去年9月份，T.J.杜安开始在斯坦福大学商学院(Stanford University's Graduate School of Business)学习创业车库(Startup Garage)课程，他计划打造一个面向律师的封闭在线网络。

    这门课程为期24周，但上了大约8周后，他和他的团队抛弃了这个想法。

    “我们改弦易辙，决定打造一个面向社区的工具，”杜安说。他最近刚刚放下手头的工作，返回校园休整。杜安的团队试图帮助研究生根据各自的技能和学术背景找到合适的创业搭档。

    创业车库鼓励失败。创业车库指导老师、斯坦福商学院的运营、信息和技术教授史帝范•赞尼奥斯说，尝试，失败，再次尝试，这个周期有助于学生再三锤炼自己的创意，做好接受天使投资人拷问的准备。

    赞尼奥斯说：“创业车库侧重于种子期融资，也就是说要让你成长到能够站在投资者面前，要求获得25万、50万，甚至100万美元投资的程度。”

    斯坦福大学商学院目前有809名在校生，其中大约95%的学生至少选择上一门创业课，无论是创业车库，产品发布(Product Launch)，还是新创企业的组建( Formation of New Ventures)。在斯坦福创业工作室(Stanford Venture Studio)，申请常驻的学生正在利用这片空间设计和打造公司。其他人正在利用工作室提供的各种服务，比如产品宣传练习、与导师配对，以及点对点辅导。

    尽管选修课程是斯坦福培育学生创业精神的核心方式，但这所学校相对于其他商学院的另一个明显优势是，它位于硅谷。此外，斯坦福距离最大的风投公司集中地、加利福尼亚州门洛帕克仅几英里远。自1996年成立以来，斯坦福大学创业研究中心(CES)充分利用了这个得天独厚的地理位置，不断地从硅谷招募人才，同时还与硅谷领袖缔结了各种合作伙伴关系。

    斯坦福大学与硅谷的联系“对商学院的影响更加迅速，更加深入，”天使投资人，凯鹏华盈风险投资公司(KPCB)前合伙人拉塞尔•席格曼这样说。席格曼目前在斯坦福商学院讲授创业车库和其他课程。

    结果是：斯坦福大学往往会吸引相当多打算自主创业的学生。一旦学生进入硅谷，学校会提供足够多的机会来提升他们成功的几率。2013届斯坦福MBA项目毕业生中，选择自主创业的学生比重再创新高，达到了18%，较90年代末期的12%大幅增长。在社交网站Poets&Quants发布的MBA初创公司100强榜单上，斯坦福和哈佛商学院占据的份额超过一半。（跻身这份榜单的MBA初创公司至少需要募集160万美元。）

    T.J. Duane began the Startup Garage course at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business last September planning to build a closed online network for lawyers.

    About eight weeks into the 24-week class, he and his team ditched that idea.

    "We pivoted ... and decided to instead build a community tool," he says, during a recent break on campus from working on his company. His team's startup will help graduate students find each other based on their skills and academic backgrounds.

    In Startup Garage, failure is encouraged. That cycle of trying, failing, and trying again helps prepare students to pitch bullet proof ideas to angel investors, says Startup Garage instructor Stefanos Zenios, who is also a professor of operations, information, and technology at Stanford.

    "Startup Garage focuses on the seed-stage of funding -- getting to the point where you can stand up in front of investors and ask them for $250,000 or half a million or maybe a million," Zenios says.

    About 95% of Stanford's Graduate School of Business's 809 students opt to take at least one entrepreneurship class -- whether it's Startup Garage, Product Launch, or Formation of New Ventures. At the Stanford Venture Studio, students who apply to be residents are using the space to design and build companies. Others are taking advantage of services like pitch session practice, mentor matching, or peer-to-peer coaching.

    While the elective courses are at the core of Stanford's approach to entrepreneurship, another obvious edge the school has over others is its location in Silicon Valley. It's also just miles from the biggest venture capital firms in Menlo Park, Calif. Since its founding in 1996, the Stanford's Center for Entrepreneurial Studies (CES) has taken advantage of that proximity, hiring from Silicon Valley and creating partnerships with its leaders.

    Stanford's ties to Silicon Valley "rubs off quicker and more deeply at the school," says Russell Siegelman, an angel investor and former partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who teaches Startup Garage and other courses.

    The result: Stanford tends to attract a very high percentage of prospective students who want to do their own thing and, once in Silicon Valley, the school serves up enough opportunities to push the odds in their favor. A record 18% of the 2013 Stanford MBA class chose to form a startup, up from 12% in the late 1990s. According to a Poets&Quants list of the top 100 startup companies founded by MBAs, Stanford and Harvard's business schools together accounted for more than half of the list. (To make the list, an MBA startup had to have raised a minimum of $1.6 million.)

    在这份榜单上，哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)的毕业生占据了34个名额。斯坦福毕业生也不甘落后，共有32家初创公司上榜，其中包括视频流媒体公司Viki、卫星影像公司Skybox、移动初创公司Karma Science、学生贷款再融资公司SoFi和基因检测公司Counsyl。位居榜首的是一个在斯坦福校园如雷贯耳的名字：野火(Wildfire)，一家创建于2008年的社交媒体营销公司，创始人是一对分别毕业于哈佛和斯坦福的夫妇。谷歌(Google)2012年收购了野火公司，交易价格据说高达3.5亿美元。

    位居第6位的SoFi就是在创业车库诞生的。2011年，迈克•卡格尼，丹•麦克林，詹姆斯•菲尼根和伊恩•布雷迪构想出了一个点子，以更低的利率帮助学生筹集资金以偿还学生贷款。他们呼吁斯坦福校友借钱给正在进行再融资的斯坦福学生。“一年的工夫，他们就募集了好几百万美元，”赞尼奥斯说。截至去年9月份，SoFi已经为4,500名借款人筹集了4.5亿美元贷款，人均募得9,400美元。

    身为斯坦福大学创业研究中心的教导主任，赞尼奥斯还鼓励MBA、工程师、律师和医学院学生相互协作。最近一个名为“寻找你的团队”的联谊活动共吸引了250位来自斯坦福大学不同院系的学生。他们正在讨论各自的工作，赞尼奥斯说，如果一切顺利的话，这些学生将组建创业团队。

    与此同时，创业车库学生杜安正在尝试创建一个研究生，特别是MBA学生的在线网络，这些学生一直在寻找计算机科学家帮助他们打造产品。杜安开玩笑地说：“他们会带上一块比萨饼去工程系那边溜达。”

    转变，坚持或消亡

    创业车库在一个名为CoLab，明亮的现代空间授课，这些显然是为了模仿车库的氛围，只不过这个车库充满了白色的宜家( Ikea)风格家具和许多白板。去年9月，100名学生申请参加这门课程。根据他们提交的旨在解决客户痛点的新产品或新服务创意，赞尼奥斯最终接收了70名学生。今天，20多名学生聚在一起，参加一个关于初创公司人力资源问题的讨论会。

    许多商学院的选修课程都使用现实世界的商业案例来传授创业技巧，MBA毕业生往往会在两三年后创办一家公司。作为二年级的选修课，创业车库要求学生借鉴埃里克•里斯宣扬的精益创业模式，迅速开发、推出产品或服务，以避免代价高昂的失败。赞尼奥斯说：“你变成你自己的案例。”

    今天的任务是进行一个竞争力的分析，确定竞争对手的商业模式，并为某位学生的企业确定一个“独特的差异点”。本学季即将结束，团队已经建立了一个为期12个月的营运计划。

    去年，赞尼奥斯采用“翻转课堂”这样一个正在斯坦福校园流行的理念，改变了创业车库的授课方式。不是利用宝贵的课堂时间讲课，翻转课堂要求学生提前观看录制的讲座。学生团队观看讲座，同时在网上提交功课，这样他们就可以利用课堂时间应用自己已经学到的知识。

    去年秋天共有25支团队启动了创业车库，目前仅剩下12支。其中有几支团队已经改弦易辙。有一支团队最初构想了一个面向新车市场的创业理念，但最终转向巴西的宠物托管B&B服务领域。另一支团队放弃了一个针对医疗市场的创意。赞尼奥斯说：“他们碰到了障碍，并且发现无论怎么做也不会产生经济效益，但他们可以迅速地做出调整，把相同的知识应用到他们正在探索的全新领域。”

    Harvard Business School graduates have launched 34 of the top 100 MBA-founded startups. Stanford grads weren't far behind, with 32 startups on the list -- including video streaming company Viki, satellite imaging company Skybox, mobile startup Karma Science, student loan refinancing company SoFi, and genetic testing startup Counsyl. At the top of the list is a name well-known on Stanford's campus: Wildfire, a social media marketing company founded by a Harvard/Stanford couple in 2008. Google (GOOG) acquired WildFire in 2012 for a reported $350 million.

    SoFi, No. 6 on the list, came out of Startup Garage. In 2011, Mike Cagney, Dan Macklin, James Finnigan, and Ian Brady had an idea for refinancing student loans at lower rates. They decided to ask Stanford alumni to lend money to Stanford students who were refinancing. "They raised a couple of million within a year," Zenios says. By last September, SoFi was funding $450 million in loans to 4,500 borrowers at an average savings of $9,400 per borrower.

    As faculty director of CES, Zenios also encourages collaboration between MBAs, engineers, lawyers, and medical school students. A recent "Finding Your Team" social mixer drew 250 people from different Stanford programs, who discuss what they're working on and, if all goes well, get together to form startup teams, Zenios says.

    Meantime, Startup Garage student Duane is trying to connect graduate students online, particularly MBA students, who are always searching for computer scientists to help build a product. "They'll go over and hang out at the engineering department with a pizza," Duane jokes.

    Pivot, persevere or perish

    Startup Garage is held in a bright, modern space called the CoLab, which is meant to resemble a garage; that is, if the garage were filled with white, Ikea-style furniture and many whiteboards. This past September, 100 students applied to take the course. Zenios accepted 70 students with ideas for a new product or service that addressed a customer pain point. More than 20 students are gathered today for a panel on HR issues at startups.

    Many business school electives use real-world business cases to teach entrepreneurialism, and MBA grads move on to start a company two, three years later. Startup Garage, a second-year elective, asks students to build an idea for a company using, in part, the lean startup model, Eric Ries's method of developing and rolling out products or services quickly to avoid costly failures. "You become your own case," Zenios says.

    Today's assignment was to do a competitive analysis, defining rivals' business models and a "unique point of differentiation" for the student's business. With the academic quarter ending soon, teams have already built a 12-month operating plan.

    Last year, Zenios revamped Startup Garage by flipping the classroom, an idea that's gaining traction at Stanford. Instead of using precious classroom time for lectures, a flipped classroom asks students to watch recorded lectures with instructors ahead of time. Student teams watch lectures and file their assignments online so they can spend class time applying what they've learned.

    Of 25 teams that began Startup Garage in fall, 12 are left. A few have pivoted. One team that started with an idea for a new car market ended up switching to a petsitting B&B service in Brazil. Another ditched an idea in the medical market. "They bump up against something [and discover] the economics will never work no matter what we do, but they can apply the same learning to the new space they're exploring and move really quickly," Zenios says.

    团队成员走出课堂，通过采访潜在客户，业内其他企业和专家等方式取得进步。第一个月结束时，学生们会确定用户群体和市场需要，最终产生一个独特的见解，足以使他们确信自己能够以一种新的方式解决客户的需求。

    如果学生带到潜在客户面前的第一个产品原型不能奏效，那就意味着“你没有理解他们的痛点——你还没有解决5件或10个问题，”赞尼奥斯说。随后，学生们重返创业车库，继续修改。

    这门课程的核心是来自创业车库指导老师的不断审议和反馈。这支指导团队共4人，其中包括席格曼，以及另外两位风险资本投资人萨尔•古尔和理查德•林。上课时，他们在团队间来回走动，提供指导意见。古尔是查尔斯河风险投资公司(Charles River Ventures)的普通合伙人。林是斯坦福商学院MBA，三拱门风投公司(Three Arch Partners)合伙人，他曾经在加州大学旧金山分校医学院(UCSF School of Medicine)和哈佛医学院(Harvard Medical School)从事科研工作。

    负责协调课程日常运作的创业车库副主任瑞安•普赖斯说，赞尼奥斯与这三位风投精英的合作已经取得了非常好的效果。有时候，老师本人也会成为投资人。

    去年，创业工厂学生托尼•徐和埃文•摩尔计划并测试了一个名为DoorDash的创意，尝试把圣荷西/南湾地区的餐厅和送外卖的司机联系起来。

    几位学生在冬季学期花了一些工夫，研究餐厅外卖的经济性，尝试着计算他们每小时需要交付多少订单才能盈利。随后，徐和摩尔连同另外两名斯坦福学生一起创办了DoorDash公司。

    2013年9月，毕业仅仅几个月后，他们就获得了230万美元的风投资金，主要投资者包括科斯拉风投公司(Khosla Venture)的基思•拉布伊斯和查尔斯河风投公司的古尔。

    古尔和赞尼奥斯确信，创业精神是可以传授的。“如果把创业分解为一个过程，就可以教人们创业，”赞尼奥斯说。“可以教不同的创业要素，这样它就变得不那么吓人。还可以帮助学生了解在创业的每一个步骤会发生什么事情。”（财富中文网）

    译者：叶寒

    Teams progress by interviewing potential customers, other businesses in their space, and industry experts -- hitting the pavement outside of class. At the end of the first month, students identify their user, the market need, and a unique insight that makes them believe they can address a customer need in a new way.

    If the first prototype brought in front of potential customers doesn't work, it means "you don't understand their pain point -- there are five or 10 things you are not addressing," Zenios says. The students go back and revise.

    At the core of the course is constant review and feedback from the Startup Garage team of four instructors, which includes Siegelman and fellow venture capital investors Saar Gur and Richard Lin, who move from team to team during class. Gur is a general partner at Charles River Ventures. Lin, a Stanford MBA, is a former research scientist at the UCSF School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School, and a partner at Three Arch Partners.

    Pairing Zenios with these three successful investors has worked well, says Startup Garage assistant director Ryann Price, who coordinates the day-to-day operations of the course. Sometimes, the teachers become investors.

    Last year, Startup Garage students Tony Xu and Evan Moore were planning and testing the idea behind DoorDash, which matches local restaurants with drivers who deliver takeout in the San Jose/South Bay area.

    The students spent hours during the winter quarter studying the economics of restaurant takeout, trying to figure out how many orders they needed to deliver per hour to run a profitable business. Xu and Moore went on to launch DoorDash with two other Stanford students.

    In September 2013, just months after graduation, Khosla Ventures' Keith Rabois and Charles River Ventures's Gur led DoorDash's $2.3 funding round.

    Gur and Zenios clearly believe that entrepreneurship can be taught. "If you break it down as a process, then you can teach it," Zenios says. "You can teach people the different elements and it becomes less intimidating. You can teach them what to expect from every part of the process."