Learning to Play the Game

学习游戏规则

“You’re live now, so it’s a ticking time bomb,” Penny Herscher, the executive chairwoman of FirstRain, a business software company, told Ms. Miller in July. “Can you get enough momentum to get liftoff fast enough?”

“你们已经上线，所以它就是个定时炸弹，”去年7月，商用软件公司FirstRain执行董事长彭尼·赫尔舍(Penny Herscher)这样对米勒说。“公司能有足够的发展势头，实现足够快的飞跃吗？”

Ms. Herscher, who has two and a half decades of experience as a software executive, was introduced to Ms. Miller through a colleague and had agreed to become a kind of mentor. Ms. Miller had unveiled Doxa three weeks before. The site had 820 active users, and 300 companies on a waiting list to be included.

赫舍尔有二十五年的软件行业高管经历，她经一名同事介绍认识了米勒，并同意担任一个类似导师的角色。三周前，米勒对外推出了Doxa。这个网站当时有820个活跃用户，另有3000个企业用户即将被纳入。

Now it needed money. Ms. Miller had calculated that $2 million in venture capital would enable her to hire the people she needed and keep the company running for 18 months. But time was tight. She needed to start paying salaries.

现在它需要资金。米勒计算过，只要能拿到200万美元的风险投资，就足以让她雇到所需的员工，并让公司持续运转18个月。但时间很紧迫。她需要马上开始为员工支付工资。

She had made her pitch to three small, mission-driven funds that wanted to invest in female and minority founders. Ms. Herscher said she should be aiming instead at well-known venture capital firms.

她已经向三家以使命为导向的小型基金做了自我推介，这些基金想投资女性和少数族裔创业者。赫舍尔认为，她反倒该把目标对准知名风投公司。

“The thing is, no real investor is going to invest in you because of the mission,” she said. “They’re going to invest in you if they think you’ll make a lot of money.”

“问题是，没有那个投资者真的会因为你的使命感做出投资，”她说。“如果他们觉得你有可能赚大钱，才会投资你。”

“The feedback we’re getting from the big guns is we’re too small now,” Ms. Miller told her.

“我们从大风投公司得到的反馈是，我们现在还太小，”米勒告诉她。

“They didn’t wait for Google to have a prototype before they invested,” Ms. Herscher said.

“他们可没有等到谷歌(Google)做出大概的样子才进行投资，”赫舍尔说。

The first time they met to discuss Doxa, Ms. Miller had worn jeans and a sleeveless shirt. The look was too unprofessional, Ms. Herscher told her. She should dress like Yahoo’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer (whose uniform is crew neck, knee-length dresses with cardigans). Ms. Miller said that everyone she had worked with at tech companies wore jeans and T-shirts, and surely no venture capitalist cared if Mark Zuckerberg showed up in a hoodie. Ms. Herscher was uncompromising: Like it or not, the standard is different for women.

她们第一碰面讨论Doxa时，米勒穿了件无袖衬衫和一条牛仔裤。赫舍尔告诉她，这身打扮太不职业。她应该穿得像雅虎(Yahoo)首席执行官玛丽莎·梅耶尔(Marissa Mayer)那样（她的标准服装是圆领及膝裙子搭配羊毛开衫）。米勒说她在技术公司的同事都是穿牛仔裤和T恤，而且显然没有哪个投资者在意马克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)穿着帽衫去见他们。赫舍尔依然坚持：不管你喜欢与否，针对女性的标准是不一样的。

This time, Ms. Miller wore a dark cardigan over a dark blouse.

这一次，米勒在一件深色衬衫外面套了件深色羊毛开衫。

Ms. Herscher asked if she had been hit on yet by venture capitalists. She hadn’t. Ms. Herscher told her own horror stories — the investor who slipped his hand under her hair and massaged her neck, the one that rubbed her knee.

赫舍尔问，有没有投资者试图挑逗她。她说没碰到过。赫舍尔讲了自己过去的可怕经历——有一个投资者曾把手滑到她的头发里，并抚摸她的脖子，还有一个曾经摸过她的膝盖。

Ms. Miller was more worried about the investors’ reaction to her pregnancy. She broke the news to Ms. Herscher.

米勒更担心的是投资者对她怀孕一事的反应。她把这个消息告诉了赫舍尔。

After congratulations, they plotted strategy. Wait until the second meeting to mention it, Ms. Herscher said. “Then say: ‘I’m pregnant. And I’m so well organized that my baby’s due on Christmas Day, which will be a slow time. I don’t expect it will faze me at all. I’m married to a man who will be a primary caregiver, and this is no different from investing in a man whose wife is pregnant.’”

在对米勒表示祝贺之后，她们一起商量了对策。赫舍尔说，等到第二次会面再提这一点。“然后就说：‘我怀有身孕。我把一切都准备好了，孩子大概会在圣诞节前后出生，那时候公司也不会太忙。我一点也不觉得这件事是个困扰。我丈夫会是孩子的主要看护者，这和投资一个妻子怀孕的男士没什么区别。’”

Then her tone shifted. She wasn’t talking about business anymore.

然后她话锋一转，开始谈商业层面之外的问题。

“Having your first child is just physically hard, emotionally hard,” said Ms. Herscher, who has two children. “I would never discourage you or say you can’t do it, because you absolutely can. Just be very clear why you’re doing it and what price you’re willing to pay, because the price is time with your baby.”

“生育第一个孩子不光是生理上的考验，精神上也是很大的挑战，”育有两个孩子的赫舍尔说。“我永远不会劝阻你，或对说你不行，因为你肯定能行。但是你要搞清楚，自己为什么要做这件事，以及你愿意为之付出多大代价，因为这个代价是你和幼小的孩子在一起的时间。”

After the conversation, Ms. Miller talked with her husband, who works in advertising and was then a freelancer, about being the primary parent. He was on board. She figured she would take off a few weeks and get right back to work.

这次谈话之后，米勒和她在广告行业做自由职业者的丈夫谈了这件事，表示想让他担起抚养孩子的主要职责，丈夫同意了。米勒打算等孩子出生后，请几周的假，然后就马上回去工作。

The gender issues and sexism that Ms. Miller’s generation faces tend to be different from those of earlier generations. There is still blatant bad behavior, but official reports of sexual harassment have declined in recent years. More often, the challenges are subtler.

米勒这一代女性所面临的性别问题和性别歧视，似乎和之前几代人不太一样。现在依然存在明目张胆的恶劣行为，但官方统计数据显示，性骚扰事件在最近几年有所下降。更常见的情况是，她们需要应对一些比较微妙的问题。

At the gender discrimination trial last year against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which the venture capital firm won, female employees said they were excluded from a ski trip, denied credit for deals they brought to the firm, and told they both didn’t speak up enough and talked too much.

在去年凯鹏华盈(Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers)的性别歧视案中，女性员工称她们没有获得滑雪旅行的机会，没有因为给公司带来交易而受到认可，并且被告知她们发言不够积极，说的太少。该公司最终胜诉。

“I feel like it’s a lot more nuanced and sometimes it’s subconscious,” said Julia Hu, the founder and chief executive of Lark, which makes a health and weight-loss app. “V.C.s are pattern matchers, and they’re just used to seeing men like themselves.”

“我感觉问题更加微妙了，有时是潜意识的，”Lark创始人兼首席执行官胡念君(Julia Hu)说。“风险投资人是一些寻找匹配模式的人，他们只习惯看到跟他们类似的男性。”该公司开发了一种健康和减肥应用。

Many women convey confidence and leadership in a different way than men do, she said. As an Asian woman, she said, she was raised to be humble and quiet and felt uncomfortable promoting her skills. “To try to be who I thought they wanted me to be, which was another Mark Zuckerberg, was actually very difficult for me without feeling inauthentic.”

她表示，很多女性表现信心及领导力的方式与男性不同。她表示，作为一名亚洲女性，她从小就被教导要谦逊、安静，宣扬自己的能力让她感到不自在。“我很难真心真意地去努力变成他们希望的样子，那就是另一个马克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)。”

Later, she realized that describing business partnerships she had made, like one to preinstall Lark on new Samsung phones, was a more effective way for her to demonstrate her leadership skills than boasting about herself.

后来，她认识到与自我吹嘘相比，介绍她促成的商业合伙关系——比如在新的三星(Samsung)手机上预装Lark——对她来说是一个更加有效地展示其领导力的方式。

Social science research supports Ms. Hu’s experience. A series of experiments by Laurie A. Rudman, a psychology professor at Rutgers, found that women who spoke directly about their strengths and achievements were considered more capable, but also less hirable. Self-promotion by men made them more hirable.

社会科学研究证实了胡念君的经历。罗格斯大学心理学教授劳莉·A·鲁德曼(Laurie A. Rudman)的一系列实验发现，人们认为直接说明自己的优势及成就的女性更能干，但同时受聘的可能性也较低。男性的自我推广使得他们更容易被聘用。

In parenthood, too, there is a double standard. Mothers are penalized in pay and promotions because employers assume they will be less committed to work, research shows, while fathers get raises because employers think they will be extra committed to breadwinning.

在为人父母上也存在一个双重标准。研究显示，母亲的薪水和职位会受到影响，因为雇主想当然地认为她们不会那么投入工作，而父亲却会得到提升，因为雇主认为他们会更加致力于挣钱养家。

People in Silicon Valley say new motherhood is particularly difficult, because competition moves at hyperspeed. Ms. Mayer, for example, felt the need to announce that she would be “taking limited time away and working throughout” her leave after giving birth to twins late last year.

硅谷人士表示，新为人母尤其困难，因为竞争非常激烈。例如，梅耶尔称在去年晚些时候生下双胞胎后，感觉自己有必要说明，她“休假时间会很有限，且会在休假期间工作”。

‘Speak in Bullet Points’

“逐条表述”

A few weeks later, Ms. Miller was back at Ms. Herscher’s office, practicing her pitch while Ms. Herscher played the part of skeptical venture capitalist.

几周之后，米勒回到赫尔舍的办公室，练习她的项目推介技巧，而赫尔舍则扮演持怀疑态度的风险投资人。

Ms. Miller had been working 70 hours a week managing Doxa, recruiting companies, trying to raise money and working nights with the engineers who had day jobs.

米勒每周花费70小时管理Doxa，扩大工作团队，设法筹集资金，与那些做兼职的工程师熬夜工作。

Several firms, including 79 Studios, an investment fund focused on female entrepreneurs, had told her they would be interested in investing if another firm led the financing round. “We’re pretty positive on this from a mission point of view and even from a return on investment point of view,” said Saujin Yi, chief executive of 79 Studios — but the firm typically invested only alongside a lead investor.

包括关注女性创业者的投资基金79 Studios在内的几家公司告诉她，如果有一家公司牵头融资，他们也会有兴趣投资。“从使命的角度，甚至从投资回报角度看，我们非常乐观，”79 Studios首席执行官李叙稹（Saujin Yi，音）说，但该公司通常与领投方一同投资。

Though her pregnancy had been relatively easy — at one point she vomited on the sidewalk after meeting an investor, and she was down to a single professional-looking dress that was loose enough to hide her growing belly — she had not told any investors that she was pregnant, though two had obliquely asked if she was planning to have children.

虽然她怀孕期间没有那么难熬——有一次见完投资人后在人行道上呕吐，只剩一件看起来比较职业的裙子可以遮掩她越来越大的肚子，但她还没有告诉投资人她怀孕了，尽管有两人转弯抹角地问她是否计划生孩子。

Ms. Miller began her practice pitch to Ms. Herscher: “Doxa is a platform to match qualified people to the right companies. Once this platform exists, we’re going to wonder how we ever found jobs before.” She talked about the team and showed a diagram of how the service worked.

米勒开始对着赫尔舍练习项目推介：“Doxa是一个帮助合格求职者找到合适职位的平台。一旦平台得以存在，我们将会无法想象以前是怎么找到工作的。”她谈到了工作团队，并通过示意图说明服务的流程。

“At this point I have no idea if this is important,” Ms. Herscher said. “You’ve told me there’s a problem but not if it could make money.”

“到目前为止我还是不知道这是否重要，”赫尔舍说。“你已经告诉我存在一个问题，但没说它能否赚钱。”

They ran through some more slides, including her go-to-market strategy — aiming at women in tech.

她们又看了几张幻灯片，包括她针对科技领域女性的市场推销策略。

“I’m immediately turned off and lost, because what you’re telling us is you have this fantastic technology and star team, and you’re going to go after this itty-bitty market and a bleeding heart cause,” Ms. Herscher said.

“我很快就感到倒了胃口，而且很迷惑，因为你一直在说你拥有非常棒的技术和出色的团队，你们将瞄准这种小型市场，这是一桩发善心的事业，”赫尔舍说。

Ms. Miller finished her pitch. It needed to be crisper and more confident, Ms. Herscher said: “It’s an art to speak in bullet points. It takes practice. Sit in the car and say it over and over.”

米勒完成了推介。她需要更加简洁、自信，赫尔舍说：“逐条表述是一种艺术。这需要练习。坐在车里，一遍一遍地练习。”

“O.K., wear cardigans, speak in bullet points,” Ms. Miller said.

“好的，穿开衫，逐条表述，”米勒说。

A week later, she met with Ms. Yuan at Cowboy Ventures. Her tone was more confident and her pitch faster, and she had broadened it beyond women in tech. “The tools can be used by anyone — the recruiting market is gigantic,” she said. “What people want is not gender-specific, it’s very millennial-specific.”

一周后，她在Cowboy Ventures见到了乔安妮·袁。她的语气更加自信，介绍速度加快，而且扩大了目标范围，不只针对科技领域女性。“这个平台可以供所有人使用——招聘市场十分巨大，”她说。“人们想要的不是针对性别的服务，而是针对千禧世代的服务。”

Ms. Yuan pushed back. “There’s this inherent tension in the way we monetize,” she said. Doxa was asking companies to pay to use the service for recruiting while at the same time the site would publish potentially negative employee comments about the companies’ culture.

乔安妮·袁提出不同意见。她说，“我们的赚钱方式本身存在矛盾。”Doxa是在要求公司付钱使用他们的招聘服务，同时该网站会公布员工对公司文化做出的评论，这些评论可能是负面的。

“It enables companies to be responsive: ‘Let’s get a maternity policy because we don’t want to be up on your platform without that,’” Ms. Miller said. Smiling, she added, “I love that you’re saying ‘we.’”

“这使得公司做出反应：‘制定产妇政策，我们不想在没有这种政策的情况下出现在你们的平台上，”米勒说。她微笑着说到，“我喜欢你说‘我们’。”

Her next pitch was to NEA, a global venture firm. She wore a gray, knee-length dress, cardigan and short heels. She thought the conversation flowed easily.

她接下来去全球风投公司NEA做推介。她穿着灰色及膝裙、开衫和低跟鞋。她觉得对话进展很顺畅。

But a few days later, both venture capitalists declined to invest. NEA said Doxa didn’t show enough traction with users yet. Cowboy said it wasn’t clear that Doxa’s technology was different enough from that of other hiring websites.

但几天之后，两位风险投资人都拒绝投资。NEA称，Doxa尚未展现出对用户足够多的吸引力。Cowboy称目前尚不清楚Doxa的技术是否与其他招聘网站有很大的不同。

“I really thought it was a good idea,” Ms. Yuan said later. “But there were really well funded start-ups in this space, and it was hard to tell because it was so early.”

“我真的觉得这是一个好主意，”乔安妮·袁后来说。“但这个领域实际上已经有一些资金充足的初创企业，现在为时过早，还很难说。”

Ms. Miller told Mr. Meder that she was scaling back her ambitions from raising $2 million and hiring a full team to raising $500,000 for just the two of them. But things had changed for him. He had been given more responsibility at his day job, and it didn’t feel fair to leave for Doxa, with its uncertain prospects.

米勒对梅德表示，她将降低目标，从筹集200万美元并招聘一个完整团队降至筹集50万美元，招聘两人。但对他来说，情况已经改变。他的正职工作被赋予更多责任，由于前景不确定，现在辞职加入Doxa感觉并不合适。

Ms. Miller canceled her coming pitches and told potential investors that Doxa was on pause. She had talked to more than 40 venture capitalists. But without her co-founder, who was building the technology while Ms. Miller built the business, venture capitalists were unlikely to provide financing.

米勒取消了接下来的推介活动，并告诉潜在的投资人，Doxa现在处于暂停状态。她已经与40多名风险投资人交谈过。但没有她的联合创始人，风险投资人不太可能提供资金。联合创始人负责技术开发，米勒负责发展业务。

The flip side of overnight success in Silicon Valley is overnight failure. Start-ups can be so dependent on a single investor or partnership that a turn of events can change their fates.

在硅谷，一夜成名的另一面是一夜过后的失败。创业公司可以十分依赖某一个投资人或合伙人，以致于事件发生转折就带来关乎命运的改变。

In 2011, Jason Shen helped found a start-up called Ridejoy, for connecting people who were driving long distances. For a time, it seemed as if it had the golden touch — entry into Y Combinator, $1.3 million in venture capital and traffic pouring in from Craigslist, where it posted its services. Vanity Fair did a photo shoot with the founders, and a writer profiled them for a book.

2011年，杰森·沈(Jason Shen)共同创建了一家名为Ridejoy的初创公司，帮助长途出行的人员拼车。该公司似乎一度非常成功——进入了Y Combinator，获得了130万美元的风险投资，Craigslist网站带来大量流量——公司在Craigslist上发布服务广告。《名利场》杂志(Vanity Fair)为几位创始人拍摄了照片，一名作家在一本书中介绍了他们。

Then, Craigslist sent a cease-and-desist letter, forbidding Ridejoy to post on the site. By the time Vanity Fair came out, Ridejoy had laid off nearly all its employees and stopped working on the site.

然后，Craigslist发来一封警告信，禁止Ridejoy在该网站发布广告。那期《名利场》问世的时候，Ridejoy已经裁掉了几乎所有员工，停止了网站的工作。

“Now I see companies who raised $10 million, and I’m like, did we just not have guts? Did we just not follow through? Did we just not believe in our thing enough?” said Mr. Shen, who now works at Etsy. “Funding is such a confidence game.”

“现在看到那些筹到1000万美元的公司，我的感想是，我们那时没有勇气吗？我们没有坚持到底吗？我们不够相信自己的产品吗？”目前在Etsy工作的杰森·沈说。“筹资是一场有关信心的游戏。”

He is saving his money to try to play the game again.

他正在存钱，试图再玩一次这个游戏。

As her baby’s Christmas due date neared and she approached a year of living off savings, Ms. Miller began to get an unfamiliar feeling: the desire for stability.

随着预产期的临近，米勒靠积蓄生活的日子也快有一年了。她开始生发出一种陌生的感觉：渴望稳定。

She was searching for a new technical co-founder. A few of the investors and companies she had met during the fund-raising process had contacted her about working for them. She began consulting at Code 2040, a nonprofit that matches black and Latino software engineers with internships at tech companies, started by Mr. Walker and Laura Weidman Powers, whom Ms. Miller knew from college.

她当时正在寻找负责技术的新联合创始人。她在筹资期间接触的一些投资人和公司曾与她联系，希望聘用她。她开始在非营利机构Code 2040做咨询工作。这家由沃克与劳拉·韦德曼·鲍尔斯(Laura Weidman Powers)创立的机构为黑人及拉丁裔软件工程师寻找在科技公司实习的机会。米勒在上大学期间就认识了鲍尔斯。

A couple of months later, Code 2040 offered Ms. Miller a full-time job, as the director of partner programs. She accepted. Building a new business focused on diversity fulfilled some of the hopes she’d had for Doxa. She imagined keeping Doxa alive as a side project, once she had more time.

几个月后，Code 2040为米勒提供了一份全职工作，担任合作伙伴项目的负责人。她接受了这份工作。发展以多元化为宗旨的一家新公司，实现了她曾托付于Doxa的一些希望。她设想，一旦有更多时间，她就可以将Doxa作为副业。

Ms. Miller’s plan was to take a month off and get back to work. Then, right on time, on Christmas Day, she gave birth to a girl, Zadie Mai, and changed her mind. The baby took over her thoughts. “I feel a mixture of intense love and protectiveness,” she said. “I want to hang out with the baby forever. There are my real physical needs and the physical dependence of the baby, all this stuff I didn’t expect to be so consuming.”

米勒计划休一个月的产假，然后回去工作。她在圣诞节当天准时生下了女儿泽迪·梅(Zadie Mai)，然后改变了主意。她满脑子想的都是孩子。“我感受到强烈的爱和保护欲，”她说。“我想和宝宝永远在一起。这是我真实的生理需求，对宝宝的生理依赖。我没有想到这些反应会如此强烈。”

She said she had an entirely new perspective on how undervalued caregivers are, and how people judge women for taking time off work for their families.

她表示自己对护理人员被低估的程度有了全新的看法，还有人们如何对女性为了家庭减少工作时间而苛刻地评头论足。

She decided to take at least six months off, doing some work from home after three or four months, and Code 2040 agreed. Her husband, meanwhile, had found a full-time job in advertising.

她决定至少休息六个月，三四个月后在家里做一些工作。Code 2040同意这种做法。与此同时，她的丈夫在广告领域找到了一份全职工作。

Ms. Miller said the transition from start-up founder to employee and mother had given her a new perspective on success in Silicon Valley and, more broadly, on what her generation wanted from work, something she wanted to address in her new job.

米勒表示，从创业者到妈妈雇员，这种身份的转变使她对在硅谷获取成功有了新认识，更宏观地说，也对她这代人希望从职业生涯中获得的东西有了新认识。她希望在新工作中解答这些问题。

“I wasn’t naïve,” Ms. Miller said. “I knew when I quit Instacart that going on this entrepreneurial journey wouldn’t be like ‘The Social Network.’ ”

“当时我不是天真，”米勒说。“我知道当我退出Instacart、走上创业之路时，过程不会像《社交网络》(The Social Network)电影里演的那样。”

“But for me, this was a lesson that it’s not always a straight shot from idea to financing to taking over Silicon Valley and taking over the world,” she said. “Maybe this was just a lesson that being entrepreneurial and taking risks and jumping into new things you’re excited about sometimes is not linear at all.”

“但对我来说，这是上了一课。从提出想法到筹集资金，到掌管硅谷再到征服世界并不是直线完成的，”她说。“或许它只是说明，进行创业、冒风险、尝试你为之激动的新事物的过程，有时候根本不是一条直线。”