找到 Marc Andreessen 2011 年的这篇旧文，重读。
Software is eating the world.
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?”
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.
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!”
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.
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.
Why is this happening now?
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.
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.
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 $150,000 a month. Running that same application today in Amazon’s cloud costs about $1,500 a month.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Today’s fastest growing entertainment companies are videogame makers—again, software—with the industry growing to $60 billion from $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 $235 million this year, more than double revenues from a year earlier. Rovio, maker of Angry Birds, is expected to clear $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.
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.
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.
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.
Today’s fastest growing telecom company is Skype, a software company that was just bought by Microsoft for $8.5 billion. CenturyLink, the third largest telecom company in the U.S., with a $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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Still, we face several challenges.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That’s the big opportunity. I know where I’m putting my money.
中文翻译：
软件正在占领全世界。
距离上世纪90年代互联网泡沫达到顶峰，已经过去十多年时间，现在Facebook和Twitter等十几家新兴互联网公司由于在私有市场上的市值快速膨胀，乃至间或发生的成功IPO，在硅谷引发了巨大争议。十年前的网络泡沫给投资者们造成的伤痛仍未完全消去。人们不禁要问：“新一轮的危险泡沫又要来了吗？”
我和其他一些人都持相反的意见。（我是风投资本公司安德森•霍姆维茨的联合创始人和主要合伙人，这家风投投资了Facebook、Groupon、Skype、Twitter、Zynga和Foursquare等公司，我个人在LinkedIn也有投资。）我们相信，许多突出的新互联网公司的业绩都是实打实的，它们拥有高增长、高利润，抗打击能力强的特点。
今天的股票市场其实讨厌科技，表现在一直以来上市的主要科技公司的市盈率都很低。举例来说，尽管苹果的利润惊人，并在市场上占据主导地位，但它的市盈率在15.2X左右，与股市大盘的市盈率相同。（按照市值计算，苹果在上两周刚刚超过了埃克森美孚，成为全美最大的公司。）也许更能说明问题的是，当人们都在不停地尖叫着“泡沫”的时候，其实不大可能会有泡沫。
但绝大多数争论仍在围绕着财务价值，而不是硅谷这些新公司中的佼佼者的潜在内在价值。我的看法是，我们正处在一个戏剧性的、大范围的科技和经济转型之中。此后，软件公司将接管经济的大半部分。
越来越多的大企业和行业开始依靠软件运行，并提供在线服务，从电影到农业再到国防。许多成功者都是硅谷风格的科技公司，它们侵入并颠覆了已经建立起来的行业架构。未来十年，我预计会有更多的行业被软件瓦解，新近涌现并极具震撼力的硅谷公司将比以往更多的担任执行者。
为什么现在会出现这种情况呢？
现在距离计算机革命已经过去60年，距离微处理器的发明已经过去40年，距离现代互联网的兴起已经过去20年，所有这些技术最终都会通过软件改造各行业，并在全球铺展开来。
目前有超过20亿人使用宽带互联网，十年前当我与人联合创办Netscape时，这个数字只有5000万。在未来十年，我预计全球至少有50亿人将拥有智能手机，每个行业都将通过手机与互联网即时连接，每时每刻、无处不在。
在终端部分，许多行业内，软件编程工具和基于互联网的服务将使开办全球性的软件初创公司变得非常简单，因为不需要对基础设施进行投资，也不需要对新雇员进行培训。2000年，我的合作伙伴本•霍姆维茨（Ben Horowitz）是首家云计算公司Loudcloud的首席执行官。当时一名顾客每月运行基本互联网应用的成本大约是15万美元，今天在亚马逊云服务上运行同样应用的成本只要每月1500美元。
拥有较低的创业成本和在线服务的广阔市场，结果就是全球经济首次被完全数字化。在上世纪90年代初，这是每个网络梦想家的梦想，在经过一代人之后最终成为现实。
软件吞噬传统行业的最具戏剧性例子就是Borders书店的没落和亚马逊的兴起。2001年，基于网站图书销售是非战略性的、不重要的理论，Borders同意将它的网站业务交给亚马逊。
今天，全球最大书商亚马逊是一家软件公司。它的核心能力就是令人惊叹的软件引擎，几乎将一切商品都搬到了网上销售，实体零售商店已经不再那么必需。最重要的是，就在Borders经历将要破产的阵痛时，亚马逊重新对网站改版，让它的Kindle电子书销量首次超过了实体书。现在，连书籍本身都是软件了。
按照注册用户数量计算，当今最大的视频服务网站Netflix是一家软件公司。Netflix如何击败Blockbuster已经是个很遥远的故事了，但现在其他传统娱乐供应商也面临着相同的威胁。康卡斯特（Comcast）和时代华纳等公司都以将自己转化成软件公司的形式作为回应，它们努力的成果就是TV Everywhere，这项服务将内容从物理的线缆中解放出来，与智能手机和平板电脑相连。
当今占主导的音乐公司也是软件公司：苹果的iTunes、Spotify和Pandora。传统的唱片公司越来越多的开始局限于向那些软件公司提供内容。音乐行业在数码渠道的营收2010年是46亿美元，占总营收的份额从2004年的2%增长到29%。
当今发展速度最快的娱乐公司是电子游戏制造商，这还是软件公司。整个市场的价值从5年前的300亿美元，增长到现在的600亿美元。增长速度最快的游戏制造商包括Zynga（作品包括FarmVille），它开发的全部是在线游戏。Zynga今年第一季度营收为2.35亿美元，同比增长一倍。《愤怒的小鸟》开发商Rovio预计今年的营收为1亿美元，而公司在2009年末推出《愤怒的小鸟》时已经面临破产。同时传统的电子游戏开发商电子艺界（EA）和任天堂的营收都出现停滞和下降的情况。
几十年来最好的新电影制作公司皮克斯是一家软件公司。迪斯尼必须购买皮克斯，一家软件公司，以便在动画电影领域保持一贯的重要地位。
当然，摄影在很久以前就被软件占领了。现在的手机肯定要带一个软件驱动的摄像头，所拍摄的照片可以自动传到互联网上，作永久的保存并和全世界共享。Shutterfly、Snapfish和Flickr等公司已经开始涉足柯达所在的领域。
当今最大的直接营销平台是一家软件公司：谷歌。现在Groupon、LivingSocial和Foursquare等公司也加入进来，它们利用软件蚕食了零售营销业。2010年，Groupon的营收超过7亿美元，而它成立的时间不过两年。
当今增长最快的电信公司Skype是一家软件公司。它刚刚以85亿美元的价格被微软收购。美国第三大电信公司CenturyLink的市值为200亿美元。截至6月30日，它拥有1500万接入用户。现在CenturyLink的市值正以每年7%的速度在下滑。扣除收购Qwest带来的营收，CenturyLink原本业务的营收已经下滑超过11%。与此同时，另外两大电影运营商AT&T和Verizon通过转变自己为软件公司，与苹果等智能手机制造商合作等方式幸存了下来。
LinkedIn是当今增长最快的招聘公司。有史以来第一次，在LinkedIn可以维护他们自己的简历，以便招聘人员可以进行实时搜索，这让LinkedIn有机会在价值4000亿美元的招聘市场获取份额。
在一些广泛被认为存在于物理世界的行业中，软件也开始占据它们的价值链。在今天的汽车中，软件控制着引擎和安全功能，它还担负起了娱乐乘客的功能，并指引驾驶者达到目的地，并通过移动、卫星和GPS网络与每辆车相连接。主要是因为大量软件的运用，汽车迷们可以独立修复自家汽车故障的故事已经成为历史。混合动力汽车和电动汽车的发展趋势只会加速汽车行业向软件的转化。主要汽车厂商和谷歌已经在开发用软件驱动的无人驾驶汽车。
当今现实生活中处于领先地位的零售商沃尔玛也在使用软件加强其后勤和分销能力。凭借这一点，沃尔玛压垮了众多竞争对手。同样，联邦快递也有自己的软件网络和卡车、飞机和转运中心相关联。今天航空公司的成功或失败，将取决于它们能否很好的管理机票定价、路线优化和产出，这些都需要软件。
石油天然气公司是超级计算机、数据可视化和分析领域的早期创新者，这些对今天的油气勘探起着决定性的作用。农业也开始越来越多的利用软件，包括卫星分析土壤，利用软件算法对每块土地进行选种。
过去30年中，金融行业已经明显倒向软件。几乎所有的金融交易，某人买了一杯咖啡，某人交易了1万亿美元的信贷违约掉期，这些都靠软件完成。许多金融服务业领先的创新者都是软件公司，比如Square，它使得任何人通过手机就可以接受信用卡付款；还有Paypal，它今年第2季度的营收为10亿美元，同比增长31%。
在我看来，卫生和教育领域将在下一阶段向以软件为根本转变。我的风险投资公司在这两个庞大和重要的领域中，投资了许多雄心勃勃的初创公司。我们相信，这两个在历史上很少发生改变的领域，都已经准备好向以软件为中心倾斜。
即使是国防领域也越来越多的以软件为基础。现代士兵会携带一个软件网络，向他们提供情报、通信、后勤和武器指导。软件控制的无人机可以开展攻击，减少了人类驾驶员的风险。情报部门也在利用软件进行大规模数据挖掘，以揭开和追踪潜在的恐怖阴谋。
每个行业的公司都要做好软件革命即将到来的准备。这其中甚至包括已经以软件为基础的行业。甲骨文和微软等现今伟大的软件公司正日益受到Salesforce.com和Android等与它们不相干的新软件产品的威胁。
在某些行业，特别是是石油和天然气等重度依赖现实社会元素的行业，软件革命将是现有公司的主要机会。但在许多行业中，新的软件理念将导致新硅谷风格初创公司的兴起，并肆无忌惮的对现有行业进行颠覆。在未来十年，现有公司和软件驱动的后起之秀将有一场大战。创造出“创造性破坏”概念的经济学家约瑟夫•熊彼特（Joseph Schumpeter）将为此感到自豪。
过去几周，看着自己养老金数目上蹿下跳的人们可能会对此表示怀疑，特别是它将对美国经济产生正面影响。谷歌、亚马逊、eBay等科技大公司都出现在美国，这并不是偶然。伟大的研究型大学，敢于冒险的商业文化，充实的创新资本和可靠的商业与合同法，这些加在一起使美国在世界上独一无二、无以伦比。
但我们也面临着一些挑战。
首先，今天每家新公司在创业时都要面对大规模的经济逆风，这使得现在创业的挑战相对于上世纪90年代要大得多。好消息是现在创办一家公司如果成功，将非常稳固和富有活力。经济最终稳定下来后，新公司的增长速度还要快得多。
其次，美国和全世界的许多人都缺乏参与软件革命时期新公司所需的教育和技巧。我工作过的每家公司都缺乏人才，这真是个悲剧。哪怕美国的失业率非常高的时候，合格的软件工程师、经理、营销人员和销售人员在硅谷还是可以随时获得高职位和高薪水。这个问题比实际看起来还要糟糕，因为许多现有行业的员工在软件革命中可能会走上错误的道路，而且再也没有翻盘的机会。除了教育，没有办法可以解决这个问题，我们还有很长的一段路要走。
最后，新公司必须证明自己的价值。他们需要打造强势文化，取悦他们的客户，建立自己的竞争优势，是的，要证明他们的价值是往上走的。任何人都不要奢望在一个已经存在的行业可以很容易的建立一家以软件为主的高增长公司。实际上这是非常困难的。
我有幸和一些最好的创业公司合作过，我可以告诉你们他们在各自的领域都非常棒。如果他们的表现符合我和其他人的期待，那么他们将成长为全球经济中具有高价值的基础公司，还能获得比以往技术领域更大的市场份额。
与其不断的质疑这些公司的估值，还不如试着理解新一代技术公司是如何运作的，他们将对所在行业和整个经济产生更深远的影响。我们应该齐心协力，扩大美国和全世界的创新型软件公司的数量。
这是个极大的机会。我知道该把自己的钱投向哪里。（柯山）