Captain401： 希望帮助企业更简单地创建 401K 计划
周四，从创业孵化器 Y Combinator 毕业的 Captain401 正式上线，这是一项帮助小型企业创建 401K 计划（译注：一种由雇员、雇主共同缴费建立起来的完全基金式的养老保险制度）的服务。Captain401 的目标是让管理 401K 计划像运营公司其他业务一样简单，而且像 Zenefits 或 Zenpayroll 一样更加聚焦于数字技术。
该公司首席执行官罗杰·李（Roger Lee）说，Captain401 寻求创建一套流程，避免投资那些收取高额手续费和跑不赢市场的基金。他表示，Captain401 的投资服务是自动化的，能够帮助员工做出更好的投资决策，并且对最佳选择拥有更深入的认识。
“像 ADP 和 John Hancock 那些老牌公司，它们要求大量的文书工作、缓慢的信件邮寄、各种文件填报和签名。”李说，“一些公司，比如富达投资集团（Fidelity），根本不跟小型企业合作。我们认为，我们可以在那方面做得更好，我们的解决方案是网络和无纸化。企业只需要 10 分钟就能创建自己的计划，我们让持续管理实现了自动化。对员工来说，他们免除了搞清楚自己该怎么做的麻烦。”
尽早创建 401K 计划是很重要的，这有几方面的原因，如果说哪个最重要，那就是展示雇主关心自己员工的未来。李此前曾运营一家创业公司，他的员工问起了 401K 计划的事情。李想创建一套，但整个过程缓慢而又过时。举例来说，那些提供此项计划的机构仍然需要大量的文书工作，需要签名、邮寄和传真文件。
“它看起来是一个麻烦，花的时间很长，我们认为，我们可以利用更加现代化的技术做得更好。”李说，“多年来，我个人帮助过 100 多名亲朋好友检查他们的 401K 计划，并协助他们进行投资。我意识到，他们 401K 计划的投资分配都不够理想。他们不知道该如何选择自己的投资对象，我们希望在 401K 领域引入 Wealthfront 那样的在线理财平台。”
与此同时，Captain401 的另一位联合创始人保罗·萨瓦亚（Paul Sawaya）是来自 Mozilla 基金会的一名软件开发者。该公司创建了一套 401K 计划，但整个流程很难管理，员工也没有被教授最佳的投资方式。“我只登进过系统一次，当时我还是那里的员工。”萨瓦亚说道。两人通过一个共同的好友——Clever 的泰勒·博斯米尼（Tyler Bosmeny）——结识，他们最终谈到了 401K 计划，他们觉得自己可以提供一种更好的体验。
Captain401 的 401K 计划跟数十个先锋指数基金进行了对接，李表示，此举将能带来高于其他基金的业绩表现。“那是人们喜欢的沃伦·巴菲特（Warren Buffet）式做法，经济学家认为，这是员工的最佳选择，能够取得最多的投资回报。”
Captain401 毕业于今夏的 Y Combinator 培训班，有趣的是，Y Combinator 自己将成为该公司的客户。
“员工能够在自己的养老金计划中得到更好的投资选择，并能够就个人情况制定合适的投资策略，如果我们能够朝着那样的世界迈进，那么比之单打独斗的做法，效果能够好得多，而且能够为员工提供更多的帮助。”李说，“显然，这里面还有大量的工作要做。”
YC-Backed Captain401 Wants To Make Creating A 401k Easier For Businesses
Captain401, a service that helps small businesses set up a 401k, is launching out of Y Combinator today. The goal of Captain401 is to make managing 401ks as simple as other services are for other functions within companies — and in a more digitally focused manner like Zenefits or Zenpayroll.
Captain401 seeks to create a process that avoids funds that have higher fees and fail to beat the market, CEO Roger Lee said. The investing service is automated, helping employees make better decisions about their investments and become more educated about the best choices, he said.
“Incumbents like ADP, John Hancock, they require tons of paperwork, snail mailing, filling out and signing,” he said. “Some companies like Fidelity don’t work with small businesses. We think we can do a lot better there, our solution is online and paperless. “It takes companies 10 minutes to set up their plan, we automate the ongoing administration. For the employees it’s that education and investment experience where the existing 401k companies leave employees to figure out what to do on their own.”
401ks are important to set up early for a number of reasons, if only is to show that employers care about the future of their employees. Lee had previously run a startup where his employees were asking about a 401k. Lee wanted to set one up, but the whole process was slow and outdated. Institutions, for example, still required stacks of paperwork that required signatures and had to be mailed and faxed in.
“It seemed like a hassle, it took way longer, and we thought we could do a lot better with more modern tech,” he said. “I personally over the years helped more than a 100 friends and family look at their 401ks and help with their investments, and realized without fail that each was sub-optimally allocated. They didn’t know how to choose their investments. We wanted to bring a Wealthfront into the 401k space.”
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Meanwhile, his co-founder Paul Sawaya was a software developer at Mozilla. That company had a 401k instituted, but the whole process was difficult to manage and employees weren’t given education on how to best invest, he said. “I only logged in once when I was an employee there,” he said. The two met through a mutual friend — Tyler Bosmeny at Clever — and eventually came to the topic of 401ks, which they decided they could offer a better experience.
The 401k is tied to dozens of Vanguard index funds, which Lee says ultimately leads to higher performance than other funds. “That’s the approach that people like Warren Buffet, economists [consider], it’s the best approach for employees and get to the most returns.”
Captain401 came out of this year’s summer Y Combinator class. Interestingly enough, Y Combinator will be a customer of Captain401.
“Any step closer to a world where employees can get better investment options in their plan and they can diversify and get a suitable investment strategy that makes sense for them and their personal situation, that can just be so much better and help them so much more than the go it alone approach,” Lee said. “Obviously there’s a lot of work to do here.”
来源：techcrunch
TechCrunch
2015年07月31日
TechCrunch
硅谷之外的思考：科技公司如何改变世界
编者按 ： 克莱尔·霍夫（Claire Hough）是 在线学习平台 Udemy 的工程副总裁。
本周早些时候，众多科技巨头做了一件意义非凡的事情——他们携起手来共建一个更加美好的社会。
作为奥巴马总统提出的 ConnectHome 倡议 的合作伙伴，一批互联网服务提供商、创业公司和科技行业非营利组织，会携手将宽带接入服务扩大至 27.5 万生活在公共住房的低收入群体。随着科技已经成为我们日常生活的一部分，ConnectHome 项目应该会时刻提醒科技公司，他们有责任让尽可能多的人用到他们的产品。
按需经济的诞生重新定义了我们之前所认为的便捷性。实际上，只要你轻轻点击一下手机屏幕，你所能想到的一切东西都可以被召唤到你的身边——无论是快餐、生活用品，还是工作助理、交通工具。虽然这些服务已经改善了我们许多人的生活，但只有那些有钱负担或有机会访问到它们的人，才能从中获利。
《纽约时报》科技专栏作家法尔哈德·曼约奥（Farhad Manjoo）会经常谈到一个主题，即最近这次科技繁荣始终专注于改善少数人的生活质量，比如，他在 最新的专栏文章 中就讨论了点对点解决方案的价值。曼约奥对科技企业扩大产品生产规模的使命——为了让它们更便宜、被更多人所使用——始终抱着质疑态度，这种态度突出了硅谷在道德层面面临的两难局面。
虽然无数的创业公司因为迎合了硅谷少数富有阶层的需求而得到了快速发展，但科技公司的机遇仍然在于他们如何回报之前成就了他们的社区。
即便是今天，美国仍有数千万人无法上网，而全世界更是有一半的人不能上网——知道这一事实，肯定让人觉得很沮丧。我们的政府 已经认识到 ，宽带接入对我们的生活，就同水和电一样的重要。
网络连接可以给那些拥有这种能力的人带来极大的便利，这一点不言而喻；因此，拥有网络连接的人和没有网络连接的人，他们之间存在很大的差异。Facebook 首席执行官马克·扎克伯格（Mark Zuckerberg）试图通过 Internet.org 将廉价的互联网服务推向全世界的人，这也是最引人注目的项目之一。
最好的解决办法其实就是确保一代人拥有公平的机会——这一代人越来越多地被打上了“日渐消失的中产阶级”的烙印。作为网络服务和第三方平台的受益者，科技企业应该携手努力，对各自的社区带来积极的影响，或是对整个世界带来更大的影响。
ConnectHome 项目也许就是“科技为社会谋福利”的最佳例证。这是一个公私合作项目，谷歌和 Cox 之类的互联网服务提供商均有参与，旨在将高速宽带接入提供给美国 27.5 万低收入群体。奥巴马总统在周三宣布推出了这个项目，因为他已经认识到那些无法访问互联网的人，在教育和就业方面所面临的诸多劣势。对于部分美国人来说，今后每个月的上网费用将只有 10 美元。ConnectHome 就是创业公司如何回馈社会的一个模板。
尽管如此，回馈社会并不限于政府项目。肖恩·帕克（Sean Parker）为他的同名基金会 自筹资金 6 亿美元 ，用以证明科技企业领导人可以给这个世界带来社会效益。由于对 Facebook 的投资，帕克已成为硅谷最富有、影响力最大的科技人士之一。帕克基金会不仅致力于解决像公民参与这样发生在我们身边的小事，而且还积极参与全球公共卫生和生物科技等重要课题。他希望充分利用自己在过去多年来形成的创业心态，对社会大规模变革带来积极贡献。
SurveyMonkey 之类的公司也在开发可以回报全社会的产品。SurveyMonkey Contribute 允许用户进行调查，然后获得慈善捐款以参与他们选择的慈善事业。到目前为止，SurveyMonkey Contribute 已经向无国界医生组织（Doctors Without Borders）、美国红十字会、美国人道协会（The Humane Society Of The United States）等慈善机构捐款 500 万美元。SurveyMonkey 的平台正系统性地向给予他们最大帮助的人以回报。
毫无疑问，我们正生活在一个创业的环境下——创业公司不应以服务于有活力的市场而感到羞耻。但这种经济上的刺激并不能免除他们让产品尽可能覆盖更多受众的责任。这些价值根本不必进行大范围宣扬，而是应该成为硅谷一种根深蒂固的文化。
我们在享受科技成果上具有优先权，但最终也迫使我们承担起更大的责任，而这种责任也伴随着我们每天享受到的优先权。
Think Outside The Valley: How Tech Companies Can Change The World
Claire Hough is a VP of Engineering at Udemy, an online learning marketplace.
A handful of tech heavyweights did something remarkable earlier this week — they came together for the betterment of society.
As partners on President Obama’s ConnectHome initiative, internet service providers, startups, and tech nonprofits will expand broadband access to around 275,000 people living in public housing. As technology has become a part of our daily lives, ConnectHome should remind tech companies of their responsibility to make their products as accessible as possible.
The birth of the on-demand economy has redefined convenience as we know it. Virtually anything you can think of — dinner, groceries, work assistance, transportation — can be summoned to you in a single tap. While these services have improved the lives of many, only those who can afford or access them reap the benefits.
That the most recent tech boom has focused on improving the lives of the few is not lost on The New York Times’ Farhad Manjoo, who discussed the value of point-to-point solutions in a recent column. Manjoo’s skeptical take on tech companies’ mission to scale their products — making them cheaper and more accessible — underscores the moral dilemma Silicon Valley faces.
Although an endless number of startups has been enriched by catering to the Valley’s well-heeled residents, an opportunity remains for tech companies to give back to the community that made them.
Even today, it is disheartening to know tens of millions of people in the United States do not have access to the Internet, let alone over 50% of the world. Our government has recognized that broadband access is as vital to our lives as water or electricity.
It goes without saying online connectivity greatly advantages those who have it; hence, a wide disparity exists between those who have it and those who don’t. Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to bring affordable basic Internet service to the world through Internet.org have been one of the most notable initiatives.
It’s the best way to ensure equal opportunity for a generation increasingly defined by a disappearing middle class. As beneficiaries of online services and marketplaces, tech companies should work toward making a positive impact in their own communities or a greater impact in the world.
No program better exemplifies the “tech for good” mantra than , a public-private partnership with internet service providers like Cox and Google that will expand high-speed broadband access to 275,000 low-income Americans. President Obama announced the initiative on Wednesday, recognizing the disadvantages those without Internet access face when it comes to education and employment. For some Americans, broadband access will cost just $10 a month. ConnectHome is a model for how startups can give back.
Giving back isn’t limited to government initiatives, though. Sean Parker has self-funded his eponymous foundation to the tune of $600 million demonstrating the social good tech leaders can bring to the world. Parker, whose contributions to Facebook make him among Silicon Valley’s wealthiest, established the. Parker foundation to tackle not only nearby issues like civic engagement, but moonshots like global public health and biotech as well. He hopes to leverage the startup mentality he’s gained over the years to affect large-scale change.
Companies like SurveyMonkey are creating products designed to give back, too. SurveyMonkey Contribute lets users take surveys and be rewarded with a charitable donation to a participating charity of their choice. So far SurveyMonkey Contribute has raised over $5 million in donations to charities like Doctors Without Borders, American Red Cross, and The Humane Society Of The United States. SurveyMonkey’s platform is now organically giving back to those who need help the most.s
There’s no doubt that we’re living in an entrepreneurial environment — startups shouldn’t be shamed for serving viable markets. But that economic imperative doesn’t absolve them of their responsibility to make their products as accessible as possible. These values shouldn’t have to be preached; they should be engrained in Silicon Valley culture.
We are privileged to benefit from technology, and ultimately that obliges us to take on greater responsibility that comes with the privileges we enjoy every day.
来源：techcrunch
TechCrunch
2015年07月21日
TechCrunch
微软新推出套件集合大数据和分析工具
微软在奥兰多举行的全球合作伙伴大会上宣布了 Cortana Analytics Suite。 它将该公司的机器学习、大数据和分析产品都集合到一个完全统一的套件中
微软寄希望于该套件能够为企业用户提供一站式的大数据和分析解决方案。
微软负责 Azure 机器学习的企业副总裁约瑟夫·斯瑞西（Joseph Sirosh）告诉 TechCrunch，“我们的目的是将这些分散的部分集成在一起，这样用户就可以有一个完整的平台来搭建智能解决方案。”
至于 Cortana，这是微软在 Windows 10 中推出的语音驱动的个人助理工具，只是解决方案的一小部分，不过斯瑞西表示，微软以 Cortana 来命名这个套件是因为它象征着微软公司希望通过这个套件提供的符合实际的智能。
这个套件汇聚了微软的云机器学习产品 Azure ML、数据可视化工具 PowerBI 和上周宣布的企业数据共享和数据存储访问服务 Azure Data Catalog 等等。微软希望利用脸部和语音识别等一系列技术来生成推荐引擎和生产预测等一系列的解决方案。
一切围绕集成
微软希望通过提供一个集成的解决方案，第三方和系统集成商可以基于这一套件打造打包式解决方案，让一些不同的产品能够很好地在一起发挥功效，这样的产品将会吸引消费者。这正是这一集成所在做的事, 这样就会减少让这些类型的工具合作的复杂性——至少理论上是这样。
“这一套件提供的价值在于卓越的互操作性，已完成的解决方案，既有配方又有指导书，”斯瑞西解释道。
微软举了一个例子，它谈到 Dartmouth-Hitchcock 医疗中心的一个医疗保健协调项目。被称为 ImagineCare 的解决方案正是建立在 Cortana Analytics Suite 和 Microsoft Dynamics CRM 工具的基础之上。
这个解决方案希望通过向患者提供家庭监护来测量心率、血压、睡眠模式、体重等等，并且在 Azure 云中共享这些信息，这样医护人员可以协调更好的医疗服务，还可以防止像心脏病发作这类重大医疗事件的发生。
护士可以在医疗数据仪表盘上监控一组病人的数据，在病人的数据发生整体变化时，协调更好的治疗和更好地应对，这些变化如果不及时治疗可能会带来更大的问题。斯瑞西谨慎地指出，这更多的是一种未来的理想状态，但微软希望通过将这些分散的功能用一种协作的方式集合在一起，为这些复杂项目的发展提供一个平台。
套件情结
微软用在这个套件上的是可靠实用的打包技术，那些我们多年来在微软、IBM 和 Adobe 这样的大公司身上所看到的技术，他们用这一技术把一组有些关联的产品放在一起，鼓励顾客去购买所有的产品而不是其中的一两个。
微软在 Office 套件中就万年不变地使用类似的集成手段。Adobe 在 Creative Suite 上也是如出一辙。两家公司都为套件中的产品提供了更方便的操作。
Cortana Analytics Suite 会在今年秋季晚些时候上市。斯瑞西没有说价格的事情，不过据他说，如果你想买这个套件，收费模式会更加简单，肯定比你单独购买这些产品要划算得多。
这看上去是一个挺不错的营销做法，但在现实中，根据过去几年的经验显示，消费者想要产品类别中最好的那一款，而且他们更愿意组合他们想要的或是已有的产品。
各家企业已经不想再受制于一家供应商。他们要让他们的供应商，特别是在云端，能够让各种不同的产品，不管生产商是哪一家，都能够更容易地一道工作。
这一套件属于逆势而上。时间会告诉我们消费者是否买账。
Microsoft Hopes To Unify Big Data And Analytics In Newly Announced Suite
At its Worldwide Partner Conference in Orlando，Microsoft announced the Cortana Analytics Suite. It takes the company’s machine learning, big data and analytics products and packages them together in one huge, monolithic suite.
Microsoft has put together the suite with the hope of providing a one-stop, big data and analytics solution for enterprise customers.
“Our goal was to bring integration of these pieces so customers have a comprehensive platform to build intelligent solutions,” Joseph Sirosh, corporate vice president at Microsoft, who is in charge of Azure ML told TechCrunch.
As for Cortana, which is the Microsoft voice-driven personal assistant tool in Windows 10, it’s a small part of the solution, but Sirosh says Microsoft named the suite after it because it symbolizes the contextualized intelligence that the company hopes to deliver across the entire suite.
It includes pieces like Azure ML, the company’s cloud machine learning product, PowerBI, its data visualization tool and Azure Data Catalog，a service announced just last week designed for sharing and surfacing data stores inside a company, among others. It hopes to take advantage of range of technologies such as face and speech recognition to generate a series of solutions like recommendation engines and churn forecasting.
It’s All About Integration
Microsoft expects that by providing an integrated solution, third parties and systems integrators will build packaged solutions based on the suite, and that customers will be attracted by a product with pieces designed to play nicely together. It is building in integration, thereby reducing the complexity of making these types of tools work together — at least that’s the theory.
“Where the suite provides value is the great interoperability, finished solutions, recipes and cookbooks,” Sirosh explained.
As an example, Microsoft talked about a coordinated medical care project at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. The program, called ImagineCare, is built on top of the Cortana Analytics Suite and the Microsoft Dynamics CRM tool.
The hope is that by providing patients with home monitoring to measure things like heart rate, blood pressure, sleep patterns, weight gain and so forth, and sharing this information in the Azure cloud, they can coordinate better care and perhaps prevent a major medical event like a heart attack.
Nurses could monitor the data from a group of patients in a medical data dashboard and coordinate better care and responses to changes in the overall patient profile that could signal larger issues if left untreated. Sirosh was careful to point out that this is more of a future ideal, but Microsoft is hoping that by putting these pieces together in a coordinated fashion, it will provide a platform for these types of sophisticated projects moving forward.
Suite Emotion
What Microsoft is doing with this suite is the tried and true packaging technique, we have seen from big companies like Microsoft, IBM and Adobe for years, taking a group of somewhat-related products and putting them together to encourage customers to buy all of the products instead of just a couple.
Microsoft made billions for years delivering a similar type of integration with the Office suite. Adobe did the same thing with Creative Suite, both companies delivering ways to work more easily across the products that make up the suite.
Cortana Analytics Suite will be available later this Fall. Sirosh wouldn’t discuss pricing, but if you buy one suite, you’ll get a simpler billing model and more savings than you would get buying the individual pieces, he said.
It seems like a sound marketing practice, but in reality customers have indicated over the last several years, they want the best of breed across product categories and prefer to string together the products they want or already own.
Companies no longer want to be locked into a single vendor. They want their vendors, especially in the cloud to make it easier to make the various pieces work together, regardless of the manufacturer.
This suite bucks that trend. Time will tell if customers will bite.
来源：Techcrunch
硅谷与华尔街人才争夺战的思考：金融与科技逐渐走向融合
编者按 ： 埃里克·普瓦里耶（Eric Poirier）是 投资管理软件公司 Addepar 首席执行官。
戈登·盖柯（Gordon Gekko）的追求也折射出这代人中最具才华、最聪明的一批人的梦想。今天，优秀的大学毕业生不再将华尔街作为职场上的第一选择，而是纷纷涌向硅谷和其他顶尖高科技中心，试图用改变世界的应用和机遇来挑战现状，给这个世界带来真正且持久的影响。有关“硅谷与华尔街人才争夺战”的讨论热度仍然不会消减，而且根据常理，你一定会被吸引到硅谷，从事对这个社会很有意义的工作。
这种说法越来越常见，但准确吗？答案也很简单，不准确。这种争论往往会以“我们 PK 他们”的心态展开，这种心态具有误导性；事实是，一些看似毫不相关的行业，却得益于新出现的机遇和金融科技领域的创新，越来越有可能走到一起。
不过，在深入探讨这个问题之前，我们先来看一看引发“硅谷 PK 华尔街”讨论的相关统计数据。
条条大路通硅谷？
科技行业正在走向复兴，而且当前这个阶段完全可与受到互联网热潮推动的 20 世纪 90 年代末期和 21 世纪初期的科技繁荣时期相媲美。涌向科技行业的毕业生比例 逐年稳步上升 ，就如同 越来越多的学生进入 STEM（科学、技术、工程和数学）领域一样 。
另一方面，美国顶尖大学中从事金融工作的 MBA 比例却逐年下滑，即便金融行业已经从 2008 年金融危机的阴影中走了出来。例如，在 2013 年哈佛大学商学院的毕业生中，最终只有 27%的人从事金融工作，这一比例甚至低于 2008 年和 2009 年金融危机最为严重的时候。
这些数字进一步模糊了金融与科技之间日益密切的联系，这种联系在对金融科技投资的快速增长中体现地尤为明显。根据 Accenture 的最新调查结果， 全球金融科技在 2014 年获得的风险投资已经突破了 120 亿美元 ，大概是金融科技公司在 2013 年获得的投资（40.5 亿美元）的 3 倍。这充分表明金融服务行业正在越来越多地采用新兴技术，而科技行业与金融服务行业之间的相互依赖越来越明显。
有鉴于此，核心问题也就变成了金融服务机构如何才能吸引那些最近流向硅谷创业公司的年轻人才，如何才能充分利用金融科技当前不错的发展势头。
与金钱无关
简而言之，千禧一代人觉得，他们可以在科技行业发挥最大的作用；在科技行业，创新无处不在，非传统思维也成为最新时代思潮的一部分。随着大学生的职业目标从常春藤联盟转向谷歌园区，以及他们纷纷加入前途远大、有机会成为“下一个大事件”的创业公司，很显然科技行业已经超越金融行业，成为一个对众多顶尖院校毕业生更具吸引力的地方， 即便科技公司的平均收入仍然低于大多数金融服务机构 。
这最后一点不应该被忽略。尽管工资以及相关金融期权仍然是主要的招聘工具，但毫无疑问，有才华的毕业生进入就业市场的方式正在发生变化。
除了收入，他们还希望自己的人生更有意义：参与打造某种新的东西，或是改变某个进程的基本性质。金融服务一般被看作是一个广阔市场内更为传统的行业，如今，谷歌、苹果、Facebook 和各种各样的小型创业公司经常被打上“创新”和“灵活”这样的标签，但在我们提到大型金融服务机构时，却极少会用到这样的字眼。
这并不意味着金融服务机构吸引后备人才的关键，在于改变他们的“休闲星期五”（Casual Friday）政策（这是一种几乎完全遭到华尔街排斥的做法），而是更多地与改变组织构建和运营的方式有关，鼓励他们在科技利用方面更加灵活，对改变传统流程的态度更加开放。科技如今是而且一直是支撑金融行业发展的重要推动力。
因此，金融服务机构越来越侧重于转变外界对他们的误读，即他们厌恶改变，崇尚“尝试、失败、再尝试”的理念，这种理念已经深深扎根于硅谷和其他高科技中心。在硅谷创业公司工作，意味着你可以直接对社会带来影响，以有意义的方式“拥有”成果，相比之下，华尔街传统上给人的感觉更官僚。
合二为一
放眼未来，几年内我们会看到金融和科技的联系越来越大——到时做一些你既感兴趣又有意义的工作，就不一定是在硅谷了。
这篇报道的内容已经开始有所体现。我们可以看到，除了传统上的风险投资公司，传统金融服务机构（如摩根大通、 Fidelity 和 T. Rowe Price），也越来越多地参与到快速增长的私营科技公司的大规模融资中来。最近几年，IPO（首次公开募股）的比率一直在下降，因此， 共同基金和其他一些机构投资者不断转向私营科技公司 ，寻求提升回报率的方法，这确实是合理的选择。
同时，硅谷的公司也在改变针对消费者的金融服务流程，为了完成这些流程，他们开始与银行系统合作，而不是竞争了——这种趋势越来越明显。变化最明显的是借贷、支付和加密货币领域，Prosper 和 Coinbase 等公司身上就在发生着这种变化。
在这个信息时代，金融领域未来的领导者已经不像从前了。他们是一个按需团体，习惯于看到立竿见影的效果。如果需要做出改变，那么就可以进行改变。如果一项计划庞大且无效率，那么就需要放弃它而制定更简单的方案了。
金融服务相对于其他行业更加顽固，不愿改变现状，这已经不是第一次了；就在 30 年前，场内交易的自动化是不可想象的（还有人记得那种公开喊价的方法吗？）。今天，在很多大型交易中，很难再找到场内经纪人了。同样，在出现彭博终端（Bloomberg Terminals）之前，也很难想象华尔街的作用不可动摇——但是，交易者们曾经要用笔和纸谈论股票的价格，现在只能通过手机进行交易。
现在，金融领域进行着同样的争论，而且声音越来越大。金融服务组织机构的各个阶层都出现了新一代的投资者和经纪人，我希望看到 20 年来我们熟悉的世界也发生同样的巨变。
现在是那些金融机构愿意放弃“我们 PK 他们”心态（这种心态源于硅谷和华尔街之间的较量）的绝佳时机，他们可以成为具有深远意义的合作伙伴：科技人员和金融人员一起工作的话，他们的效率会更高，工作方式也会更透明。这种新思维必将推动新技术的推广。
毫无疑问，时代在变；那些能更快意识到这种现实并顺势而为的人，将在竞争中占据优势。
A Closer Look At The Silicon Valley Vs. Wall Street Talent War
Eric PoirierCrunch Network Contributor
Eric Poirier is the CEO of investment management software company Addepar.
How to join the network
Gordon Gekko is but a distant blip in the rear-view mirror for this generation’s best and brightest. In lieu of Wall Street, today’s top graduates are flocking to Silicon Valley and other top technology hubs in droves, drawn in by visions of challenging the status quo with world-changing apps and the opportunity to make a real, lasting impact in the world. Talk of the “SiliconValley vs. Wall Street Talent War” continues unabated — and popular wisdom suggests that you need to be anchored in Silicon Valley to do meaningful work these days.
While it’s an increasingly common narrative, is it accurate? In a word, no. The “Us vs. Them” mentality that this debate often takes is misleading; the reality is that there is an increasing opportunity for seemingly disparate sectors to unite through the budding opportunities and innovations in fintech.
Before digging into that, though, let’s look at some relevant statistics that fuel the “Silicon Valley vs. Wall Street” debate.
All Roads Lead To Silicon Valley?
The technology sector is experiencing a renaissance that rivals even the frenzied, dot-com-driven heights of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The rate of graduates flocking to technology has steadily increased on an annual basis — as has the number of students enrolling in STEM fields.
The rate of MBAs from the nation’s top universities who go into finance, on the other hand, has been shrinking on an annual basis, even as the sector has largely recovered from the 2008 crisis. Consider, for instance, that 27 percent of graduates from Harvard Business School entered finance in 2013 — a lower rate than during even the depths of the recession in 2008 and 2009.
These numbers obscure the broader marriage between finance and technology, which can be evidenced in the massive growth of investments in financial technology, or fintech; according to a recent Accenture study, global investment in fintech ventures topped $12 billion in 2014 — more than three times the $4.05 billion invested in fintech companies in 2013. This is indicative of the financial service industry’s increasing adoption of emerging technology, fostering a greater interdependence between the tech and financial services industries.
With this in mind, the question shifts to what financial services institutions can do to attract more of the young talent that has recently gravitated toward Silicon Valley startups, and how they can harness the momentum of fintech in particular.
It’s Not About The Money
Simply put, the tech sector is where millennials feel they can make the most impact. It’s where innovation happens and outside-the-box thinking is part of the current zeitgeist. Be it transitioning from an Ivy League campus to the Google campus or joining an up-and-coming startup with a chance to become the next big thing, the tech sector has clearly surpassed finance as the more appealing career path for many graduates of top institutions, even if the average tech salary falls short of those offered by most financial institutions.
Working at a Silicon Valley startup allows people to have a direct impact and “own” results in a meaningful way, whereas Wall Street is traditionally more bureaucratic.
This last point is not to be overlooked. While salaries and associated financial options remain a major recruiting tool, there has undoubtedly been a change in the way talented graduates are approaching the job market.
More than salary, they want to be impactful: a part of building something new, or changing the fundamental nature of a given process. Financial services is generally seen as one of the more traditional, if not lucrative, industries within the broader market — but it’s rare that you see the words “innovative” or “agile” mentioned in context with a large financial institution in the way that you do with a Google, Apple, Facebook or any host of small startups.
This is not meant to say that the key for financial services institutions looking to lure back talent is simply a matter of changing their Casual Friday policies (a practice Wall Street has almost universally rejected, anyway). It’s more a matter of changing the way organizations are structured and operated, and encouraging more agility in terms of technology adoption and an openness to changing long-tenured processes. Technology is and has always been a critical enabler of finance.
Financial institutions are thus increasingly focused on shifting the perception that they are change-averse and embracing the “try and fail and try again” ethos that has permeated SiliconValley and other high-tech hubs. Working at a Silicon Valley startup allows people to have a direct impact and “own” results in a meaningful way, whereas Wall Street is traditionally more bureaucratic.
When Two Become One
The coming years will see a deepening of the relationship between finance and tech — and a broader acknowledgement that you don’t have to be based in Silicon Valley to do interesting and meaningful work.
The writing is already on the wall. Consider the uptick in traditional financial institutions like J.P. Morgan, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price increasingly participating in high-profile funding rounds for fast-growth private tech companies in addition to (and often in place of) traditional venture capital firms. The rate of IPOs has slowed in recent years, so it makes sense that mutual funds and other institutional investors are increasingly turning to private technology companies as a means to boost returns for investors.
There’s also an increasing trend of Silicon Valley companies that are changing consumer-facing financial services processes and working with, not against, banks to do so. This is most notably happening in the lending, payments and crypto-currencies spaces, with companies like Prosper and Coinbase.
The future leaders of finance have been weaned during the Information Age. They’re an on-demand group accustomed to seeing immediate results. If a change is needed, it can and will be made. If a design is bulky and inefficient, it’s time to blow it up and develop something simpler.
This isn’t the first instance in which financial services have been more change-averse than other industries; just 30 years ago, it was unthinkable that floor trading would be automated (anybody remember the Open outcry system?). Today, you’re hard-pressed to find a floor broker at many of the major exchanges. Likewise, it’s hard to imagine that Wall Street existed before the advent of Bloomberg Terminals — but there was once a time when traders were indeed forced to price bonds with pencil and paper, and trade exclusively over the phone.
The same type of conversations are happening in finance today, and they are becoming louder and louder. A new generation of investors and brokers has penetrated the ranks of financial services organizations, and I expect a similar sea change from the world we’ve known for the past 20 years.
There’s a tremendous opportunity present for those financial institutions willing to push back against the “Us vs. Them” mentality currently ascribed to Silicon Valley and Wall Street, and instead embrace meaningful partnerships where the hoodies and the suits work together in a more impactful, transparent way that fosters increased adoption of new technology.
There’s no doubt that the times are changing; those who are quicker to recognize and adapt to this new reality will be the ones to come out on top.
来源：techcrunch
Docker 面向企业客户推商业解决方案：售价每个月 150 美元起
Docker 今天宣布，该公司的商业解决方案将面向所有想要使用其容器管理软件的企业客户推出。除了自家零售渠道，Docker 的商业解决方案还将通过亚马逊云计算服务 Amazon Web Services 以及 IBM 和微软销售，起售价为每个月 150 美元，价格相对适中。
付费订阅了 Docker 商业解决方案以后，客户可以获得 Docker 全天 24 小时的技术支持、最多 10 个认证 Docker 引擎和 Docker 管理工具的授权。根据客户的具体需要，Docker 还将提供额外的服务。
这项服务的核心内容是 Docker Trusted Registry，后者基于 Docker Hub Registry 开发。Docker Hub Registry 是 Docker 推出的一项旨在存储容器的服务，但企业客户现在还可以在自有系统和防火墙内使用它存储和分享 Docker 照片。这项服务提供 LDAP 与 Active Directory 整合的能力，这样，企业客户就可以利用他们现有的认证系统，设置基于角色的访问政策，同时保存审计日志。
Docker Trusted Registry 自今年 2 月以来一直在进行测试，目前已有超过 800 家企业在使用。Docker 首席执行官本·格鲁布（Ben Golub）说：“自去年 6 月份在 Docker Con 旧金山大会上发布以来，Docker Hub 就吸引了数十万个人用户和数万企业用户的参与，他们向我们提供了有关 Docker 商业解决方案的重要反馈意见，希望了解我们怎样帮助他们部署对企业业务至关重要的分布式应用。我们已充分利用这种反馈意见，以及 Docker Trusted Registry 测试项目所获得的反馈意见，对用于生产环境的 Docker 商业解决方案进行定义。”
由于 IBM、微软和 Amazon Web Services 成为 Docker 商业解决方案的经销商，再加上相对适中的订阅价格，所以 Docker 应该可以吸引大批想要订阅这项服务的企业客户。
Docker Launches Commercial Support, Starting At $150/Month
Docker today announced the general availability of its commercial solutions for businesses that want to use its container management software. Docker’s commercial solution will be available through Docker itself, but also from Amazon Web Services, IBM and Microsoft, starting at a relatively modest price of $150 per month.
For that, subscribers get 24/7 support for their Docker deployments, a license for up to 10 certified Docker Engines and Docker’s management tools. The company will also offer additional service tiers, depending on its customers’ needs.
At the core of this new service is the Docker Trusted Registry. This was built on top of the Docker Hub Registry, Docker’s service for storing containers, but enterprises can now use it on-premise and behind their firewalls to store and share Docker images. The on-premise registry offers LDAP and Active Directory integration, so businesses can use their existing authentication systems to set up role-based access policies for the service and keep audit logs.
The Trusted Registry has been in beta since February and is currently in use at over 800 companies. “Since its launch at DockerCon SF last June, Docker Hub has attracted hundreds of thousands of users and tens of thousands of organizations, all of whom have given us valuable feedback on the nature of the commercial solutions they need from us to support deployment of business-critical distributed applications,” said Ben Golub, Docker’s CEO. “We have used this feedback, as well as feedback from our Docker Trusted Registry beta program, to define our commercial solutions for production environments.”
With IBM, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services on board as resellers and a modest subscription price, Docker should be able to attract a large number of businesses that will want to subscribe to this service.
来源：techcrunch
SmartHires：帮助创业公司在相同投资组合中寻找科技人才
目前，寻找出色的科技人才仍是一个不小的挑战。正因为如此，奥巴马政府在本月早些时候向一个名为“TechHire”的新合作计划拨款 1 亿美元，试图填补美国 IT 行业当前存在的 50 万个<a Combinator 投资的 SmartHires（大家千万别将它与人才招聘网站 SmartHire 或求职搜索网站Smart Hires 混淆）创建了一个创业公司优秀人才推荐网络，试图解决这一难题。
SmartHires 背后的创意是，将人才留在投资方的投资组合网络内，是一种更好的选择。SmartHires 联合创始人斯蒂芬·克莱特兹尔（Stephan Kletzl）告诉 TechCrunch 网站，“许多创业公司将优秀人才完全拒之门外，如果将他们留在这个大家庭，结果可能会更好。”
SmartHires 是由克莱特兹尔及其双胞胎兄弟克里斯蒂安·克莱特兹尔（ChristianKletzl）以及戴维·佩奇森梅斯特（David Pichsenmeister）等三人共同创建的，因为他们发现找到顶尖人才是非常困难的一件事。斯蒂芬·克莱特兹尔说：“有些人才因招聘主管未能慧眼识珠而遭到拒绝，我们将这些人添加至‘被拒绝名单’中，一旦招聘主管的人脉圈中恰好有人需要，我们可以进行推荐。”
克莱特兹尔兄弟希望能将最有才能的人选留在某个投资人的投资组合中，一旦该投资人资助的其他创业公司需要人才，就可以将原本储备的人才推荐给他们。
SmartHires 的运作机制如下：获 Y Combinator、SV Angel 和其他投资公司等投资的创业公司招聘主管看到一份不错的求职申请，但对方又不太符合公司当前需要的人才类型。但招聘主管不是将此人的简历扔到一边，而是将它们添加至公司投资方的整个投资组合网络中。根据这一网络其他创业公司掌握的信息，该网络中的某个创业公司对这种人才趋之若鹜。
在硅谷，不少创业公司都是基于类似创意构建的，有些甚至就在 Y Combinator 网络内。例如，作为另一家获得 Y Combinator 投资的公司，HigherMe 专注于寻找合适的零售业人才；Hired 则是总部设在硅谷的一家创业公司，试图给科技企业挖掘合适的人才；SmartHires 不同于这些公司的独特之处在于，它依赖于圈内人推荐，而不仅仅是依赖于简历。
不过，SmartHires 的商业化模式类似于 Hired。同 Hired 一样，如果求职者最终在 Y Combinator 的投资组合网络内成功找到了工作，那么 SmartHires 会从求职者获得的年薪中抽成 2%。
成功推荐求职者的人不会获得任何报酬，但他可以提前接触到名单中的求职者，这样，如果求职者恰好是他们中意的人才，那么就可以捷足先登了。斯蒂芬·克莱特兹尔说：“他有可能会与那个在本公司被拒的求职者成为朋友，因此一旦有机会，可以将对方挖到自己的公司来。”
SmartHires 平台目前主要针对于 Y Combinator 的投资组合网络。据斯蒂芬·克莱特兹尔介绍，在所有申请加入 Y Combinator 所投资创业公司的人当中，至少 70%最终会获得这些公司的面试机会。Zenefits 和 Weebly 等一些创业公司已经聘用了 SmartHires 推荐的人选，或是正在对 SmartHires 推荐的人选进行最后的面试。
Y Combinator 的“演示日”活动即将举行，克莱特兹尔兄弟目前主要忙着准备这件事，但他们说 SmartHires 下一步的工作重点是为更多的投资组合网络储备人才。
YC-Backed SmartHires Helps Startups Find Tech Talent Within The Same Investment Portfolio
Finding good tech talent is a challenge right now. The Obama administration poured $100 million into the new TechHire initiative this last month to fill half a million open IT jobs in the U.S. for that reason. Y Combinator-backed SmartHires (not to be confused with the recruiting site SmartHire or job search site Smart Hires) tackles that challenge with the creation of a startup referral network for strong job candidates.
The idea behind SmartHires is that it’s better to keep talent within investor portfolio networks. “Many startups end up rejecting great candidates but it’s better if they stay in the family,” SmartHires co-founder Stephan Kletzl told TechCrunch.
Kletzl and his co-founder and identical twin brother Christian Kletzl started SmartHires, along with David Pichsenmeister, after seeing how difficult it was to find top talent. “Smart people are getting passed on and added to the rejection list when there might be someone within the hiring manager’s network that needs them,” Stephan said.
The brothers envision keeping the most talented candidates within certain investor portfolios, thus adding to a stronger pool of candidates for the startups those investors have funded.
It works like this: hiring managers at startups within YC, SV Angel or some other portfolio family see a great applicant that doesn’t exactly fit with what they are hiring for. Rather than just adding the person’s resume to a stack of rejections, the hiring manager can add them to that portfolio network of startups. Other startups within that network can see that a certain startup within the network has vouched for that candidate.
There are a lot of startups within Silicon Valley working on similar ideas, some even within the YC network. HigherMe, another YC portfolio company this batch, focuses on finding good retail employees. Hired is a Silicon Valley-based startup that hooks candidates up with tech companies. SmartHires is unique to these other recruitment companies in that it works on network referrals instead of just a resume.
The way SmartHires makes money resembles the Hired model. Like Hired, if a candidate takes the job within the portfolio network, SmartHires takes a 2 percent cut of the annual salary offered to that candidate.
The person referring the candidate doesn’t get paid for it, but they do get earlier access to candidates on the list if they refer top talent. “He’ll more likely get friends of the rejected candidate to apply at his startup and he’ll make the rejection email easier on him and the candidate,” Stephan added.
The SmartHires platform is mainly working within the YC network at the moment. At least 70 percent of those candidates applying within the YC network got interview requests with YC-backed companies, according to Stephan. Startups like Zenefits and Weebly have already hired candidates or are in the final stages of interviews from someone referred to them through SmartHires.
YC demo day is coming up and the Kletzl brothers are mainly focused on that for now, but they said the next steps would involve building out to more investor portfolio networks.
来源：techcrunch
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2015年03月23日
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微软与 YC 合作，向创业者提供免费 Azure 服务
Y Combinator 和微软在本周 公布 了一项合作计划，微软将会为参加 Y Combinator 本期孵化项目的创业公司免费提供 Azure 云端计算平台服务。
根据这份合作协议，微软会为这些创业公司提供价值 50 万美元的 Azure 云端服务和 Office 365 生产力套装的 3 年免费使用权限。50 万美元的 Azure 使用权对微软来说只是九牛一毛，但是对于参加 Y Combinator 的新生公司来说，这已经很大的一笔资金，而且能够帮助它们在孵化项目中更好地成长。所以这是一项意义重大的援助。
微软也有通过自己的 Microsoft Ventures 团队在世界各地开展 多个创业孵化项目 ，例如以色列。这个团队是在以前的 Bing Fund 整合了微软的创业孵化项目之后成立的。而 Bing Fund 现在的项目现在已经逐渐关闭了。Microsoft Ventures 的 前任 导师拉胡尔·苏德（Rahul Sood）在 Twitter 上向我表示，微软实际上已经“ 停止了这个基金的运作 ”。我向微软打过多次电话，请求对方就 Microsoft Ventures 目前的创业投资情况作出官方的说明。
（更新：在与微软的发言人交流过之后，了解到自从 Bing Fund 被归入 Microsoft Ventures 之后，它只进行过为数不多的种子投资。这家公司目前没有直接向创业公司进行现金投资。）
Y Combinator 向本期的创业公司发送了一条备忘录，其中对 Azure 进行了如下的描述：
Azure让每家创业公司都可以为自己的业务使用正确的技术——包括 Linux 和 OSS 、Node.js、PHP、Python、.NET等。此外，Azure 还拥有强大的平台即服务（PaaS）功能，例如机器学习和流分析等。
在 Y Combinator 获得的所有云端服务商赞助当中，微软是最为慷慨的一家：亚马逊提供了价值 10 万美元的 AWS 服务（亚马逊在一封邮件中告诉 TechCrunch 这些赞助会向“合资格的孵化器”提供）；Digital Ocean 提供了 10 万美元；Heroku 提供了 5 万美元。微软所提供的服务价值实际上是其他服务商捐赠总价值的两倍。
作为合作协议的一部分，微软还为参加 Y Combinator 的创业者主办了一场为期一天的研讨会，其中包括由两位高管斯蒂夫·古根海默（Steve Guggenheimer）和斯科特·格思里（Scott Guthrie）主持的演示。古根海默在微软内部被称为“Guggs”，他是微软的首席传教士。格思里是 Azure 业务的负责人。
在这项合作公布之初，我跟一位参加本期 Y Combinator 孵化项目的创业者进行了交流。这位创业者对这项援助的评价是“难以置信的慷慨”，他提到他们团队在知道这项合作之前“没有考虑过使用 Azure”，不过在合作细则公布之后，他们就“开始尝试使用它，也许会把它作为唯一的服务。”这位创业者继续表示这项合作协议让他们感到“（微软）非常渴望，也非常努力地为创业公司提供帮助，希望提升自己在创业社区当中的地位。”
这位创业者还开玩笑说他们希望亚马逊也应该加大对创业公司的投入，提供同等水平的免费服务。
微软这样做是想在创业公司当中树立口碑，为它们未来的业务提供帮助。为创业团队提供价值 50 万美元的云端计算服务，这就相当于可以让小型企业可以在短期内减少融资 50 万美元。这样创业公司就可以更有效地使用手上的资金，同时可以延后它们进行估值的时间，从而提升它们得到更高估值的可能性。
在我了解过的硅谷创业公司当中，亚马逊的 AWS 云端平台仍然是他们的首选。这项 Azure 合作协议也许可以稍微提升它在本期 Y Combinator 创业公司中的份额，而且也会影响到以后参加的公司，因为这个项目会持续进行。不知道在本期 Y Combinator 的孵化公司中有多少会选择 Azure 而不是 AWS，又有多少会将这个选择一直保留到孵化完成之后。
Microsoft Wants To Buy Love In Silicon Valley
Y Combinator and Microsoft announced a program this week that will pour free access to the Azure cloud computing platform onto the incubator’s current class of startups.
The deal includes $500,000 in credits to Microsoft’s cloud computing service Azure, and three years of access to its Office 365 suite of productivity tools. Half a million worth of Azure usage is nothing to Microsoft, but for young companies that are part of Y Combinator, the sum is a multiple of the cash that they receive to help build their firms as part of the program. That makes it a materially interesting offer.
Microsoft also runs a number of accelerators of its own around the world in places like Israel under its Microsoft Ventures team. That group was formed when disparate accelerator work was unified with what was formerly the Bing Fund. The latter effort appears to be either on the wane, or over. Former Microsoft Ventures don Rahul Sood told me on Twitter that Microsoft had indeed “stopped the fund.” I have a few calls into Microsoft requesting a formal explanation how, if at all, Microsoft Ventures is currently involved in actively investing cash into startups.
(Update: Chatted about this with a spokesperson, and after the Bing Fund was subsumed into Microsoft Ventures, a few more seed investments were made, but not many. The company is not currently making direct cash investments into startups.)
Here’s how Y Combinator described Azure in a memo sent out to companies in the current class:
Azure enables each startup to use the right technologies for their business – including Linux & OSS, Node.js, PHP, Python, .NET, etc. In addition, Azure provides powerful PaaS capabilities, like machine learning, stream analytics and more.
The Azure deal stands apart from the other offers that Y Combinator companies receive from different cloud providers: $100,000 in AWS credits from Amazon (Amazon told TechCrunch in an email that that offer is open to “qualified accelerators”), $10,000 from Digital Ocean, and $50,000 from Heroku. Microsoft is essentially offering double what those providers offer in aggregate.
As part of the deal, Microsoft hosted a day-long session for Y Combinator founders that included presentations from two of its executives: Steve Guggenheimer and Scott Guthrie. Guggenheimer, known as Guggs at Microsoft, is the company’s chief evangelist. Guthrie runs Azure.
I spoke to a current Y Combinator founder about the deal in the wake of its release. The founder called the offer “shockingly good,” noting that before the deal was announced, their team “wasn’t considering using Azure,” but following the terms’ release, are “exploring using it, possibly exclusively.” The founder continued, noting that the agreement gives them the “that [Microsoft] is hungry and that they are trying hard to be relevant and helpful to the startup community.”
The same founder went on to muse that they hope that Amazon ups its own commitment to startups by providing similar quantities free service.
Microsoft is making a play for the hearts, minds, and future business of startups. Give a team half a million in cloud computing, and that is a half million that the smaller company doesn’t have to raise in the near-term. That allows companies to spend more efficiently, and delay pricing their firms, likely allowing for a higher valuation mark to be set.
Amazon’s AWS cloud platform remains the de facto choice among startup founders that I speak to here in the Valley. The Azure deal may tip the scales slightly among the current Y Combinator class, and those that follow, as the program will recur. It will be interesting to see what percentage of the current Y Combinator class chooses Azure over AWS, and keeps that choice through the end of the period and into their life as a launched company.
来源： techcrunch.cn
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