双语阅读｜硅谷遇上西雅图，别跑！
WOULD your region care to be the next Silicon Valley? In most of the world’s technology hubs, local leaders scramble to say “yes”. But ask the question in and around Seattle, the other big tech cluster on America’s west coast, and more often than not the answer is “no”—followed by explanations of why the city and its surrounds are different from the San Francisco Bay Area. The truth may be more complex: in recent years the Seattle area has become a complement to the valley. Some even argue that the two regions, though 800 miles (1,300km) apart, are becoming one.
想成为下一个“硅谷”吗？在世界上大多数的科技中心来讲，本地的龙头 企业都会争相给出肯定的答案。但是，对于美国西海岸城市西雅图，答案就未必了。西雅图人会告诉你，虽然同为科技重镇，这里和旧金山湾区差异性太大了。真实的原因可能要复杂得多：近几年，西雅图与硅谷形成了互补关系。尽管远隔1300公里，有人甚至认为两地快要合二为一了。
They have similar roots, notes Margaret O’Mara, a historian at the University of Washington (UW). Each grew rapidly during a gold rush in the 19th century. Later both benefited from military spending. Silicon Valley ultimately focused on producing small things, including microprocessors, and Seattle on bigger ones, such as aeroplanes (Boeing was for decades the city’s economic anchor). This difference in dimension persists. The valley has plenty of giant firms, but its focus is mainly on startups and smartphones. In contrast, Seattle is still more of a company town, with Amazon and Microsoft, both builders of big data centres, looming large.
华盛顿大学（UW）的历史学家玛格丽特•奥玛拉(Margaret O’Mara)表示，两个地区早期的发展很相似：同样自19世纪的淘金热开始迅速发展，之后又同样受益于军方资金红利。发展成熟后，硅谷专注于生产“小东西”，比如微型处理器，而西雅图则制造像飞机之类的大型产品（波音飞机一度是当地的经济支柱）。这种大小差异的特点，还体现在其他方面：虽说硅谷有众多超级企业，它的焦点始终是在刚创业的“小”公司和“小”手机上；西雅图则有很多大型企业，比如亚马逊和微软，这两家企业还各自建立了大数据研究中心，俨然是庞然大物。
That, and the fact that Seattle and its suburbs are less than a fifth the size of Silicon Valley, has created a different business culture. In Seattle, for example, job-hopping is less common, as is swapping fulltime employment for the uncertain life of an entrepreneur. Seattle has spawned firms such as Avvo, an online marketplace for legal services, and Zillow, a real-estate site, but the startup scene is underdeveloped. UW is a good gauge: it now has one of America’s best computer-science departments but produces nowhere near as many new firms as Stanford University.
除此之外，西雅图及其近郊的面积加起来也不到硅谷的五分之一，这都使得西雅图的企业文化和硅谷完全不同。比如，在西雅图跳槽的频率要低得多，人们也不怎么愿意为前途一片渺茫的创业公司打工。诚然，西雅图孕育出了在线法律服务网站Avvo和房地产服务网站Zillow这样成功的科技公司，创业的土壤确实不肥沃。UW就是个很好的证明：UW有着全美最好的计算机专业，就转化出的公司数量而言，其远远比不上位于硅谷的斯坦福大学。
Local politics differ, too. Seattleites don’t want their city to become like San Francisco, which is dominated by affluent, techie types. Their city council has just approved a new programme requiring property developers to include cheap units in their projects or to pay a fee. The aim is to ensure that Seattle remains America’s second-most economically integrated city (as defined by RedFin, a data provider). San Francisco ranks 14th. “In the playground parents don’t just talk about the next big thing,” says Ed Lazowska, a professor of computer science at UW.
当地的政治氛围也大不相同。西雅图人不想让自己的城市变得像旧金山一样，让有钱的科技大佬主宰。西雅图市政厅近期通过了一项新方案，要求地产商在地产项目中必须保留一部分低价房，或者交一笔补贴费用。此举是为了西雅图在“大家都能买得起房”榜单中保持全美二名的好成绩（由数据提供商RedFin统计）。当然，旧金山排名第14。UW计算机专业的教授艾德•拉佐斯卡（Ed Lazowska）说：“在操场上，家长们不会整天谈论未来的大事件。”
That is one reason, besides nature’s attractions, cheaper housing and no state income tax, why exhausted Valleyites flock north. “You get better quality of life for half the cost,” says Simon Crosby, co-founder of Bromium, a computer-security firm, who has made the move from California. Bromium is based in Cupertino, also the home of Apple, and he regularly takes the “nerd bird”, as flights between the two tech clusters are called (they are full of geeks who live in Seattle and work in the valley). Venture capitalists often make the two-hour commute, too. Most money invested in Seattle startups comes from California; the north-western city only has a handful of VC firms, such as Ignition Partners and the Madrona Venture Group.
这也是除了环境好、房价低以及州政府不收个人所得税之外，另一个吸引硅谷人北上的原因。西蒙•克罗丝比(Simon Crosby)是计算机安全创企Bromium的联合合伙人，其司成立于旧金山湾区的库比蒂诺，即苹果公司的大本营所在地。不过，西蒙本人搬离加州，到西雅图定居。他说道：“在西雅图，花一半的钱就能过上更好的生活”。因此，与无数住在西雅图工作在硅谷的科技人士一样，他需要频繁乘坐“呆鸟”航班（特指往返两地的航班）。风险投资家们也经常花上两小时往来两地，西雅图创业公司获得的投资大部分都来自加州，而西雅图本地的风投公司数量则少之又少，能数的上的就是Ignition Partners和Madrona Venture Group。
Another link between the two cities is cloud computing. Most startups in and around San Francisco run their business on Amazon Web Services, the e-commerce giant’s cloud-computing platform. Its momentum is such that some in Silicon Valley have started to fret that it will one day become as dominant as Windows, the operating system made by Microsoft, once was.
云计算是两地间的另一联系。旧金山附近的大多数创业企来，业务展开都是基于亚马逊的云计算平台AWS(Amazon Web Services)。这一服务的作用之大、影响之广，令很多硅谷人担心AWS会成为下一个Windows，那么，硅谷将再次由西雅图巨头所主宰。
For now it is Seattle that is more worried about being dominated by its neighbour to the south. The city hosts nearly 90 engineering offices that firms have opened to find new talent to hire. A third have a Californian parent. John Cook, who cofounded GeekWire, which covers the local tech industry, argued recently that, although the new offices add to Seattle’s tech scene, they had taken “a lot of oxygen” out of the startup ecosystem by hoovering up highly qualified staff. That triggered a debate about the disadvantages of outside investment. Other effects of tech migration are equally contentious: home values have increased by a tenth in the past 12 months, according to Zillow.
在当下，还是西雅图对硅谷担心得多一些。西雅图有近90家工程类分办事处，主要用于招募人才，而这些办事处的母公司有三分之一来自加州。科技动态新闻网站GeekWire的联合创始人约翰•库克(John Cook)近期表示，尽管这些办事处的到来增强了西雅图的科技氛围，它们挖走了大量尖端人才，使得创业的生态系统“缺氧”。这也引发了关于外来投资的争论。科技人士北上带来的其他方面影响也同样富有争议，根据Zillow统计，西雅图的房价在过去十二个月里上涨了10%。
Complaints about being overrun by Californians have a long tradition in Seattle, but the risk that the area becomes a Silicon Valley overflow zone preoccupies many. “We have to choose to remain different,” says Tren Griffin, a Microsoft veteran. Chris DeVore, an angel investor who runs the Seattle branch of Techstars, a chain of accelerators, says more needs to be done to grow local startups. “Microsoft and Amazon were a bit of an accident,” he says.
一直以来，抱怨加州人过分染指西雅图的声音始终存在，最主要的担忧在于西雅图可能成为硅谷的“后院”。微软高管特兰•格里芬(Tren Griffin)提出 “我们一定要坚守自身特色”。美国著名的孵化器Techstars西雅图分公司负责人克里斯•德沃尔(Chris DeVore)则认为，西雅图需要培养更多的本地创企，“毕竟微软和亚马逊只是个例”。
Regardless, Seattle and Silicon Valley are now joined at the hip. The best approach is to make that connection as efficient as possible, says Rich Barton, a serial entrepreneur. He not only started Zillow and Expedia, a giant online travel site, among other Seattle firms, but is a partner at Benchmark, a leading VC firm in the valley. Rather than relying on flights, which are often delayed or cancelled due to bad weather, he says, someone should build a high-speed rail line. Together, he quips, that old west-coast dream, popular again after the election of Donald Trump, would be within reach: “We could form our own country and secede.”
不管怎么说，西雅图和硅谷难分彼此。里奇•巴顿(Rich Barton)表示，最佳的办法就是让两地间的连接更加高效。巴顿是一位成功的连续企业家(serial entrepreneur)，不仅在西雅图创立了Zillow以及著名线上旅行网站Expedia等公司，还是硅谷著名风投公司Benchmark的合伙人。他表示，应该在两地间建立一条高铁线路。因为航班不够稳定，经常由于天气原因而延迟甚至取消”。他开玩笑称，只有这样，“才能‘脱美’自力更生”，实现西海岸之梦：自特朗普的上台后，支持加州“脱美”的民意大幅上涨。
编译：王朦晰
审校：周小靖
编辑：翻吧君
来源：经济学人