price/earnings ratios for major public technology companies. Apple, for example, has a P/E ratio of around 15.2—about the same as the broader stock market, despite Apple’s immense profitability and dominant market position (Apple in the last couple weeks became the biggest company in America, judged by market capitalization, surpassing Exxon Mobil). And, perhaps most telling, you can’t have a bubble when people are constantly screaming “Bubble!”
如今的股票市场实际上并不青睐科技公司，这从主要上市科技公司创纪录的低市盈率就可以看出。例如，尽管 Apple 公司盈利能力强大，市场地位主导（Apple 在最近几周成为美国市值最大的公司，超过了 Exxon Mobil），但其市盈率仅为15.2左右，与整体股市水平相当。也许最能说明问题的是，当人们不断高呼”泡沫”时，泡沫反而不太可能形成！
But too much of the debate is still around financial valuation, as opposed to the underlying intrinsic value of the best of Silicon Valley’s new companies. My own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.
然而，目前的争论仍过多地集中在财务估值上，而非硅谷新兴公司的内在价值。我的观点是，我们正处于一个剧烈而广泛的技术和经济变革之中，软件公司正准备接管经济的大片领域。
More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services—from movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures. Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not.
越来越多的主要企业和行业正在通过软件运营，并以在线服务的形式提供——从电影到农业再到国防。许多赢家都是硅谷式的创业科技公司，它们正在入侵并颠覆既有的行业结构。我预计，在未来10年里，更多的行业将被软件颠覆，而这种颠覆在大多数情况下都将由新兴的、具有世界级竞争力的硅谷公司来完成。
Why is this happening now?
为什么这种情况现在才发生？
Six decades into the computer revolution, four decades since the invention of the microprocessor, and two decades into the rise of the modern Internet, all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale.
计算机革命已经过去了六十年，微处理器发明至今已有四十年，现代互联网兴起也有二十年了。如今，通过软件改造各行各业所需的所有技术终于成熟，并能够在全球范围内广泛应用。
Over two billion people now use the broadband Internet, up from perhaps 50 million a decade ago, when I was at Netscape, the company I co-founded. In the next 10 years, I expect at least five billion people worldwide to own smartphones, giving every individual with such a phone instant access to the full power of the Internet, every moment of every day.
现在，使用宽带互联网的人数已超过20亿，而在十年前我还在我联合创立的 Netscape 公司工作时，这个数字可能只有5000万。我预计在未来10年内，全球至少会有50亿人拥有智能手机，这意味着每个拥有智能手机的人都能随时随地即时访问互联网的全部功能。
On the back end, software programming tools and Internet-based services make it easy to launch new global software-powered start-ups in many industries—without the need to invest in new infrastructure and train new employees. In 2000, when my partner Ben Horowitz was CEO of the first cloud computing company, Loudcloud, the cost of a customer running a basic Internet application was approximately 1,500 a month.
在后端，软件编程工具和基于互联网的服务使得在许多行业中轻松创建新的全球性软件驱动的初创公司成为可能——无需投资新的基础设施或培训新员工。2000年，当我的合伙人 Ben Horowitz 担任第一家云计算公司 Loudcloud 的CEO时，客户运行一个基本的互联网应用每月需要花费约15万美元。而今天，在 Amazon 的云上运行同样的应用，每月只需要约1500美元。
With lower start-up costs and a vastly expanded market for online services, the result is a global economy that for the first time will be fully digitally wired—the dream of every cyber-visionary of the early 1990s, finally delivered, a full generation later.
由于创业成本降低和在线服务市场的大幅扩张，结果是全球经济首次实现了完全数字化连接——这是90年代初每个网络远见者的梦想，如今终于在整整一代人之后实现了。
Perhaps the single most dramatic example of this phenomenon of software eating a traditional business is the suicide of Borders and corresponding rise of Amazon. In 2001, Borders agreed to hand over its online business to Amazon under the theory that online book sales were non-strategic and unimportant.
软件吞噬传统业务这一现象最戏剧性的例子可能就是 Borders 的自杀式衰落和 Amazon 的相应崛起。2001年，Borders 同意将其在线业务交给 Amazon，认为在线图书销售既不具战略意义，也不重要。
Oops.
Today, the world’s largest bookseller, Amazon, is a software company—its core capability is its amazing software engine for selling virtually everything online, no retail stores necessary. On top of that, while Borders was thrashing in the throes of impending bankruptcy, Amazon rearranged its web site to promote its Kindle digital books over physical books for the first time. Now even the books themselves are software.
如今，全球最大的图书销售商 Amazon 是一家软件公司——它的核心能力是其出色的在线销售软件引擎，可以在线销售几乎所有商品，无需实体店。更重要的是，当 Borders 正在破产的边缘挣扎时，Amazon 重新设计了其网站，首次将 Kindle 电子书的推广置于实体书之上。现在，就连书籍本身也变成了软件。
Today’s largest video service by number of subscribers is a software company: Netflix. How Netflix eviscerated Blockbuster is an old story, but now other traditional entertainment providers are facing the same threat. Comcast, Time Warner and others are responding by transforming themselves into software companies with efforts such as TV Everywhere, which liberates content from the physical cable and connects it to smartphones and tablets.
如今按订阅用户数量计算的最大视频服务公司是一家软件公司：Netflix。Netflix 如何摧毁 Blockbuster 已经是一个老故事了，但现在其他传统娱乐提供商正面临同样的威胁。Comcast、Time Warner 等公司正通过将自身转变为软件公司来应对，比如推出”TV Everywhere”这样的服务，将内容从物理有线电视中解放出来，连接到智能手机和平板电脑上。
Today’s dominant music companies are software companies, too: Apple’s iTunes, Spotify and Pandora. Traditional record labels increasingly exist only to provide those software companies with content. Industry revenue from digital channels totaled $4.6 billion in 2010, growing to 29% of total revenue from 2% in 2004.
如今主导音乐行业的公司也是软件公司：Apple 的 iTunes、Spotify 和 Pandora。传统唱片公司越来越多地只是为这些软件公司提供内容。2010年，数字渠道的行业收入总计46亿美元，占总收入的比例从2004年的2%增长到了29%。
Today’s fastest growing entertainment companies are videogame makers—again, software—with the industry growing to 30 billion five years ago. And the fastest growing major videogame company is Zynga (maker of games including FarmVille), which delivers its games entirely online. Zynga’s first-quarter revenues grew to 100 million in revenue this year (the company was nearly bankrupt when it debuted the popular game on the iPhone in late 2009). Meanwhile, traditional videogame powerhouses like Electronic Arts and Nintendo have seen revenues stagnate and fall.
如今增长最快的娱乐公司是视频游戏制作商——再次强调，这是软件行业——该行业规模在过去五年从300亿美元增长到了600亿美元。增长最快的主要视频游戏公司是 Zynga（包括 FarmVille 在内的游戏制作商），它完全通过在线方式提供游戏。Zynga 今年第一季度的收入增长到2.35亿美元，比一年前翻了一番多。Angry Birds 的制作公司 Rovio 预计今年的收入将超过1亿美元（该公司在2009年底在 iPhone 上推出这款热门游戏时几乎破产）。与此同时，像 Electronic Arts 和 Nintendo 这样的传统视频游戏巨头的收入却出现了停滞和下滑。
The best new movie production company in many decades, Pixar, was a software company. Disney—Disney!—had to buy Pixar, a software company, to remain relevant in animated movies.
几十年来最优秀的新电影制作公司 Pixar 是一家软件公司。迪士尼——没错，就是迪士尼！——不得不收购软件公司 Pixar，以在动画电影领域保持竞争力。
Photography, of course, was eaten by software long ago. It’s virtually impossible to buy a mobile phone that doesn’t include a software-powered camera, and photos are uploaded automatically to the Internet for permanent archiving and global sharing. Companies like Shutterfly, Snapfish and Flickr have stepped into Kodak’s place.
当然，摄影早已被软件吞噬。如今几乎不可能买到不带软件驱动相机的手机，照片会自动上传到互联网上永久存档并在全球范围内分享。Shutterfly、Snapfish 和 Flickr 等公司已经取代了柯达的地位。
Today’s largest direct marketing platform is a software company—Google. Now it’s been joined by Groupon, Living Social, Foursquare and others, which are using software to eat the retail marketing industry. Groupon generated over $700 million in revenue in 2010, after being in business for only two years.
如今最大的直接营销平台是一家软件公司——Google。现在，Groupon、Living Social、Foursquare 等公司也加入其中，它们正在利用软件吞噬零售营销行业。Groupon 在成立仅两年后的2010年就创造了超过7亿美元的收入。
Today’s fastest growing telecom company is Skype, a software company that was just bought by Microsoft for 20 billion market cap, had 15 million access lines at the end of June 30—declining at an annual rate of about 7%. Excluding the revenue from its Qwest acquisition, CenturyLink’s revenue from these legacy services declined by more than 11%. Meanwhile, the two biggest telecom companies, AT&T and Verizon, have survived by transforming themselves into software companies, partnering with Apple and other smartphone makers.
如今增长最快的电信公司是 Skype，这家软件公司刚刚被微软以85亿美元收购。美国第三大电信公司 CenturyLink，市值200亿美元，截至6月30日拥有1500万接入线路——以每年约7%的速度下降。如果不计入其收购 Qwest 带来的收入，CenturyLink 来自这些传统服务的收入下降了11%以上。与此同时，两大电信公司 AT&T 和 Verizon 通过将自身转变为软件公司，与 Apple 和其他智能手机制造商合作，得以生存下来。
LinkedIn is today’s fastest growing recruiting company. For the first time ever, on LinkedIn, employees can maintain their own resumes for recruiters to search in real time—giving LinkedIn the opportunity to eat the lucrative $400 billion recruiting industry.
LinkedIn 是当今增长最快的招聘公司。在 LinkedIn 上，员工首次可以自主维护自己的简历，供招聘人员实时搜索——这给了 LinkedIn 吞噬价值4000亿美元的利润丰厚的招聘行业的机会。
Software is also eating much of the value chain of industries that are widely viewed as primarily existing in the physical world. In today’s cars, software runs the engines, controls safety features, entertains passengers, guides drivers to destinations and connects each car to mobile, satellite and GPS networks. The days when a car aficionado could repair his or her own car are long past, due primarily to the high software content. The trend toward hybrid and electric vehicles will only accelerate the software shift—electric cars are completely computer controlled. And the creation of software-powered driverless cars is already under way at Google and the major car companies.
软件还在吞噬许多被广泛认为主要存在于物理世界的行业的价值链。在当今的汽车中，软件运行引擎、控制安全功能、娱乐乘客、引导驾驶员到达目的地，并将每辆车连接到移动、卫星和GPS网络。由于软件含量高，汽车爱好者自己修理汽车的时代早已过去。向混合动力和电动汽车发展的趋势只会加速软件转型——电动汽车完全由计算机控制。而且，Google 和主要汽车公司已经开始着手创造由软件驱动的无人驾驶汽车。
Today’s leading real-world retailer, Wal-Mart, uses software to power its logistics and distribution capabilities, which it has used to crush its competition. Likewise for FedEx, which is best thought of as a software network that happens to have trucks, planes and distribution hubs attached. And the success or failure of airlines today and in the future hinges on their ability to price tickets and optimize routes and yields correctly—with software.
如今领先的实体零售商沃尔玛利用软件驱动其物流和配送能力，借此击败竞争对手。联邦快递也是如此，它最好被理解为一个恰好拥有卡车、飞机和配送中心的软件网络。当今和未来航空公司的成败关键在于它们能否通过软件准确定价机票并优化航线和收益。
Oil and gas companies were early innovators in supercomputing and data visualization and analysis, which are crucial to today’s oil and gas exploration efforts. Agriculture is increasingly powered by software as well, including satellite analysis of soils linked to per-acre seed selection software algorithms.
石油和天然气公司是超级计算机和数据可视化分析的早期创新者，这对当今的油气勘探至关重要。农业也越来越多地由软件驱动，包括将卫星土壤分析与每英亩种子选择软件算法相结合。
The financial services industry has been visibly transformed by software over the last 30 years. Practically every financial transaction, from someone buying a cup of coffee to someone trading a trillion dollars of credit default derivatives, is done in software. And many of the leading innovators in financial services are software companies, such as Square, which allows anyone to accept credit card payments with a mobile phone, and PayPal, which generated more than $1 billion in revenue in the second quarter of this year, up 31% over the previous year.
在过去30年里，金融服务业已经明显被软件改造。实际上，从买一杯咖啡到交易价值万亿美元的信用违约衍生品，每一笔金融交易都是通过软件完成的。许多金融服务领域的领先创新者都是软件公司，比如 Square，它让任何人都能用手机接受信用卡支付；还有 PayPal，仅在今年第二季度就创造了超过10亿美元的收入，比去年同期增长31%。
Health care and education, in my view, are next up for fundamental software-based transformation. My venture capital firm is backing aggressive start-ups in both of these gigantic and critical industries. We believe both of these industries, which historically have been highly resistant to entrepreneurial change, are primed for tipping by great new software-centric entrepreneurs.
在我看来，医疗保健和教育是下一个将经历软件基础变革的领域。我的风险投资公司正在这两个巨大而关键的行业中支持一些激进的创业公司。我们相信，这两个历来对创业变革高度抵触的行业，正准备被优秀的新一代以软件为中心的企业家颠覆。
Even national defense is increasingly software-based. The modern combat soldier is embedded in a web of software that provides intelligence, communications, logistics and weapons guidance. Software-powered drones launch airstrikes without putting human pilots at risk. Intelligence agencies do large-scale data mining with software to uncover and track potential terrorist plots.
就连国防也越来越依赖软件。现代战斗士兵被嵌入到一个软件网络中，这个网络提供情报、通信、后勤和武器制导。由软件驱动的无人机可以发动空袭，而不用让人类飞行员冒险。情报机构利用软件进行大规模数据挖掘，以发现和追踪潜在的恐怖袭击阴谋。
Companies in every industry need to assume that a software revolution is coming. This includes even industries that are software-based today. Great incumbent software companies like Oracle and Microsoft are increasingly threatened with irrelevance by new software offerings like Salesforce.com and Android (especially in a world where Google owns a major handset maker).
各行各业的公司都需要假设软件革命即将到来。这甚至包括今天已经以软件为基础的行业。像 Oracle 和 Microsoft 这样的大型老牌软件公司，正日益受到 Salesforce.com 和 Android 等新软件产品的威胁，面临被边缘化的风险（尤其是在 Google 拥有一家主要手机制造商的世界里）。
In some industries, particularly those with a heavy real-world component such as oil and gas, the software revolution is primarily an opportunity for incumbents. But in many industries, new software ideas will result in the rise of new Silicon Valley-style start-ups that invade existing industries with impunity. Over the next 10 years, the battles between incumbents and software-powered insurgents will be epic. Joseph Schumpeter, the economist who coined the term “creative destruction,” would be proud.
在某些行业，特别是那些有大量实体世界组成部分的行业（如石油和天然气行业），软件革命主要是现有企业的机遇。但在许多行业中，新的软件理念将导致硅谷式的新创企业崛起，它们将毫无顾忌地入侵现有行业。在未来10年里，现有企业与由软件驱动的新兴企业之间的战斗将会是史诗级的。提出”创造性破坏”这一术语的经济学家约瑟夫·熊彼特会为此感到自豪。
And while people watching the values of their 401(k)s bounce up and down the last few weeks might doubt it, this is a profoundly positive story for the American economy, in particular. It’s not an accident that many of the biggest recent technology companies—including Google, Amazon, eBay and more—are American companies. Our combination of great research universities, a pro-risk business culture, deep pools of innovation-seeking equity capital and reliable business and contract law is unprecedented and unparalleled in the world.
尽管人们看到自己的401(k)退休账户价值在最近几周上下波动可能会产生怀疑，但这对美国经济来说是一个深刻的积极故事。许多最大的新兴科技公司——包括 Google、Amazon、eBay 等——都是美国公司，这并非偶然。我们拥有优秀的研究型大学、鼓励冒险的商业文化、寻求创新的大量股权资本以及可靠的商业和合同法，这种组合在世界上是前所未有的，也是无与伦比的。
Still, we face several challenges.
尽管如此，我们仍面临几个挑战。
First of all, every new company today is being built in the face of massive economic headwinds, making the challenge far greater than it was in the relatively benign ’90s. The good news about building a company during times like this is that the companies that do succeed are going to be extremely strong and resilient. And when the economy finally stabilizes, look out—the best of the new companies will grow even faster.
首先，如今每一家新公司的创建都面临着巨大的经济逆风，这使得挑战远比相对温和的90年代更加艰巨。在这样的时期创建公司的好消息是，那些成功的公司将会极其强大和有韧性。当经济最终稳定下来时，要当心——最优秀的新公司将会增长得更快。
Secondly, many people in the U.S. and around the world lack the education and skills required to participate in the great new companies coming out of the software revolution. This is a tragedy since every company I work with is absolutely starved for talent. Qualified software engineers, managers, marketers and salespeople in Silicon Valley can rack up dozens of high-paying, high-upside job offers any time they want, while national unemployment and underemployment is sky high. This problem is even worse than it looks because many workers in existing industries will be stranded on the wrong side of software-based disruption and may never be able to work in their fields again. There’s no way through this problem other than education, and we have a long way to go.
其次，美国和世界各地的许多人缺乏参与软件革命带来的伟大新公司所需的教育和技能。这是一个悲剧，因为我合作的每家公司都极度渴求人才。硅谷的合格软件工程师、经理、营销人员和销售人员随时都能获得数十个高薪、高潜力的工作机会，而全国的失业率和就业不足率却居高不下。这个问题比表面看起来更糟糕，因为许多现有行业的工人将被软件基础的颠覆甩在身后，可能再也无法在自己的领域工作。解决这个问题的唯一途径就是教育，而我们在这方面还有很长的路要走。
Finally, the new companies need to prove their worth. They need to build strong cultures, delight their customers, establish their own competitive advantages and, yes, justify their rising valuations. No one should expect building a new high-growth, software-powered company in an established industry to be easy. It’s brutally difficult.
最后，这些新公司需要证明自己的价值。它们需要建立强大的企业文化，取悦客户，建立自己的竞争优势，当然，还要证明它们不断上涨的估值是合理的。没有人应该期望在一个成熟的行业中建立一个新的高增长、由软件驱动的公司是件容易的事。这是极其困难的。
I’m privileged to work with some of the best of the new breed of software companies, and I can tell you they’re really good at what they do. If they perform to my and others’ expectations, they are going to be highly valuable cornerstone companies in the global economy, eating markets far larger than the technology industry has historically been able to pursue.
我有幸与一些最优秀的新一代软件公司合作，我可以告诉你，它们在自己的领域真的很出色。如果它们能达到我和其他人的期望，它们将成为全球经济中极具价值的基石公司，吞噬远比科技行业历史上能够追求的更大的市场。
Instead of constantly questioning their valuations, let’s seek to understand how the new generation of technology companies are doing what they do, what the broader consequences are for businesses and the economy and what we can collectively do to expand the number of innovative new software companies created in the U.S. and around the world.
与其不断质疑它们的估值，不如让我们努力去理解这一代新技术公司是如何做到它们所做的事情，这对商业和经济有什么更广泛的影响，以及我们可以共同做些什么来增加在美国和世界各地创建的创新型新软件公司的数量。
That’s the big opportunity. I know where I’m putting my money.
这就是一个巨大的机遇。我知道我会把钱投在哪里。