中国共享经济先锋Ofo陷入财务危机
对城市拥堵给出的一个简单、零排放的精妙解决方案?还是一种得到风投支持的、已经达到疯癫地步的技术狂妄?
Dockless rented bicycles swept into Chinese cities two years ago. Their arrival inspired a wave of similar mobility experiments around the world, even as city dwellers in China bemoaned the sight of candy-colored bikes heaped in unholy piles on their sidewalks.
两年前，无桩出租自行车席卷了中国的城市。它们的到来在全世界启发了一轮类似的出行实验浪潮，尽管糖果色的自行车在人行道上堆起的龌龊景象令中国的城市居民怨声载道。
Now, one of China’s leading bike start-ups, Ofo, is facing serious financial problems. Its founder is on a government blacklist for unpaid bills. Millions of riders who placed deposits are demanding their money back. And the business model used by many of China’s tech firms — spend furiously to acquire new users, worry about profits later — is showing its limits.
如今，中国领先的自行车初创企业之一Ofo正面临严重的财务问题。其创始人因拖欠账单已被列入政府的黑名单。数百万支付了押金的骑行用户正在要求退还押金。许多中国科技企业惯用的商业模式——先烧钱买用户，后期再谈盈利——正显示出其局限性。
The run of Ofo customers seeking refunds appears to have started last week. Doubts about the company’s financial health had swirled for months. People said on social media they were unable to get refunds on deposits of $15 to $30, which they put down to rent Ofo’s bumblebee-yellow bikes. (The company’s Chinese nickname translates as “Little Yellow Bike.”)
Ofo用户要求退回押金的狂潮大约始于上周。对该公司财务健康状况的疑问已盘桓数月。有人在社交媒体上说，他们无法获得为租借Ofo的明黄色自行车支付的15到30美元的押金退款。(该公司中文昵称为“小黄车”。)
But according to state media, one user posted on the social platform Weibo last week that he had quickly gotten a refund after writing an email to Ofo — in English.
但据国有媒体报道，上周，一位用户在微博上发帖称，他在用英文给Ofo写了一封邮件之后，很快收到了退还的押金。
The post touched off outrage about the apparent differences in the way the company was treating Chinese people and foreigners. It also set off a rush among other Ofo users seeking refunds.
该贴掀起了民众对于该公司对待中国和外国人明显差异的愤怒，并引发了其他Ofo用户索要退款的热潮。
“Ofo’s user base is large, so there is a possibility that the number of applications for deposit refunds will soar,” the company said late Monday in a statement posted on Weibo. “Please be patient. We promise that deposits will be refunded according to the proper procedures. To all users, please don’t worry!”
“Ofo用户基数大，存在退押金申请激增的可能，”该公司在周一晚发布的微博声明中说。“请广大用户耐心等待，我们承诺依序妥善处理好退押金事宜，请广大用户放心!”
The statement appears only to have made people worry more.
该声明似乎反而让公众更加担心。
Many customers used the Ofo app to apply for refunds and joined a queue that had climbed to nearly 12 million people by Thursday.In an email to employees on Wednesday, Ofo’s founder, Dai Wei, acknowledged that the company had been under financial strain all year.
许多用户通过Ofo应用申请了退押金，并加入了周四已攀升到将近1200万人的排队阵列。周三，在给员工的一封邮件中，Ofo创始人戴威承认，公司今年一整年都背负着财务压力。
“I thought countless times about cutting operating capital to pay back some of users’ deposits and debts to suppliers, and even about dissolving the company and filing for bankruptcy,” Mr. Dai wrote. An Ofo spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
“我无数次想过把运营资金全砍掉，用来退还部分用户押金和供应商欠款，甚至是解散公司、申请破产，”戴威写道。Ofo发言人未回应置评请求。
Hundreds of people have also shown up at Ofo’s Beijing headquarters this week.
本周，上千人已出现在Ofo的北京总部大厦。
On Thursday, the company’s fifth-floor office was filled with police officers and shouting customers. Two women were crying.
周四，该公司的五层办公楼里到处是警察和呼喊的用户。有两名女性在哭泣。
Zhang Wei, a migrant worker, had come to the office on Monday seeking a refund and had left without it, missing a day of work in the process. Mr. Zhang, 27, showed up again Thursday morning and wound up angrily kicking an Ofo employee.
民工张伟周一曾来过办公楼要求退还押金未果，还在这过程中耽搁了一天的工作。周四早晨，27岁的张再次前来，结果愤怒中踢打了Ofo的员工。
After being taken to the local police station and released, he returned to the Ofo office. He finally managed to convince an employee to transfer him the amount he had put down, around $30.
他在被带到当地警察局后获释，随即又回到了Ofo办公楼。最后他终于说服了一名员工把他支付的30美元左右金额转账给他。
By then, he had spent a total of around $15 to travel to and from Ofo’s offices by subway and taxi. But he said it was worth it.
到那时，他已经总共花了大约15美元乘地铁和出租车来回往返Ofo办公楼。但他说这也值了。
“It was never about the money,” he said. “I just needed to vent.”
“这不是钱的问题，”他说。“我就是为了出这一口气。”
Liu Jingyi, a student from the northern city of Xi’an, had forgotten about her Ofo deposit until she saw people talking about it on Weibo last month.
来自北方城市西安的学生刘静怡之前忘记了她的Ofo押金，直到上个月她看到人们在微博上谈论这件事情才想起。
Ms. Liu, 23, said she was not optimistic that she would get her money back. 23岁的刘说，对于拿回钱，她不大乐观。
“Look at how many shared bikes there are now,” she said. “I always felt that these cash-burning business models would have to end sooner or later.”
“你看现在共享单车这么多，”她说。“我是一直都觉得他们这种烧钱的模式迟早要完。”
When the history of the current go-go era in China’s tech industry is written, Ofo’s rise and fall may serve as a useful parable. In bike rentals, ride hailing, food delivery and more, a good business idea attracts a swarm of copycats. Cutthroat competition ensues. Many companies and investors get burned.
在中国科技行业当前这个蓬勃发展的时代被写入历史之时，Ofo的兴衰或许可以成为一则有益的寓言。在自行车租赁、叫车、送餐等行业，一个好的商业创意会吸引大批模仿者。继而发生恶性竞争。许多公司和投资者因此蒙受损失。
Mr. Dai founded Ofo in 2014 while studying at Peking University. Cities like New York, London and Paris had long had programs for renting bicycles for short time periods. But those programs required riders to return the bikes to docks fixed to the ground.
戴威于2014年在北京大学学习期间创立了Ofo。像纽约、伦敦和巴黎这样的城市长期以来都有短期租赁自行车的服务。但它们要求骑车者将自行车送回固定的停车点。
Ofo and another Beijing start-up, Mobike, realized that by equipping bikes with GPS and digital locks, commuters could use their phones to rent bikes, freeing them from fixed docks. That would keep bikes circulating, and available wherever people needed them.
Ofo和另一家北京初创企业摩拜意识到，通过给自行车配备GPS和数字锁，通勤者可以用手机租赁自行车，将自行车从固定的停车点解放出来。这可以保持自行车的流通，并且在人们需要自行车的任何地方都可以使用。
Almost overnight, the streets of China’s cities started to resemble a kind of bicycle free-for-all. Imitators sprouted by the dozen, and other start-ups angled to find the next big thing in sharing: umbrellas, basketballs, cellphone power banks, even concrete mixers.
几乎一夜之间，中国城市的街道充满了免费提供给所有人的自行车。十几个模仿者纷纷涌现，其他的初创公司也在寻找下一件可供分享的热点：雨伞、篮球、手机充电宝，甚至是混凝土搅拌机。
Investment poured in. China’s tech giants, including Alibaba and Didi Chuxing, put money into Ofo. Eventually, the start-up raised $2.2 billion, according to Crunchbase. State media hailed bike-sharing as one of China’s “new four great inventions,” putting it and high-speed rail, e-commerce and smartphone payments on the same plane as paper, movable type, the compass and gunpowder.
投资不断涌入。阿里巴巴和滴滴出行等中国科技巨头向Ofo投入了资金。根据Crunchbase的数据，这家初创公司最终筹集到了22亿美元。国家媒体称赞共享单车与高铁、电子商务和智能手机支付一起成为中国的“新四大发明”，与纸张、活字印刷、指南针和火药相提并论。
But it did not take long for the fever to become madness. Vandals set two-wheelers ablaze and heaved them into rivers and canals. Whispers abounded about rental companies hiring people to destroy rivals’ bikes or dump them in out-of-the-way places.Beijing and other cities decided they had had enough, and blocked start-ups from adding more bikes to their streets.
但没过多久，热烈就变成了疯狂。蓄意破坏的人点燃自行车，把它们扔进河流和水渠。关于租车公司雇人毁坏竞争对手的自行车或把它们扔到偏僻地方的传言不绝于耳。北京和其他城市觉得受够了，于是阻止那些初创企业在街道上增加自行车。
Financial pressure started building as well. As long as new riders kept signing up, cash kept flowing in the form of deposits. But it has been expensive for the companies to replace damaged stock, and to hire workers to haul bikes all day from low- to high-demand locations.
财务压力也开始增大。只要新用户不断注册，现金就会以充值的形式持续流动。但对于这些公司来说，更换受损的库存，雇佣工人整天从低需求地区运自行车到高需求地区，成本是很高昂的。
In April, Mobike was acquired by Meituan-Dianping, a food-delivery giant whose financial resources could help it continue to subsidize cheap bike trips. But Ofo has had trouble lately raising money from investors, Mr. Dai said in his letter this week. The company withdrew from several overseas markets, including the United States, this year just months after entering them.
今年4月，美团点评收购了摩拜。美团点评是一家食品快递巨头，其财务资源可以帮助摩拜继续补贴廉价的自行车骑行。但戴威在本周的信中说，Ofo最近在从投资者那里筹集资金方面遇到了麻烦。该公司今年在进入包括美国在内的几个海外市场几个月后就撤出了。
Mr. Dai, who said just last year that Ofo had ballooned to more than $2 billion in value, was recently added to an official blacklist of credit defaulters. According to a government database, he and Ofo’s parent company owe a total of $7.8 million related to various contract disputes. Being on the list means Mr. Dai can be blocked from booking fancy hotels or flying first class.
戴威去年还说，Ofo的价值已经激增到20多亿美元，然而他最近被列入了官方的信用违约黑名单。根据政府的数据，他和Ofo的母公司因各种合同纠纷总共欠下780万美元。被列入该名单意味着戴威可能被禁止预订豪华酒店或乘坐头等舱。
Ofo’s bikes still have their fans in China. Bi Wenwen, a 38-year-old entrepreneur in Shanghai, applied for a deposit refund in November. She does not expect to receive it, but she said she would still use Ofo in the meantime.
Ofo的自行车在中国仍有粉丝。38岁的上海创业者毕雯雯于11月申请退还押金。她预计不会收回这笔钱，但她表示，在此期间仍会使用Ofo。
“It provides a lot of convenience,” Ms. Bi said.
“它提供了很多便利，”毕雯雯说。
Wang Jinzhi applied for a refund from Ofo two weeks ago. But he has already lost all confidence in the sharing economy.
王近知两周前向Ofo申请退款。但他已经对共享经济完全失去信心。
Mr. Wang, a 28-year-old financial analyst in Beijing, lost the $500 deposit he paid a high-end car-sharing company after the company folded. He also failed to get his deposit back from Bluegogo, another bike-rental start-up.
28岁的王近知是北京的一名金融分析师，在一家高端汽车共享公司倒闭后，它损失了支付给这家公司的500美元定金。他也没能从另一家自行车租赁初创公司小蓝单车取回押金。
“Actually, I didn’t have much confidence right from the beginning,” Mr. Wang said, about the sharing economy. “So many similar companies fighting against one another.”
“其实本来开始的时候就没什么信心，”王近知在谈到共享经济时说。“这么多同类型的公司互打。”
In the end, he bought his own bike.
最后，他自己买了一辆自行车。
