打敗優(yōu)步的柳青

For two years, Jean Liu and Travis Kalanick were mortal adversaries, as their businesses, the world’s two largest ride-sharing companies, fought an increasingly bitter and expensive war. Kalanick, CEO of Uber, the San Francisco-based ride-hailing app, was trying to muscle into China, where Liu is president of Didi Chuxing, Uber’s Chinese equivalent.

2年來，柳青(Jean Liu)和特拉維斯•卡蘭尼克(Travis Kalanick)一直是死敵，他們各自的企業(yè)、世界上最大的兩家共乘公司，打了一場日漸激烈和昂貴的戰(zhàn)爭?？偛课挥谂f金山的打車應(yīng)用公司優(yōu)步(Uber)的首席執(zhí)行官卡蘭尼克試圖以強力突入中國市場，而柳青則是類似優(yōu)步的中國企業(yè)滴滴出行(Didi Chuxing)的總裁。

The hard-fought contest saw their respective companies spend in excess of $1bn a year in a battle to lock in market share and bankrupt each other. It also pitted the man who, for many, represents the macho culture of Silicon Valley against a woman who, at first glance, appears to typify the “gentle”, soft-spoken persona of the Chinese feminine ideal.

這場艱苦的較量讓他們各自公司為了鎖定市場份額并耗盡對方實力，一年花費逾10億美元。這也是一場在很多人眼中代表硅谷男性文化的男人，與一個乍看之下似乎是“溫柔”、輕言細語的中國女性理想典范的女人之間的較量。

Liu laughs when asked about the dynamic. Kalanick “is an aggressive businessman but a good player,” she says. The one detail that stands out, she says, is his taste for red sneakers. “Travis impressed me with his consistent taste . . . every time I saw him he wore the same pair of red sneakers,” she laughs. “He has a consistent taste in shoes so I guess that means he is a guy who is consistent and persistent — and focused.”

當(dāng)被問到兩人之間的這種互動時，柳青笑起來。她說，卡蘭尼克“是一個強硬的商人，但也是一個優(yōu)秀的競爭者”，有一個細節(jié)非常突出，那就是他對紅色運動鞋的鐘愛。“特拉維斯始終如一的品味讓我印象深刻……每次我看到他，他都穿著同一雙紅色運動鞋，”她笑著說，“他對鞋子的品味一直不變，因此我猜想，這意味著他也是一個始終如一、堅持不懈的人——而且專注。”

And what about that female stereotype? Sitting in her Beijing office, Liu discusses the clichés she has to contend with each day. “In China, women should act more gently and speak more softly,” she says. “That’s a Chinese cultural stereotype from ancient history. So a lot of times if you speak too loudly, you’re being considered overly aggressive.”

那個有關(guān)女性的刻板印象呢?坐在她位于北京的辦公室里，柳青談到了她必須每天應(yīng)對的陳詞濫調(diào)。“在中國，女性應(yīng)該表現(xiàn)得更溫柔，說話應(yīng)該更輕柔，”她說，“這是中國自古以來的文化定式。因此很多時候，如果你說話太大聲，你會被認為過于咄咄逼人。”

Liu’s rise to fame in the tech world is not exactly testament to a gentle approach. This August, the 38-year-old — along with Didi’s chairman Cheng Wei — won the war against Uber, which sold its China operations for a 20 per cent stake in Didi. Uber is infamous for playing rough but Didi was rougher — or, at least, richer — and enjoyed home-court advantage. In what became a fantastically reckless round of poker, both companies spent an astronomical amount on subsidies in an attempt to grab market share.

柳青在科技企業(yè)界的聲名鵲起并不只是證明了“溫柔”策略的勝利。今年8月，38歲的柳青和滴滴董事長程維一同在與優(yōu)步的戰(zhàn)爭中取得了勝利。后者將中國業(yè)務(wù)賣給滴滴，換得滴滴20%的股份。優(yōu)步因為野蠻競爭而臭名昭彰，而滴滴更野蠻——或者，至少錢包更鼓——并且享有主場優(yōu)勢。在令人難以置信的一輪不計后果的比拼中，兩家公司都為了奪取市場份額花掉了天文數(shù)字的資金用于補貼。

Winning took a lot of money, which Liu helped bring in, and also nerves. To raise billions and then essentially give it away in subsidies required something greater: a cast-iron belief in eventual success. “We wouldn’t be where we are today without burning cash,” boasted a distinctly bolder Liu, at the height of the war in September 2015. She might as well have lit a cigar with a $100 bill. “Cash burning” became a mantra for Didi and, eventually, Uber ended the epic battle.

勝利需要大量的金錢，柳青不僅幫助帶來了這些資金，還帶來了膽量。募集數(shù)十億資金，再以補貼的形式實際上將這些資金送出去，需要一些更強大的東西：相信最終會成功的鐵一般的信念。“不燒錢我們走不到今天這一步，”在2015年9月燒錢大戰(zhàn)的頂峰，顯然更為大膽的柳青夸口。她沒準用一張100美元的鈔票點過雪茄呢。“燒錢”成為了滴滴的真言，最終優(yōu)步終結(jié)了這場史詩大戰(zhàn)。

Liu continues to resist the idea that the outcome with Uber was anything other than a consensual, win-win affair. “The war with Uber . . .” She catches herself. “Actually, I didn’t mean to say war, because it wasn’t a war . . . War is short term but when we talk about building something, that is long term.”

柳青依然堅持，與優(yōu)步的最終結(jié)果只是共識性的雙贏局面，而不是這之外的任何情況。“與優(yōu)步的戰(zhàn)爭……”她發(fā)現(xiàn)自己也出現(xiàn)了口誤，“事實上，我并不是說那是一場戰(zhàn)爭，因為那并不是一場戰(zhàn)爭……戰(zhàn)爭是短期的，但當(dāng)我們說到建立什么東西，那是長期的。”

Outside the cloister of Liu’s office lies the geometric concrete landscape of Zhongguancun — China’s answer to Silicon Valley — a northern suburb of Beijing, which is home to some of the country’s biggest tech companies. The latte-drinking, bike-sharing culture of Zhongguancun is heavily tilted towards a brand of Silicon Valley evangelism: the idea that advancing technology can be a game without losers. “[A] focus on winning and losing just limits your potential,” Liu says.

在柳青的辦公室外是中關(guān)村幾何式的混凝土實景。位于北京北部的中關(guān)村相當(dāng)于美國的硅谷，是中國最大的一些科技公司的所在地。中關(guān)村喝拿鐵咖啡、共享單車的文化明顯帶有硅谷特有的福音主義的痕跡：認為推進科技可以是一種沒有輸家的游戲。“只關(guān)心輸贏只會限制你的潛力，”柳青說。

 . . .   . . . 

The contest with Uber was just a warm-up for the real test that Liu now faces — transforming Didi from a $35bn taxi company into a global internet powerhouse. At its current valuation, Didi is approaching China’s behemoths Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu, which, collectively, cater to the world’s largest internet market.

與柳青現(xiàn)在面臨的真正考驗——把滴滴從一家估值350億美元的打車公司轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)橐患胰蛐曰ヂ?lián)網(wǎng)巨擘——相比，和優(yōu)步的較量只是一場熱身。滴滴目前的估值正在接近中國的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)巨頭騰訊(Tencent)、阿里巴巴(Alibaba)和百度(Baidu)，這三家公司都服務(wù)于中國這個世界最大的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)市場。

According to official figures, China outstrips everyone else in just about every metric one can find to measure internet business: its ecommerce market is greater than that of the US; its internet-payments industry accounts for two-thirds of global volumes; and it has one-fifth of the world’s smartphone users. Liu gives another example: Didi currently handles 20 million rides per day — that is three times larger than the global total for ride-hailing apps, she says.

官方數(shù)據(jù)顯示，在衡量互聯(lián)網(wǎng)業(yè)務(wù)的幾乎所有指標上，中國都領(lǐng)先于其他國家：中國的電商市場規(guī)模大于美國;中國的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)支付行業(yè)處理了全球三分之二的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)支付額;中國擁有全球五分之一的智能手機用戶。柳青還舉了另外一個例子：滴滴目前每天要處理2000萬個訂單，是全球其他叫車應(yīng)用公司訂單總和的三倍。

Getting that number to grow may be tricky and, crucially, means redefining Didi’s mission: 20 million seems like a lot until you measure it against all rides, everywhere in China. This figure is somewhere around 700 million each day, according to Liu’s back-of-the-envelope calculation. “Twenty million daily rides — that only represents 2 per cent of everybody’s daily ride. That means huge potential in front of us. But, in order to achieve that, it means we have to make huge technology breakthroughs. We need to invest all of our capacity and manpower,” she says.

讓這個數(shù)字繼續(xù)增長可能難度很大，而且關(guān)鍵是，這意味著重新定義滴滴的使命：2000萬看似很多，但把它跟全中國全部的出行次數(shù)相比，就不會這樣覺得了。根據(jù)柳青的粗略計算，全中國每天大約有7億人次乘車出行。柳青說：“每天2000萬訂單僅僅代表著出行總數(shù)的2%，這意味著巨大的市場潛力。不過，為了挖掘這個潛力，我們需要有重大的技術(shù)突破。我們需要投入我們?nèi)康哪芰亢腿肆Α?rdquo;

The end of the (non) war with Uber has given Liu and her team something they desperately crave — time to focus on these emerging challenges. She is just back from a round of meetings in the US aimed at recruiting big-data scientists. Burning cash to get a critical mass of customers, she says, was the way to get “from zero to one” but to get from “one to 100” you need technology such as big data and machine learning.

結(jié)束與優(yōu)步的“非戰(zhàn)爭”給了柳青及其團隊渴求的東西——有時間專注于這些新的挑戰(zhàn)。她剛剛結(jié)束了在美國的一輪會議回國，此行旨在招聘大數(shù)據(jù)科學(xué)家。她表示，燒錢贏得臨界數(shù)量的用戶是“從0到1”，但要實現(xiàn)“從1到100”，你就需要大數(shù)據(jù)和機器學(xué)習(xí)等技術(shù)。

“If you go downstairs and try to get a car, that’s easy,” she says. “But if 100 people go downstairs and try to get a car, that wouldn’t work. Now think about it for a moment — what if the network knows that at this moment, 11.45am, there will always be 100 people coming out of this building? And what if the network knows which directions they will be going? And what if the network knows the drivers around this area — where their destinations are? Then we can match perfectly,” she says, every bit the technology evangelist.

“如果你要下樓打一輛車，這很容易。”她說，“但如果100個人同時下樓打車，就不好辦了?，F(xiàn)在，你想象一下，如果網(wǎng)絡(luò)知道，在上午11點45分這個時候總是會有100個人到這座樓的樓下打車，如果網(wǎng)絡(luò)知道他們?nèi)ネ膫€方向，如果網(wǎng)絡(luò)知道有哪些司機在這周邊，他們又去往哪里，我們就能完美地進行調(diào)配。”一個十足的技術(shù)布道者。

As a successful female business leader, Liu is still a rarity, but she insists that in China women face fewer obstacles in technology companies than they do elsewhere. While glass ceilings might be very hard to crack, they are comparatively easier in customer-driven, private-sector-dominated industries such as technology. A study by the Cyberspace Administration of China estimates that women founded 55 per cent of new internet companies in the country. This compares with the US, where only 22 per cent of start-ups have one or more women on their founding teams, according to research by Vivek Wadhwa and Farai Chideya, authors of Innovating Women (2014). “My feeling is that there are more women in China in tech than in other industries,” Liu says. “In the internet era, the key to a successful business is understanding the customers’ expectations — and half the customers are women.”

作為一名成功的女性企業(yè)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人，柳青這樣的女性仍屬鳳毛麟角，但她堅稱，在中國，女性在科技公司面臨的障礙比其他地方少。盡管玻璃天花板可能很難打破，但是在科技等客戶驅(qū)動、私營企業(yè)主導(dǎo)的行業(yè)里，女性晉升相對容易些。中國國家互聯(lián)網(wǎng)信息辦公室(Cyberspace Administration of China，簡稱“網(wǎng)信辦”)在一項研究中估計，中國55%的新互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司都是女性創(chuàng)立的。相比之下，《創(chuàng)新女性》(Innovating Women)(2014年出版)作者維維克•瓦德瓦(Vivek Wadhwa)和法拉伊•奇德亞(Farai Chideya)的研究顯示，美國只有22%的初創(chuàng)企業(yè)在創(chuàng)始團隊中有一名或一名以上的女性。柳青表示：“我感覺中國科技界的女性數(shù)量要比其他行業(yè)的多。在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)時代，企業(yè)成功的關(guān)鍵是理解客戶的期望，而一半的客戶是女性。”

Still, gender discrimination remains brazen in China, where ads for senior positions often specify that only men need apply. Liu says that she has never experienced discrimination while at Goldman Sachs nor at Didi, but her experience is not typical of Chinese women. She has spent her life bouncing from elite institution to elite institution in a dizzying spiral of success.

不過，性別歧視在中國仍然大行其道，高級職位招聘廣告往往指定只要男性。柳青說，她在高盛(Goldman Sachs)和滴滴從未遇到性別歧視，但這并非中國女性的典型經(jīng)歷。她的人生道路一帆風(fēng)順，從一個精英機構(gòu)到另一個精英機構(gòu)，接二連三地取得了令人目眩的成功。

Liu was born in 1978 into Chinese tech royalty, as the daughter of Liu Chuanzhi, who founded Lenovo, the computer maker that bought IBM’s PC business in 2005 and subsequently became the largest PC maker in the world. “My father said one thing that has stayed with me: ‘It’s supposed to be hard,’” she says. “When you have that mentality, you find nothing is so difficult. It’s supposed to be hard. Then you actually start to enjoy it and have fun.”

1978年，柳青生于中國科技企業(yè)界的一個顯赫家庭。她是聯(lián)想(Lenovo)創(chuàng)始人柳傳志的女兒。計算機制造商聯(lián)想在2005年收購了IBM的個人電腦(PC)業(yè)務(wù)，之后成為世界最大PC制造商。“我父親說過的一句話我始終記得：‘做事情難是應(yīng)該的，’”她說，“當(dāng)你擁有這種心態(tài)，你會發(fā)現(xiàn)沒有什么事情那么難。難是應(yīng)該的。那么你就會真的開始享受，開始有樂趣。”

Indeed, Liu has made it all look easy. Graduating from Peking University with a degree in computer science, she went on to do a masters degree at Harvard, followed by 12 years at Goldman Sachs, mostly in Hong Kong. Leaving Goldman in 2014 was “one of the hardest decisions I ever made”, she says, but joining Didi was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up.

的確，柳青讓一切都看起來很簡單。從北京大學(xué)(Peking University)計算機系本科畢業(yè)后，柳青前往哈佛大學(xué)(Harvard)攻讀碩士學(xué)位，之后在高盛工作12年，期間主要是在香港。2014年離開高盛是“我做過的最艱難的決定之一”，她說，但加入滴滴是一個她無法錯失的機會。

Didi’s chairman Cheng Wei recruited her by taking her and other senior executives on a road trip to Tibet. Ride-sharing at the time was a nascent industry — and something that Liu saw a market for. Navigating Chinese streets with small children, she found the state-regulated taxi services maddening. “When I first moved back to China from Hong Kong, I often found myself stuck in the middle of the street or curb with my kids, trying to hail a taxi. At that time, in 2012, obviously, there were no choices for people like us.”

滴滴的董事長程維讓柳青加入滴滴的方式是帶著她和其他滴滴高管進行一次西藏自駕之旅。當(dāng)時共乘還是一個新興行業(yè)——而柳青在其中看到了市場。在和孩子們在中國的街道上逛的時候，她發(fā)現(xiàn)受政府監(jiān)管的出租車服務(wù)令人抓狂。“我最早從香港搬回內(nèi)地的時候，常常發(fā)現(xiàn)自己為了打到一輛出租車而和孩子們被困在街道中央。當(dāng)時，也就是2012年，像我們這樣的人顯然別無選擇。”

But what really appealed was the chance to put her own stamp on the company. “When you join a company that’s only two years old, you don’t feel like a professional manager, that you are joining a mature business and your role is to just be a part of it. You feel you have the potential to shape this company and grow the culture together.”

但真正吸引她的是有機會給這家公司打上自己的印記。“當(dāng)你加入一家只創(chuàng)立了兩年的公司時，你不會感覺自己是加入一家成熟公司的職業(yè)經(jīng)理人，你的角色是成為其中的一部分。你感到你有潛力塑造這家公司，能夠一起發(fā)展公司文化。”

Her first challenge was to put Didi on the map with investors while also using her not inconsiderable contacts from the Chinese tech industry. Analysts put the number of investors in Didi at around 90; Liu says that while fundraising was part of her role that she “never met 95 per cent of our investors,” before coming to work at Didi. She did raise $1bn from Apple in a singularly audacious deal she personally oversaw, one which may have contributed to Uber throwing in the towel.

她的第一個挑戰(zhàn)是讓滴滴在投資者中出名，同時利用好她在中國科技界不可小視的人脈。分析師認為滴滴的投資者大概有90個;柳青表示，盡管籌資是她工作內(nèi)容的一部分，她在加入滴滴之前“與我們95%的投資者從未會面”。她從蘋果公司(Apple)那里募集到10億美元，這是她親自監(jiān)督的一筆尤為大膽的交易，這筆交易可能也促成了優(yōu)步的認輸。

Among all this, Liu was treated for breast cancer last year. She has now recovered. “I was lucky to have the support from my family, my friends and my team here,” she says. Now she is focusing on the next professional hurdle: defeating or at least blunting the impact of regulations in Beijing and Shanghai aimed at limiting drivers to those with residence permits, or hukou. If this were implemented, it would decimate the ranks of Didi’s drivers, who are mainly migrants from other provinces.

去年柳青被診斷出乳腺癌。如今她已康復(fù)。“我很幸運得到了我的家庭、朋友和團隊的支持，”她說?，F(xiàn)在她正專注于下一個職業(yè)難關(guān)：擊敗、或者至少削弱北京和上海關(guān)于網(wǎng)約車司機必須有本地戶口的規(guī)定的影響。如果這種法規(guī)得到實施，大批滴滴司機將因此無法上路，其中的主體是來自其他省份的移民。

Didi is no stranger to dealing with hostile regulation, and Liu and her colleagues are meeting regional mayors at a furious pace in an effort to convince them to allow the nascent ride-hailing-app industry to continue to thrive in their cities. “Innovation always outgrows regulation,” she says. Her approach to dealing with the challenges her company faces remains the same: “Be gentle but firm when you believe in yourself.”

對于應(yīng)對不利的法規(guī)，滴滴并不陌生。柳青和她的同事正在以驚人的速度與地方市長會面，努力說服他們允許新生的打車應(yīng)用行業(yè)繼續(xù)在他們的城市繁榮發(fā)展。“創(chuàng)新總是超前于監(jiān)管，”她說。在應(yīng)對她的公司所面臨的挑戰(zhàn)時，她的策略還是一樣：“當(dāng)你相信自己的時候，你要溫柔但堅定。”

Charles Clover is the FT’s Beijing correspondent

本文作者是英國《金融時報》北京通訊員