五年前，斯科特·戈贝尔（Scott Gerber）从纽约大学电影专业毕业，拿着几千美元的学生贷款，他搬回斯塔腾岛与父母住在了一起。随后他贷了更多款创办了一家新媒体技术公司，但由于对市场缺乏清晰认识，公司于2006年倒闭。
“It made me feel demoralized and humiliated,” he says. “I wondered if this was really what post-collegiate life was supposed to be like. Did I do something wrong? The answers weren’t apparent to me.”
“这让我一度意志消沉、抬不起头，”他回忆道。“我不知道是否大学毕业后的生活就真是这个样子。我做错了什么吗？对我而言，答案并不明朗。”
Still in debt, Mr. Gerber considered his career options. His mother kept encouraging him to get a “real” job, the kind that comes with an office and a boss. But, using the last $700 in his bank account, he decided to start another company instead.
仍然负债的戈贝尔先生斟酌着他的事业选择。他母亲一直鼓励他谋取一份“真正的”工作——坐坐办公室、听从老板指挥的职场人士。但他没这么做，而是动用了银行账户上仅余的700美元，决定另开一家公司。
With the new company, called Sizzle It, Mr. Gerber vowed to find a niche, reduce overhead and generally be more frugal. The company, which specializes in short promotional videos, was profitable the first year, he says.
凭借这家名叫Sizzle It的新公司，戈贝尔先生发誓要有所成就，他削减了日常开支，过着更为节俭的生活。据他所称，这家致力于短小精悍的推销视频的公司首年便有盈利。
Mr. Gerber, now 27, isn’t a millionaire, but he’s paid off his loans and doesn’t have to live with his parents (he rents an apartment in Hoboken, N.J.). And he thinks his experience can help other young people who face a daunting unemployment rate.
现年27岁的戈贝尔先生纵然不是百万富翁，但他已经还清了贷款，也不必与父母住在一起（他在新泽西的霍博肯租了一个套间。）他认为自己的经历对其他在高失业率面前望而却步的年轻人不无裨益。
In October, Mr. Gerber started the Young Entrepreneur Council “to create a shift from a résumé-driven society to one where people create their own jobs,” he says. “The jobs are going to come from the entrepreneurial level.”
10月，戈贝尔先生创立了年轻创业者理事会，“意在促使简历驱动的社会转型为人们自创工作的社会，”他兴致勃勃地谈道。“工作将源于创业。”
The council consists of 80-plus business owners across the country, ages 17 to 33. Members include Scott Becker, 23, co-founder of Invite Media, an advertising technology firm recently acquired by a Google unit; Lauren Berger, 26, founder of the Intern Queen, a site that connects college students with internships; Aaron Patzer, the 30-year-old who sold Mint.com to Intuit for $170 million; and Josh Weinstein, 24, who started CollegeOnly.com, a social networking site that is backed by a PayPal founder.
理事会由全国各地80多位企业主组成，年龄均在17岁到30岁之间。会员包括23岁的Invite Media合作创始人斯科特·贝克（Scott Becker），该广告技术企业最近被一家Google旗下公司收购；26岁的Intern Queen创始人劳伦·博格（Lauren Berger），该站点在大学生与实习职位之间架起桥梁；30岁的阿隆·帕泽尔（Aaron Patzer），他以1.7亿美元将Mint.com卖给了Intuit；24岁的CollegeOnly.com创立人乔什·韦恩斯坦（Josh Weinstein），该社交网站由一位PayPal创始人提供财力支持。
The council, which has applied for nonprofit status, serves as a help desk and mentoring hotline for individual entrepreneurs. People can also submit questions on subjects like marketing, publicity and technology, and each month a group of council members will answer 30 to 40 of them in business publications like The Wall Street Journal and American Express Open Forum, and on dozens of small business Web sites.
理事会已申请为非营利性组织，旨在充当个体创业者的求助平台与指导热线。人们也可以就诸如市场营销、宣传与技术之类的主题提问，每月将有一组理事会会员在商业刊物如《华尔街日报》和《美国运通开放论坛》上，以及在几十个小型商业网站上解答其中的30-40个问题。
Council members assert that young people can start businesses even if they have little or no money or experience. But whether those start-ups last is another matter. Roughly half of all new businesses fail within the first five years, according to federal data. And the entrepreneurial life is notoriously filled with risks, stresses and sacrifices.
理事会会员断言，即便年轻人资本与经验欠缺，他们也是可以创立企业的。不过这些新企业能否持久则另当别论。据联邦数据的粗略统计，半数的新企业在五年内倒闭。而且创业者的生活充满风险、压力和牺牲是出了名的。
But then again, unemployment is 9.8 percent; Mr. Gerber’s in-box is flooded with e-mails from young people who have sent out hundreds of résumés for corporate jobs and come up empty. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, only 24.4 percent of 2010 graduates who applied for a job had one waiting for them after graduation (up from 19.7 percent in 2009). What do some people have to lose?
不过话说回来，失业率已经到了9.8%；戈贝尔的收件箱里塞满了年轻人的邮件，他们都发过数百份简历申请公司职位，但却泥牛入海不见回音。根据全美大学 与雇主协会的统计，2010年求职的毕业生中仅有24.4%获得成功（比2009年的19.7%略好）。连工作都没有，这些人还有什么是不能失去的呢？
THE lesson may be that entrepreneurship can be a viable career path, not a renegade choice — especially since the promise of “Go to college, get good grades and then get a job,” isn’t working the way it once did. The new reality has forced a whole generation to redefine what a stable job is.
教训或许是：创业堪为一条可行的事业道路，而非一种叛逆之选——特别是“上大学，获得好成绩，然后就会得到工作”的承诺不再如从前那么奏效之后。新的现实已经迫使整整一代人重新定义什么是稳定的工作。
“I’ve seen all these people go to Wall Street, and those were supposed to be the good jobs. Now they are out of work,” says Windsor Hanger, 22, who turned down a marketing position at Bloomingdale’s to work on HerCampus.com, an online magazine. “It’s not a pure dichotomy anymore that entrepreneurship is risky and other jobs are safe, so why not do what I love?”
“我见过进入华尔街的各色人群，以及那些本应获得好工作的人。如今他们都失业了，”22岁的温德索·汉格（Windsor Hanger）感概道，她拒绝了布鲁明戴尔的市场营销职位，转而效力于一家网络杂志HerCampus.com。“创业有风险，其他工作才安全，这已不再 是笃定的情形，因此为何不做我所喜欢的呢？”
Mr. Gerber argues that the tools to become an entrepreneur are more accessible than they’ve ever been. Thanks to the Internet, there are fewer upfront costs. A business owner can build a Web site, host conference calls, create slide presentations online through a browser, and host live meetings and Web seminars — all on a shoestring.
戈贝尔先生认为，创业者可资利用的工具从未像现在这样容易取得。得益于互联网，获得工具几乎不需预付什么费用。企业主建立网站、召开电话会议、借助浏览器在线创建幻灯演示以及举行直播会议和网络研讨会——所有都不用花什么钱。
Can’t afford a Madison Avenue address? Try borrowing one instead. That is what Mr. Gerber did, for $300 a year, from ManhattanVirtualOffice.com, which forwards mail from a recognizable address. He says it saved him $100,000 in rent and gave Sizzle It the credibility it needed to start attracting clients that now include Procter & Gamble and the Gap. He does most of his actual work at home and in coffee shops and shared work spaces.
若是负担不起麦迪逊花园的住址？不妨借一处试试。正如戈贝尔先生所做的，在Manhattan VirtualOffice.com支付300美元一年的费用，便可由真实地址转发邮件。他称这帮他省下了10万美元的租金，同时又提高了Sizzle It的可信度，使其足以吸引到诸如宝洁和盖普这类的客户。他的实际工作大多在家里和咖啡店里完成，并且可以共享工作空间。
“If this were the 1980s, I’d need a corner office,” says Shama Kabani, 25, a Y.E.C. member and founder of Marketing Zen, a digital marketing firm in Dallas, with yearly revenue in the seven figures. “All you need today is a laptop, patience and willingness,” she says. Ms. Kabani hired all of her 24 employees virtually; 15 are in the Philippines. “I’ve never met any of them,” she says.
“如果这是在1980年代，我得需要一间角落办公室，”25岁的理事会会员暨Marketing Zen创始人夏玛·卡巴尼（Shama Kabani）坦言，Marketing Zen是一家达拉斯的数字化营销公司，年收入达7位数。“今天你只需要一台笔记本电脑、耐心与干劲就行了，”她如是说。卡巴尼小姐在网上雇用了24名员 工；15名都在菲律宾。“我还从来没与他们谋过面，”她笑着说道。
Open-source software can reduce or eliminate the need for consultants and tech support. When Annie Wang, 21, co-founder of HerCampus.com, wanted the articles on the site to rotate in a slide show, she didn’t hire a Web designer. She found a free online resource and spent a day teaching herself how to create the slide show.
开源软件可以削减甚至消除对咨询顾问与技术支持的需求。当21岁的HerCampus.com联合创始人安妮·王（Annie Wang）想以幻灯方式循环播放网站文章时，她没有雇用web设计师，而是查找了免费的在线资源，并花一天时间自学了怎样创建幻灯播放。
Being a young entrepreneur means coming up with creative ways to fill your knowledge gaps, says Eric Bahn, 29, a council member and founder of BeatTheGMAT.com, an M.B.A. applicant community that generates close to seven figures in revenue. Mr. Bahn, who does not have a technical background, found a free resource on the Web and taught himself HTML to build his site.
按29岁的理事会会员暨BeatTheGMAT.com（一家年收入接近7位数的MBA申请者社区）创始人埃里克·巴恩（Eric Bahn）的话，成为年轻创业者就意味着要提出创新方法来弥补学问上的差距，巴恩先生没有什么技术背景，他在网上找到免费资源并运用自学的HTML创建了 他的站点。
Most of the business owners who belong to the council did not need much physical space to start their companies. For the person who wants to start a restaurant, a bakery, an exercise studio — or any other business that requires renting or owning property — the barriers and expenses are still high. Mr. Gerber warns that anyone starting a brick-and-mortar business still faces the same cost barriers they always have — including high rent. He advises young people to start a business that does not require expensive space.
加入理事会的大多数企业主创建公司都无需太多物理空间。对于那些想要开餐馆、面包房和健身馆（或者其他需要租地或房产的企业）的人而言，门槛与开销依然 很高。戈贝尔先生警告说，所有创立实体企业者所面临的成本门槛并无改观——包括高企的租金在内。他建议年轻人应创立不需昂贵空间的企业。
BUT start-ups do need some financing. So Mr. Gerber is also starting the Gen Y Fund, from which young entrepreneurs can seek funding. Council members will have the option of investing in the fund starting next year.
但是创业确实需要一些资金作为支撑。因此戈贝尔先生同时创立了the Gen Y Fund（Y世代基金），年轻创业者可以从中筹集资金。从明年起，理事会会员将有权选择投资该基金。
Could it be that the council and separate fund are mainly a way for Mr. Gerber to identify new investing opportunities? He emphatically says no, adding that helping young people succeed as entrepreneurs through the council is his passion.
理事会以及分立的基金是主要作为戈贝尔先生鉴别新投资机会的途径吗？他对此予以断然否定，并补充说，通过理事会帮助年轻人创业成功是他的热情使然。
As far as the fund is concerned, “We are looking to spearhead a major shift in how resources are allocated to our generation, because no one from above is going to do it,” he says.
就基金而言，“在将资源分配给我们这一代的重大转变中，我们希望充当先锋，因为之前还没人打算做这件事，”他强调道。
The goal of the fund is not to find the next Facebook or sexy Web start-up, Mr. Gerber says; instead, it will look for practicable and marketable business ideas. In fact, a favorite phrase of his is “boring is better.” He’ll be looking for businesses that are incubated outside of Silicon Valley.
戈贝尔先生表示，基金的目标不是要发现下一个Facebook或迷人的网站新贵；相反，它将寻觅可行性好且具有市场前景的商业点子。实际上，他信奉的一句话是“平淡才更好。”他将寻求在硅谷之外孵化企业。
The council and fund do add visibility to Mr. Gerber’s entrepreneurial empire. In addition to running Sizzle It, Mr. Gerber writes a widely syndicated column for young entrepreneurs, and he recently published a book called “Never Get a ‘Real’ Job: How to Dump Your Boss, Build a Business, and Not Go Broke.” He also runs Gerber Enterprises, his personal investing fund, and is an investor in a restaurant group.
理事会与基金确实为戈贝尔先生的创业帝国平添了曝光率。除了运营Sizzle It之外，戈贝尔先生还撰写一个广为多家报刊采用的年轻创业者专栏，而且最近出版了一本书《永远不要获得“真正的”工作：怎样炒老板鱿鱼，创建企业并屹立 不倒》，他掌管着个人投资基金——戈贝尔企业发展基金，并且是一家餐饮集团的投资人。
Mr. Gerber has never taken a business or economics class; he says he took a lot of people out to lunch to learn about the nuts and bolts of the business world. “I didn’t go to my third-tier upper-management boss,” he says. “I e-mailed people in my circle and figured who knew what I needed to know.”
戈贝尔从未上过商业或经济课；他说自己是在与许多人共进午餐时学到了商业世界的具体细节。“我不会去找我的第三级上层老板，”他说。“而是发email给我圈子里的人，并找到懂得我需要知道的东西的人。”
Lack of experience can actually be an asset to young business owners. When Ms. Kabani first started Marketing Zen, she tried to hide her age through a combination of wardrobe choices and trying to sound “older.” “I thought I was fooling all these people, but then one of my clients told me he hired me because I was 23. He wanted someone who spoke digital as a first language, not a second. It was a mind-blowing moment for me.”
缺乏经验实际可能成为年轻企业主的一项优势。当卡巴尼小姐创办Marketing Zen时，她试图通过衣着搭配和成熟嗓音来掩盖自己的实际年龄。“我认为我在欺骗所有人，但之后我的一位客户告诉我，他正是由于我23岁才雇我的。他想要 一个把数码当作第一语言而非第二语言的人。此时的我才茅塞顿开。”
Ms. Hanger, co-founder of HerCampus.com along with Ms. Wang and Stephanie Kaplan, 22, says being young helps attract advertisers like New Balance and Juicy Couture to the site. “They like that I am my readership. I was in college six months ago,” she says. The site recently started turning a profit.
汉格小姐与王小姐及22岁的斯蒂芬妮·卡普兰（Stephanie Kaplan）携手创立了HerCampus.com，卡普兰说，正是年轻帮助网站吸引到了诸如新百伦和橘滋这类广告客户。“他们喜欢我自己就是读者群中 的一员。6个月前我还在大学里，”她解释道。该站点最近已经开始盈利了。
MANY of the council members aren’t bankrolled by their parents. Only a third of them received outside funding to start their businesses. In fact, Mr. Gerber’s message to young entrepreneurs is “No one will give you money” and “Start on a shoestring budget,” something many of them did.
许多理事会会员的父母都不会提供资金资助。仅有三分之一的会员在创办企业时接受了外部投资。实际上，戈贝尔先生的故事给年轻创业者的启示是“没人会给你钱”和“凭借小额预算创业”，会员中的许多人也都是这么做的。
For many of these entrepreneurs, success didn’t happen overnight. Mr. Bahn started BeatTheGMAT.com in 2005 as a blog that developed a following over the course of a few years. It was three years before he quit his day job in a general management program at Intuit to work on the site full time.
对于其中许多创业者而言，成功并非一蹴而就的。巴恩先生在2005年以博客形式创立了BeatTheGMAT.com，博客在几年间发展了一批追随者。三年之后，他辞去了在Intuit公司综合管理项目的正职工作，全身心投入到网站建设中。
Even if these 20-somethings pulled it off, the reality is a vast majority of entrepreneurs, of any age, don’t succeed. “The first business is probably going to fail,” says Arel Moodie, 27, a Y.E.C. member and co-owner of the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour, which educates college students on starting a business. Mr. Moodie’s first two businesses — a calendar company and a protein drink company — flopped and put him $30,000 in debt. (He has paid it off.)
即使这些20多岁的年轻人成功了，现实却是，绝大多数创业者，不论年龄多大，都与成功无缘。“第一家企业也许会失败，”27岁的理事会会员暨 Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour（一家指导大学生创业的公司）的联合创始人阿瑞尔·穆迪（Arel Moodie）毫不讳言，他的前两家企业——日历公司和蛋白饮料公司——都不幸惨败，还让他背负了3万美元的债务。（他已经还清了。）
Ben Brinckerhoff, 28, who is not a member of the council, started Devver.net, an online tool to test computer software in 2008. The company folded last spring.
28岁的本·布伦克霍夫（Ben Brinckerhoff）不是理事会会员，他2008年创立了一个电脑软件测试的工具站点Devver.net。该公司今春倒闭。
Mr. Brinckerhoff was formerly a software developer at Microsoft. “There are very real cons to starting a company. It can hurt your ego, and financially it’s a big hit. If I had stayed at my old job at Microsoft, I would have been better off financially,” he says.
布伦克霍夫先生先前是微软的软件开发员。“创办公司确实有诸多不利因素。它会伤害你的自尊，经济上也会遭受沉重打击。如果我还留在微软干原来的工作，我在经济上会好过一些，”他总结道。
The silver lining, however, was that Mr. Brinckerhoff got inquiries from 10 companies about working for them after they read on the Web or heard through word of mouth that his company had failed.
不过，黑暗中也有一线曙光，布伦克霍夫先生得到了10家公司伸来的橄榄枝，他们或在网上读到，或由传言听闻他的公司失败后，纷纷邀请他前来赴职。
“Employers like the entrepreneurial skill set,” he says. “They want to hire people who are risk-takers and can make quick decisions.” He is now working as a freelance Web and technology consultant in Boulder, Colo., and hopes to start another company.
“雇主们都青睐创业综合技能，”他说。“他们想雇用肯承担风险又能迅速作出决策的人。”现在他是网站自由作家及科罗拉多Boulder公司的技术顾问，并希望再创一家公司。
When deciding whether to start a business, “You have to really want to do it,” says Maia Josebachvili, 27, a council member and founder of Urban Escapes, which organizes outdoor trips. She quit her job as a derivatives trader on Wall Street to start her company, which grew to 45 employees and was recently acquired by LivingSocial, a consumer site.
在决定是否创办企业时，“你必须要真想做它，”27岁的理事会会员暨Urban Escapes（一家组织户外旅游的公司）创始人迈娅·乔斯巴谢维利（Maia Josebachvili）说道。为了创办公司，她辞掉了华尔街金融衍生品交易员的工作，现公司已发展到45名员工，并于近期被消费网站 LivingSocial收入旗下。
“It takes a lot of discipline. I didn’t eat out for the first six months, and I lived on my friend’s couch,” Ms. Josebachvili says. “Unless you are independently wealthy, it’s a lifestyle adjustment.”
“这需要严格约束自己。前六个月我没出去吃过一顿饭，而且我就住在朋友的沙发上，”乔斯巴谢维利小姐告诫道。“除非你自己财力雄厚，否则就意味着要调整生活方式。”
