［每日阅读训练］04-1-25坚持10天平均提高20%正确率

为了督促我自己，也为了更多复习GMAT的同仁共勉，从今日起，每天发布阅读材料，大家可以跟贴督促自己，我也会为大家改正的。 特别鸣谢资料来源：chasedream论坛。 训练方法：计时＋写出大纲（中英文均可） ～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～ Article 2: What Industries Venture Capitalists Are Hot For 【Time 1】 If you are an aggressive entrepreneur gunning to grow a company quickly, then venture capital is probably your game. If you are going to try to pitch a VC, best go in with your eyes wide open, knowing what they want and where they are spending money. In 2013, venture capitalists in the U.S. did more deals in information technology than any other industry by far, according to data on the market released today from Dow Jones's news and analytics platform, DJX. And while VCs did fewer deals in healthcare, U.S. VCs spent just as much in total on healthcare entrepreneurs than they did on IT entrepreneurs last year. That means that each deal that a VC signed with a healthcare entrepreneur had a larger price tag than did the average IT deal. After information technology, venture capitalists did more deals in business and financial services than any other industry. And after healthcare and IT, U.S. VCs spent more money on business and financial services than any other group of startups. Check out these charts showing in further detail where VCs invested their money in 2013, broken down by industry. The end of 2013 saw a handful of large venture capital raises. Cloud-based storage company DropBox raised $250 million, social-media platform Pinterest raised $225 million and Nest Labs, which was recently acquired by Google, raised $150 million. All three are based in California's Silicon Valley. The locations of these big deals are indicative of where the heart of the market is located. Venture capital, as an industry, is still predominantly a West Coast game. In the last three months of the year, 250 San Francisco-based startups received VC funding, compared to 129 in New York and 90 in Boston. Here's a look at where the startups that got funding in the fourth quarter were located. 【305】 http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/231018 Article 3: Yes, You Can Be Happy While Pushing Yourself to Success 【Time 2】 Most of us, at some point or another, think that we will be happy once we achieve a particular goal. I'll be happy after I... graduate from college make a million dollars get married lose 40 pounds get a job ...and so on. To be clear, I have been guilty of this as well. There have been plenty of times that I have assumed that satisfaction and success would come after I won a championship or after I built a successful business or after XYZ goal. Society tells us that this is a good thing. We hear about athletes that are never satisfied until they have reached the top. We hear about entrepreneurs who worked like crazy to build a business that changed the world. The basic idea is that to be driven, you also have to be dissatisfied. Dissatisfied with second place. Dissatisfied with average. Then you have the other side of the equation: people who are happy with life as it is. They say that you need to develop the skill of "not wanting more." That you can be happy where you are right now. That you are already perfect. The Problem Here's the problem: I want both. Maybe you do too. I like being happy. It's fun. I don't want to delay happiness until I reach some milestone. But I also like getting better. I don't want to settle for less than I can do in life. I'd like to be happy along the way and achieve my goals. For a long time, it bothered me that being happy (being satisfied) and being driven (being dissatisfied) seemed to be at odds with one another. I still don't have a lot of this figured out, but the more I study people who have had a great deal of success, the more I think that it's possible to be happy and driven. Here's how... 【315】 【Time 3】 Driven and Happy Let's start with being driven. If you want to maximize your potential, then you will need to continue to work to become better both before and after you achieve a given goal. Why would someone do that? For example, if your goal was to make a million dollars and you made it, why would you keep working hard after that? The answer is a little more complicated than you might think. The Law of Diminishing Returns In economics, there is a fundamental principle known as the Law of Diminishing Returns. Here's the short definition: as you get more of something, it becomes less valuable. This isn't just economic theory, a similar trend happens in real life. If you have zero money and you make $10,000, then it's going to be a big deal. But if you have already earned $1 million, then making another $10,000 doesn't seem as significant. Making each dollar means a lot in the beginning, but less over time. If you have never won a championship, then that first one is going to be incredible. But if you already have five championship rings, then adding a sixth isn't going to be as sweet as getting the first. Standing at the top means a lot in the beginning, but less over time. If you are starting a company, then getting your first customer is an incredible rush. But if you already have 100 paying clients, then adding one more doesn't provide the same thrill. Landing each client means a lot in the beginning, but less over time. In other words, the goals and results that seem so valuable to you in the beginning actually become less valuable as you achieve more of them. 【288】 【Time 4】 How to Stay Driven So, if the results mean less as you achieve more of them, how do you stay driven? By loving the practice of what you do. It's only the people who embrace their work as a craft and fall in love with the boredom of doing it day in and day out that stay driven over the long-term. Here are some examples... Richard Branson is already a billionaire. He has already built hundreds of companies. He's not still doing it because of the money. The money stopped meaning a lot to him a long time ago. He's doing it because he loves the practice of doing it. Nick Saban has already won four national championships (1 with LSU and 3 with Alabama). He makes over $5 million dollars per year. He's not coaching football for the money anymore. He's not coaching to "make it to the top." He's coaching because he loves the process (and he talks about process all the time). Jack LaLanne was setting fitness records for 40+ years. He wasn't working out to lose a few pounds. He exercised every day because he loved it. Summary: the only way to stay driven before and after achieving goals is to love the practice of what you do. How to Be Happy Guess what? This answer is now easy. If you love the practice of what you do, if you love the daily work, then you can be happy before and after you achieve your goals. When you learn to love the process of what you are doing and not focus so much on the goal, you automatically find happiness while staying driven. If you learn to love the practice of working out, then you'll be happy right now and you'll see results later. If you learn to love the practice of marketing your business, then you'll be happy right now and you'll see results later. If you learn to love the practice of supporting your friends and family, then you'll be happy now and see the results later. Happy and driven. Just one more reason why the system is better than the goal. 【358】 Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230968 Article 4: The 3 Things You Need to Consider Before Meeting a Mentor 【Time 5】 As the new year is in full swing, many entrepreneurs have big plans for 2014 -- hoping to eclipse goals from last year. One way to make sure you are on the right track is to meet with a mentor. But for these meetings to be a success be sure to meet on a regular basis (at least once a month). Before I delve into what the meeting should entail, it is important to seek out the correct mentors. You may have heard your net worth is closely connected to your network. Ready for a great activity? Think about the past 72 hours and write out a list of the people you've spent considerable time with. (By considerable, I'm thinking more than an hour in conversation.) Next, think about the direction you're going in the next six-to-12 months. Would you want to talk with any of those people about one of the goals you've set or one of the problems you're facing? Or do you know that you're going to have to "add" a new person to that circle of influence? Either way, email or message someone and set up a time to meet this week. It could be a quick coffee, lunch meeting or for a glass of wine. Explain to your mentor the direction you're heading and ask for the help you need. But before you delve into discussions, there are three prompts to think through before the meeting: 1. What is one of your specific goals for 2014? Those in our network know us, accept us and love us. The danger is when we do get together, it's often easy to talk a little about everything. Don't do that. Tell them what you'd like to discuss and get to a point of clarity with one of the goals you have for the rest of the year. 2. What do you feel is in your way of achieving it? While you're having the goal discussion, you'll recognize certain hurdles are in the way, while other things will be along the way. Don't confuse them. An apparent roadblock may indeed be a milestone. A problem may be a pivot point. By acknowledging what you think and feel is in your way, you can change and reset your perspective. 3. What is the specific help you need to achieve that goal? Only answer this question after you've done the work of going through the first two. People love to help, they're just wary of being asked. By doing the work of answering all these questions, you put yourself in a position of proactive power. Keep reviewing and revising the answers to those questions over time. You'll do more than just think about the goal, you'll recognize the effort needed and plan for the support to achieve that success. 【468】 【Time 6】 AT GOOGLE they call it the toothbrush test. Shortly after returning to being the firm’s chief executive in 2011, Larry Page said he wanted it to develop more services that everyone would use at least twice a day, like a toothbrush. Its search engine and its Android operating system for mobile devices pass that test. Now, with a string of recent acquisitions, Google seems to be planning to become as big in hardware as it is in software, developing “toothbrush” products in a variety of areas from robots to cars to domestic-heating controls. Its latest purchase is Nest Labs, a maker of sophisticated thermostats and smoke detectors: on January 13th Google said it would pay $3.2 billion in cash for the firm. Google’s biggest move into hardware so far is its $12.5 billion bid for Motorola Mobility, a handset-maker, in 2011. In recent months it has been mopping up robotics firms (see table), most notably Boston Dynamics, which makes two- and four-legged machines with names like BigDog and Cheetah that can walk and run. Google’s in-house engineers have also been busy working on driverless cars and wearable gadgets such as Google Glass. Nest takes Google into the home-appliance business, which is how another, much older American conglomerate got started. General Electric (GE) produced its first electric fans in the 1890s and then went on to develop a full line of domestic heating and cooking devices in 1907, before expanding into the industrial and financial behemoth that is still going strong today. The common factor shared by GE’s early products was electricity, something businesses were then just learning to exploit. With Google’s collection of hardware businesses, the common factor is data: gathering and crunching them, to make physical devices more intelligent. Even so, the question is whether Google can knit the diverse businesses it is developing and acquiring into an even more profitable engineering colossus—or whether it is in danger of squandering billions. Concern that the firm could make overpriced acquisitions has grown along with the size of its cash pile, now around $57 billion. Eyebrows were raised this week when the price for Nest was revealed. Morgan Stanley, a bank, reckons it represents ten times Nest’s estimated annual revenue. (Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, is a non-executive director of The Economist Group.) Why fork out so much for a startup that makes such banal things as thermostats? Paul Saffo of Discern Analytics, a research firm, argues that Google is already adept at profiting from the data people generate in the form of search queries, e-mails and other things they enter into computers. It has been sucking in data from smartphones and tablet computers thanks to the success of Android, and apps such as Google Maps. To keep growing, and thus to justify its shares’ lofty price-earnings ratio of 33, it must find ever more devices to feed its hunger for data. Packed with sensors and software that can, say, detect that the house is empty and turn down the heating, Nest’s connected thermostats generate plenty of data, which the firm captures. Tony Fadell, Nest’s boss, has often talked about how Nest is well-positioned to profit from “the internet of things”—a world in which all kinds of devices use a combination of software, sensors and wireless connectivity to talk to their owners and one another. Other big technology firms are also joining the battle to dominate the connected home. This month Samsung announced a new smart-home computing platform that will let people control washing machines, televisions and other devices it makes from a single app. Microsoft, Apple and Amazon were also tipped to take a lead there, but Google was until now seen as something of a laggard. “I don’t think Google realised how fast the internet of things would develop,” says Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies, a consultancy. Buying Nest will allow it to leapfrog much of the opposition. It also brings Google some stellar talent. Mr Fadell, who led the team that created the iPod while at Apple, has a knack for breathing new life into stale products. His skills and those of fellow Apple alumni at Nest could be helpful in other Google hardware businesses, such as Motorola Mobility. Google has said little about its plans for its new robotics businesses. But it is likely to do what it did with driverless cars: take a technology financed by military contracts and adapt it for the consumer market. In future, personal Googlebots could buzz around the house, talking constantly to a Nest home-automation platform. The challenge for Mr Page will be to ensure that these new businesses make the most of Google’s impressive infrastructure without being stifled by the bureaucracy of an organisation that now has 46,000 employees. Google has had to overcome sclerosis before. Soon after returning as boss, Mr Page axed various projects and streamlined the management. Nest is being allowed to keep its separate identity and offices, with Mr Fadell reporting directly to Mr Page. Google has also protected its in-house hardware projects, such as Google Glass and self-driving cars, from succumbing to corporate inertia by nurturing them in its secretive Google X development lab. It has also given its most important projects high-profile bosses with the clout to champion them internally. The new head of Google’s robotics business is Andy Rubin, who led the successful development of Android. Such tactics are good ways to avoid the pitfalls of conglomeration. But to ensure success, Google will need to avoid another misstep. Its chequered record on data-privacy issues means that Nest and other divisions will be subject to intense scrutiny by privacy activists and regulators. Provided it can retain the confidence of its users on this, Google should be able to find plenty of new opportunities in both software and hardware that pass the toothbrush test and keep a bright smile on its shareholders’ faces. 【980】