“技术泡沫”来临，科技创企将何去何从
编者注：Rob Hayes是硅谷早期风险投资公司First Round Capital的合伙人，他曾投资多家公司，其中包括Square、TaskRabbit和Uber。
Rob Hayes真的很不喜欢“技术泡沫”这个词。在他眼里，技术泡沫总会定期出现。在出现技术泡沫的那段时间里，会大量出现各类新的初创企业；也会出现对大片公司进行泡沫估值的现象。但对于风险投资机构First Round Capital的合伙人Rob Hayes来说，这些已经见怪不怪了。
Hayes解释说道，在Google和Facebook这种大公司工作的人，会经常看到昔日一起工作的伙伴在获得某次融资后发展得越来越好。
“它看起来好像很简单，”Hayes说，“我是说融资看起来并不是件难事，而且现在每家初创企业都会加入像企业孵化器一样的组织。”
Hayes在1999年、2006年和2007年亲眼见证了技术泡沫对科技行业的影响，而今天他仿佛再次看到了技术泡沫。
现在，创业的人越来越多，我们要想在这茫茫创业大潮中寻找那些真正拥有极佳创业点子的企业创始人越来越难了。现在的初创企业都很单调，它们无非就是想成为某某领域的Uber或是直接将原有的企业翻新罢了。
“有的人见到周边的人都开公司了，自己也就眼红了，心急火燎地也想跟着创业。”Hayes说道。
Hayes没有进行市场预测，所以也就说不准初创企业存在的这种现象会在何时有所改变，也无法知晓投资者们在何时能更加容易地找到自己中意的创始人。
抢座位游戏
“在技术泡沫时期，公司的运作资金用完了，那么接下来会发生什么呢？公司垮了，公司的每个人又想回到Google和Facebook上班，可这时他们就不得不挤破脑袋去争抢那名额有限的职位（就跟玩抢座位游戏一样）。在2002年、2008年或是未来的某个时候，你会看到一帮疯狂的创始人，不论何时何地，他们都在创办企业。可他们其中也不乏那些有极佳创业点子的人，他们极富创业热情，他们就是你想要投资的对象。”Hayes说道。
这并不是说Hayes要暂停自己的投资道路。目前为止，他所在的First Round Capital对医疗保险初创企业Clover Health投资了其投资史上空前的一笔资金，投资了400万美元。平均算下来，First Round的交易规模在500美元到70万美元之间。
达成一项交易需要花很多的时间，但是Hayes知道那些真正有想法的创始人在等你去发现。Hayes正在寻找能创造自己产品市场的企业，而不是那些跟风者。
“现在，很多人正在开始创办自己的公司，可他们身边总是会出现一些盗取别人创业理念的人来影响他们。虽然这意味着想找到拥有极佳创业点子的创始人变得更加困难了。”Hayes说道，“但我们一向来只投资那些我们自认为很有发展前景的公司。”
Here’s what happens in tech when the money runs dry
Rob Hayes doesn't like the term "tech bubble." Instead, Hayes thinks of it in cycles, and the First Round Capital partner has seen this stage of frothy valuations and startup founders before.
People working at big companies like Google and Facebook see other friends raising money and getting rich, Hayes explained.
"It almost looks easy," Hayes said. "It seems easy to raise money. Everyone is joining incubators, all this kind of stuff."
Hayes saw it in 1999, in 2006 and 2007, and he's seeing it now.
However, this rise of entrepreneurship means there's a lot more noise to cut through to find the signal of a founder with a big idea. Those are droned out by the "Uber for X," or the gaggle of startups that want to recreate everything their mom did for them.
"The people that are starting a company because they see everyone else starting a company tend to come up with the derivative ideas and small things," Hayes said.
Hayes doesn't make market predictions, so there's no time frame when it will change and the signal-to-noise ratio will become easier.
Musical chairs
"What happens is the cycle changes and the money runs dry. Companies fail, and everyone goes back in a giant game of musical chairs to find a job at Google or at Facebook, wherever," Hayes said. "In those times, in 2002, in 2008, and some time in the future, you'll have just the bats--- crazy founders who will start a company no matter what and no matter when. And those are the people with good ideas and are crazy and you want to invest in."
That doesn't mean Hayes is taking a pause from investing. His firm, First Round Capital, just made its largest investment ever in Clover Health, pouring $4 million into the healthcare startup. On average, First Round's deal size is between $500 and $700K.
It may take more time to find the deal, but Hayes believes the founders with big ideas are still out there. And he's looking for those who are creating markets of their own rather than piggybacking off of another startup.
"They're starting companies today, but there's just so much noise. It's harder to find that signal. They're out there — I promise," Hayes said. "We're investing in companies all the time that we think can be really big."
Source:BI
编译：圈圈
HackerRank近日获得七百五十万美元投资[caption id="attachment_8176" align="alignnone" width="720"] Tech Hiring Matchmaker HackerRank Draws $7.5M From Global HR Firm[/caption]
HackerRank近日获得七百五十万美元投资
程序员招聘竞赛平台HackerRank近日宣布从日本人力资源巨头Recruit获得七百五十万美元投资。HackerRank让应聘者在线完成真实项目的编程挑战，从而来为企业筛选出能力优秀、符合招聘需求的技术人员。HackerRank的联合创始人兼首席执行官Vivek Ravisankar表示, Recruit成为股东将有助于HackerRank扩展在亚太地区的业务。Recruit可以成为HackerRank在亚太地区企业和应聘者的入口。
去年11月有报道国内有一家Hackerrank 的平台：
HackerRank模式的中国尝试者：oxcoder让程序猿在线完成项目挑战来帮企业做招聘笔试
http://www.hrtechchina.com/archives/4383
原文来自：
http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2015/07/14/tech-hiring-matchmaker-hackerrank-draws-7-5m-from-global-hr-firm/
HackerRank, which hosts online competitions that help programmers flaunt their skills to potential employers like Amazon and Quora, said today it has landed a $7.5 million investment from the funding arm of Japan-based human resources giant Recruit.
The new alliance with Recruit will help Palo Alto, CA-based HackerRank scale up its business in the Asia Pacific region, CEO and co-founder Vivek Ravisankar says. Recruit could be HackerRank’s gateway to both employers and job candidates in that part of the world, he says.
HackerRank counts as customers more than a thousand employers such as Walmart, Bloomberg, and Morgan Stanley, which pay for access to programmers who score high in HackerRank’s online coding challenges, Ravisankar says. All have made at least one hire facilitated by HackerRank, he says. Recruit itself is not a client—yet.
“I think we’ll get them soon,” Ravisankar (pictured above) says.
Ravisankar and his co-founder Harishankaran Karunanidhi, who started the company in 2012, want to change the way tech workers and employers find each other. Under traditional staff search processes, tech applicants send their resumes into the “black hole” of company hiring departments, while recruiters spend hours sifting through resumes to find good prospects, Ravisankar says. Employers may then spend weeks doing interviews to try to gauge the applicants’ actual technical abilities.
HackerRank’s competitions are designed to speed up that process, and open opportunities to people regardless of their gender, race, location, or the prestige of their university degrees. Hackers can log in to the site to improve their skills, compete in challenges, and gain rankings across a range of specific areas such as algorithms, machine learning, and streamlining code. For employers looking to hire skilled new tech team members, it’s kind of like consulting a Moneyball analysis of programmers, Ravisankar says.
“They’re getting to talk to high-quality candidates from the start,” Ravisankar says. HackerRank has screened more than a million developers over the last couple of years, he says. More than 150,000 active programmers used the site over the past month.
In addition to the chance of getting a job offer, hackers can win cash prizes or tech toys such as GoPro cameras, drones, and laptops by performing well in the contests.
HackerRank has built a reputation as “the go-to community for tech talent analysis,” HR Technology Fund president Chihiro Ueda said in a statement about the Recruit fund’s investment in the startup. “As the demand for technology talent continues to outstrip supply, HackerRank offers an efficient way for HR professionals to evaluate talent beyond traditional means.’’
The Recruit fund’s investment brings HackerRank’s total fundraising to $17 million. The company’s earlier financial backing came from Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, and Battery Ventures, among other investors. Ravisankar says HackerRank’s competitors include companies such as San Francisco-based recruiting software company Gild. Gild compiles profiles of working professionals from dozens of sites, and helps employers find those who best match their needs.
HackerRank’s clients include small to medium-sized businesses as well as larger enterprises, Ravisankar says. The company charges fees of $5,000 to $10,000 a year, per user, depending on the extra features clients want to add. These include CodePair, a skills-testing tool employers can use during the interview process. HackerRank also enables companies to set up their own hacker challenges on their websites’ career landing pages.
Ravisankar says he expects HackerRank’s revenues to reach “the double-digits of millions of dollars” in the next three to four months. The company may double its current staff size of 120 within a year, he says.
HackerRank is one of a growing number of online forums where programmers can demonstrate their computer science skills, outside the academic credentialing system of degrees from accredited colleges and universities. For example, Utah-based online learning company Pluralsight offers skills tests through its divisionSmarterer, and hackers can showcase their work on tech projects throughGitHub.
HackerRank is also making inroads into the academic system. Professors at 74 colleges are using HackerRank’s challenge infrastructure at no charge to set programming tasks for their students, rather than posting the assignments via e-mail, downloading each student’s work, and computing the rankings themselves. Once the classroom service becomes better known, HackerRank will market it as a product to colleges and universities, Ravisankar says.
But HackerRank will remain an avenue of opportunity for people who have never earned a degree, says Ravisankar. The company’s core mission is to create a meritocratic route to tech employment, he says. Fees will never be charged to hackers entering one of the company’s coding contests, he says.
“They will never pay,” Ravisankar says. “It will always be free forever.”
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