和许多创业者一样，罗宾•蔡斯创业的点子同样源于自己的个人生活经历。12年前，现年54岁的蔡斯成立Zipcar公司时，她家正需要第二辆车，但只会偶尔使用。结果如何？她在波士顿创办的这家公司成了全球领先的汽车共用网络，2011年公司年收入达到2.42亿美元。2003年，蔡斯辞去CEO职位，目前正在经营Buzzcar公司，帮助车主在法国出租自己的车辆。她拒绝透露这家公司的具体盈利情况。Buzzcar公司的联合投资者是一家支持可持续交通的法国公司Mobivia。下面就是罗宾•蔡斯的创业传奇：

    我父亲是一名美国外交官，因此，我曾经在多个国家居住。我的成长期主要是在斯威士兰度过，这样的经历也造就了我的全球视角。我母亲是一位极其优秀的企业家。她曾在多个国家创办各种手工作坊，涉及的产品种类从手绢到服装设计，可谓五花八门。

    后来，我去巴黎读大学。1980年，我从威尔斯利学院（ Wellesley College）毕业，获得了文科学位。之后，我前往波士顿卫生保健研究及培训机构JSI工作，该机构接手了多个美国国际开发署（U.S. Agency for International Development）公共健康领域的大合同。在那里，我见识了没有任何金融背景的人如何进行项目运营，所以我决定到商学院继续深造。

    1986年，从麻省理工大学斯隆管理学院（MIT Sloan School of Management）毕业，我心怀壮志，但同时却要抚养孩子。我有三个孩子，分别相差三岁。从商学院毕业到成立Zipcar期间，我有时会做全职工作，有时会做兼职，或者根本没有工作时间，一切取决于孩子的年龄，以及我丈夫的工作。我丈夫（罗伊•拉塞尔）是一位语音识别领域的电气工程师。1999年9月，我与安特耶•丹尼尔森闲聊时，她提到曾经在柏林见过汽车共用服务。安特耶是德国人，她的孩子是我六岁孩子最好的朋友。当时，我待业在家已经有一年时间，正在寻找创业的机会。

    我和丈夫住在马萨诸塞州的坎布里奇。我很少开车，所以我不用再买一辆车。其实，我希望能按小时或按天租车，不必非得拥有一辆属于自己的车。所以，汽车共用的理念深深吸引了我。

    1999年，互联网的繁荣达到了巅峰。大约50%的人在上班时能够上网，25%的人拥有手机。那时的创业群体对无线网络简直就是趋之若鹜。我在与安特耶交谈时想到，汽车共用恰好体现了互联网的意义——在一大群人中共享某种资源，而Zipcar正是对无线网络的有效应用。

    Like a lot of Entrepreneurs, Robin Chase got the idea for a business from personal experience. In the case of Zipcar (ZIP), which she launched 12 years ago, Chase, now 54, needed a second car for her family -- but only on occasion. The result? Her Boston startup has become the world's leading car-sharing network, with annual revenue of $242 million in 2011. Chase, who stepped down as CEO in 2003, is now behind Buzzcar, a service that lets car owners rent out their own vehicles in France. While she declines to reveal numbers, her co-investor in Buzzcar is Mobivia, a French company that supports sustainable transportation practices. Her story:

    My father was an American diplomat, so I have lived in different countries. I grew up primarily in Swaziland and have a global view of the world. My mother was incredibly entrepreneurial. She started a number of cottage industries in several countries, ranging from handicrafts to clothing design.

    I started college in Paris, then graduated from Wellesley College with a liberal arts degree in 1980. After that, I went to work for JSI in Boston, which handled large USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development] contracts in public health. I saw how programs were being run by people who had no knowledge of finance, so I decided to go to business school.

    When I graduated from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1986, I was both ambitious and raising babies. I had three children -- three years apart -- and from the time I finished business school to the time I founded Zipcar, I worked full-time, part-time, or no time, depending on how old the children were, and my husband's job. My husband [Roy Russell] is an electrical engineer who worked with tech teams on speech recognition.

    In September 1999, I was talking with Antje Danielson, whose child was then best friends with my 6-year-old. Antje was German and had seen car sharing in Berlin. I'd just taken a year off from working and was looking to do a startup.

    My husband and I were living in Cambridge, Mass., with one car. There was no way I wanted a second car because I drove so infrequently. Instead, I wanted a car that I could rent by the hour or the day and that I didn't have to own, so the idea of car sharing instantly appealed to me.

    In 1999 it was the peak of the dotcom boom. Fifty percent of the population had Internet access at work, and 25% had cellphones. Wireless was the buzz of the entrepreneurial community. As Antje and I talked, I thought, Car sharing is what the Internet was meant for -- sharing specific resources among large groups of people -- and Zipcar would be a great application for wireless.

    下面就是Zipcar的运作理念。客户可以在线或通过电话预定在某个时段使用某辆车。预定信息通过无线网络发送到汽车上。Zipcar会员可通过会员卡打开预定的汽车。用完之后，用户将汽车返还公司，在将其锁好后，计费便会停止。办理租车仅需要30秒钟便可完成，而且只有承租人可以使用汽车。所以，Zipcar的服务完全是一种自助且自主的服务，瞬间便可完成。

    有了这个想法之后，我们便决定成立一家公司。安特耶的工作是负责汽车技术和联系租车公司。我则负责融资、建设网站、营销、设计支付系统和其他事务。

    首先，我起草了一份商业计划书。1999年12月，我们便去拜访MIT斯隆管理学院（Sloan School）院长格兰•厄本。他曾在汽车制造业从事过营销工作。他认为Zipcar是个好主意，但他说我们需要筹措两倍的资金，将发展速度加快一倍，而且要立即行动。

    接下来三天，我一直在家里思考一个问题：我真的想干这件事吗？我12岁的女儿问我：“发生什么事了？”她曾经跟我聊过联合国儿童基金会（Unicef），我告诉她，我在犹豫是否应该把大把时间花在这家公司，因为这意味着我将不得不减少与家人在一起的时间。她问：“那这是不是意味着，你会很有钱，可以给联合国儿童基金会捐更多钱，拯救更多儿童？”我说没错。她说：“那就干吧。”

    于是，在2000年1月，我们注册成立了公司。到2000年6月，开业当天，我筹得75,000美元，并购买了四辆汽车。其中第一批50,000美元投资来自我在斯隆管理学院的同学珍•哈蒙德（信息技术公司Quarry Technologies与IT服务公司AXON Networks创始人），她是我同学中的首位百万富翁。

    我一直努力说服的一位天使投资人在最后一刻提供了剩下的25,000美元资金。离公司开业还有三天的时候，我们的银行账户只剩下67美元，只有一辆用作β测试的汽车，而购车首付款则以我的房子作为抵押。然而，租车公司突然通知我们，剩下三辆车每一辆必须支付7,000美元首付款。我当时正在公司开业典礼上，胡安•安立奎斯（目前为投资公司Excel Medical Ventures执行董事）走到我面前对我说：“我能为你做些什么？”我说：“明天上午之前，我需要搞到25,000美元。”他说：“没问题。”

    我每周在备用卧室里工作100个小时，但却乐在其中。2000年9月，我丈夫从语音及语言解决方案供应商Lernout & Hauspie辞掉了软件开发总监的工作，成为Zipcar的首席技术官。但他在Zipcar只领半薪，而且我们完全互换了角色。他成了照看孩子的主力，而且，虽然他在Zipcar做的是全职工作，但我却只能给他半薪。Zipcar成立的第一年，我自己没有工资。那年秋天，安特耶又有了一个孩子。2001年1月，回来工作后不久，她便决定离开。我们在第一年便实现了收支平衡。从公司成立伊始，Zipcar每月都以7%至12%的幅度增长。首轮融资，我们获得了130万美元投资。于是，我们产生了向其他城市扩张的想法。当时投资者们认为，Zipcar在波士顿能大获成功，并不代表其理念一定会成功。

    Here's how Zipcar works. You make a car reservation online or by phone for a specific car at a specific time. That information gets sent to the car wirelessly. The Zipcar member uses his card to open the car. After driving it, he returns it and locks it, and the billing is done. The rental transaction takes 30 seconds, and the car opens only to the renter. So it's self-service, autonomous, and takes only a few seconds.

    With that idea, we decided to form a company. Antje's job was to deal with vehicle technology and get hold of the car leases. I did the fundraising, building the website, marketing, designing a payment system, and everything else.

    After I wrote a business plan, we went to see Glen Urban, who was the dean at MIT's Sloan School in December 1999. He had worked in marketing with car manufacturers and said Zipcar was a brilliant idea. He told us we'd need to raise twice as much money, move twice as fast, and get right on it.

    I wandered around the house for the next three days thinking, Do I really want to do this? My 12-year-old daughter asked, "What's going on?" She and I had been talking about Unicef, and I said I needed to decide whether I want to devote time to this company on a big scale, which would mean less time with the family. She asked, "So does this mean you could become rich and could give more money to Unicef and save lots of children's lives?" I said yes. She said, "Do it."

    So in January 2000 we incorporated. I had raised $75,000 by the day we launched with four cars in June 2000. The first $50,000 came from Jean Hammond, a Sloan classmate (founder of Quarry Technologies and AXON Networks), who was the first millionaire among us.

    The remaining $25,000 came at the last minute from an angel investor I'd been working on. Three days before launch, we had $67 in the bank and one car we had bought -- with my house as a down payment -- to use as a beta-test car. Out of the blue, the leasing company wanted a $7,000 down payment for each of the three other cars in the fleet. I was at a startup launch party, and Juan Enriquez (now managing director of Excel Medical Ventures) came up to me and said, "What can I do for you?" I said, "I need $25,000 by tomorrow morning," and he said, "Done."

    I was working out of our spare bedroom doing 100-hour workweeks, but it was a joy. In September 2000, my husband quit his job as director of software development for Lernout & Hauspie, and became the company's CTO. He was on Zipcar's payroll only half-time, and we reversed roles. He became the primary child caretaker, and while I paid him half-time, he actually worked full-time. For the first year of Zipcar, I didn't pay myself. Antje had a child that fall, and after coming back to work, she decided to leave in January 2001.

    在此期间，我们将业务扩展到许多大学城。Zipcar的目标消费群是不需要开车上班的人，大学自然成了理想之选。早期，麻省理工大学和哈佛大学（Harvard）都给我们提供了停车场，还我们进行推广。由于许多人不再开自己的车，而是共用Zipcar的汽车，也就不再需要停车场，于是我们也消除了这些大学在校园内加建停车场的必要。2003年，完成一轮700万美元融资后，公司已经具备了盈利能力。这一年，我父亲去世，我16岁的女儿成为一名超级模特。【卡梅隆•拉塞尔，现年25岁，为卡尔文•克莱恩（Calvin Klein）、普拉达（Prada）、香奈儿（Chanel）和其他许多设计师担任模特。】当时，我非常消沉，觉得自己想做的都已经做到了。于是在2003年，我辞掉了CEO职位。在公司董事会任职两年后，彻底离开Zipcar。现在，我还持有这家公司的部分股份。

    离开Zipcar后，我申请了哈佛大学的勒布奖学金，深造了一年，学习了城市规划、交通和互联网等各方面的知识。2007年，我成立了一家车辆共乘公司Coloco.com，但这家公司的理念太过超前。美国人尚无法接受车辆共乘的概念。这种理念总有一天会在美国普及，但并不是现在。

    交通方面，法国的做法比美国更加超前。法国率先推出自行车共享出行，我曾就大规模单向电动车共享出行咨询过巴黎市政府。去年12月，巴黎市政府投入了1,800辆这种汽车，我也想参与其中。

    于是，2011年6月，我在法国成立了Buzzcar公司，支持车主将汽车出租给朋友和邻居。公司成立至今已有15个月时间，在法国共有12,000名会员和1,500辆汽车。我的联合投资方是法国一家大型私营运输公司Mobivia。

    拥有一个愿景，并能说服人们投资自己创办的事业，而只有你自己能亲眼见证这份事业一步步的发展，这总是让我非常兴奋，不论要经历多少艰难痛苦的日子。我曾开玩笑说，交通是我们日常生活的中心。但同时，我也坚信这一点。我们上班和回家的出行体验会让我们对未来的展望更加多彩。交通占家庭预算的18%，全球二氧化碳排放30%来自交通部门。看到我所成立的公司能够产生社会效益，便是对我最大的回报。

我的建议

    充分利用其别人的闲置能力。我与麻省理工大学建立了合作伙伴关系，校方向其35,000名教职人员和学生发送电子邮件，鼓励他们加入Zipcar。学校这么做不需要任何成本，但从营销角度来讲，我需要投入大笔资金才能取得同样的效果。

    Along the way, we opened in a number of university towns. Zipcar is targeted at people who don't need a car to get to work, and universities are a natural fit. Early on, MIT and Harvard gave us parking spaces and helped market the company. We eliminated the need for each of them to build a parking garage on their campus because of the large number of people who shared Zipcar instead of driving and parking their own vehicles.

    When I finished raising a $7 million round of financing in 2003, we were on the road to profitability. I also had a father who was dying, and a daughter who was becoming a supermodel at age 16. (Cameron Russell, now 25, models for Calvin Klein, Prada, Chanel, and many other designers.) I was a complete wreck, and decided I'd done everything I wanted to do. I stepped down as CEO in 2003, stayed on the board for two years, then left. I still hold some shares in the company.

    After Zipcar, I did a Loeb fellowship at Harvard for a year and learned a lot about urban planning, transportation, and the Internet. I started a ride-sharing company called Goloco.com in 2007, but was too early with it.America's not ready for ride sharing. It will be one day, but not now.

    France is a step ahead of the U.S. in transportation practice. It had been leading with shared transportation in bikes, and I'd been consulting with the city of Paris on transportation with one-way electric-car sharing on a large scale. It launched 1,800 such cars in Paris in December last year, and I wanted to be in the mix.

    So in June 2011, I started Buzzcar in France, which allows you to rent your own car to friends and neighbors. The company is 15 months in now, with 12,000 members and 1,500 cars throughout France. My co-investor is a large, privately held French transportation company named Mobivia.

    It's exciting to have a vision, to persuade people to invest in what you're building, and a privilege to see it play out, despite many a miserable and hard day. I joke, yet believe, that transportation is at the center of our daily lives. Our outlook is colored by what it was like to get to work and home. Transportation contributes to 18% of the household budget and 30% of the world's CO2 emissions. It's extremely rewarding to see the social benefits that have come from the companies I have founded.

My advice

    Leverage other people 's excess capacity. I made a partnership with MIT in which they sent an e-mail to their 35,000 staff and students about joining Zipcar. It cost them next to nothing to do and, from a marketing standpoint, would have cost me a lot to buy.

    了解自己的弱点，通过招聘进行弥补。虽然我成立了一家汽车公司，但我对汽车却是一窍不通。于是我聘用了一位曾在赫兹租车公司（Hertz，《财富》500强）管理北美车队的人，担任公司运营副总裁。

    要有前瞻性，即便这可能会带来伤害。Zipcar成立初期，我将汽车租赁费定得过低，于是不得不两次提价。人们说提高费用会给公司品牌带来风险。但如果继续执行不合适的价格，我们可能已经倒闭了。

    要有自己的特色。我希望强调Zipcar不同于汽车租赁公司，所以我们没有使用汽车租赁公司使用的任何车型。我选择了最新上市的绿色大众甲壳虫作为β测试用车，因为这款汽车不仅外形可爱，而且有良好的口碑。为了吸引注意力，我在车身上加了的公司标识，结果证明，这是非常有效的营销手段。

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    Know your weaknesses and hire to fill them. I started a car company, yet knew nothing about cars. So I hired for my vice president of operations a man who had managed Hertz's (HTZ, Fortune 500) North American fleet.

    Be proactive, even if it hurts. Very early with Zipcar, I put too low a price point on the car rental, and had to raise it twice. People said raising the rate would put our brand at risk. But if the price didn't work, we'd have gone under.

    Stand out from the crowd. I wanted to emphasize that Zipcar was different from car rental companies, so we didn't use any vehicle that could be found in a car rental fleet. For the beta car, I chose a newly introduced green Volkswagen Beetle, which was cute and had cachet. I put our logo on the car because I wanted to draw attention to it, and it worked as great marketing.