2012年伊始，不少创业公司的高管都把自己手里的那本《精益创业》（Lean Start-Up）塞回了书架，仰面朝天，为自己将要面对一系列全新的挑战而唏嘘不已。虽然现在讨论如何为初出茅庐的创业公司找到产品／市场匹配度的建议铺天盖地，但其中却暗含着一条奸诈的小秘密：实现适销对路之际，难题才真正开始。其难点就在于规模化。

    橱窗公司打拼了三四年后，终于实现了上百万美元的营收，有了一二十名员工，一切都开始步入正轨。此时，压力才真正出现。公司里的员工会开始幻想：“如果我们公司价值10亿美元，那我就算是百万富翁了！”——我管这种想法叫“影子股票算术”；公司的诸位风投对你的认知将从“言之尚早”转变为“具有高回报的潜力”；配偶也会开始打探你的努力工作何时会真正获得回报。

    然而，事关规模化的艰难挑战和决策正在前方等待着你。只有它们才能催生出真正的价值，而非区区的一时进展。我发现，创业公司一旦开始看到自己的初期投入终于结出了果实，便会面临以下几个最艰巨的挑战：

    1.产品策略：保持专注vs.拓展范围。初期产品表现良好；此时的问题在于，应该将产品策略拓展至何等程度？如果你认为既有产品的现有市场总量（TAM）足以满足你与投资者的胃口，那就保持专注。然而，通常来说，取得更大胜绩的诱惑会诱使创业者踌躇满志，通过有机成长甚或并购来拓展产品范围。我的合伙人奇普•哈泽尔德喜欢将这种拓展模式称为“荷叶策略”：全力跳到相邻的而不是池塘另一端的某片荷叶上。着眼于这种天然的毗连性，企业可以提高自己的现有市场总量——理想的情况是利用既有的客户（扩大客户的服务范筹）、渠道（增加渠道的供应量）或产品（开发天然相关的附加产品拓展现有产品范围）。令我常常感到诧异的是，企业在评估这些连带机遇的时候，并没有仔细考量竞争策略的基本要素。

    可能会有人因为我摆出一副竞争策略大师的架势而赏我几枚白眼，但我真诚地建议各位创业公司的CEO：在评估连带机遇的时候，好好地考量一下那片“新荷叶”的竞争强度、进入风险、替代品的威胁以及供应商和客户的实力。

    2. 财务策略：功成身退vs.扩大融资。火势正旺时，总是教人忍不住想要再添一把柴。如果顾客购置成本（CAC）为1美元，顾客终身价值（LTV）为2美元，何不筹集个几百万美元，获得更多的客户？很显然，这个决策并不轻松。融资是个极其另人分心、操心的过程——再加上股权的稀释，以及投资者的选择，均会对你未来的选择空间产生深远的影响。另一方面，功成身退可能也很教人动心，尤其是对一名从未成功过的创业者而言。但这同样会有许多难题需要考量，我的博文《远离流动性》（Walking Away From Liquidity）和罗杰•艾伦伯格的博文《卖还是不卖》（To Sell or Not To Sell）中，对此均有阐述。

    At the onset of 2012, many start-up executives are sticking their copy of Lean Start-Up on the shelf, leaning back and bemoaning the fact that they have a new set of challenges ahead of them. Although there is a plethora of advice now being given about how to find product-market fit for your fledging start-up, there's a dirty little secret out there: Once you've achieved product-market fit, the hard work really begins. Scaling is hard.

    After three or four years of jamming on your start-up, you've finally crossed a few million in revenue, gotten north of 10-20 employees, and it's all starting to click. Now the pressure really begins. Your employees start doing what I call "phantom equity math" (if this company were worth a billion dollars, I'd become a multimillionare!), your VCs shift you in their mental models from "too early to tell" to "high return potential" and your spouse starts asking about when all that hard work is going to really pay off.

    Yet, the hard scaling challenges and decisions that will enable true value creation, not just interim progress, are all ahead of you. Here are a few of the top ones that I see start-ups wrestle with once they start seeing their initial revenue projections finally come to fruition:

    1. Product Strategy: Stay Focused vs. Broaden the Footprint. The initial product is working well and now the question is how broad a product strategy should you pursue? If you think the total available market (TAM) for the existing product is large enough to satisfy yours and your investor's ambitions, stay focused. But, typically, the allure of pursuing the bigger win draws founders into ambitious efforts to broaden their product footprint through organic development efforts or even M&A. My partner Chip Hazard likes to refer to the broadening efforts as the "lilly pad strategy": Focus on jumping on to a lillypad next to you rather than across the entire pond. By pursuing natural adjacencies, a company can increase its TAM - ideally by leveraging existing customers (meet their needs more broadly), channels (given them more things to sell) or products (extend the current prodcut footprint with natural adjacent add-ons). I'm often surprised that companies don't think through the basics of competitive strategy when evaluating these adjacent opportunities.

    At the risk of getting some eye rolls for evoking Michael Porter, I encourage start-up CEOs to think carefully about the new lilly pad's competitive intensity, entrance threats, threats of substitute products as well as the power of suppliers and customers when evaluating the adjacent opportunities.

    2. Financial Strategy: Exit vs. Raise Additional Capital. Once things are working well, there is a magnetic power that demands pouring more fuel onto the fire. If the customer acquisition costs (CAC) are proving out to be $1 and the customer's lifetime value (LTV) are $2, why not raise millions of dollars to acquire more customers? Obviously, it's not that easy a decision. Raising capital can be a hugely distracting, draining process -- and the dilution implications, as well as the choice of investors, have deep repercussions on your future options. On the other hand, pursuing an early exit can be appealing, particularly if the entrepreneur has never had a win before, but there are many difficult considerations here as well, which I touch on in a blog post (Walking Away From Liquidity) as does Roger Ehrenberg (To Sell or Not To Sell).

    3. 人力资本策略：聘请老手vs.只招新人。创始团队同进同退，随着公司发展不断扩容，无疑极具吸引力，而且有很多好处：公司文化的核心将得以维持不变，有才干的年轻员工将获得发展机会，外来者加入带来的干扰将被降至最低程度。然而，才能卓越、帮助你一路走到规模化入口处的创始团队却常常并不适合引领接下来的规模化之路。我把创业公司的生命期分为三个阶段，分别是“丛林”、“土路”和“高速公路”。擅于在丛林中开辟道路的团队，常常并不适应找出一条土路之后的迅速加速。但在有资历更深、经验更丰富的高管加入时，保留创始文化和保持团结又至关重要。最好的公司会为了规模化而提早打造团队（比如，在部门成长时，聘用可同时有效担任执行者与指导者角色的优秀副总），努力挑选契合公司文化的人【谷歌（Google）公司数一数二的招聘主管迈克•加戈曾就招聘最佳攻略接受了美国私募股权新闻网站peHUB的采访，题为《好人有好报》（Why It Pays To Be Nice），非常精彩】。

    4. 创始人的两难选择：是否引入职业经理人？一间资历尚浅的公司在规模化进程中要作的一项最为重大的决策便是：应该由什么人担任CEO？创始人或许会是一个具备独特才能、可将公司从丛林中一路带上高速公路的人，但在更多的时候却并非如此，人们需要聘请资深的职业经理人，协助引领公司发展至下一阶段。这一决策是真正的不成功便成仁。一切要看创始人的意愿，以及董事会是否相信，职业经理人有能力使公司从以产品为中心、寻找产品市场匹配度的阶段转入以营销为中心、找到产品市场匹配度之后的阶段。投资者总是希望由创始人来实现这一转变，可如果创始人并不具备这种能力，通过对外求助、实现有序过渡就成了关键所在。哈佛大学商学院（HBS）的诺姆•沃瑟曼教授曾就这一话题撰写过一系列案例，阐明了这个转变过程中该做和不该做的事情。这种转变从来都不轻松。

    上述决定每一个都教人费尽思量，都等同于拿公司命运作赌。听说在这些问题上的决定有可能导致功败垂成的悲惨结局。进展顺利时，你会想让上述决策发生得自然而然，而且取得某种程度的成功，即使只是小小的胜利。这可能意味着沿用最初的领导团队、实行适当的产品策略以及早日脱手。

    为什么上述的决策每一项听来都效果有局限性呢？这是因为，伟大的企业家都是些不畏竞争、雄心勃勃的人，他们会招徕雄心勃勃的管理团队、顾问和投资者。一旦设想中的产品市场匹配性得到了验证，他们就会下意识地积极行动，实现规模化。但在规模化的过程中，务必请保持明智。要让营收从100万美元增长到1,000万美元，其难度并不亚于达到最初100万美元的水平。而达到1亿美元甚至更多的时候，你便真正开始跻身于大公司的行列。这会让你周围的人激动不已，同时也会使众人的期望值飙升。

    本文作者杰夫•巴斯冈是风投公司飞桥资本合伙公司（Flybridge Capital Partners）的一般合伙人。

    译者：千牛絮

    3. Human Capital Strategy: Hire Grownups vs. Stay Young. There is a certain charm and many benefits to the founding team sticking together and scaling with the start-up. The culture remains true to the founding core, the young talented employees get growth opportunities, and there's an appeal to minimizing the disruption that outsiders bring. Yet, frequently, the talented founding team that gets you to the point of scaling is not the right team to lead the scaling process. I refer to the three stages of a start-up's life as "the jungle," "the dirt road" and "the highway." The team that is skilled at hacking its way through the jungle is often not as well-suited to accelerate rapidly once a dirt road has been discovered. Yet when more senior, experienced executives arrive, preserving the founding culture and maintaining alignment is critical. The best companies build teams for scale early on (e.g., hiring great VPs who can be both effective players and coaches as their department grows) and work hard to select for cultural fit (Google's top recruiter, Mike Junge, had a great interview on hiring best practices in peHUB, "Why It Pays To Be Nice").

    4. Founder's Dilemma: Bring in a Professional CEO? One of the biggest decisions a scaling young company makes is - who should be the CEO? The founder may be one of the uniquely talented individuals who can scale from the jungle all the way through the highway but, more often than not a senior, professional CEO is hired to help take the company to the next level. This decision is truly make or break. It rests on the founder's desires as well as the board's confidence in their ability to transition from a product-centric, pre product-market fit world to a sales and marketing execution-centric, post product-market-fit world. Investors would always prefer to see the founder make that transition, but if the skillset isn't there, having an orderly transition with open communication is key. HBS Professor Noam Wasserman has written a series of cases on this topic that show some of the do's and don'ts of navigating this transition. It's never an easy one to embark on.

    Each of these decisions can be gut-wrenching, bet the company moves. There's a nasty image I hear used in the board room about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. If things are going well, you want to let them evolve naturally and achieve some measure of victory, albeit a small one. This may mean sticking with a founding leadership team, a niche product strategy and selling early.

    Why should each of these decisions sound limiting? Because great entrepreneurs are competitive, ambitious types who attract ambitious management teams, advisors and investors. There's a natural allure to moving aggressively to scale once the initial product-market fit assumptions become validated. Just scale wisely. Going from $1 million to 10 million in revenue is no easier than achieving that initial $1 million. And getting to $100 million and beyond, well now you're really in the rarified air that gets the people around you excited - and sets expectations soaring higher.

    Jeff Bussgang is general partner at venture capital firm Flybridge Capital Partners. You can follow him on Twitter @bussgang