2009年，戴维•埃伯斯曼时任生物科技巨头基因泰克（Genentech）首席财务官，某种意义上他也是该公司董事长阿特•莱文森的门生。这一年，埃伯斯曼协助基因泰克完成了金额达460亿美元的一项交易。交易完成后，罗氏控股（Roche Holdings）成为公司的全资股东。此后不久，他就开始接到美国一些大公司打来的招聘电话。

    但埃伯斯曼最后决定加入一家初创企业，虽然当时这家公司的员工人数还不到1,000人，营收微薄，而且首席财务官也像走马灯似地换个不停。

    现在来看，这一步险棋至少获得了回报。

    作为Facebook的首席财务官，现年42岁的埃伯斯曼是这家公司轰动一时的IPO背后主要推手之一。

    埃伯斯曼为人温和谦逊，他在基因泰克的15年职业生涯堪称辉煌。1994年，他作为业务开发分析师加盟基因泰克。他引起了时任首席执行官莱文森的注意【莱文森后来加入了苹果公司（Apple），成为了公司的董事长】。莱文森告诉我，他让埃伯斯曼走上了有别于他人的特殊发展道路，作为有前途的管理人员培养，每隔两、三年会得到提拔，接受新的挑战。

    短短几年后，埃伯斯曼开始管理产品开发业务。他展现出卓越的运营技能之后，被提升为基因泰克制造业务负责人，管理着该公司当时约8,000名雇员的一半左右。

    2006年，他被任命为基因泰克的执行副总裁兼首席财务官，并赢得了善于从长计议的名声。例如，他帮助推动基因泰克接受了某些成本高昂的临床试验，这些试验的结果不确定，但潜在回报巨大。莱文森称：“这些决定可能是当时能做出的最明智的决定，但如果看看公司下一季度或下一年的情况，确实很难下定决心。”

    作为首席财务官，埃伯斯曼很快赢得了投资者和分析师的尊重和钦佩。券商国际策略暨投资集团（ISI Group）的生物科技和医药行业高级分析师马克•舒恩鲍姆称：“当时很多人，包括我自己在内，都说：‘基因泰克究竟是怎么了，居然找一个34岁的人做首席财务官。’”（事实上埃伯斯曼当时是36岁。）但舒恩鲍姆表示，第一次面谈时，他就很快信服了。“埃伯斯曼走进来，开口说话，30秒后，我就说：‘我明白了’。大家都觉得他是个聪明人。”

    舒恩鲍姆说，埃伯斯曼在华尔街颇受欢迎，部分是因为他愿意直面投资者的问题。“他人很好，一点架子都没有，”他说。他还说，罗氏当初收购基因泰克的谈判过程很微妙，埃伯斯曼在其间发挥了重要作用，帮助基因泰克股东实现了利益的最大化。

    Shortly after he helped to close the $46 billion deal that turned Roche Holdings into the full owner of Genentech in 2009, David Ebersman, who was chief financial officer of the biotechnology giant and something of a protégé to Chairman Art Levinson, started fielding recruiting calls from some of America's biggest companies.

    But Ebersman decided to join a startup with fewer than 1,000 employees, meager revenues and a history of cycling through CFOs

    The gambit paid off, to say the least.

    As chief financial officer of Facebook, Ebersman, who is 42, has been one of the chief drivers behind the company's blockbuster IPO filing.

    A quiet and unassuming executive, Ebersman had a stellar, 15-year career at Genentech (RHHBY). He joined in 1994 as a business development analyst. He caught the eye of Levinson, who was CEO at the time (he would later join the Apple (AAPL) board and become its chairman). Levinson tells me he placed Ebersman on special track in which promising executives were promoted and given new challenges every two or three years.

    Within a few years, Ebersman was running product development. After proving his skills as an operator, he was promoted to head Genentech's manufacturing, a position that gave him oversight of about half of the company's 8,000 or so employees at the time.

    In 2006, he was named executive vice president and CFO, and earned a reputation for reinforcing long-term thinking. For example he helped push the company to embrace certain costly clinical trials whose results were uncertain but whose potentially payoffs were huge. "These decisions can be the wisest you can make, but if you are looking at the next quarter or at the next year, they are hard to swallow," says Levinson.

    As CFO, Ebersman quickly earned the respect an admiration of investors and analysts. "A lot of people, myself included, said 'what the hell is going on at Genentech that they are naming a 34-year-old as CFO," says Mark Schoenebaum, a senior analyst covering biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies at the ISI Group. (Ebersman was actually 36 at the time.) But Schoenenbaum says that at their first face-to-face meeting he was quickly mollified. "He comes in, and within 30 seconds of his opening his mouth, I said, 'I get it.' He comes across as brilliant."

    Schoenebaum says Ebersman was well liked on Wall Street, in part because of his willingness to deal forthrightly with investors' questions. "He is a very nice guy with not a shred of ego," he says. And he says Ebersman played an important role in helping to get the most value for Genentech shareholders during delicate takeover negotiations with Roche.

    虽然在基因泰克非常成功，但在Facebook，他面临的是截然不同的一个世界：这是一家自由自在的初创企业，一大群20出头的工程师们天生就不相信“西装革履的家伙”拥有绝对的话语权。

    埃伯斯曼非常努力地去了解Facebook的业务，试图融入其中。埃伯斯曼是一个关注细节的人，喜欢眼见为实，因此，他花了很多时间研究Facebook的广告业务，熟悉公司那些昂贵、极其耗电的基础设备。当初，Facebook决定实施公司历史上最大的资本项目——在俄勒冈中部建设一个庞大的一流数据中心时，他在建设期间多次亲临现场，监控进度。

    融入Facebook的文化还需要打破常规，干出一些大多财务人士都不会做的事情。当初，埃伯斯曼就曾经领导财务部发起了一场“编程马拉松”（hack-a-thon），效仿Facebook工程师们常见的通宵编程合作。

    结果：当时规模尚小的财务高手团队一夜间就“攻克”了一个跨越多个年份的预算案。它的意义已不在于财务计划本身，更多的在于团队建设。“这个预算案还需要几个月的时间才能最后敲定，”埃伯斯曼2010年在为数不多的一次采访中这样告诉我。“我们这样做是为了与公司文化衔接。”

    埃伯斯曼的另一项业余活动则为他在Facebook员工中赢得了更多口碑：他作为贝斯手加入了Feedbomb，即Facebook内部的金曲翻唱乐队。这支乐队已在Facebook的七周年庆典上、在帕洛阿尔托和旧金山的很多场合进行过演出。（在Facebook上的一张乐队照片中，埃伯斯曼换下了自己常穿的正装衬衫，穿着一件枪炮玫瑰的T恤。）“工程师们非常钦佩乐手，”Facebook一位老员工称。“这为他赢得了很多好感。”

    埃伯斯曼很强的运营背景也让Facebook及未来的公众投资者多了一层放心。

    Facebook高调的首席运营官谢莉尔•桑德伯格未来离开Facebook后的去向长期以来一直是硅谷的谈资。当然，没人觉得她短期内就会离开。但如果未来桑德伯格选择政治或公共服务领域，埃伯斯曼将是一个理想的继任者。莱文森说：“很少有他干不好的工作。”

    For all his success at Genentech, at Facebook he was confronted with a radically different world: a freewheeling startup, where 20-something engineers with an inherent mistrust of "suits" ruled the roost.

    Ebersman worked hard to learn the business and to fit in. A detail-oriented person who likes to see things for himself, Ebersman spent hours drilling down on Facebook's advertising business, and becoming familiar with the costly, electricity-guzzling infrastructure. After the company decided to go forward with its biggest capital project ever, a giant state-of-the-art data center in central Oregon, he visited multiple times during construction to keep tabs on its progress.

    Fitting into Facebook's culture also took some stepping out of what you'd think of as the comfort zone of most finance professionals. Early on, Ebersman led a finance department "hack-a-thon," modeled after the all-night programming sessions that are common among Facebook's engineers.

    The result: a multi-year budget that was "hacked" overnight by a still-small team of finance whizzes. It was more exercise in team-building than actual financial plan. "It still took months to finalize it," Ebersman told me in a rare 2010 interview. "It was meant to be a nice tie in with the culture."

    Ebersman earned additional credibility with the Facebook troops through an extracurricular activity: He joined Feedbomb, Facebook's in-house top-40 cover band, as its bass player. The band has played at Facebook's 7th birthday party and a number of venues in Palo Alto and San Francisco. (In a band photo on Facebook, Ebersman traded his usual buttoned-down shirt for a Guns and Roses t-shirt.) "Musicians have a lot of respect among engineers," says a veteran of Facebook. "It gave him a fair amount of cred."

    Ebersman's strong operational background provides an extra layer of comfort for Facebook and its would-be public investors.

    The post-Facebook aspirations of Sheryl Sandberg, the company's high-profile COO, have long been the talk of Silicon Valley. No one expects her to leave any time soon. But if Sandberg opts for a future in politics or public service down the line, Facebook would have in Ebersman a well-prepared executive to step into her shoes. Says Levinson: "There are very few jobs he wouldn't excel at."