PayPal公司崛起的传奇故事( 二 ) _小知识

由投资所带动起的激烈竞争反过来产生了巨大的压力；通宵熬夜的人很常见。

PayPal burned through dangerous amounts of cash to attract new customers.
PayPal消耗了大量的资金来吸引新客户。

It was sued repeatedly and subject to fraud. Splits among the top brass caused commotions: two chief executives were ousted in coups in a six-month spell.
它被多次起诉，并遭受欺诈。高层之间的分歧引发了骚乱:在六个月的时间里，两名首席执行官在内斗中被撤职。

Mr Soni’s text is peppered with colourful quotations from Mr Thiel (“I need people here I can scream at”) and Mr Musk (“This is like gambling one hundred million smackeroos”).
索尼的文字中充斥着丰富多彩的语录，如蒂尔的“我需要这里有能被我吼的人”和马斯克的“这就像是在赌一亿美元” 。

[Paragraph 5]
All this gives a taste of the chaos of startup life. Business models were improvised on the fly.
这一切都展现了初创公司的混乱。商业模式在匆忙中即兴创作出来。

Shortly before Confinity’s launch, Mr Thiel told journalists that his new product would be free.
在Confinity推出前不久，蒂尔告诉采访人员他的新产品将是免费的。

That was news to his engineers, who quickly removed fees from the website.
这对于他的工程师来说是新消息，他们很快就把费用从网站移除了。

Experimentation led to grave mistakes.
这一尝试导致了严重的错误。

For almost a month a loophole in X.com’s security allowed villains to steal from banks using only account and routing numbers, both of which were printed on cheques.
在将近一个月里，X.com的安全漏洞使得不法分子仅用印在支票上的账号和路由号码就能从银行窃取资金。

[Paragraph 6]
What the book lacks is a clinching answer as to why the PayPal gang have been so successful.
至于为什么PayPal这一群人如此成功，这本书没有给出一个明确的答案。

Lots of theories are offered, including the wildness of the PayPal rollercoaster and the outsider status of many of those involved (nine of the ten founders of the two original firms were foreign-born).
人们提供了很多观点，包括PayPal 过山车般的疯狂模式，以及许多员工的外来人口身份(两家最初公司的10位创始人中有9位是在国外出生的) 。

None of these explanations is convincing; most apply to other tech startups.
这些解释没有一个令人信服;其中大多数也适用于其他科技初创公司。

[Paragraph 7]
Even so, this is an engrossing glimpse of the PayPal mafia’s riotous early days.
即便如此，这也是对早期PayPal黑手党的混乱的惊鸿一瞥。

Many former employees object to that nickname now, on the grounds that it insinuates something sinister.
许多前雇员现在都反对这个绰号，因为它暗示着某种邪恶的东西。

A quip by John Malloy, a former board member, better captures the book’s tone: “Calling us a mafia is to insult mafias.A mafia is far better organised than we were.”
前董事会成员约翰?马洛伊的一句调侃更能体现这本书的基调:“叫我们黑手党是在侮辱“黑手党”这一词。黑手党可比我们有纪律多了。”

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量670左右）
原文出自：2022年2月19日《The Economist》Culture版块。
精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路
本文翻译整理：Fei Min
本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【补充资料】（来源于网络）
“PayPal 黑手党”（英语：PayPal Mafia）是指一群在以后开发或成立其他科技公司的前 PayPal 员工。他们在离开 PayPal 再次创业成功率之高令人侧目，他们创建的企业包括特斯拉汽车，领英，Matterport，Palantir Technologies，太空探索科技公司，YouTube，Yelp 和 Yammer 。大部分的成员都在斯坦福大学或伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校就读，部分人在高校时期于伊利诺伊数学与科学学院就读。其中三个成员，包括彼得·蒂尔、伊隆·马斯克和里德·霍夫曼成为了亿万富翁。

【重点句子】（3个）
The fierce competition fomented by the investment in turn generated intense pressure; all-nighters were common.
由投资所带动起的激烈竞争反过来产生了巨大的压力；通宵熬夜的人很常见。

All this gives a taste of the chaos of startup life. Business models were improvised on the fly.
这一切都展现了初创公司的混乱。商业模式在匆忙中即兴创作出来。