Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.

This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story," and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all, very much.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA

By now, what in front of us is an unpredictable future, let's wait and see whether Draper is right or not 3~5 years later. To see is Draper is right or wrong :-)

 

Draper: "This is the best time ever to start business -- people need jobs, existing companies are reeling, fewer startup competitors there are new technologies."

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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/technologybrierdudleysblog/2009269250_wtia_draper_says_best_time_eve.html

Draper says best time ever to start business

Posted by Brier Dudley

Venture capitalist Tim Draper gave entrepreneurs a pep talk, mixed with some politics, at the WTIA Fast Pitch Forum today.

Draper, founder and managing director of Silicon Valley venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, called for less regulation and protectionism and more bold entrepreneurs. His hit investments include Hotmail, Skype, Baidu and Overture and he's credited with introducing the concept of viral marketing via Web email to advance Hotmail and Yahoo Mail.

He also regaled the Bell Harbor crowd of 150 with the "Riskmaster" song he performs at tech events.

"This is an opportunity, it's an opportunity to change the way you do things, change the way your customers do things, change your teams -- these are great opportunities for you as entrepreneurs,'' he said.

"This is the best time ever to start business -- people need jobs, existing companies are reeling, fewer startup competitors there are new technologies."

Among the flamebait Draper offered were "good" and "bad" terms to listen for on the radio and TV. A good term, for instance, is "business solution" and a bad one is "government intervention."

Draper said "Let losers die" is a good term, bailout is a bad one, drawing applause, and "freedom" is good while "regulation" is bad.

Then he said "free trade" is a good term, while bad terms include "patriotism, protection and poverty."

Explaining the patriotism bit, he said he considered himself a patriot but "sometimes you have to look at the world as a whole" and the term can be used to counter free trade.

"By being a patriot sometimes it's us against them, but what that doesn't recognize is the economic value of having a win-win situation where we're all working together and we're working together a lot more," he said.

I just wish someone would come up with a new term for "win win situation."

　　中新网4月19日电 美国国家航空总署(NASA)预定5月12日发射航天飞机前往哈勃太空望远镜(Hubble Space Telescope)进行维修和零组件更新作业，但这次航天飞机任务和过去有些不同，因为有另一架航天飞机同样整装待发，准备随时展开紧急救援任务。

　　据“中央社”报道，航天飞机亚特兰提斯号(Atlantis)预定5月12日升空，前往哈勃太空望远镜从事任务，这也是NASA对哈勃这个位于地球轨道上的天文台最后一次后勤维护任务。

　　但另一艘航天飞机奋进号 (Endeavour)18日也移入39B发射台，距离亚特兰提斯号准备升空的39A发射台不过3公里多；NASA表示，奋进号的所有准备作业都与正式发射作业无异，即使它从事救援任务的可能性并不高。报道说这是太空史上的首次。

　　2003年NASA发生航天飞机哥伦比亚号(Columbia)重返地球时解体烧毁，造成7名航天员殉职的惨剧后，NASA就取消了对哈勃望远镜的维护任务。

　　从那时开始，所有航天飞机任务都是前往国际太空站进行维护与兴建任务，如果航天飞机出现危及重返地球时的安全问题，航天员仍然能够待在国际太空站，等待救援人员和航天飞机前来载他们回到地球。

　　但哈勃望远镜所在的地球轨道、方向，与国际太空站完全不同，如果发生状况，航天员也无暂时栖身之处，因此，NASA必须准备另一艘可立即升空的航天飞机做为紧急救援之用。

　　哥伦比亚航天飞机于2003年2月1日完成任务，重返地球大气层时，在德州上空解体烧毁，7名航天员殉职。事后调查确认，哥伦比亚号在发射升空时，外部燃料槽一块如手提箱大小的绝缘体脱落，击中航天飞机机翼，致使部分隔热砖剥离，重返大气层时的摩擦高热穿透机翼，导致航天飞机解体失事。

　　NASA后来重新设计外部燃料槽，并于每次航天飞机靠泊国际太空站时，从内而外仔细检查梭体是否受损。

　　这次亚特兰提斯号航天飞机前往哈勃望远镜的任务，虽然无法靠泊国际太空站，但仍能藉助航天飞机本身的机械手臂检查梭体，如果确认无安全疑虑，在地面备便的奋进号就无需升空救援。

　　NASA指出，一旦亚特兰提斯号航天飞机升空，奋进号将待命7天，让工程人员有充分时间确认亚特兰提斯号安全无虞；如果有救援需要，奋进号将以货舱不载货的“空机”状态升空，并在控制舱内多安置7个供亚特兰提斯号航天员使用的座椅。

　　等到亚特兰提斯号安全返回地球后，奋进号将移往39A发射台，准备6月份发射前往国际太空站的任务。

　　航天飞机于1981年由哥伦比亚号航天飞机首次升空，NASA的航天飞机机队(尚包括发现号，失事毁损挑战者号和哥伦比亚号)将于明年全部退役，目前看来，在退役前，最多还有9次太空任务。

第一次在博客上发表原创帖，作为一个纪念。

 

第一次听她的歌，是在深圳的时候。同学兼同事贾君推荐了她的《叶子》，听了，觉得很好听，感觉我的生活也很像歌词中所描述的... 歌词那么地亲切...那是第一次知道阿桑这位女子。

 

2007年6月22日晚，有幸看了她的live现场表演。赶到演播厅门口的时候，她刚好从一辆轿车中出来，弱小的她有一位司机陪同，身边并没有其他明星所常常拥有的记者或保镖，一丝低调，一丝寂寞弥漫在淡蓝的夜幕下。好友孙君和我一同进了演播厅，看她的歌唱节目录制。第一次听到她的现场演唱《叶子》、《寂寞在唱歌》，感觉有点像听许巍的歌一样，那么亲切，那么自然，也有一丝忧伤，永远抹之不去...

 

物是人非，大家好好珍惜身边的人和身边的事，好好对待每一天，都拥有健康的身体，美好的生活...

 

那晚的LIVE照片：

 

 

Three years ago Venture Capitalist Timothy Draper graced the cover of a financial-industry trade magazine wearing a wide grin and a Captain America costume. Draper, the tagline said, had joined the “League of Extraordinary VCs” for his smart investments in Chinese search service Baidu and free PC phone service Skype. Both picks earned Draper’s firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and one of its affiliates millions in profits.

Baidu and Skype are today highlighted prominently in DFJ’s press materials, and since late 2000 the firm and its affiliates have raised an estimated $3 billion for traditional high-tech investments as well as forays into new markets like Brazil and India. All that money has enriched DFJ’s partners: In the last ten years they’ve likely earned tens of millions in annual fees.

Lots of DFJ’s investors, though, are still waiting for their payoff. Many of the big universities, foundations and rich individuals who parked money in the firm’s flagship funds have yet to see a dime of profit from Baidu or Skype. Those homerun investments were made from a DFJ affiliate called Eplanet Ventures, in which only some of DFJ’s investors participated. (DFJ declines to say how many.)

The investors in other big DFJ funds raised around the same time as Eplanet have come up empty. The return on the DFJ’s $640 million Fund VII, raised in 2000, is a sickly –2% as of Sept. 30, according to quarterly statements sent out to the fund’s investors. So far it has paid back only $115 million to its investors, even though the fund is entering the ninth year of its ten-year life and should be realizing more gains. Many investments have been marked down significantly. Investors would have been better off buying the S&P 500 index, which is down 0.4% annually in the same period.

The venture capital industry is staring at the most vicious shakeout in its history. Returns are pathetic for most funds, the public offering pipeline on which venture depends for its exit strategy is clamped shut, and with the shares of many big publicly traded tech companies swooning, those firms are less likely to buy up promising upstarts.

Tim Draper can find plenty of sympathy on Sand Hill Road, that rarefied stretch of pavement in Menlo Park, Calif. that is home to the world’s premier VC firms. The median annual return for all venture funds raised in 2000, the peak of the dot-com craziness, is –1%, according to research firm Cambridge Associates. By that measure DFJ doesn’t look so bad.

Where Draper won’t find much sympathy is with the pension funds, foundations and well-heeled investors who make up the base of venture firms’ investors. These so-called limited partners have always looked to venture as a way to sweeten conservative portfolios with some concentrated bets in high-flying software and biotech upstarts. The venture firms earn between 2% and 2.5% of their capital under management and retain 20% to 30% of any profits. In exchange for their fees, VCs were counted on like heroes to spot and nurture the next Ebay, Google, Genentech and Cisco, firms that have made the U.S. the world’s incubator for innovation.

大前研一

早稻田大学理工系毕业后，获得东京工业大学硕士学位，MIT博士学位。曾任McKinsey公司日本分社社长、公司董事，国际著名企业顾问。1994年7月离开McKinsey，现任创业者商学院校长和一新塾校长，1996年起任UCLA研究生院教授，Stanford GSB客座教授。被UK《Economist》杂志评选为“全球五位管理大师”之一，“日本战略之父”。

 

 

 

1、坚持看CCTV-1新闻联播 要想把握经济命脉，必须关注政局，新闻联播着实为中国商人的最佳晴雨表。
2、不要轻易相信合约或合同 哪怕合约让你的律师看过了，公证处公证了都不要轻易相信，甚至当你的客户把钱已经汇入你指定的账户以后你都必须确认。
3、你自己必须守信，一诺千金 若想一直做个商人，那么你必须树立自己的信誉。
4、对不守信的人例外 不要给对方予机会以谎言解释谎言。
5、你能赢得起但你可能输不起的生意最好不做 在做任何生意以前，你都必须考虑清楚，你是否输得起，输不起的事情最好别做。
6、不要先期投入太多，给自己留够底牌 不到最后关键时刻，最好不要亮出你手里最有分量的牌，最后的赢家才是真正的赢家。
7、天下无事不可为，但商人有所为也有所不为 不要因为利润少而不做，也不要因为风险小就去做。
8、慎重选择合作伙伴，亲密战友是一定要慎重、慎重再慎重地选择，慎重是对彼此而言并非只针对单方。
9、不要在你的团队里有你家庭成员的影子 因为以你为核心之一的团队接受的是你，而不是你的家庭成员。
10、不要给你的女人讲你的商业细节 第一，你谈了可能她们也不懂；第二，那里面可能会有给你带来麻烦的内容；第三，可能会涉及到商业机密。
11、不要偷税漏税 这是一个商人应该做的。
12、但要学会合理避税 这是一个精明的商人应该学会做的。
13、不要太相信记者和媒体 你不能告诉记者很多你的底细，更不能相信记者会给你保守商业秘密，且必须学会面对记者并加以设防。
14、不要摆大，哪怕你真的是老大 天外有天，不要在任何场合摆大，哪怕你真的很大。
15、保持中立，不要卷入政治派系纷争 事实证明，把商业利益的希望寄托在派系纷争的任何一方，都是危险而且不明智的，在派系纷争之间，你必须冷静的保持中立。
16、不要太在乎金钱与利益得失 天下自然有的是你赚不完的钱和商业机会，所以在金钱与利益面前大度一些又何妨呢？
17、不要过多用金钱粉饰自己 你当然可以穿自己喜欢的“内联升”的布鞋，你也可以在很多人面前抽你自己喜欢抽的劣质香烟！
18、资本决定发言权，但你不应该轻易让别人知道你有多大的发言权 关心下属于你的资本和你能控制的资本是正确的，甚至你该关心的包括你的坏帐和现金收益以及现金流量，但这些不应该让太多人知道。
19、总结别人的成败得失 不要羡慕别人的成功，更不要鄙夷别人的失败，找出别人失败或者成功的全部原因，取其长，补其短。
20、不要用旁门左道的规矩去解决商业上的冲突 商业有商业自身的游戏规则，你必须遵守商业中的一切游戏规则，愿赌就得服输！
21、在能把握全局的前提下，不要追求事必躬亲 不要把自己搞得没有时间与朋友交流，最要紧的是不要让自己没有时间放松与思考。当然，业务的核心部分你自己必须牢牢把握。
22、给自己留条后路，预防众叛亲离你 可以在沉寂江湖多年以后重整旗鼓，但你不可以倒下以后就不再起来，所以你必须给自己留一条后路。

 

Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his strength. - Hasidic saying

 

I have never thought of writing for reputation and honor. What I have in my heart must come out; that is the reason why I compose. - Ludwid wan Beethoven

 

Meaning is not about money, power, or prestige. It’s not even about creating a fun place to work. Among the meanings of “meaning” are to
• Make the world a better place.
• Increase the quality of life.
• Right a terrible wrong.
• Prevent the end of something good.
Goals such as these are a tremendous advantage as you travel down the difficult path ahead. If you answer this question in the negative, you may still be successful, but it will be harder to become so because making meaning is the most powerful motivator there is.
It’s taken me twenty years to come to this understanding.

 

第三章 口头表达的艺术

对你的言辞稍做修饰，免得它断了你的财运。  -- 莎士比亚 《李尔王》

在有些时候 ...... 刀刃可以无情地转向挥刀的人......你要小心翼翼地用刀，因为你明白刀是不长眼睛的。 -- Stephen King

 

第四章 制定商业计划书的艺术

准备作战的时候，我发现计划都是无用的，但计划的过程却是必不可少的。 -- Dwight David Eisenhower

It is all right to aim high if you have plenty of ammunition. -- Hawley R. Everhart

 

第五章 白手起家的艺术

这是你最后的机会。从此以后，你再也不能回头。如果你吃蓝药丸--故事将会结束，你在床上醒来，相信你想要相信的一切。如果你吃红药丸--你就会停留在奇境，我将让你看到兔子洞有多深。 --《骇客帝国》 1999年

 

第六章 招聘的艺术

雇佣、信任和奖励那些与你的观点、能力和判断力截然不同的人是非常重要的。这需要非同寻常的谦逊、宽容和智慧，因而也是很罕见的。 -- Dee W.Hock

我的前提是：领导的职能在于培养出更多的领导者，而不是更多的追随者。  -- Ralph Nader

 

第八章 合伙的艺术

你知道什么或者你认识谁，这都不重要。重要的是谁认识你。 -- Susan RoAne

 

第九章 打造品牌的艺术

响亮的品牌不是有意识地创造出来的。企业家们一开始都只是想要推出一种伟大的--而且能赚钱的--产品或服务以及为其提供生存土壤的企业 -- Scott Bedbury

 

一种创新的产品，它必须有实用价值，使用简便且功能突出。它最好只有一个作用，否则会让人迷惑。如果这个东西使用起来不简便，那它就没有用。 -- 彼得*德鲁克

 

为什么有的人有话要说却说不出口，而为什么有的人没有什么可说却又闭不上嘴？ --无名氏

 

后记

书籍本身是个好东西，但也只是生活中一种苍白而没有血肉的代替品  -- 罗伯*路易丝*史蒂文森