斯坦福：YC创业课 - 第09集：如何融资

视频信息

• 标题: 斯坦福：YC创业课 - 第09集：如何融资
• BV号: BV1oWKpzoE1Z
• 时长: 50分10秒（3010秒）
• 作者: 常春藤中英字幕课
• 原始链接: B站视频

视频摘要

本集YC创业课由Ron Conway（SV Angel）和Mark Andreessen（Andreessen Horowitz）主讲，深入探讨融资的核心逻辑。两位顶级投资人指出，风险投资本质是一场异常值游戏：每年约4000家融资可行的公司中，仅约15家产生97%的行业回报，因此投资决策的关键是寻找极端优势而非全面无短板的团队。Parker补充了创始人的融资智慧——应尽可能延长自力更生时间，先建立真正有价值的业务，而非痴迷于打磨融资演讲稿。Mark提出风险洋葱理论：融资即逐层剥离风险的过程，种子轮剥离初始风险，A轮剥离产品与招聘风险，创始人应精确匹配融资额与里程碑。此外，Ron与Mark均强调选择投资者如选择人生伴侣——如果一切顺利谁做投资者无关紧要，但危机时刻董事会成员的质量将决定公司命运。Airbnb与Google的投资案例印证了创始人团队优秀程度与企业长期成功的强相关性。

核心要点

1. 异常值游戏：VC行业4000家公司中约15家产生97%回报，投资决策核心是寻找极端优势而非消除弱点。

2. 风险洋葱理论：创业公司从第一天起就面临创始团队、产品、技术、发布、市场接受度等大量风险，融资即逐层剥离风险的过程。

3. 资本密集型企业的精准融资：需要精确排列里程碑与融资轮次，避免A轮筹集过多导致后续C/D/E轮累积稀释失控。

4. 股权稀释警戒线：种子轮10%-15%、A轮20%-30%，一旦外部投资者持股超过80%，团队将失去动力、VC会主动放弃投资。

5. 自力更生优于融资技巧：Parker建议尽可能延长自力更生时间，Steve Martin的忠告——做到如此出色以至于他们无法忽视你。

6. 选择投资者如选择配偶：创始人与投资人的关系是长期婚姻，危机时刻董事会成员的质量决定公司命运，投票很少发生但讨论至关重要。

7. 联合创始人决定成败：Airbnb三位创始人均同样优秀极为罕见，Google创始人Larry与Sergey的互补性是关键，成功需要找到比自己更强或相当的联合创始人。

8. VC的机会成本约束：每个投资决策既排除竞争类别又占用普通合伙人的董事会席位（每人约10-12个），机会成本是拒绝大部分还不错项目的根本原因。

视频全文转录（中英双语）

以下为完整中英双语转录，已加标点。英文在前，中文在后，逐段对照。

由 Groq Whisper 转录 → M2.7 B 方案整文标点 + 分段 → M2.7 段号保留翻译 → 逐段对照。

[段 1]

I want to start with a question for Mark and Ron, which is by far the number one question. I think you guys decide to invest in a founder or a company. Either of you. No, no, no, no. You first. Well, we have a slide on that. We have an app for that. Mark can start while we try to get your slide up. Okay. So say the question again. Go ahead. What makes you decide to invest in a company? So what makes us invest in a company is based on a whole bunch of characteristics. I’ve been doing this since 1994, right before Mark got out of the University of Illinois. So SV Angel and its entities have invested in over 700 companies.

[译文 1]

我想从一个向Mark和Ron提出的问题开始，这是迄今为止问得最多的问题。我想问一下，你们是决定投资一个创始人还是一家公司？你们中任何一位。不，不，不，不，你先来。好的，我们有一页幻灯片讲这个。我们有一个APP可以回答这个问题。在我们尝试把你的幻灯片调出来的同时，Mark可以先开始。好的，再说一遍问题吧。请继续。是什么让你们决定投资一家公司？那么让我们决定投资一家公司的因素是基于一系列特征。我从1994年就开始做这个了，正好在Mark从伊利诺伊大学毕业后。所以SV Angel及其关联实体已经投资了超过700家公司。

[段 2]

So, to invest in 700 companies, that means we’ve physically talked to thousands of entrepreneurs. And there’s a whole bunch of things that just go through my head when I meet an entrepreneur. And I’m just going to talk about what some of those are. And literally, while you’re talking to me in the first minute, I’m saying, is this person a leader? Is this person rifle-focused and obsessed by the product? And obsessed by the product. I’m hoping, because usually the first question I ask is, what inspired you to invent this product? I’m hoping that it’s based on a personal problem that that founder had, and this product is the solution to that personal problem. Then I’m looking for communication skills, because if you’re going to be a leader and hire a team, assuming your product is successful.

[译文 2]

所以，要投资700家公司，意味着我们已经亲自与数千位创业者交流过。当我见到一位创业者时，有很多想法会从我脑中闪过。我就来谈谈其中一些。实际上，当你和我交谈的前一分钟，我在想，这个人是领导者吗？这个人是否对产品高度专注且痴迷？我希望如此，因为通常我问的第一个问题是，是什么促使你发明这个产品？我希望答案是基于该创始人个人遇到的问题，而这个产品就是那个个人问题的解决方案。然后我在寻找沟通能力，因为如果你要成为领导者并组建团队，假设你的产品成功了的话。

[段 3]

You’ve got to be a really good communicator, and you have to be a born leader. Now, some of that you might have to learn, those traits of leadership, but you better take charge and be able to be a leader. I’ll switch back to the slide, but let’s let Mark. Yeah, I agree with all that. I guess there’s a lot of detail to this question that we could talk about, and we may be even a little bit different than Ron. We actually invest across stages, so we invest at the seed stage, venture stage, growth stage, and then we invest in a variety of different business models, consumer, enterprise, and a bunch of other variations. So there are kind of fine grained answers that we could get into if there are specific questions.

[译文 3]

你必须是一个非常善于沟通的人，而且你必须是个天生的领导者。现在，其中一些你可能需要学习，那些领导者的特质，但你最好主动承担责任并且能够成为一个领导者。我会切换回幻灯片，但让我们请Mark。是啊，我同意所有这些。我想这个问题有很多细节我们可以讨论，而且我们可能和Ron略有不同。我们实际上在各个阶段都有投资，所以我们在seed阶段、venture阶段、growth阶段都有投资，然后我们还投资各种不同的商业模式，包括consumer、enterprise以及其他很多变体。所以如果我们有具体问题，我们可以给出更细致的答案。

[段 4]

Two general concepts that I would share, so one is the venture capital business is 100% a game of outliers. It’s extreme exceptions, right? So the conventional statistics are, you know, on the order of 4,000 venture fundable companies a year who want to raise venture capital, companies a year that want to raise venture capital. About 200 of those will get funded by what’s considered a top-tier VC. About 15 of those will someday get to $100 million in revenue. And those 15 from that year will generate something on the order of 97% of all the returns for the entire category of venture capital in that year. And so venture capital is such an extreme feast or famine business, you’re either in one of the 15 or you’re not.

[译文 4]

我分享两个总体概念，一个是风险投资业务100%是极端异常值的游戏。都是极端例外，对吧？按照常规统计，每年大约有4000家公司想要获得风险投资融资。每年大约有200家会获得所谓顶级VC的资金。其中大约15家有一天能达到1亿美元的收入。而这15家从那一年开始将产生大约97%的整个风险投资类别的所有回报。所以风险投资是如此极端的饱一顿饿一顿的业务，你要么是那15家之一，要么就不是。

[段 5]

Or you’re in one of the 200 or you’re not. And so the big thing that you’re just looking for, no matter which sort of particular kind of criteria we talk about, they all have the characteristic of you’re looking for the extreme outlier. The other thing I’d highlight that we think about a lot internally is we have this concept, invest in strength versus lack of weakness. And at first that sounds obvious, but it’s actually fairly subtle, which is sort of the default way to do venture capital is to kind of check boxes, right? So really good founder, really good idea, really good products, really good initial customers, check, check, check, check, okay, this is reasonable, I’ll put money in it.

[译文 5]

或者你是200个项目中的一个，或者你不是。无论我们讨论什么样的具体标准，你一直在寻找的最大的东西就是它们都有一个共同特征——你在寻找极端的异常值。另一个我想强调的、我们在内部经常思考的概念是，我们倾向于投资于优势而不是缺乏弱点。乍一听这很明显，但实际上相当微妙，因为做风险投资默认的方式就是打勾检查，对吧？所以创始人很好、想法很好、产品很好、初始客户很好，打勾、打勾、打勾、打勾，好，这很合理，我把钱投进去。

[段 6]

What you find with those sort of checkbox deals, and they get done all the time, but what you find is they often don’t have something that really makes them really remarkable and special. They don’t have an extreme strength that makes them an outlier. On the other side of that, the companies that have the really extreme strengths often have serious flaws. And so one of the cautionary lessons of venture capital is if you don’t invest on the basis of serious flaws, you don’t invest in most of the big winners. And we could go through example after example after example of the big winners, and we could go through example after example after example of that, but that would have ruled out almost all the big winners over time.

[译文 6]

你会发现，那些类似打勾式的交易虽然经常发生，但它们往往没有什么真正使其出众和特别的东西。它们没有一个能使其成为异类的极端优势。另一方面，那些拥有真正极端优势的公司往往存在严重缺陷。因此，风险投资的一条警示经验是：如果你不基于严重缺陷进行投资，你就不会投资大多数的大赢家。我们可以逐一列举这些大赢家的例子，也可以逐一列举这方面的例子，但那样做的话，长期来看几乎所有的大赢家都会被排除掉。

[段 7]

And so at least what we aspire to do is to invest in the startups that have a really, really extreme strength along an important dimension, and then be willing to tolerate some other set of weaknesses. Ron, we got your slide up. Okay, I don’t want to overdwell on the slide, but when you first meet an investor, you’ve got to be able to say in one compelling sentence that you should practice like crazy what your product does, so that the investor that you’re talking to immediately can picture the product in their own mind. Probably 25% of the entrepreneurs I talk to today still, after the first sentence, I don’t know what they do. And as I get older and less patient, I say, back up, I don’t even know what you do yet.

[译文 7]

所以我们至少想要做的是投资那些在某个重要维度上具有非常非常极端优势的初创公司，然后愿意容忍其他一些弱点。Ron，你的幻灯片已经显示了。好的，我不想在幻灯片上花太多时间，但当你第一次见投资者时，你必须能够用一句有吸引力的话来概括你的产品是做什么的，这样你与之交谈的投资者就能立即在脑海中描绘出这个产品。大概25%的创业者，我在和他们交谈后，听完第一句话，仍然不知道他们是做什么的。随着年龄增长和耐心减少，我会说，等一下，我还不明白你是做什么的。

[段 8]

So try and get that perfect. And then I want to skip to the second column. You have to be decisive. The only way to make progress is make decisions. Procrastination is the devil in startups. So no matter what you do, you’ve got to keep that ship moving. If it’s decisions to hire, decisions to fire, you’ve got to make those quickly. All about building a great team. Once you have a great product, then it’s all about execution and building a great team. Parker, could you talk about your seed round and how that went, and what you wish you had done differently as a founder of RaisingMoney? Sure, so actually I think my seed round most of the stuff with my current company felt like from a fundraising perspective felt like it came together relatively quickly, but actually one of the experiences that I had, I started a company before this that I was at for about six years, and my co-founder and I pitched almost every VC firm in Silicon Valley.

[译文 8]

所以尽量做到完美。然后我想跳到第二栏。你必须果断。唯一取得进步的方法就是做决定。拖延是创业者的恶魔。所以无论你做什么，都必须让船继续前进。无论是招聘决定还是解雇决定，你都必须快速做出。一切都关乎组建一个优秀的团队。一旦你有了优秀的产品，接下来就是执行和组建优秀的团队。Parker，你能谈谈你的种子轮融资以及进展如何吗？作为 RaisingMoney 的创始人，你希望有什么不同的做法？当然，所以实际上我觉得我的种子轮融资就我目前公司的大多数事务而言，从融资角度来看，感觉相对较快地整合在一起，但实际上我经历过的一件事是，我之前创办了一家在那待了大约六年的公司，我和我的联合创始人几乎向硅谷的每一家 VC 公司都做过推介。

[段 9]

We literally went to like 60 different firms, and they all told us no. And we were constantly trying to figure out how should we adjust our pitch and how should we do the slides differently and how do we tweak the story and that sort of thing. And at one point, there was this sort of key insight that someone gave me when I was pitching, actually someone at Coastal Ventures. And this VC said, guys, he was looking for some very particular kind of analysis that we didn’t have on hand. And he was like, guys, you don’t get it. He was like, if you guys were the Twitter guys, you guys could come in and you could just be like, and put whatever up here and we would invest in you, but you guys aren’t the Twitter guys, so you need to make this really easy and have all this stuff ready for us and all this kind of stuff.

[译文 9]

我们literally去了大约60家不同的公司，他们都拒绝了我们。我们不断地试图弄清楚应该如何调整我们的pitch，应该如何不同地制作幻灯片，应该如何修改我们的故事，诸如此类的事情。有一次，在我做pitch的时候，有人给了我一个关键见解，那个人实际上是Coastal Ventures的。这个VC说，伙计们，他在寻找某种非常特定的analysis，而这些东西我们手头没有。他说，伙计们，你们不懂。他接着说，如果你们是Twitter guys，你们可以直接走进来，随意在这里展示什么，我们都会投资你们，但你们不是Twitter guys，所以你们需要把这个事情做得非常简单，把所有这些东西都为我们准备好，诸如此类。

[段 10]

And I took the exactly opposite lesson of what he, I think, wanted me to take away from that with, which was like, geez, I should really just figure out a way to be the Twitter guys. And that’s the way to do this. And so actually one of the reasons I started my current company or one of the things I found very attractive about Zenefits is as I was thinking about it, it seemed like a business. I was so frustrated from this experience of having tried for two years to raise money from VCs and then sort of decided to hell with it. You can’t count on there being capital available to you. And so the business that I started seemed like one that actually just maybe I could do it without raising money at all.

[译文 10]

我从他那件事中学到的恰恰相反的教训，我觉得他想要我从中得到的教训是：哎呀，我真的应该想办法成为 Twitter 那帮人。而这才是做事的方式。所以实际上，我创办现在这家公司的原因之一，或者说 Zenefits 非常吸引我的一点是，当我在思考这件事的时候，它看起来像是一桩生意。我从这段经历中感到非常沮丧：我花了两年时间试图从 VCs 那里融资，然后基本上决定去他的。你不能指望总有资金可用来支持你。所以我创办的这家公司看起来像是可以完全不靠融资就能做的事情。

[段 11]

There might be a path to kind of, there was enough cash flow, it seemed compelling enough that I could do that. And it turns out that those are exactly the kinds of businesses that investors love to invest in, and it made it incredibly easy. So I actually think Sam was very kind and said I was an expert in fundraising. The reality is I don’t actually even think I’m very good at fundraising. It’s probably something I’m less good at than other parts of my job. But I think if you can build a business where everything is moving in the right direction, fundraising becomes much easier. If you can be the Twitter guys, nothing else matters. And if you can’t be the Twitter guys, it’s very hard for anything else to make a difference, for things to come together for you.

[译文 11]

这里有一些路径，有足够的现金流，看起来足够吸引人，我可以做到。事实证明，这些正是投资者喜欢投资的企业类型，这使得融资变得非常容易。所以我实际上认为Sam非常友善，他说我是筹资方面的专家。现实是，我甚至不认为自己在筹资方面很擅长。这可能是我工作中不太擅长的部分。但我认为，如果你能建立一个一切都在正确方向上发展的企业，筹资就会变得容易得多。如果你能成为Twitter那样的公司，其他什么都不重要。而如果你不能成为Twitter那样的公司，其他任何事情都很难产生影响，事情很难为你汇聚在一起。

[段 12]

Why did that VC say be like the Twitter guys when the fail whale dominated the site for two years? Because it kept growing anyway. Because it worked. Yeah. The other point I want to make is bootstrap as long as you possibly can. I met with one of the best founders in tech who’s starting a new company, and I said to her, well, when are you going to raise money? I might not. And I go, that is awesome. Never forget the bootstrap. So I was actually going to close on this but I’m just going to accelerate it because Parker, I think, just gave you the most important thing you’ll ever hear, which is what I was also going to say.

[译文 12]

为什么那个VC说要学Twitter团队，当时fail whale在这个网站上宕机了两年？因为它反正还是在增长。因为它确实管用。是的。我想说的另一点是，尽可能久地bootstrap（自力更生）。我遇到了一位科技界最优秀的创始人，她正在创办一家新公司，我问她，你什么时候准备融资？她说可能不会。我说，这太棒了。永远不要忘记bootstrap。所以我本来要完成这件事，但现在我只是想加速它，因为Parker，我想，刚刚给了你最重要的事情，你一生中最重要的建议，这也是我本来要说的。

[段 13]

So the number one piece of advice that I’ve ever read and that I tell people on these kinds of topics is always from the comedian Steve Martin, who I think is an absolute genius, wrote a great book on his startup career, which obviously was very successful. The book’s called Born Standing Up. And he, literally, it’s a short little book, and it describes how he became Steve Martin. And the heart of the book is, he says, what’s the key to success? He says the key to success is be so good they can’t ignore you. And so in a sense, we’re going to have this entire conversation, and I’m sure we’ll keep having it, about how to raise money.

[译文 13]

所以，我读过的、最好的建议，也是我在这些话题上告诉人们的，始终来自喜剧演员Steve Martin，我认为他是个绝对的天才，他写了一本关于自己创业生涯的好书，这本书显然非常成功。这本书叫《Born Standing Up》。确切地说，这是一本简短的小书，描述了他如何成为Steve Martin。这本书的核心是，他说，成功的秘诀是什么？他说，成功的秘诀是be so good they can’t ignore you。所以，从某种意义上说，我们将进行整个对话，而且我确信我们会继续讨论如何融资。

[段 14]

But in a sense, it’s all kind of beside the point. Because if you do what Parker’s done, and you build a business that is going to be a gigantic success, then investors are throwing money at you. And if you come in with a theory and a plan and no data, and you’re just one of the next thousand, it’s going to be far, far harder to raise money. So that’s the positive way to put it. It’s kind of be so good they can’t ignore you. In other words, you’re almost always better off making your business better than you are making your pitch better. The other thing, that’s the positive way of looking at it. The negative way of looking at it, or the cautionary lesson, is that, and this gets me in trouble every single time I say it, but I’m on a ton of flu medication, so I’m going to go ahead and just let it rip.

[译文 14]

但从某种意义上说，这都不重要。因为如果你做到了Parker所做的事，建立了一个即将取得巨大成功的业务，那么投资者会争相把钱塞给你。但如果你带着一个理论和计划，却没有数据，只是下一个千人中的一员，那筹钱就会难上加难。所以这是积极的说法。换句话说就是让自己变得优秀到他们无法忽视你。换句话说，你几乎总是把业务做好比把路演做好更有效。另一面，这是积极的看待方式。消极的看待方式，或者说警示教训，就是——每次我说这个都会惹麻烦，但我现在吃了大量感冒药，所以我就豁出去了。

[段 15]

Raising venture capital is the easiest thing a startup founder is ever going to do, as compared to recruiting, as compared to recruiting engineers in particular, as compared to recruiting engineer number 20. It’s far harder than raising venture capital. Selling to enterprise customers is harder. Getting viral growth going on a consumer business is harder. Getting advertising revenue is harder. Almost everything you’ll ever do is harder than raising venture capital, and so I think Parker is exactly right. If you get in a situation in which raising the money is hard, it’s probably not hard compared to all the other stuff that’s about to follow, and it’s very important to bear that in mind. It’s often said raising money is not actually a success, it’s not actually a milestone for a company, and I think that’s true, and I think that’s the underlying reason.

[译文 15]

融资是创业创始人做过的最容易的事，相比招聘，尤其是招聘工程师，特别是招聘第20号工程师，这比融资难得多。向企业客户销售更难。在消费类业务中获得病毒式增长更难。获得广告收入更难。你将要做的几乎所有事情都比融资难，所以我认为Parker完全正确。如果你遇到融资困难的情况，与即将随之而来的所有其他事情相比，这可能算不上真正的困难，记住这一点非常重要。人们常说融资实际上并不是成功，实际上并不是公司的里程碑，我认为这是对的，而这就是根本原因。

[段 16]

It puts you in a position to be able to do all the other harder things. Related to that, what do you guys wish founders did differently when raising money? And specifically, Mark, you mentioned this relationship between money and how that applies here, so maybe we could start with that. Yeah, so the single biggest thing that people are just missing, and I think it’s all of our faults that we’re all not talking about it enough. But I think the single biggest thing entrepreneurs are missing, both on fundraising and how they run their companies, is the relationship between risk and cash. So the relationship between risk and raising cash, and then the relationship with risk and spending cash.

[译文 16]

这让你能够去做所有其他更难的事情。紧接着这个话题，你们希望创始人在融资时做什么不同的事？特别是 Mark，你之前提到了金钱与……之间的关系以及它如何应用到这一点上，也许我们可以从那里开始。是的，所以人们完全忽略的最大的一件事，而且我认为这是我们所有人的错，因为我们都没有充分讨论它。但我认为企业家们忽略的最大的一件事，无论是在融资方面还是他们如何经营公司方面，就是风险与现金之间的关系。即风险与融资之间的关系，然后是风险与支出现金之间的关系。

[段 17]

So I’ve always been a fan of something that Andy Ratcliffe taught me years ago, which he calls the onion theory of risk, which basically is you can think about a startup like on day one as having every conceivable kind of risk, right? And you can basically just make a list of the risks. And so you’ve got founding team risk. Are the founders going to be able to work together? Do you have the right founders? You’re going to have product risk. Can you build a product? You’ll have technical risk, which is maybe you need a machine learning breakthrough or something to make it work. Are you going to be able to do that? You’ll have launch risk.

[译文 17]

所以我一直很喜欢Andy Ratcliffe多年前教给我的一个东西，他称之为风险洋葱理论（onion theory of risk），它的基本理念是，你可以把一家初创公司想象成在第一天就面临着各种可以想象到的风险，对吧？然后你基本上可以列出一份风险清单。所以你会有创始团队风险——创始人们能够一起合作吗？你有合适的创始人吗？你会有产品风险——你能做出产品吗？你会有技术风险，比如你可能需要在机器学习方面取得突破或其他什么才能让产品运行。你能做到吗？你会有发布风险。

[段 18]

Will the launch go well? You’ll have market acceptance risk. You’ll have revenue risk. A big risk you get into in a lot of businesses that have a sales force is, can you actually sell the product for enough money to actually pay for the cost of sale? So you have cost of sale risk. If you’re a consumer product, you’ll have viral growth risk. Well, you get the thing of viral growth. And so a startup at the very beginning is basically just this long list of risks. And then the way that I always think about running a startup is also the way I think about raising money, which is it’s a process of peeling away layers of risk as you go.

[译文 18]

产品发布会顺利吗？你会面临市场接受度风险。你会面临收入风险。在很多有销售团队的企业中，一个很大的风险是：你是否真的能把产品卖到足够多的钱来支付销售成本？所以你会面临销售成本风险。如果你是消费品公司，你会面临病毒式增长风险。嗯，你会遇到病毒式增长这件事。所以一家初创公司在一开始基本上就是这份长长的风险清单。然后我一直思考经营初创公司的方式，也是我思考融资的方式，那就是：这是一个随着进程不断剥去一层层风险的过程。

[段 19]

And so you raise seed money in order to peel away the first two or three risks, the founding team risk, the product risk, maybe the initial launch risk. You raise the A round to peel away the next level of product risk. Maybe you peel away some recruiting risk because you get your full engineering team built. Maybe you peel away some customer risk because you get your first five beta customers. And so basically the way to think about it is you’re peeling away risk as you go. You’re peeling away risk by achieving milestones. And then as you achieve milestones, you’re both making progress in your business and you’re justifying raising more capital. And so you come in and you pitch somebody like us and you say you’re raising a B round.

[译文 19]

所以你融种子轮资金是为了剥离前两三个风险，即创始团队风险、产品风险，也许还有初期发布风险。你融A轮来剥离下一层的产品风险。也许你剥离了一些招聘风险，因为你组建完成了完整的工程团队。也许你剥离了一些客户风险，因为你获得了前五个beta客户。所以基本上可以这样理解，你是在逐步剥离风险。你通过达成里程碑来剥离风险。然后当你达成里程碑时，你既在业务上取得了进展，也在为融更多资金提供了依据。然后你来找我们这样的人pitch，你说你要融B轮。

[段 20]

The best way to do that with us is you say, okay, I raised a C round. I achieved these milestones. I eliminated these risks. I raised the A round. I achieved these milestones. I eliminated these risks. Now I’m going to raise a B round, here are my milestones, here are my risks. And then by the time I go to raise a C round, here’s the state that I’ll be in. And then you calibrate the amount of money that you raise to spend to the risks that you’re pulling out of the business. And I go through all this, in a sense, this sounds kind of obvious, but I go through all this because it’s a systematic way to think about how the money gets raised and deployed, as compared to so much of what’s happening, especially these days, which is just, Oh my god, let me go raise as much money as I can.

[译文 20]

和我们合作的最好方式是，你这样说，好吧，我完成了C轮。我达到了这些里程碑，消除了这些风险。我完成了A轮，达到了这些里程碑，消除了这些风险。现在我要进行B轮，这是我的里程碑，这是我的风险。然后当我进行C轮时，这就是我的状态。然后你校准融资的金额与你从业务中消除的风险相匹配。我经历了这一切，从某种意义上说，这听起来有点显而易见，但我这样做是因为这是一种系统性的思考方式，关于资金如何筹集和部署，相比之下，现在发生的事情，尤其是这些天，就是，天哪，让我尽可能多地筹集资金。

[段 21]

Let me go build the fancy offices. Let me go hire as many people as I can, and just kind of hope for the best. I’m going to be tactical for sure. Don’t ask people to sign an NDA. We rarely get asked anymore because most founders have figured out that if you ask somebody for an NDA at the front end of the relationship, you’re basically saying, I don’t trust you. So the relationship between investors and founders involves lots of trust. The biggest mistake that I see by far is not getting things in writing. My advice on the fundraising process is do it as quickly and efficiently as you possibly can. Don’t obsess over it. For some reason, founders get their ego involved in fundraising, where it’s a personal victory.

[译文 21]

让我去建一个高大上的办公室吧。让我尽可能多招人，然后就希望一切顺利吧。我肯定会讲究策略的。不要让人签 NDA。我们现在很少被要求签了，因为大多数创始人都明白，如果在关系一开始就要求对方签 NDA，基本上就等于在说，我不信任你。所以投资人和创始人之间的关系包含很多信任。我见过的最大的错误就是没有把事情写下来。我对融资过程的建议是，尽可能快速高效地完成它。不要过度纠结。不知为何，创始人在融资时会把自我代入，把它当成个人胜利。

[段 22]

It is the tiniest step on the way, as Mark said. And it’s the most fundamental. Hurry up and get it over with. But in the process, when somebody makes a commitment to you, you get in your car and you type an email to them that confirms what they just said to you. Because a lot of investors have very short memories, and they forget that they committed to you that they were going to finance. Or they forget what the valuation was. That they were going to find a co-investor. You can get rid of all that controversy just by putting it in writing. And when they try and get out of it, you just resend the email and say, excuse me.

[译文 22]

这只是前进道路上最小的一步，正如Mark所说的。但这也是最根本的。快点完成它。但在这个过程中，当有人对你做出承诺时，你要做的是坐进车里，给他们发一封邮件，确认他们刚才对你说的话。因为很多投资者的记忆力非常短暂，他们会忘记自己曾承诺要为你融资。或者他们忘记估值是多少。他们说要找联合投资者。你可以通过书面形式消除所有这些争议。当他们试图反悔时，你只需重发那封邮件，然后说：不好意思。

[段 23]

And hopefully they’ve replied to that email anyway. So get it in writing. In meetings, take notes and follow up on what’s important. I want to talk a little bit more about tactics here. Just how does the process go? Can people email you guys directly? Do they need to give an introduction? How many meetings does it take for you to make a decision? How do you figure out what the right terms are? When can a founder ask you for a check? Do you want to? That was like six questions. That’s a lot of things. Yeah, okay. Okay. That was like six questions. That’s a lot. Thanks. Yeah, okay, good. It’s the process. Why don’t you describe, because you’ll describe seed, and then I’ll describe seed.

[译文 23]

希望他们无论如何都已经回复了那封邮件了。所以要把一切都书面化。在会议中，做笔记并且跟进重要的事情。我想在这里多谈一点策略。整个流程是怎样的？人们可以直接给你们发邮件吗？他们需要自我介绍吗？你们需要开多少次会议才能做出决定？你们如何确定正确的条款？创始人什么时候可以向你们请求投资？你们愿意吗？那大概是六个问题。内容真多。嗯，好。好。那大概是六个问题，内容真多。谢谢。嗯，好，好的。这是流程。你来描述一下流程，因为你会描述 seed，然后我来描述 seed。

[段 24]

Yeah, yeah. So SV Angel invests in seed stage startups, so we like to be the very first investor. We normally invest today in a round that’s a million to two million. It used to only be a million. So if we invest 250K, that means there’s five or six other investors in that syndicate. SV Angel has now a staff of 13 people. I do no due diligence anymore. I am not a picker anymore. I just help on major projects for the portfolio companies that are starting to mature. But we have a whole team that processes. We at SV Angel end up investing in one company for every 30 that we look at, and we end up investing in about one a week.

[译文 24]

嗯，嗯。SV Angel投资种子期创业公司，我们喜欢成为最早的投资者。我们现在通常投资100万到200万的轮次。以前只是100万。所以如果我们投资250K，那就意味着这个联合投资中有其他五六位投资者。SV Angel现在有13名员工。我不再做尽职调查了。我不再是选项目的人了。我只是帮助那些开始成熟的被投公司的主要项目。但我们有一个完整的团队来处理。我们SV Angel最终是每看30家公司投资1家，我们最终大约每周投资1家。

[段 25]

I think what’s interesting is we don’t really take anything over the transom. Our network is so huge now that we basically just take leads from our own network. We evaluate the opportunity, which means you have to send in a really great short executive summary. And if we like that, we actually vote, although I’m not in this meeting anymore, but the group actually votes on. Do we make a phone call? That’s how important time is in this process. And if enough of the team at SV thinks it’s interesting, then they appoint a person to make a phone call to that founder, usually somebody on our team who has domain experience. If the phone call goes well, bingo, we want to meet you.

[译文 25]

我认为有趣的是，我们实际上不接收任何主动送上门的项目。我们的网络现在非常庞大，以至于我们基本上只从自己的网络中获取项目来源。我们会评估这个机会，这意味着你需要发送一份非常精彩的简短执行摘要。如果我们喜欢这个项目，我们实际上会投票，虽然我不再参加这个会议了，但团队会实际进行投票。我们是否打电话？在这个过程中，时间就是如此重要。如果SV团队的足够多成员认为它有趣，那么他们会指定一个人给那个创始人打电话，通常是我们团队中具有领域经验的人。如果电话沟通顺利，耶，我们就想要见你。

[段 26]

If SV Angel asks you for a meeting, we are well on our way to investing. If that meeting goes well, we’ll do some background checks, backdoor background checks, get a good feeling about the company, the market that they’re going after, and then make the commitment to invest, and then start helping get other value-add investors to be part of the syndicate. Is if we’re going to have an equal workload, we want the other investors in this company to be great angel investors as well. So I’ll talk a little bit about the venture stage, kind of the Series A stage that follows. So to start with, I think it’s fair to say at this point that the top tier venture capitalists pretty much only invest in two kinds of companies at the Series A stage.

[译文 26]

如果SV Angel约你开会，我们就快投资了。如果会议顺利，我们会进行一些背景调查，秘密背景调查，对公司、他们要进入的市场感觉良好，然后做出投资承诺，接着开始帮助引入其他有价值的投资者加入联合投资体。也就是说，如果我们要承担相等的工作量，我们也希望这家公司的其他投资者是优秀的Angel投资人。所以我来谈谈风险投资阶段，也就是随后的Series A阶段。首先，我认为可以公平地说，在目前这个阶段，顶级风险投资人几乎只在Series A阶段投资两类公司。

[段 27]

One is if they have previously raised a seed round. And so it’s almost always the case when we’re doing a Series A investment the company has a million or two million dollars of seed financing from Ron and folks that he likes to work with. Almost always, by the way, Ron, just to be clear, and folks he likes to work with. So first, either they have a seed round. So if you’re going to raise Series A, the first thing to do is raise seed because that’s generally the way the progression works at this point. Every once in a while, we’ll go straight to A on a company that hasn’t raised a seed round. Really, the only times, though, that that happens are when it’s a founder who has been a successful founder in the past and is almost certainly somebody we’ve worked with in the past.

[译文 27]

一个条件是，如果他们之前已经完成过种子轮融资的话。因此，我们在进行Series A投资时，目标公司几乎总是已经获得了Ron及其合作伙伴提供的100万或200万美元种子资金。几乎总是如此，顺便说一下，Ron，就是他本人以及他愿意合作的那些人。所以，首先，要么他们有种子轮融资。如果你要进行Series A融资，第一件事就是先完成种子轮融资，因为到目前为止，发展路径基本上是这样的。偶尔，我们也会直接进行A轮投资，投资那些还没有进行种子轮融资的公司。但实际上，这种情况只有在以下条件下才会发生：创始人之前已经成功创立过公司，而且几乎可以肯定是我们之前合作过的人。

[段 28]

So we actually haven’t announced but we just did one of these. We’ll announce in a few weeks where it’s a founder who I was an angel investor in actually. I think Brian was also in the team’s company in like 2006, and then the company did its thing and then ultimately was acquired by another big company, and then that team now is starting their new thing. So in that case, we’re just going to jump it straight to an A because they’re so well known and they have a plan all lined up for it. But that’s the exception. It’s almost always preceded by a seed round. The other thing is, I guess I mentioned this already, but we get similar to what Ron said.

[译文 28]

所以我们实际上还没有宣布，但我们刚刚完成了一个这样的投资。我们将在几周后宣布，这是一个我实际上做过天使投资人的创始人。我认为Brian在2006年也在这个团队的公司，然后公司发展自己的业务，最终被另一家大公司收购了，现在那个团队正在开始他们的新项目。所以在这种情况下，我们直接跳到A轮，因为他们的知名度很高，而且已经制定好了完整的计划。但这是例外情况。几乎总是以种子轮为前提。另一件事是，我想我之前已经提到过，但我们得到的和Ron说的类似。

[段 29]

We get 2,000 referrals a year through our referral network. A very large percentage of those are referrals through the seed investors. And so by far, the best way to get the best introductions to the A stage venture firms is to work through the seed investors or to work through something like Y Combinator. Speaking about terms, what terms should founders care most about? And how should founders negotiate? Maybe Parker, we can start with you on this one. How should founders negotiate? Maybe Parker, we can start with you on this one. Sure. Well, I think probably precisely because of what Mark said, the most important thing at the seed stage is picking the right seed investors because they’re going to sort of lay the foundation for future fundraising events.

[译文 29]

我们通过推荐网络每年获得2000次推荐。其中很大一部分是通过seed investors推荐的。因此到目前为止，获得A阶段风投公司最佳介绍的最佳方式是通过seed investors合作，或者通过像Y Combinator这样的机构。说到条款，创始人最应该关注哪些条款？创始人应该如何谈判？也许Parker，我们可以先从你开始。创始人应该如何谈判？也许Parker，我们可以先从你开始。好的。嗯，我想可能正是因为Mark所说的，在seed stage最重要的事情是选择正确的seed investors，因为他们将奠定未来融资活动的基础。

[段 30]

They’re going to make the right introductions. And I think there’s an enormous difference in the quality of an introduction. So if you can get a really good introduction from someone who a venture capitalist really trusts and respects, the likelihood that that’s going to go well is so much higher than a much more lukewarm introduction from someone they don’t know as well. So at the seed stage, probably the best thing you can do is find the right investors. And then… How does the founder know who the right investors are? Well, I think it’s really hard. So one of the best ways, not to give a plug for YC, but YC does a very good job of telling you exactly who they think those people are and can really direct you towards…

[译文 30]

他们会做出恰当的介绍。而且我认为介绍的质量差异巨大。所以如果能得到一个真正好的介绍，来自风险投资家非常信任和尊重的人，那这件事成功的可能性要比一个来自不太熟识的人的不温不火的介绍高出很多。所以在种子阶段，你能做的最好的事情就是找到合适的投资人。然后……创始人怎么知道谁是合适的投资人呢？嗯，我认为这真的很难。所以最好的方法之一——不是给YC打广告——但YC在做得很出色，他们会告诉你他们认为哪些人合适，并且能真正引导你去……

[段 31]

And I actually have found it to be pretty accurate in terms of who you guys said were going to be the best people. They ended up being the most helpful as we were raising subsequent rounds, sort of really provided the best introductions. And the people who maybe I thought seemed OK, but were not as sort of highly rated by YC, that ended up being the case that they were kind of like real duds in the seed round. Some day we’re going to publish our list of these people. Oh my God, there are going to be a lot of upset people. Oh my God, there are going to be a lot of upset people when we do.

[译文 31]

实际上我发现你们说的哪些人会是最好的人，这是相当准确的。在我们进行后续融资时，他们最终提供了最多的帮助，真的是提供了最好的引荐。而那些我以为看起来还不错，但YC评分不是那么高的人，结果在种子轮中他们确实是相当糟糕的。总有一天我们会公布这些人的名单。天哪，到时候会有很多人感到不爽。天哪，当我们公布的时候，会有很多人感到不爽。

[段 32]

So how do you think about negotiation? How do you figure out what the right valuation for a company is and what other terms? Well, so I started out, when I was raising my seat around it, I really didn’t know. And we had conversations about this. I probably started a little too high on the valuation side. So as you guys know, Y Combinator culminates in this thing called Demo Day, where you get all of these investors at once who are looking at the company. And I started out trying to raise money at like a $12 or a $15 million cap, which is like not quite the same thing as evaluation, but sort of roughly equivalent. And everyone was like, that’s crazy.

[译文 32]

所以你是怎么看待谈判的？你是如何确定公司的正确估值和其他条款的？嗯，我开始融资的时候，我真的不知道。我们也讨论过这个问题。我可能在估值方面开价有点太高了。所以你们都知道，Y Combinator 最终会以 Demo Day 形式呈现，你会一次面对所有这些投资者来审视公司。我一开始试图以 $1200 万或 $1500 万 cap 的估值融资，这和 valuation 不太一样，但大致相当。然后所有人都说，这太疯狂了。

[段 33]

You know, that’s completely nuts. You’re like too big for your britches. Like that’s completely just wouldn’t work. And so I ended up sort of walking it down a little bit. And within sort of the space of a couple days said, okay, well, I’m going to raise it nine. And then suddenly, for whatever reason, that sort of hit some magical threshold on the seed stage that it was below 10, that it seemed like there was almost infinite demand for the round at a $9 million cap. So no one would pay $12, but at a $9 million cap, it felt like I probably could have raised like $10 million. And the round came together in roughly about a week at that point once I kind of hit that threshold.

[译文 33]

你知道，那完全是疯了。你就是眼高手低。就好像这完全行不通似的。所以我最后决定稍微降低一点要求。然后在几天内，我就说，好吧，我要提高到 nine。然后突然，由于某种原因，这触及了 seed stage 低于 10 百万 cap 的某个神奇阈值，似乎在 9 million cap 的情况下几乎有无限的需求。所以没人会付 12 million，但在 9 million cap 的情况下，感觉我可能已经融到了大约 10 million。一旦我达到那个阈值，融资大约在那时候的一周内就完成了。

[段 34]

And so there seem to be, and they probably fluctuate over time, but there seem to be these sort of like thresholds, particularly for seed stage companies that investors will think of as like. This is what, you know, like above this level is like crazy. That like doesn’t matter. And there’s sort of like a rough kind of range that people are willing to pay. And so you just kind of like, you have to just kind of figure out what that is, get the money that you need, don’t raise any more than you need, and just kind of get it done. And, you know, at the end of the day, like whether you raise it 12 or 9 or like 6, it’s not a huge deal for the rest of the company.

[译文 34]

所以似乎确实存在这样的阈值，而且它们可能会随着时间波动，但尤其对于 seed stage 公司，投资者会有一个心理预期。就是超过这个水平就太离谱了，低于这个就无所谓了。大致上也有一个人们愿意支付的区间范围。所以你要做的就是弄清楚这个区间是多少，拿到你需要的钱，不要融超过你需要的，然后就这么定了。说到底，不管你是融 12 还是 9 还是 6，对公司的其他方面来说都不是什么大事。

[段 35]

Is there a maximum amount of the company you think the founders should sell in their C-round and A-round, beyond which Paul is talking? I feel like that’s a better question for you. Well, gosh, I don’t know. I mean, you know, I think on, I mean, I don’t know the rules on this stuff. I think the tricky thing is, I mean, it seems like they’re kind of rough, particularly for like a Series A. You’re probably going to sell somewhere between 20% and 30% of the company because venture capitalists tend to be a lot more ownership-focused than price-focused. So you might find that it’s actually sometimes when companies raise really big rounds, it’s because the investor basically said, listen, I’m not going to go below 20% ownership, but I’ll pay more for it.

[译文 35]

你觉得创始人在C轮和A轮中应该出售公司的最大比例是多少，超出这个比例后Paul就在讨论了？我感觉这个问题你回答更合适。哎呀，我不知道。我是说你知道，我觉得，嗯，我不太清楚这方面的规则。我觉得棘手的是，嗯，这些规则似乎有点粗糙，尤其是对于Series A来说。你可能要出售公司20%到30%的股份，因为venture capitalists往往更注重所有权而非价格。所以你可能会发现，有时候公司进行大额融资，是因为投资者基本上在说，听着，我不会接受低于20%的所有权，但我愿意为此支付更多。

[段 36]

And above 30%, probably sort of weird things happen at the cap table. It gets hard down the line to have there be enough room on the cap table for everyone. And so everything seems to come in in that range. So that probably just is what it is in most cases. So at the seed stage, what I’ve heard, there doesn’t seem to be any magic to it, but it seems like 10% to 15% is what people say. But that’s mostly just what I’ve heard. I’m curious. Yeah, I agree with all that. I think it’s important to get the process over with. But I think it’s important for the founder to say to themselves in the beginning, at what point does my ownership start to demotivate me?

[译文 36]

超过 30%，股权结构表上可能会出现一些奇怪的情况。以后想要在股权结构表上给每个人留出足够的空间会变得困难。所以一切似乎都在那个范围内。这可能就是大多数情况下的常态。在种子阶段，据我了解，似乎没有什么神奇的公式，但人们说的好像是 10% 到 15%。不过这主要也就是我听来的。我很好奇。是的，我同意你说的这一切。我认为尽快完成这个流程很重要。但我认为创始人一开始就需要问自己：到了什么时候，我的所有权反而开始让我失去动力？

[段 37]

Because if there’s like a 40% dilution in an angel round, I’ve actually said to the founder, do you realize you’ve already doomed yourself? You’re going to own less than 5% of this company if you’re a normal company. And so these guidelines are important, the 10% to 15%, because if you keep giving away more than that, there’s not enough left for you and the team, and you’re the ones doing all the work. Well, actually, we’ll walk. We’ve seen a series of interesting companies in the last five years where we just walk simply on the basis of the cap table’s already destroyed. We won’t bid simply on the basis of their cap table is already destroyed. Outside investors already own too much.

[译文 37]

因为如果在天使轮有大约40%的稀释，我实际上曾对创始人说过，你意识到你已经把自己坑了吗？如果是一家普通公司，你最终拥有的股份将不到这家公司的5%。所以这些指导原则很重要，10%到15%，因为如果你不断给出超过这个比例的股份，留给你和团队的就不够了，而你们才是做所有工作的人。嗯，实际上，我们会放弃。过去五年，我们看到过一系列有趣的公司，仅仅是基于他们的 cap table 已经被毁了，我们就直接放弃。我们不会出价，仅仅是基于他们的 cap table 已经被毁了。外部投资者已经拥有太多股份了。

[段 38]

There’s a company we really wanted to invest in, but the outside investors already owned 80% of it when we talked to them. And it was still a relatively young company. They had just done two early rounds that had just sold too much of the company. And literally we were worried, and I think accurately so, that it was going to be demotivating for the team to have that structure. One more question before we open it up to the audience for Ron and for Mark. Could you guys both tell the story of the most successful investment you’ve ever made and how that came to happen? Other than Zenefits, of course. Other than Zenefits. Yeah, other than Zenefits.

[译文 38]

有一家公司我们真的很想投资，但当我们和他们谈的时候，外来投资者已经拥有80%的股份了。而且这家公司还相当年轻。他们刚刚完成了两轮早期融资，卖掉了太多的股份。说真的我们很担心，而且我认为这种担心是准确的，这样的股权结构会让团队失去动力。在向观众开放提问之前，我想再问Ron和Mark一个问题。你们能分别讲讲你们做过的最成功的投资是什么，以及它是如何实现的吗？当然，除了Zenefits。除了Zenefits。是的，除了Zenefits。

[段 39]

For me, clearly, it was the investment in Google in 1999. And we got Google return out of it. But funny enough, I met Google through a Stanford professor, David Cheriton, who’s in the School of Engineering. He’s still here. He was actually an angel investor in Google and an investor in our fund. And kind of the quid pro quo we have with our investors in the fund is you have to tell us about any interesting company that you see. And we loved it that David Cheriton was an investor in our fund because he had access to the computer science department’s deal flow. And we were at this party at Vivek Ranadive’s house in full tuxedo, I hate to wear tuxedos.

[译文 39]

对我来说，毫无疑问，是1999年对Google的投资。我们从中获得了Google的回报。但有趣的是，我是通过一位斯坦福大学的教授David Cheriton认识Google的，他在工程学院。他还在这里。他实际上是Google的天使投资者，也是我们基金的投资者。我们和基金投资者之间有一种互惠关系，你必须告诉我们你看到的任何有趣的公司。我们很喜欢David Cheriton是我们基金的投资者，因为他可以接触到计算机系的交易流。我们在Vivek Ranadive家的派对上，我穿着全套燕尾服，我讨厌穿燕尾服。

[段 40]

And did anyone here know David Cheriton? Because you know for sure he does not like tuxedos. And he was in a tuxedo. But I went up to him and we complained about our attire. And then I said, hey, what’s happening at Stanford? And he says, well, there’s this project called Backrub. And it’s search. And it’s search by page rank and relevancy. And back in today page rank and relevancy everyone says, oh, you know, that’s so obvious. In 1998, that was not obvious. That engineers were designing a product based on this thing called page rank. And all it was was a simple algorithm that said if a lot of people go to that website and other websites direct them there, there must be something good happening on that website.

[译文 40]

有人认识David Cheriton吗？因为可以确定他不喜欢燕尾服。但他却穿着燕尾服。于是我走向他，我们抱怨了自己的着装。然后我说，嘿，Stanford那边有什么新鲜事？他说，呃，有个项目叫Backrub，是关于搜索的，是基于page rank和relevancy的搜索。回到今天，page rank和relevancy大家都说，哦，你知道，这太显而易见了。但在1998年，这并不显而易见。工程师们基于这个叫page rank的东西设计产品。它其实就是一个简单的算法，说如果很多人访问那个网站，而且其他网站也把他们引向那里，那那个网站上一定有什么好东西在发生。

[段 41]

That was the original algorithm. And the motivation was relevance. So I said to David, I have to meet these people. And he said, you can’t meet them till they’re ready, which was the following May, funny enough. I waited, I called them every month for five months, and finally got my audition with Larry and Sergey. And right away, they were very strategic. They said, we’ll let you invest if you can get Sequoia. We don’t know Sequoia, but they’re investors in Yahoo, and because we’re late to market, we want an OEM deal with Yahoo. And so I earned my way into the investment in Google. So I’ll tell one on the other side, which is Airbnb, which we actually were not early investors in.

[译文 41]

那是最初的算法。动机是相关性。所以我对David说，我必须见这些人。他说在他们准备好之前你见不到他们，那就是第二年五月，挺有意思的。我等了五个月，每个月都给他们打电话，终于获得了和Larry及Sergey会面的机会。而他们立刻就很有策略性。他们说，如果你能拉来Sequoia，我们就让你投资。我们不了解Sequoia，但他们是Yahoo的投资者，而且因为我们进入市场晚了，我们想和Yahoo达成OEM协议。就这样，我凭自己的努力获得了投资Google的机会。那我来讲另一个例子，也就是Airbnb，我们实际上并不是他们的早期投资者。

[段 42]

We did Airbnb as a growth round. We did the first big growth round in Airbnb at about a billion-dollar valuation in 2011. And I think that will turn out to be, I believe that will turn out to be one of the spectacular growth investments of all time. We’ll see, but I think this is really going to be one of the big companies. So I’ll tell that story because it’s not a story of pure genius. We passed. We didn’t even meet with them. I don’t think we met with them the first time around, or maybe one of our junior people did. But it was one of these. I said earlier that venture capital is entirely a game of outliers.

[译文 42]

我们把Airbnb当作成长轮投资。我们在2011年以大约10亿美元的估值参与了Airbnb的第一轮大型成长轮投资。我认为是这样的，我相信这最终会成为有史以来最惊人的成长投资之一。我们拭目以待，但我认为这真的会是一家伟大的公司。所以我来讲讲这个故事，因为这不是一个纯粹天才的故事。我们放弃了。我们甚至没有和他们见面。我不认为我们第一次就见过他们，或者也许我们某个初级人员见过。但这就是这样。我之前说过，风险投资完全是异常值的游戏。

[段 43]

One of the key things with outliers is the ideas often seem completely nuts up front. And so, of course, the idea of a website where you can have other people stay in your house, if you just made a list of the ideas that are most nuts, that would be right there at the top. And then I have a very nice email from you, hopefully. I was very courteous in my stupidity. Well, the second most stupid idea you could possibly think of is a website where you can stay at other people’s houses. And so Airbnb uniquely combines both of those bad ideas. So, of course, it turns out they’ve unlocked an entirely new way to basically use real estate.

[译文 43]

关于异常值，关键的一点是他们的想法往往一开始看起来完全疯狂。所以，当然，如果你列一个最疯狂的想法清单，让别人住在你家里的网站这个想法肯定名列前茅。而你能想到的第二愚蠢的想法是，让你可以住在别人家里的网站。所以 Airbnb 独特地结合了这两个糟糕的想法。所以，当然，事实证明他们已经开创了一种全新的方式来使用房地产。

[段 44]

They’ve unlocked this just gigantic network effect. It’s a gigantic global phenomenon. It’s going to be an enormously successful company. So part was just coming to grips with the fact that we had whiffed on our initial analysis of the idea and that the numbers were clearly proving that we were wrong and the customer behavior was clearly proving that we were wrong. So one of our philosophies at our firm is we’re multi-stage. The big reason for that is so we can fix our mistakes and we can pay up to get in later when we screw up early on. The other thing I’ll highlight, though, is the other reason why we pulled the trigger at a high valuation when we did was because we had spent time at that point with the founders, with Brian and with Joe and with Nate.

[译文 44]

他们释放了巨大的网络效应。这是一个巨大的全球现象。这将成为一家极其成功的公司。所以部分原因是我们开始认清一个事实：我们对这个想法的初步分析完全错了，数据清楚地证明我们错了，客户行为也清楚地证明我们错了。所以我们公司的一个理念是我们是多阶段的。这样做的最大原因是我们可以纠正错误，当我们在早期搞砸时，我们可以支付更高的价格在后期进入。另外我想强调的是，我们当时以高估值投资的其他原因是，因为我们花了时间与创始人相处，与Brian、与Joe和与Nate相处。

[段 45]

And there’s a friend of mine in private equity who has this great line. Egon Durbin has this great line. He says, as people progress through their careers, they get bigger and bigger jobs. And at some point, they get the really big job. And some people, about half the people, grow into the big job, and about the other half of the people swell into it. And you can kind of tell the difference. There’s a point when people just lose their minds. And one of the issues with these companies that are sort of super successful hyper-growth companies is, You know, Airbnb was sort of the classic case of these super young founders who hadn’t run anything before.

[译文 45]

我有一个在私募股权行业的朋友，他有句很棒的话。Egon Durbin有句很棒的话。他说，随着人们在职业生涯中不断晋升，他们得到的职位越来越大。在某个时刻，他们会得到真正的大职位。而有些人，大约一半的人，会真正成长为一个重要的职位，而大约另一半的人会勉强撑进这个职位。你可以辨别出区别。在某个时刻，人们就是会失去理智。而这些超级成功的高增长公司的问题之一是，你知道，Airbnb就是这些超级年轻的创始人——他们之前没有任何运营经验的典型案例。

[段 46]

So how were they going to be at running this sort of giant global operation? And we just were tremendously impressed and are today, every time we deal with all three of those guys, how mature they are, how much they’re progressing. It’s like they get more and more mature, they get better and better judgment, and they get more and more humble as they grow. And so that made us feel really good that not just was this business going to grow, but that these were guys who were going to be able to build something and be able to run it in a really good way. You know, people always ask me, why do you think Airbnb is such a great company?

[译文 46]

所以他们在运营这种大型全球业务方面会表现如何呢？我们印象极其深刻，而且直到今天，每次我们与这三个人打交道时，都会为他们有多成熟、进步有多大而感到惊叹。感觉他们越来越成熟，判断力越来越好，而且随着成长也越来越谦逊。这让我们感觉非常好，因为不仅仅是这门生意会增长，而且这几个人是能够建立一番事业并能够以很好的方式运营它的人。你知道，人们总是问我，你为什么认为 Airbnb 是如此伟大的公司？

[段 47]

It’s funny, we’re obsessing over Airbnb, such a great company. It’s funny, we’re obsessing over Airbnb. And I say to people, it’s because all three founders are as good as the other founder. That is very rare. In the case of Google, two founders, one of them is a little better than the other one. Hey, he’s the CEO. Every company has a CEO. I think we just got the TechCrunch headline. Every company has a CEO. Every company, every company has a CEO. Why am I saying this? When you start a company, you have to go find somebody as good or better than you to be the co-founder. If you do that, your chances of success grow astronomically.

[译文 47]

这很有趣，我们对Airbnb如此痴迷，这是一家很棒的公司。这很有趣，我们对Airbnb如此痴迷。我对人们说，这是因为三位创始人每位都非常出色。这非常罕见。以Google为例，两位创始人，其中一位比另一位略胜一筹。嘿，他是CEO。每家公司都有CEO。我想我们刚刚上了TechCrunch头条。每家公司都有CEO。每家公司，每家公司都有CEO。我为什么要说这些？当你创业时，你必须找到一个和你一样优秀或者比你更优秀的人来担任联合创始人。如果你做到了这一点，你成功的机会就会大幅提升。

[段 48]

And that’s why Airbnb became so successful so quickly. The anomaly is Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. Yes, he has an awesome team, but the Mark Zuckerberg phenomenon where it’s mainly one person that is the outlier. So when you start a company, you’ve got to find phenomenal co-founders. Alright, audience questions. So obviously the conventional wisdom about why you raise money is because you need it, but the more I get off the conventional, the more I’m starting to hear another story about why you raise money, and I’m actually hearing founders say it’s more to facilitate the big exit, or, in the worst case, to facilitate the Apple hire instead of just fizzling out into nothing. To what extent is that accurate thinking or flawed thinking?

[译文 48]

这就是为什么 Airbnb 如此快速地取得成功。例外是 Facebook 的 Mark Zuckerberg。是的，他有一个很棒的团队，但 Mark Zuckerberg 现象指的是主要靠一个人成为异类。所以当你创业时，你必须找到出色的联合创始人。好了，观众提问。传统观点认为融资的原因是你需要钱，但我越偏离传统观点，就越开始听到另一种关于融资原因的说法。实际上，我听到创始人们说融资更多是为了促成大退出，或者在最坏的情况下，是为了促成对 Apple 的 hires，而不是仅仅走向消亡。这种想法在多大程度上是准确的还是存在缺陷？

[段 49]

Does raising money help you with an exit or an Apple hire? Well, if you pick good investors who have good Rolodexes and domain expertise in what your company does, they’re going to add a lot more value than the money. And those are the types of investors you should be looking for. Yeah, so the answer to the question is clearly yes, but also in a sense it doesn’t matter because you can’t plan these things according to the downside. And so, I mean, that’s the scenario you are not, or obviously you’re not hoping for. And so while the answer is yes, probably that shouldn’t enter into the decision-making process too much. It might enter into which investor to raise money from.

[译文 49]

筹集资金对你有帮助退出或Apple的招聘吗？嗯，如果你选择拥有丰富人脉和对公司业务有领域专业知识的优秀投资者，他们带来的价值将远超资金本身。这些才是你应该寻找的投资者类型。是的，所以这个问题的答案显然是否定的，但从某种意义上来说这并不重要，因为你无法根据最坏情况来计划这些事。我的意思是，这不是，或者说你显然不希望出现那种情况。因此，虽然答案是否定的，但这可能不应过多地影响决策过程。这可能会影响你选择从哪家投资者那里筹集资金。

[段 50]

It probably doesn’t enter into the whether to raise money question that much, I don’t think. I think the start of business is fairly capital-intensive. You still want to end up with some equity. You guys have me in price about how to deal with that. You’re talking about demotivation and so on. Not everything is like you start some software, it’s viral, whatever. What should founders do for capital-intensive companies to still be paying off their risk? So this is, I would double down on my previous comments on the onion theory of risk and the staging of risk and cash, which is the more capital-intensive the business, the more intense and serious you have to be about exactly what’s going to be required to make the business work and what the staging of milestones and risks are.

[译文 50]

这可能并没有在很大程度上影响是否要融资的问题，我认为。我认为创业初期是相当资本密集型的。你还是希望最终保留一些股权。你们让我思考如何处理这个问题。你们在谈论积极性下降等等。并非所有事情都像你开发一个软件，它就能病毒式传播之类的。对于资本密集型公司来说，创始人应该怎么做才能仍然补偿他们的风险？所以这一点上，我会重申我之前关于风险洋葱理论和风险及现金分阶段投放的观点——业务越是资本密集型，你就越需要认真严谨地明确要使业务运转起来具体需要什么，以及里程碑和风险的分阶段安排是什么。

[段 51]

Because in that case, you want to line up, you want to be very precise of lining up, because the risk is so high that it all goes sideways, right? So, like, you want to be very precise what you’re going to accomplish with your A round and what’s going to be a successful execution of the A round, because if you raise too much money in the A round, that’ll seriously screw you up later on down the road, because you’re going to raise the C, D, E rounds, and then the cumulative dilution will get to be too much. And so you have to be precise in every single round. You have to raise as close to the exact right amount of money as possible.

[译文 51]

因为在那种情况下，你需要对齐，你需要非常精确地对齐，因为风险太高，一切都可能出问题，对吧？所以，你想要非常精确地规划你通过A轮要实现什么，以及怎样才算成功完成A轮，因为如果A轮融资太多，会在后续发展中严重搞砸你，因为你还要进行C、D、E轮，然后累积的稀释会变得太严重。所以你必须在每一轮都非常精确。你必须尽可能接近正确的融资金额。

[段 52]

And then you have to be as pure and clean and precise with the investors as you can possibly be about the risks and the milestones. But this, by the way, is a big thing. This is actually, I’m really glad you asked the question. It kind of goes back to what Parker said. Like, look, if you walk into our firm and you’ve got Twitter or you’ve got Pinterest or you’ve got something and it’s just viral growth and it’s just on fire and it’s just going to go, like, those are the easy ones. Like, it’s just like, let’s put money in it and let’s just feed the beast and off it goes. But if you walk in and you’re like, I got this really great idea, but it’s going to take $300 million staged out over the next five years, probably across five rounds, it has a potentially very big outcome.

[译文 52]

然后，你必须尽可能地对投资者保持坦诚、清晰和精准，关于风险和关键里程碑。但顺便说一句，这是一件大事。实际上，我真的很高兴你问了这个问题。这有点像回到Parker说的内容。比如说，看，如果你走进我们公司，你已经有了Twitter或Pinterest或什么产品，而且它正处于病毒式增长中，正在爆发中，正在起飞，那些是容易的项目。比如说，那就像是，我们把钱放进去，我们喂饱这个野兽，然后它就起飞了。但如果你走进来说，我有了一个很棒的想法，但它将需要$300 million，分阶段在未来五年内完成，可能跨越五轮，它有一个潜在非常大的成果。

[段 53]

But boy, this is not Twitter. This is going to be serious heavy lifting to be able to get there. We will still do those, but the operational excellence on the part of the team matters a lot more. And one of the ways that you convey the operational excellence is in the quality of the plan. And so back to the Steve Martin thing, be so good they can’t ignore you. The plan should be very precise. And there are ways, if you’re capital equipment intensive, there are ways of borrowing money in addition to venture capital. Yeah, you can kick in venture debt and then later on lease financing. But again, that underlines the need for operational excellence because if you’re going to raise debt, then you really need to be precise in how you’re running the company because it’s very easy to trip the covenants on a loan and it’s very easy to lose the company.

[译文 53]

但伙计，这不是 Twitter。要达到那个目标，需要付出认真的艰苦努力。我们仍然会做那些，但团队的运营卓越性要重要得多。传达运营卓越性的方式之一就是计划的质量。所以回到 Steve Martin 说的那句话，让自己变得如此出色，让他们无法忽视你。计划应该非常精确。如果你是资本设备密集型，有除了 venture capital 之外的融资方式。是的，你可以先用 venture debt，然后再用 lease financing。但再次强调，这突出了对运营卓越性的需求，因为如果你要举债，你就真的需要在经营公司方面做到精确，因为触发贷款 covenant 非常容易，失去公司也非常容易。

[段 54]

And so it’s a thread-the-needle process that demands just sort of a more advanced level of management than sort of the next Snapchat. What are some bad sides for investors that you shouldn’t work with for your company? Yeah, this is a good question. How do you know what’s a side you should avoid if you’re an investor? Well, it’s the inverse of what I said about a good investor. If it’s an investor who has no domain expertise in your company, does not have a Rolodex where they can help you with introductions, both for business development and in helping you do the intros for Series A, you should not take that person’s money, especially if they’re in it just to make money.

[译文 54]

所以这就像穿针引线的过程，需要比下一个 Snapchat 更高水平的管理。对于投资者来说，你们公司不应该合作的糟糕投资者有哪些？是的，这是个好问题。作为投资者，你怎么知道哪些是你应该避免的？嗯，它和我说的好投资者恰恰相反。如果一个投资者在你的公司领域没有专业知识，没有可以帮助你进行业务拓展和 A 轮融资介绍的人脉资源，你就不应该拿他们的钱，尤其是如果他们只是为了赚钱的话。

[段 55]

And you can suss those people out pretty quickly. Yeah, I’m glad you asked that question. I bring up sort of a broader point, which is if your company is successful, we’re talking about, I think generally, at least the companies we want to invest in are the ones that want to build big independent franchise companies. So we’re talking about a 10 or 15 or 20 year journey. So we’re talking about a 10 or 15 or 20 year journey. You know, 10, 15, 20 years, you may notice, is longer than the average American marriage. This is significant. The choice of key investors, in particular investors who are going to be on the board for a company, I think is just as important as who you get married to, which is extremely important.

[译文 55]

你可以很快地识别出那些人。是的，很高兴你问这个问题。我提出一个更广泛的观点，即如果你的公司成功了，我们谈论的是，我认为总体而言，我们想要投资的公司是那些想要建立大型独立特许经营公司的公司。所以我们谈论的是10年、15年或20年的旅程。我们谈论的是10年、15年或20年的旅程。你知道，10年、15年、20年，你可能注意到，这比美国人的平均婚姻时间还要长。这很重要。关键投资者的选择，特别是那些将成为公司董事会成员的人，我认为和你与谁结婚一样重要，这是极其重要的。

[段 56]

These are people you’re going to be living with and partnering with and relying on and dealing with in conditions of great stress and anxiety for a long period of time. And the big argument I always make is, and I make this all the time, sometimes people believe it, sometimes they don’t, which is, like, if everything just goes great, it kind of doesn’t matter who your investors are. But almost never does everything just go great, right? Even the big successful companies, even the big, you know, Facebook and all these big companies that are now considered very successful, you know, along the way, all kinds of shit went sideways. You know, shit hit the fan over and over and over and over again.

[译文 56]

这些人将是你在巨大压力和焦虑条件下，长期共同生活、合伙、依靠和打交道的人。我经常强调的一个主要观点是——我一直都在讲这个——有时候人们信，有时候不信——那就是，如果一切都非常顺利，其实你的投资者是谁并不重要。但几乎从来不会一切都那么顺利，对吧？即便是那些大成功的公司，即便像Facebook这样现在被认为非常成功的大公司，一路上也出现过各种问题。你知道，麻烦一次又一次地出现。

[段 57]

And there are any number of stressful board meetings, and discussions, and late-night meetings, with the future of the company at stake, where everybody really has to be on the same team, and have the same goals, and be pulling in the same direction, and have a shared understanding, and have the right kind of ethics, and the right kind of staying power to be able to actually weather the storms that come up. And one of the things that you’ll find is a big difference between first-time founders versus second-time founders is, almost always, the second-time founders take that point much more seriously after they’ve been through it once. And so it really, really, really matters. I always thought, and I believe that it does, it really matters who your partner is.

[译文 57]

还有无数充满压力的董事会会议、讨论会和深夜会议，这些都关系到公司的未来，每个人必须真正团结一致，拥有共同的目标，朝同一方向努力，拥有共识，具备正确的道德品质，以及足够的韧性，才能真正度过出现的风暴。你会发现的一件事是，第一次创业者与第二次创业者之间的一个大区别是，几乎总是，第二次创业者在经历了一次之后会更加认真地对待这一点。所以这真的、真的、真的非常重要。我一直认为，而且我相信确实如此，合作伙伴是谁真的非常重要。

[段 58]

It really is like getting married, and it is worth putting the same amount of time—maybe not quite as much time and effort—into picking your spouse, but it is worth spending significant time really understanding who you’re about to be partnered with, because that’s way more important than whether I got another $5 million in the valuation, or whether I got another $2 million in the check. The marriage analogy is great. I know, at SV Angel, our attitude is, when we invest in an entrepreneur, we are investing for life, because we want to invest in—if we made the right decision—we’re going to invest in every company they start. And once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur. So we actually do consider it a marriage.

[译文 58]

这真的很像结婚，值得投入同样多的时间——也许不是完全一样的时间和精力——来选择你的伴侣，但值得花大量时间真正了解你即将与之合作的人，因为这比我在估值中是否多获得了$5 million重要得多，或者我在支票中是否多获得了$2 million。婚姻这个比喻很棒。我知道，在SV Angel，我们的理念是，当我们投资一位创业者时，我们是在做终身投资，因为我们想要投资——如果我们做了正确的决定——他们创办的每一家公司。一旦成为创业者，就永远是创业者。所以我们确实把它视为一段婚姻。

[段 59]

We’re investing for life. One thing that I—which is another way of saying what Mark just said—is, I always look for, in that first meeting, do you feel like you respect this person? And do you feel like you have a lot to learn from them? Because sometimes you meet with VCs, and in the initial meeting, you kind of feel like, Man, they’re just like slow on the uptake, or they don’t get it, or they don’t see it. And sometimes you walk in, and they have just such an incredible amount of insight into your business that you walk out of there being like, Man, even if these guys didn’t invest, that sort of hour that I spent with them was such a great use of my time.

[译文 59]

我们做的是终身投资。我想说的是——用另一种方式表达Mark刚才说的——我在第一次会议中总是会看：你是否感觉你尊重这个人？你是否感觉你可以从他们身上学到很多？因为有时候你和VC见面，在初次会议中，你会有点感觉，嘿，他们就是反应迟钝，或者他们不理解，或者他们看不到（你的想法）。但有时候你走进去，他们对你的业务有如此令人难以置信的洞察力，以至于你走出来时会想：嘿，即使这些人没有投资，我与他们共度的那一个小时也是对我时间的极好利用。

[段 60]

I felt like I came out with a much clearer picture of what I need to do, and where I need to go. And that’s such a great microcosm of what the next couple of years are going to be like. If you feel like you would want this person to be really involved in the company, even if they didn’t have a checkbook that they brought with them, that’s probably a really good sign. And if not, that’s probably a really bad sign. What’s the constraint on the deal-making activities of angels and VC? The time, money, or the lack of companies? What’s the constraint on how many companies you guys can custody? SV Angels kind of got comfortable with one a week.

[译文 60]

我觉得我对自己需要做什么以及要去哪里有了更清晰的认知。这就像未来几年的一个绝佳缩影。如果你觉得你希望这个人真正参与到公司中来，即使他们没有带支票本，这可能是一个非常好的信号。如果不是的话，那可能是一个非常糟糕的信号。是什么限制了天使投资人和VC的投资活动？是时间、金钱，还是缺少好公司？是什么限制了你們能参与多少家公司？SV Angels已经适应了每周一家的节奏。

[段 61]

You certainly can’t do more than that, and that’s a staff of 13, so it’s really the number of companies. Ron, if you had—if you all worked twice the number of hours, would you invest in twice the number of companies? I would advise against that. I would rather just add value, more value to the existing companies. I’ll take the role of questioner for a second. Maybe you could talk a little bit about conflict policy—or not conflict policy? Well, SV Angel actually does have a written conflict policy. But most, when we end up with a conflict, it’s usually because one company has morphed into another space. We don’t normally invest in companies that have a direct conflict.

[译文 61]

你当然不可能做更多了，这已经有13人的团队了，所以这实际上是公司数量的问题。Ron，如果你——如果你们所有人都投入两倍的时间，你会投资两倍数量的公司吗？我建议不要那样做。我宁愿在现有公司中增加更多价值。让我来扮演提问者的角色。也许你可以谈一谈冲突政策——或者不是冲突政策？嗯，SV Angel实际上有书面的冲突政策。但大多数时候，当我们遇到冲突时，通常是因为一家公司已经转型到另一个领域。我们通常不会投资存在直接冲突的公司。

[段 62]

If we do, we will disclose it to the other company, to both companies. And keep in mind, at our stage, we don’t know the company’s product strategy anyway. We probably don’t know enough to disclose. But our conflict policy also talks about this really important word, which is trust. In other words, we’re off to a bad start if we don’t trust each other. And with SV Angel, the relationship between the founder and us is based on trust. And if somebody doesn’t trust us, then they shouldn’t work with us. Mark, are you going to ask a competitive question? Yeah. So this is actually—so let me go back to the original question. I’ll come back to that. So the original question is, this is the thing we talk about most often in our firm.

[译文 62]

如果我们这样做，我们会向另一家公司披露，也会向两家公司披露。请记住，在我们的阶段，我们反正也不了解公司的产品策略。我们可能知道的不足以进行披露。但我们的冲突政策还谈到了一个非常重要的词，那就是信任。换句话说，如果我们不互相信任，我们就会有一个糟糕的开始。对于SV Angel，创始人和我们之间的关系是基于信任的。如果有人不信任我们，那他们就不应该和我们合作。Mark，你打算问一个竞争相关的问题吗？是的。所以这实际上是——让我回到原来的问题。我会回到那个问题。所以原来的问题是，这是我们在公司里最常谈论的事情。

[段 63]

So this is kind of the question that’s at the heart of, I think, how all venture capital operates, which is the question of constraints. So the big constraint on a top-tier venture capital firm, the big constraint is the concept of opportunity cost. So it’s the concept that basically everything you do means that there are a whole bunch of other things that you can’t do. And so it’s not so much the cost—and we think about this all the time—it’s not so much the cost of we invest $5 million in a company, and the company goes wrong, and we lose the money. That’s not really the loss that we’re worried about, because the theory is we’ll have the winners that will make up for that, in theory.

[译文 63]

所以这其实是核心问题，我认为这也是整个风险投资运作的核心问题，即约束条件的问题。顶级风险投资公司面临的最大约束，实际上是机会成本的概念。这个概念的本质在于，你做的每一件事，都意味着你无法做很多其他事情。所以问题不在于成本——我们一直都在思考这个问题——问题不在于我们向一家公司投资500万美元，然后公司出了问题，我们损失了这笔钱。这不是我们真正担心的损失，因为理论上我们会获得赢家来弥补这个损失，理论上是这样。

[段 64]

The cost that we’re worried about is, every investment we make has two implications for how we run the firm. Every investment we make, number one, rules out conflicts. And so our policy, for sure, on venture and growth rounds is that we don’t invest in conflicting companies. And so we can only invest in one company in a category. And so if we invest in MySpace, and then Facebook comes along a year later—like, we’re out. We can’t do it, right? And so we basically lock every investment we make. And so we basically lock—every investment we make locks us out of a category. And the nature—that’s a very complicated topic when you’re discussing these things internally in these firms, because you only know the companies that already exist.

[译文 64]

我们担心的成本是，我们所做的每一项投资对我们如何运营公司都有两个影响。我们所做的每一项投资，首先，会排除冲突。因此我们的政策，在风险投资和成长轮次上，确定是不投资有冲突的公司。所以我们在一个类别中只能投资一家公司。因此如果我们投资了MySpace，然后一年后Facebook出现了——比如，我们就出局了。我们做不到，对吧？因此我们基本上锁定了我们所做的每一项投资。因此我们基本上锁定——我们所做的每一项投资把我们锁定在一个类别之外。性质——当你在这些公司内部讨论这些事情时，这是一个非常复杂的话题，因为你只知道已经存在的公司。

[段 65]

You don’t know the companies that haven’t even been founded yet. And God help you had you invested in an early company that was not going to be the winner, and you were locked out by the time the winner emerged three years later, and you just couldn’t make the investment. So that’s one issue is conflict policy. The other issue is opportunity cost on the time and bandwidth of the general partners. And so going back to the concept of adding value, we’re a fairly typical firm of eight general partners. Each general partner can maybe be on 10 to 12 boards in total if they’re completely fully loaded. So it’s basically—Warren Buffett talks a lot about investing as you basically want to think of it as a ticket that you have a limited number of holes that you can punch, and every time you make an investment, you punch the hole.

[译文 65]

你不知道那些甚至还没有成立的公司。上帝保佑你，如果你投资了一家注定不会成为赢家的早期公司，而当赢家三年后出现时，你已经被锁定了，你根本无法进行那笔投资。所以这就是一个问题——冲突政策。另一个问题是普通合伙人的时间和带宽的机会成本。回到增加价值的概念，我们是一家相当典型的公司，有八位普通合伙人。每位普通合伙人如果完全满负荷的话，可能总共可以担任10到12家公司的董事。所以这基本上就是——Warren Buffett经常谈论的投资理念，你要把它想象成一张票，你只有有限数量的孔可以打，而每次你进行投资时，你就打一个孔。

[段 66]

And when you’re out of holes to punch, you’re done. You can’t make any new investments. And that’s very much how venture capital operates. And so the way to think about it is, every open board slot that one of our GPs has at any given point in time is an asset of the firm that can be deployed against an opportunity. But every time we make an investment, it takes the number of slots that we can punch down by one. So it reduces the ability for the firm to do new deals. And so every investment we make forecloses not just the competitive set, but other deals where we will simply run out of time. And this is sort of a big thing of like—well, this goes back to what I said earlier.

[译文 66]

当你没有孔可打时，你就完了。你无法再做任何新投资。这就是风险投资运作的方式。所以可以这样理解，我们任何一位GP在任意时间点上的每个空余董事会席位，都是公司可以部署来把握机会的资产。但每次我们做一笔投资，都会使我们可以打的孔的数量减一。因此它降低了公司做新交易的能力。所以我们做的每一笔投资都不仅仅排除了竞争对手，还排除了其他我们根本没时间做的交易。这有点像——好吧，这又回到我之前说的。

[段 67]

Like, This company is pretty good. It seems fairly obvious that it’s going to raise venture funding. Why didn’t you fund it? Well, on its own, if we had unlimited capacity, we probably would have. It’ll probably make money. But relative to getting blocked out of the competitive set, and relative to not having that open board seat for an even better opportunity, we pass on that basis a lot. It’s pretty widely agreed that it’s easier than ever to build an MVP, launch, get traction. At the same time, we know that there are seed deals that happen pre-MVP or even pre-launch and pre-traction. So in those instances where you do do a seed round— A company that either doesn’t have a product yet or doesn’t have a launch, you’ve gotten some price attraction, what do those deals look like and what do you make that judgment based on?

[译文 67]

比如说，这家公司相当不错。显然它会获得风险投资。为什么你没有投资它？嗯，就它本身而言，如果我们有无限的能力，我们可能就投了。它很可能会赚钱。但相对于被竞争对手排挤，以及相对于没有一个开放的董事会席位来获得更好的机会，我们经常基于这个原因放弃。人们普遍认为，比以往任何时候都更容易构建MVP、推出产品并获得增长。与此同时，我们知道有些种子轮投资发生在MVP之前，甚至在产品发布和增长之前。所以在那些你确实进行种子轮投资的案例中——一家公司要么还没有产品，要么还没有发布，已经获得了一些价格吸引力——这些交易是什么样的，你又是基于什么做出这个判断的？

[段 68]

What can we see you do to invest with no product and no traction? What would convince us? Which is what usually convinces us is the founder and their team themselves, so we invest in people first, not necessarily the product idea. The product ideas tend to morph a lot, so we will invest in the team first. If it’s pre-users, the valuation is going to tend to be correspondingly lower unless one of the founders has a success track record. Yeah, for us it’s almost always—if there’s nothing at the time of investment, then it’s almost other than a plan. It’s almost always a founder who we’ve worked with before or a founder who’s very well known. By the way, the other thing worth highlighting is: in all these conversations, the default assumption is that we’re all starting consumer web companies or consumer mobile companies.

[译文 68]

没有产品也没有用户增长的情况下，我们能看到你做了什么来让我们投资？什么能说服我们？通常能说服我们的是创始人及其团队本身，所以我们先投资于人，而不是一定要投资于产品想法。产品想法往往会经常变化，所以我们先投资于团队。如果是pre-users阶段，估值往往会相应较低，除非创始人之一有成功记录。是的，对我们来说几乎总是——如果在投资时什么都没有，那几乎就是一个计划而已。几乎总是我们之前合作过的创始人，或者非常出名的创始人。另外，值得指出的一点是：在所有这些对话中，默认假设是我们都在创建消费互联网公司或消费移动互联网公司。

[段 69]

There are other categories of companies. Capital-intensive is one that’s been brought up. I’ll just say, for example, enterprise software companies, or enterprise—these days, SaaS application companies or cloud companies—it’s much more common that there’s no MVP. It’s much more common that there are cold starts, and it’s much more common that they build a product in the A round. And there’s no point to have an MVP because the customer is not going to buy an MVP. The customer actually needs the full product when they first start using it. And so the company actually needs to raise $5 or $10 million to get the first product built. But in almost all those cases, that’s going to be a founder who’s done it before.

[译文 69]

还有其他类别的公司。资本密集型是已经被提出来的一个。我就说，比如，企业软件公司，或者企业——如今，SaaS应用公司或云公司——没有MVP要常见得多。冷启动要常见得多，在A round构建产品要常见得多。而且做MVP没有意义，因为客户不会购买MVP。客户实际上在首次开始使用时就需求完整的产品。所以公司实际上需要融资500万或1000万美元来构建第一个产品。但在几乎所有这些案例中，这将是一个之前做过这种事创始人。

[段 70]

I think we have time for one more question. Can you talk about the ideal board structure and investment perspective and how they’re fixing that? Could you guys talk about the ideal board structure? Gosh. I think—so in our board, we’re fortunate that we have, there’s myself and my co-founder and a partner from Andreessen Horowitz, which I think probably removes the fear, probably creates a little more trust, because it sort of removes the fear that, like, you know, someone’s going to come in and just, like, fire you arbitrarily because, like, it’s time for a big company CEO kind of thing. But— like, it’s time for a big company CEO kind of thing. But in most cases, I think if you trust the people that you’re working with, it shouldn’t really be an issue.

[译文 70]

我想我们还有时间再回答一个问题。你能谈谈理想的董事会结构以及投资视角，以及他们如何解决这个问题吗？你们能谈谈理想的董事会结构吗？天哪。我觉得——所以在我们的董事会中，我们很幸运有我、我的联合创始人，还有一位来自Andreessen Horowitz的合伙人，我认为这可能会消除恐惧，可能会创造更多的信任，因为这有点像消除了那种恐惧，就是，你知道的，有人会进来然后，随意地解雇你，因为，呃，是时候让大公司的CEO来接手之类的。但——呃，是时候让大公司的CEO来接手之类的。但在大多数情况下，我认为如果你信任和你一起工作的人，这应该不应该是问题。

[段 71]

Because there are so few—I mean, things almost never come to a board vote. And by the time that they do, it’s like something’s deeply broken at that point anyway. And most of the power that VCs have comes outside of the board structure. It’s protective covenants that are built into the financing round. So it’s like you can’t take on debt. You can’t sell the company. There are certain things you can’t do without them agreeing to it anyway. So it’s probably less of a big deal than people make it out to be. What I found is that it seems to me that as a founder, if things are going well at the company, you have sort of unlimited power vis-a-vis your investors, almost unlimited, no matter what the board structure is and no matter what the covenants are in the round.

[译文 71]

因为这种情况非常少见——我的意思是，事情几乎根本不会走到董事会投票这一步。而等到真正投票的时候，通常意味着公司已经出了大问题。除此之外，VC的大部分权力实际上来自董事会结构之外。它们是嵌入在融资条款中的保护性契约。比如你不能举债、不能出售公司，有些事情如果没有他们的同意你就不能做。所以董事席位这件事可能没有人们想象的那么重要。我发现的是，作为创始人，如果公司发展顺利，不管董事会结构如何，不管条款里写了什么，你对投资者几乎拥有无限的权力。

[段 72]

If you say, ‘Listen, I want to do this and I think this is what we need to do,’ even if it’s a good investor or a bad investor, even the bad investors will be like, ‘Let’s make it happen’ because they want to ride this rocket ship with you. And when things are going badly, it does not matter what protections you’ve built into the system for yourself. At the end of the day, you need to go back to the trough to get more money. And if things aren’t going well, they’re going to have all of the cards in their hand. And they’re going to get to renegotiate all the terms. And exactly— they’ll change all the time.

[译文 72]

如果你说：“听我说，我想做这件事，我认为这就是我们该做的”，即使是好投资者还是坏投资者，即使是糟糕的投资者也会说，“让我们一起实现吧”，因为他们想和你一起搭上这艘火箭飞船。当事情进展不顺时，你自己建立的各种保护机制都不管用了。说到底，你需要回头去找他们融资要更多的钱。如果事情进展不好，他们就会掌握所有的牌。他们会重新谈判所有的条款。的确——他们会不断地改变条款。

[段 73]

This is what happens actually when a company gets in dire straits. This is what happens actually when a company gets in dire straits. It actually doesn’t matter what the terms of the prior rounds are. They all get renegotiated. This is, I think, the fundamental rule of raising money—other than never having a downturn—is that if things are going well, the founders are in control, and if the company needs more money and things are going badly, the investors are in control. I’ve been on boards for 20 years, public and private. I have never been in a board vote that mattered. It’s always been never. Never a vote. Many discussions, many controversies, many issues. Never a vote. But the decision has always been clear by the end.

[译文 73]

这就是当一家公司陷入困境时真正会发生的事情。当一家公司陷入困境时真正会发生的事情就是：之前几轮的条款实际上根本不重要。都会被重新谈判。我认为是这样的，这就是融资的基本规则——除了永远不要遇到经济衰退之外——就是如果一切顺利，创始人掌控公司；而如果公司需要更多资金且情况糟糕，投资者掌控公司。我担任董事会成员已有20年，上市公司和私人公司都包括在内。我从来没有过一次真正重要的董事会投票。一次都没有。从来没有投票。有过很多讨论、很多争议、很多问题。但从来没有投票。不过最终决定总是很清楚的。

[段 74]

And it’s either been unanimous or very close to unanimous. And so I think it is almost all around the intangibles and almost not at all around the details. Okay, thank you guys very much for coming today. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.

[译文 74]

要么是全票通过，要么是极其接近全票通过。所以我认为几乎完全取决于无形因素，几乎完全不取决于细节。好吧，非常感谢大家今天到来。谢谢。谢谢。谢谢。

Source: bilibili BV1oWKpzoE1Z