The Venture Capital Squeeze

November 2005 In the next few years, venture capital funds will find themselves squeezed from four directions.

2005 年 11 月 未来几年，风险投资基金将发现自己受到四个方向的挤压。

They're already stuck with a seller's market, because of the huge amounts they raised at the end of the Bubble and still haven't invested.

他们已经陷入了卖方市场，因为他们在泡沫结束时筹集了巨额资金，但仍未进行投资。

This by itself is not the end of the world.

这本身并不是世界末日。

In fact, it's just a more extreme version of the norm in the VC business: too much money chasing too few deals.

事实上，这只是风险投资行业常态的一个更极端的版本：太多的资金追逐太少的交易。

Unfortunately, those few deals now want less and less money, because it's getting so cheap to start a startup.

不幸的是，这些少数交易现在需要的资金越来越少，因为创办一家初创公司变得如此便宜。

The four causes: open source, which makes software free; Moore's law, which makes hardware geometrically closer to free; the Web, which makes promotion free if you're good; and better languages, which make development a lot cheaper.

四个原因：开源，使软件免费；摩尔定律，使硬件在几何上更接近自由；网络，如果你表现出色，可以免费获得晋升；以及更好的语言，这使得开发成本大大降低。

When we started our startup in 1995, the first three were our biggest

当我们 1995 年开始创业时，前三个是我们最大的

expenses.

费用。

We had to pay $5000 for the Netscape Commerce Server, the only software that then supported secure http connections.

我们不得不支付 5000 美元购买 Netscape Commerce Server，这是当时唯一支持安全 http 连接的软件。

We paid $3000 for a server with a 90 MHz processor and 32 meg of memory.

我们花费 3000 美元购买了一台配备 90 MHz 处理器和 32 MB 内存的服务器。

And we paid a PR firm about $30,000 to promote our launch.

我们向一家公关公司支付了大约 30,000 美元来宣传我们的发布。

Now you could get all three for nothing.

现在你可以免费得到这三个。

You can get the software for free; people throw away computers more powerful than our first server; and if you make something good you can generate ten times

您可以免费获得该软件；人们扔掉了比我们第一台服务器更强大的计算机；如果你做了好事，你可以产生十倍

as much traffic by word of mouth online than our first PR firm got through the print media.

网上口碑传播的流量比我们第一家公关公司通过印刷媒体获得的流量还要多。

And of course another big change for the average startup is that programming languages have improved-- or rather, the <a href="avg.html">median language has.

当然，对于普通初创公司来说，另一个重大变化是编程语言已经改进——或者更确切地说，中值语言已经改进。

At most startups ten years ago, software development meant ten programmers writing code in C++.

十年前，在大多数初创公司中，软件开发意味着十名程序员用 C++ 编写代码。

Now the same work might be done by one or two using Python

现在，同样的工作可能由一两个人使用 Python 完成

or Ruby.

或红宝石。

During the Bubble, a lot of people predicted that startups would outsource their development to India.

在泡沫时期，很多人预测初创公司会将其开发外包给印度。

I think a better model for the future is David Heinemeier Hansson, who outsourced his development to a more powerful language instead.

我认为未来更好的模型是 David Heinemeier Hansson，他将自己的开发外包给了一种更强大的语言。

A lot of well-known applications are now, like BaseCamp, written by just one programmer.

现在，许多著名的应用程序（例如 BaseCamp）都是由一名程序员编写的。

And one guy is more than 10x cheaper than ten, because (a) he won't waste

一个人比十个人便宜十倍以上，因为 (a) 他不会浪费

any time in meetings, and (b) since he's probably a founder, he can pay himself nothing.

会议中的任何时间，并且（b）由于他可能是创始人，所以他可以不给自己支付任何费用。

Because starting a startup is so cheap, venture capitalists now often want to give startups more money than the startups want to take.

由于创办一家初创公司的成本如此之低，风险投资家现在常常想给初创公司提供比初创公司愿意接受的更多的资金。

VCs like to invest several million at a time.

风险投资家喜欢一次投资数百万美元。

But as one VC told me after a startup he funded would only take about half a million, "I don't know what we're going to do.

但正如一位风险投资家在他资助的一家初创公司只需要大约 50 万美元后告诉我的那样，“我不知道我们要做什么。

Maybe we'll just

也许我们只会

have to give some of it back." Meaning give some of the fund back to the institutional investors who supplied it, because it wasn't going to be possible to invest it all.

必须归还一些。”这意味着将部分资金返还给提供资金的机构投资者，因为不可能将其全部投资。

Into this already bad situation comes the third problem: Sarbanes-Oxley.

在这个已经很糟糕的情况下出现了第三个问题：萨班斯-奥克斯利法案。

Sarbanes-Oxley is a law, passed after the Bubble, that drastically increases the regulatory burden on public companies.

萨班斯-奥克斯利法案是泡沫之后通过的一项法律，大大增加了上市公司的监管负担。

And in addition to the cost of compliance, which is at least two million dollars a

除了合规成本之外，每年至少需要 200 万美元

year, the law introduces frightening legal exposure for corporate officers.

今年，该法律为公司高管带来了可怕的法律风险。

An experienced CFO I know said flatly: "I would not want to be CFO of a public company now." You might think that responsible corporate governance is an area where you can't go too far.

我认识的一位经验丰富的CFO斩钉截铁地说：“我现在不想当上市公司的CFO。”您可能认为负责任的公司治理是一个不能走得太远的领域。

But you can go too far in any law, and this remark convinced me that Sarbanes-Oxley must have.

但任何法律都可能走得太远，这句话让我确信《萨班斯-奥克斯利法案》一定有这样的规定。

This CFO is both the smartest and the most upstanding money guy I know.

这位首席财务官是我认识的最聪明、最正直的财务人员。

If

如果

Sarbanes-Oxley deters people like him from being CFOs of public companies, that's proof enough that it's broken.

萨班斯-奥克斯利法案禁止像他这样的人担任上市公司的首席财务官，这足以证明它已经失效了。

Largely because of Sarbanes-Oxley, few startups go public now.

主要是由于萨班斯-奥克斯利法案，现在很少有初创公司上市。

For all practical purposes, succeeding now equals getting bought.

出于所有实际目的，现在的成功就等于被收购。

Which means VCs are now in the business of finding promising little 2-3 man startups and pumping them up into companies that cost $100 million to acquire.

这意味着风险投资公司现在的工作是寻找有前途的小型 2-3 人初创公司，并将它们注入到花费 1 亿美元收购的公司中。

They didn't mean to be in this business; it's

他们并不是故意从事这个行业的；他们并不是有意从事这个行业的。这是

just what their business has evolved into.

这正是他们的业务发展的结果。

Hence the fourth problem: the acquirers have begun to realize they can buy wholesale.

因此出现了第四个问题：收购者已经开始意识到他们可以批发购买。

Why should they wait for VCs to make the startups they want more expensive?

他们为什么要等待风投让他们想要的初创公司变得更昂贵？

Most of what the VCs add, acquirers don't want anyway.

风险投资公司添加的大部分内容，收购者并不想要。

The acquirers already have brand recognition and HR departments.

收购方已经拥有品牌知名度和人力资源部门。

What they really want is the software and the developers, and that's what the startup is in the early phase: concentrated

他们真正想要的是软件和开发人员，这就是初创公司在早期阶段的特点：集中

software and developers.

软件和开发人员。

Google, typically, seems to have been the first to figure this out.

通常情况下，谷歌似乎是第一个解决这个问题的。

"Bring us your startups early," said Google's speaker at the <a href="http://startupschool.org">Startup School .

“尽早向我们展示您的初创公司，”Google 在<a href="http://startupschool.org">初创公司学校 上的发言人说道。

They're quite explicit about it: they like to acquire startups at just the point where they would do a Series A round.

他们对此非常明确：他们喜欢在即将进行 A 轮融资时收购初创公司。

(The Series A round is the first round of real VC funding; it usually happens in the first

（A轮是第一轮真正的风险投资；通常发生在第一轮

year.) It is a brilliant strategy, and one that other big technology companies will no doubt try to duplicate.

年。）这是一项出色的战略，其他大型科技公司无疑会尝试复制这一战略。

Unless they want to have still more of their lunch eaten by Google.

除非他们想让谷歌吃掉更多的午餐。

Of course, Google has an advantage in buying startups: a lot of the people there are rich, or expect to be when their options vest.

当然，谷歌在收购初创公司方面有一个优势：那里的很多人都很富有，或者期望在他们的选择权归属时变得富有。

Ordinary employees find it very hard to recommend an acquisition; it's just too annoying to see a bunch of twenty year olds get rich

普通员工很难推荐收购；看到一群二十岁的人发财真是太烦人了

when you're still working for salary.

当你还在为工资而工作的时候。

Even if it's the right thing for your company to do.

即使这对您的公司来说是正确的事情。

The Solution(s) Bad as things look now, there is a way for VCs to save themselves.

解决方案 尽管现在的情况看起来很糟糕，但风投们还是有办法拯救自己的。

They need to do two things, one of which won't surprise them, and another that will seem an anathema.

他们需要做两件事，其中一件不会令他们感到惊讶，而另一件则似乎令人厌恶。

Let's start with the obvious one: lobby to get Sarbanes-Oxley loosened.

让我们从显而易见的一个开始：游说放松《萨班斯-奥克斯利法案》。

This law was created to prevent future Enrons, not to

该法律的制定是为了防止未来的安然事件，而不是为了

destroy the IPO market.

破坏IPO市场。

Since the IPO market was practically dead when it passed, few saw what bad effects it would have.

由于首次公开募股市场在它过去时几乎已经死了，很少有人看到它会产生什么坏影响。

But now that technology has recovered from the last bust, we can see clearly what a bottleneck Sarbanes-Oxley has become.

但现在技术已经从上次的萧条中恢复过来，我们可以清楚地看到萨班斯-奥克斯利法案已经成为一个什么样的瓶颈。

Startups are fragile plants — seedlings, in fact.

初创企业是脆弱的植物——事实上，是幼苗。

These seedlings are worth protecting, because they grow into the trees of the economy.

这些幼苗值得保护，因为它们会长成经济之树。

Much of the economy's growth is their growth.

经济的增长很大程度上是他们的增长。

I think

我认为

most politicians realize that.

大多数政治家都意识到这一点。

But they don't realize just how fragile startups are, and how easily they can become collateral damage of laws meant to fix some other problem.

但他们没有意识到初创公司是多么脆弱，也没有意识到它们很容易成为旨在解决其他问题的法律的附带损害。

Still more dangerously, when you destroy startups, they make very little noise.

更危险的是，当你摧毁初创公司时，它们几乎不会发出任何噪音。

If you step on the toes of the coal industry, you'll hear about it.

如果您接触煤炭行业，您就会听说过它。

But if you inadvertently squash the startup industry, all that happens is that the founders of the next Google stay in

但如果你不经意地压制了创业行业，那么所发生的一切就是下一个谷歌的创始人留在原地。

grad school instead of starting a company.

读研究生而不是创办公司。

My second suggestion will seem shocking to VCs: let founders cash out partially in the Series A round.

我的第二个建议似乎会让风险投资家感到震惊：让创始人在 A 轮融资中部分兑现。

At the moment, when VCs invest in a startup, all the stock they get is newly issued and all the money goes to the company.

目前，当风险投资家投资一家初创公司时，他们获得的所有股票都是新发行的，所有资金都归公司所有。

They could buy some stock directly from the founders as well.

他们也可以直接从创始人那里购买一些股票。

Most VCs have an almost religious rule against doing this.

大多数风险投资家都有一种几乎宗教般的规则，反对这样做。

They don't want founders to get a penny till the company is sold or goes

他们不希望创始人在公司被出售或破产之前得到一分钱

public.

公开。

VCs are obsessed with control, and they worry that they'll have less leverage over the founders if the founders have any money.

风投们痴迷于控制权，他们担心，如果创始人有钱，他们对创始人的影响力就会减少。

This is a dumb plan.

这是一个愚蠢的计划。

In fact, letting the founders sell a little stock early would generally be better for the company, because it would cause the founders' attitudes toward risk to be aligned with the VCs'.

事实上，让创始人提前出售少量股票通常对公司来说更好，因为这会让创始人对风险的态度与风险投资人保持一致。

As things currently work, their attitudes toward risk tend

随着目前情况的进展，他们对风险的态度倾向于

to be diametrically opposed: the founders, who have nothing, would prefer a 100% chance of $1 million to a 20% chance of $10 million, while the VCs can afford to be "rational" and prefer the latter.

截然相反：一无所有的创始人宁愿100%机会获得100万美元，也不愿20%机会获得1000万美元，而风险投资家可以“理性”地选择后者。

Whatever they say, the reason founders are selling their companies early instead of doing Series A rounds is that they get paid up front.

不管他们怎么说，创始人提前出售公司而不是进行 A 轮融资的原因是他们可以预先获得报酬。

That first million is just worth so much more than the subsequent ones.

第一个一百万的价值远远高于随后的一百万。

If founders could sell a little stock early,

如果创始人能早点卖掉一点股票

they'd be happy to take VC money and bet the rest on a bigger outcome.

他们很乐意接受风险投资，并将剩下的钱押在更大的结果上。

So why not let the founders have that first million, or at least half million?

那么为什么不让创始人拥有第一笔一百万，或者至少五十万呢？

The VCs would get same number of shares for the money.

风险投资公司将获得相同数量的股份。

So what if some of the money would go to the founders instead of the company?

那么，如果部分资金流向创始人而不是公司呢？

Some VCs will say this is unthinkable — that they want all their money to be put to work growing the company.

一些风险投资家会说这是不可想象的——他们希望把所有的钱都用来发展公司。

But the fact is, the huge size of current VC

但事实是，当前VC规模巨大

investments is dictated by the structure of VC funds, not the needs of startups.

投资是由风险投资基金的结构决定的，而不是初创公司的需求。

Often as not these large investments go to work destroying the company rather than growing it.

这些巨额投资往往会毁掉公司而不是发展公司。

The angel investors who funded our startup let the founders sell some stock directly to them, and it was a good deal for everyone.

资助我们初创公司的天使投资者让创始人直接向他们出售一些股票，这对每个人来说都是一笔划算的交易。

The angels made a huge return on that investment, so they're happy.

天使们从这项投资中获得了巨大的回报，所以他们很高兴。

And for us founders it blunted the terrifying all-or-nothingness

对于我们创始人来说，它削弱了可怕的“全有或全无”

of a startup, which in its raw form is more a distraction than a motivator.

初创公司的原始形式更多的是分散注意力而不是激励因素。

If VCs are frightened at the idea of letting founders partially cash out, let me tell them something still more frightening: you are now competing directly with Google.

如果风险投资家对让创始人部分套现的想法感到害怕，让我告诉他们更可怕的事情：你现在正在与谷歌直接竞争。

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Sarah Harlin, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.

感谢 Trevor Blackwell、Sarah Harlin、Jessica Livingston 和 Robert Morris 阅读本文的草稿。