作者：Stuart Dredge

“保持开阔视野，全力以赴改变世界，而非仅创造渐进成就……”

在日前的伦敦“ME Top 50 Innovators”大会上，Playfish主管Kristian Segerstrale（游戏邦注：他如今负责EA社交游戏业务）热情洋溢地呼吁英国移动初创公司行动起来。

大会聚集英国50家最具创造性的移动公司，Segerstrale称“今天是初创公司的重要时刻”。

Kristian Segerstrale(from bbgsite.com)

为什么？因为小型移动公司不论身处哪个行业，都能带来惊人突破。谈到当前经济形势和大公司裁员现象，Segerstrale表示，“如今的大型公司处境不佳，要制作富有创造性的新颖内容非常困难。”

“然而今天，用户首次得以访问具有可用性的手机平台和平板电脑。这些用户希望转变自己的操作方式。”

Segerstale还指出，如今大家能够通过云端服务和软件服务工具在短短几天内创建新公司、新企业。

他表示，“以前小公司从未有机会挑战业内巨头。没有行业能够提供像移动领域这样的机会。”

Segerstrale过去致力于移动游戏领域，先是在英国开发公司Macrospace任职，后来担任Glu Mobile EMEA地区主管（游戏邦注：在Glu Mobile收购Macrospace后）。几年后他离开Glu Mobile自己创建Playfish。

他表示，“移动领域的杰出之处不仅在于优质用户体验：将来我们或许会达到这样的临界点，制造移动设备和智能手机变得和制造功能手机一样廉价和简单。”

“未来3-5年，内容瞄准的平台将由功能手机转向智能手机，即便是在新兴经济市场。智能手机用户将由10-15亿增加至40-50亿，这有点不可思议。”

Segerstrale给英国移动初创公司提出5点建议：

1. 开阔视野

“考虑目标时，大处着眼，大胆试验。不要只是把产品投放市场，然后据此创收，而是要真正改变世界。这里存在大型公司无法把握的机会：若公司规模巨大则很难瞄准此平台。用户从桌上电脑转移至移动平台，大型公司绝不会进行相应转移，但小型公司就可以。”

“若能把握长远目标，则不要从小处着手：其成本相同。愿意放手一搏，改变世界，而非仅创造渐进成就。这非常有趣，毕竟生命短暂，这最终体现在你如何吸引人才和资金。”

2. 筹集更多资金

“大处着眼，则获利丰厚。我在欧洲碰到很多初创公司，每次谈到融资，他们总是目光狭隘：他们无法获得足够资金。若只要能够继续融得硅谷同胞所筹资金的1/4或1/5，我们就会继续收购公司，最终创造世界无敌的游戏公司。”

“我们拥有丰厚资本和杰出投资者，初期融资获得大量资本。但还需要敢于全力以赴，投入所有所得资金，追求更大目标。通过自己的演示文稿争取5000万美元投资，这是个好想法。你现在不会把资金都用完，但你会投资1000万美元把自己变成未来估值1亿美元的公司。”

3. 敢于转移方向

“若公司处在停滞状态，要敢于做出调整。若事情未以正确方向发展，敢于进行彻底变革。你原本拥有资金、支持者和朋友，若失去这些你该怎么办？全球大型公司总是适时调整方向。最好召开董事会，然后表示‘这行不通……’”

4. 不要胆怯

“表达自己的构思。如今有太多优秀大学毕业生投身咨询和银行等传统企业，在那里消磨自己的聪明才智。我们需要这些年轻力量加入初创公司，和我们共同改变世界。唯一的途径就是多向这些年轻人讲述我们的故事，我们的自我推销仍然不够。”

“我们需要表达这些想法，我们需要协助媒体宣传这些理念，我们的政府非常愿意支持初创公司，Tech City就是其中体现。”

5. 不一定要依赖地缘优势

“大家在英国常谈到Silicon Roundabout和Tech City之类的群集现象，但若你熟悉硅谷故事，这最初是个半导体区域，后来那里的众多杰出英才开始努力探索如何创造不同成果，如何更上一层楼——学习如何通过Web 2.0和社交网络制作CPU嵌入式软件，书写操作系统，开发驱动程序。”

“谈到硅谷，大家总觉得其存在某些魔力——仿佛这是奇迹的发生地。但群集不是指地理位置：这并非核心要素，虽然其有所帮助。而是指大家通过反复尝试推动技术和服务不断向前发展，互相合作从而创造奇迹。”

“硅谷是通过吸引大批杰出人才投身创新活动，快速学习而取得杰出成就。”

“我觉得由用户网络服务转向手机设备和平板电脑会是有史以来最彻底的转变（游戏邦注：超越由Web 1.0到Web 2.0，以及社交网络的转变）。伦敦应把握机会，凭借我们处在同个城市，具有众多投资者和杰出技术、用户体验人才以及这里充满大量充满激情的优秀创业者的优势创建自己的群集。”

“若我们能够腾出充足时间相聚一堂，互相交流，合作共事，我们定能够把伦敦上升至硅谷层次，成为移动网络发展的助推力。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Playfish boss Kristian Segerstrale on the opportunity for UK startups

by Stuart Dredge

‘Make sure you have a vision that goes out and changes the world versus just creating the incremental win…’

At tonight’s ME Top 50 Innovators event in London, Playfish boss Kristian Segerstrale – now running EA’s social gaming business – gave a rabble-rousing call to action for British mobile startups.

The event brought together 50 of the most innovative mobile firms in the UK, who were told by Segerstrale that “Today is a truly awesome time to be a startup.”

Why? Because small, nimble mobile companies are well placed to disrupt whatever industry they are in. “It is horrible today to be a big company and want to do something new and innovative and different,” said Segerstrale, referring to the current economic climate and the cutbacks that are being forced on many large companies as a result.

“Yet today, consumers for the first time have access to really usable mobile platforms and tablets. And those consumers want to shift how they operate.”

Segerstale also pointed out that it’s also easier now to set up a company using various cloud services and software-as-a-service tools for almost anything you want as a company, creating a new venture within days.

“Never before has there been a time where as a small company you have such an unbelievable opportunity to challenge the big giants in any sector,” he said. “And nowhere is there such an opportunity as in mobile.”

Segerstrale used to work in the mobile games industry, first at UK developer Macrospace, and then as EMEA head of Glu Mobile after it acquired that company. He left a few years later to set up Playfish.

“What’s very cool about mobile now is that not only is the user experience great: we may be reaching that tipping point where manufacturing mobile devices and smartphones is becoming as cheap and simple as manufacturing feature phones,” he said.

“In the next 3-5 years, we will see this market flip from feature phones into smartphones, even in emerging economies. That’s going from a billion or 1.5 billion people with smartphones to 4-5 billion, which is just unreal.”

Segerstrale had five specific pieces of advice for mobile startups in the UK – although they apply much more widely too. Here are the salient points:

1. Think big

“When you think of your vision, make it bigger and make it bolder. Not just taking a product to market and making some money off it, but genuinely changing the world. There’s an opportunity that big companies can’t do: it’s hard to focus on this platform when you’re big. People are migrating from desktops to mobiles, and big companies won’t do it: you guys will.”

“Don’t have a small dream when you can have a big dream: it costs just the same. Make sure you have a vision that goes out and changes the world versus just creating the incremental win. It’s much too fun, life’s too short, and this is ultimately how you will both attract talent and the funding.”

2. Raise more money

“Big vision, big money. I come across a lot of startups here in Europe, and every time they talk about raising money, people tend to think too small: they don’t raise enough. If we continue to raise money that’s one quarter or one fifth of what our brethren in Silicon Valley raise, they will continue acquiring the companies here and ultimately creating the world-beating companies.”

“We have smart capital and smart investors here, and there is lots of capital around for early-stage investments. But go out and dare to put a zero on that number that you’re raising, in order to chase that vision that is exponentially bigger than what you were going to put on that PowerPoint. When you walk in with the PowerPoint looking for a $50 million round, it feels really good. You won’t use it all now, but you’ll invest $10 million to make this a $100 million dollar business in the next five years.”

3. Dare to pivot

“If the thing that your company is working on feels like it’s stagnating, dare to pivot. When things aren’t gong in the right direction, dare to take a radical turn. If you had this money, backing, people and friends, what would you do with those if you had nothing? The greatest companies in the world have been built on pivots in various directions. It’s fine to call a board meeting and say ‘This isn’t working…’”

4. Don’t be shy…

“Tell your stories. There are far too many bright university graduates in consultancies and banks, plugging their heads into the machines that suck the cleverness out of them. We need these bright young things to join the startups, and change the world together with us. The only way is to tell our stories: they’re not told enough.”

“We need to tell them, we need to help the press to tell them for us, and we have a government that is really interested in backing startups, with Tech City and all that stuff.”

5. …But don’t get hung up on geographic clusters

“People talk a lot about clusters in the UK, with Silicon Roundabout and Tech City and all these things. But if you read the story about Silicon Valley, it started off as a semiconductor place, where a bunch of talent figured out how to make various things, and constantly moved up one layer in the stack – learning to make embedded software for CPUs, writing operating systems, drivers… right the way through to Web 2.0 and the social web.”

“People talk about Silicon Valley as if there is some kind of magic – as if it’s a place where magic happens. But clusters are not about geographic location: that’s not really what it’s about, although it helps. It’s really about people that work and try again and again to push technology and services forward, and work with each other to make it happen.”

“Every time Silicon Valley has negotiated the next big thing, it’s by having a ton of talent available to throw at the new thing, and learn quicker than anybody …

“I believe that the shift from consumer internet services onto mobile devices and tablets will be more fundamental than any shift we’ve seen before, including Web 1.0, Web 2.0, the social web and all of that. And there is a unique opportunity for us as London – forget east, west, north or south – for London to start forming our own cluster based not just on the fact that we live in the same city and have fantastic investors, technology talent and user experience talent – but also on the fact that we are passionate, talented entrepreneurs.”

“If we spend enough time together and bother to listen to one another and work together, we can raise London up from a distant second cousin to Silicon Valley to a genuine driver of where the mobile internet is going.”（Source：mobile-ent）