A Unified Theory of VC Suckage

March 2005 A couple months ago I got an email from a recruiter asking if I was interested in being a "technologist in residence" at a new venture capital fund.

2005 年 3 月 几个月前，我收到了一封来自招聘人员的电子邮件，询问我是否有兴趣成为一家新风险投资基金的“常驻技术专家”。

I think the idea was to play Karl Rove to the VCs' George Bush.

我认为这个想法是让卡尔·罗夫（Karl Rove）面对风险投资家的乔治·布什（George Bush）。

I considered it for about four seconds.

我考虑了大约四秒钟。

Work for a VC fund?

在风险投资基金工作？

Ick.

恶心。

One of my most vivid memories from our startup is going to visit Greylock, the famous Boston VCs.

在我们的创业过程中，我最生动的记忆之一就是去拜访著名的波士顿风险投资公司 Greylock。

They were the most arrogant

他们是最嚣张的

people I've met in my life.

我一生中遇到的人。

And I've met a lot of arrogant people.

而且我也遇到过很多傲慢的人。

[1] I'm not alone in feeling this way, of course.

[1] 当然，我并不是唯一有这种感觉的人。

Even a VC friend of mine dislikes VCs.

就连我的一个风投朋友也不喜欢风投。

"Assholes," he says.

“混蛋，”他说。

But lately I've been learning more about how the VC world works, hack it )--> and a few days ago it hit me that there's a reason VCs are the way they are.

但最近我更多地了解了风险投资世界是如何运作的，破解它)-->几天前，我突然意识到风险投资之所以如此是有原因的。

It's not so much that the business attracts jerks, or even that the power they wield corrupts them.

与其说这个行业吸引了混蛋，不如说是因为他们所掌握的权力腐蚀了他们。

The real problem is

真正的问题是

the way they're paid.

他们的报酬方式。

The problem with VC funds is that they're funds .

风险投资基金的问题在于它们是基金。

Like the managers of mutual funds or hedge funds, VCs get paid a percentage of the money they manage: about 2% a year in management fees, plus a percentage of the gains.

与共同基金或对冲基金的经理一样，风险投资人按其管理资金的一定比例获得报酬：每年约 2% 的管理费，加上一定比例的收益。

So they want the fund to be huge-- hundreds of millions of dollars, if possible.

因此，他们希望该基金规模庞大——如果可能的话，达到数亿美元。

But that means each partner ends up being responsible for investing a lot of money.

但这意味着每个合作伙伴最终都要负责投资大量资金。

And since one person can only manage so many deals,

由于一个人只能管理这么多交易，

each deal has to be for multiple millions of dollars.

每笔交易的金额必须达到数百万美元。

This turns out to explain nearly all the characteristics of VCs that founders hate.

事实证明，这几乎解释了创始人讨厌的风险投资公司的所有特征。

It explains why VCs take so agonizingly long to make up their minds, and why their due diligence feels like a body cavity search.

它解释了为什么风险投资家要花这么长的时间才能做出决定，以及为什么他们的尽职调查感觉就像是一次体腔搜查。

[2] With so much at stake, they have to be paranoid.

[2] 由于风险如此之大，他们不得不变得偏执。

It explains why they steal your ideas.

它解释了为什么他们窃​​取你的想法。

Every founder knows that VCs will tell your secrets to your competitors if they end up

每个创始人都知道，如果你的竞争对手最终失败，风险投资家会把你的秘密告诉他们。

investing in them.

投资于他们。

It's not unheard of for VCs to meet you when they have no intention of funding you, just to pick your brain for a competitor.

风险投资家在无意资助你的情况下与你会面，只是为了为竞争对手挑选你的大脑，这种情况并非闻所未闻。

This prospect makes naive founders clumsily secretive.

这种前景使得天真的创始人笨拙地守口如瓶。

Experienced founders treat it as a cost of doing business.

经验丰富的创始人将其视为开展业务的成本。

Either way it sucks.

无论哪种方式都很糟糕。

But again, the only reason VCs are so sneaky is the giant deals they do.

但风险投资如此狡猾的唯一原因是他们所做的巨额交易。

With so much at stake, they have to be devious.

由于事关重大，他们必须采取狡猾的手段。

It explains why VCs tend to interfere in the companies they invest in.

这解释了为什么风险投资家倾向于干预他们所投资的公司。

They want to be on your board not just so that they can advise you, but so that they can watch you.

他们想加入你的董事会，不仅是为了给你提供建议，也是为了监督你。

Often they even install a new CEO.

通常他们甚至会任命新的首席执行官。

Yes, he may have extensive business experience.

是的，他可能拥有丰富的商业经验。

But he's also their man: these newly installed CEOs always play something of the role of a political commissar in a Red Army unit.

但他也是他们的人：这些新上任的首席执行官总是扮演着红军部队政治委员的角色。

With so much at stake, VCs can't resist micromanaging you.

由于风险如此之大，风险投资人无法抗拒对你进行微观管理。

The huge investments themselves are something founders would dislike, if they realized how damaging they can be.

如果创始人意识到巨额投资本身会带来多大的破坏性，他们就会不喜欢这种投资。

VCs don't invest $x million because that's the amount you need, but because that's the amount the structure of their business requires them to invest.

风险投资公司不会投资 100 万美元，因为这是你需要的金额，而是因为这是他们的业务结构要求他们投资的金额。

Like steroids, these sudden huge investments can do more harm than good.

就像类固醇一样，这些突然的巨额投资弊大于利。

Google survived enormous VC funding because it could legitimately absorb large amounts of money.

谷歌在巨额风险投资中幸存下来，因为它可以合法地吸收大量资金。

They had to buy a lot

他们不得不买很多东西

of servers and a lot of bandwidth to crawl the whole Web.

服务器和大量带宽来抓取整个网络。

Less fortunate startups just end up hiring armies of people to sit around having meetings.

不太幸运的初创公司最终只会雇佣一大群人坐在一起开会。

In principle you could take a huge VC investment, put it in treasury bills, and continue to operate frugally.

原则上，你可以接受巨额风险投资，将其放入国库券中，然后继续节俭经营。

You just try it.

你就试试吧。

And of course giant investments mean giant valuations.

当然，巨额投资意味着巨额估值。

They have to, or there's not enough stock left to keep the founders interested.

他们必须这样做，否则就没有足够的股票来保持创始人的兴趣。

You might think a high valuation is a great thing.

您可能认为高估值是一件好事。

Many founders do.

许多创始人都这样做。

But you can't eat paper.

但你不能吃纸。

You can't benefit from a high valuation unless you can somehow achieve what those in the business call a "liquidity event," and the higher your valuation, the narrower your options for doing that.

除非你能以某种方式实现业内人士所说的“流动性事件”，否则你无法从高估值中受益，而你的估值越高，你的选择范围就越窄。

Many a founder would be happy to sell his company for $15 million, but VCs who've just invested at a pre-money valuation of $8 million won't

许多创始人很乐意以 1500 万美元的价格出售自己的公司，但刚刚以 800 万美元的投前估值进行投资的风险投资家不会这么做。

hear of that.

听说过。

You're rolling the dice again, whether you like it or not.

无论你喜欢与否，你都会再次掷骰子。

Back in 1997, one of our competitors raised $20 million in a single round of VC funding.

早在 1997 年，我们的一个竞争对手就在一轮风险投资中筹集了 2000 万美元。

This was at the time more than the valuation of our entire company.

这在当时已经超过了我们整个公司的估值。

Was I worried?

我担心吗？

Not at all: I was delighted.

一点也不：我很高兴。

It was like watching a car you're chasing turn down a street that you know has no outlet.

这就像看着一辆你正在追赶的汽车在一条你知道没有出路的街道上转弯。

Their smartest move at that point would have been to take every

他们当时最明智的举动就是采取一切措施

penny of the $20 million and use it to buy us.

2000万美元中的一分钱并用它来收购我们。

We would have sold.

我们本来会卖掉的。

Their investors would have been furious of course.

他们的投资者当然会愤怒不已。

But I think the main reason they never considered this was that they never imagined we could be had so cheap.

但我认为他们从未考虑过这一点的主要原因是他们从未想象过我们可以如此便宜。

They probably assumed we were on the same VC gravy train they were.

他们可能认为我们和他们在同一条 VC 肉汁列车上。

In fact we only spent about $2 million in our entire existence.

事实上，我们一生只花费了大约 200 万美元。

And that gave us flexibility.

这给了我们灵活性。

We could sell ourselves to Yahoo for

我们可以把自己卖给雅虎

$50 million, and everyone was delighted.

5000万美元，每个人都很高兴。

If our competitor had done that, the last round of investors would presumably have lost money.

如果我们的竞争对手这样做了，那么最后一轮投资者可能会赔钱。

I assume they could have vetoed such a deal.

我认为他们本可以否决这样的交易。

But no one those days was paying a lot more than Yahoo.

但当时没有人比雅虎支付更多的钱。

So unless their founders could pull off an IPO (which would be difficult with Yahoo as a competitor), they had no choice but to ride the thing down.

因此，除非他们的创始人能够完成首次公开募股（雅虎作为竞争对手，这将很困难），否则他们别无选择，只能顺其自然。

The puffed-up companies that went public during the Bubble didn't

那些在泡沫时期上市的自吹自擂的公司并没有

do it just because they were pulled into it by unscrupulous investment bankers.

这样做只是因为他们被无良的投资银行家拉入其中。

Most were pushed just as hard from the other side by VCs who'd invested at high valuations, leaving an IPO as the only way out.

大多数人都受到了来自高估值风险投资公司的强烈推动，使得首次公开募股成为唯一的出路。

The only people dumber were retail investors.

唯一愚蠢的人是散户投资者。

So it was literally IPO or bust.

因此，这实际上就是 IPO 或破产。

Or rather, IPO then bust, or just bust.

或者更确切地说，IPO然后破产，或者只是破产。

Add up all the evidence of VCs' behavior, and the resulting personality is not attractive.

把所有风险投资人行为的证据加起来，得出的个性并不有吸引力。

In fact, it's the classic villain: alternately

事实上，这就是经典的反派：交替

cowardly, greedy, sneaky, and overbearing.

懦弱、贪婪、卑鄙、专横。

I used to take it for granted that VCs were like this.

我曾经理所当然地认为VC就是这样。

Complaining that VCs were jerks used to seem as naive to me as complaining that users didn't read the reference manual.

在我看来，抱怨风险投资家是混蛋就像抱怨用户没有阅读参考手册一样天真。

Of course VCs were jerks.

当然，风险投资家都是混蛋。

How could it be otherwise?

不然怎么可能呢？

But I realize now that they're not intrinsically jerks.

但我现在意识到，他们本质上并不是混蛋。

VCs are like car salesmen or bureaucrats: the nature of their work turns them into jerks.

风险投资家就像汽车推销员或官僚：他们的工作性质使他们变成了混蛋。

I've met a few VCs I like.

我遇到了一些我喜欢的风险投资人。

Mike Moritz seems a good guy.

迈克·莫里茨看起来是个好人。

He even has a sense of humor, which is almost unheard of among VCs.

他甚至还有幽默感，这在风险投资人中几乎是闻所未闻的。

From what I've read about John Doerr, he sounds like a good guy too, almost a hacker.

从我读到的有关约翰·杜尔的信息来看，他听起来也是个好人，几乎是个黑客。

But they work for the very best VC funds.

但他们为最好的风险投资基金工作。

And my theory explains why they'd tend to be different: just as the very most popular kids don't have to persecute nerds , the very best VCs don't have to act like VCs.

我的理论解释了为什么他们往往会有所不同：就像最受欢迎的孩子不必迫害书呆子一样，最好的风险投资家也不必表现得像风险投资家一样。

They get the pick of all the best

他们得到了所有最好的选择

deals.

交易。

So they don't have to be so paranoid and sneaky, and they can choose those rare companies, like Google, that will actually benefit from the giant sums they're compelled to invest.

因此，他们不必如此偏执和鬼鬼祟祟，他们可以选择那些罕见的公司，比如谷歌，这些公司实际上会从他们被迫投资的巨额资金中受益。

VCs often complain that in their business there's too much money chasing too few deals.

风险投资家经常抱怨，在他们的业务中，资金太多，交易却太少。

Few realize that this also describes a flaw in the way funding works at the level of individual firms.

很少有人意识到这也描述了单个公司融资方式的缺陷。

Perhaps this was the sort of strategic insight I was supposed to

也许这就是我应该有的战略洞察力

come up with as a "technologist in residence." If so, the good news is that they're getting it for free.

提出“驻场技术专家”。如果是这样，好消息是他们可以免费获得它。

The bad news is it means that if you're not one of the very top funds, you're condemned to be the bad guys.

坏消息是，这意味着如果你不是顶级基金之一，你就注定是坏人。

Notes [1] After Greylock booted founder Philip Greenspun out of ArsDigita, he wrote a hilarious but also very informative essay about it.

注释 [1] 在 Greylock 将创始人 Philip Greenspun 赶出 ArsDigita 后，他写了一篇关于此事的搞笑但内容丰富的文章。

<!-- comparing the resulting situation to a bunch of

<!-- 将结果情况与一堆

kids sitting in the cockpit of a 747, flipping switches and wondering how to make the thing take off.

孩子们坐在 747 的驾驶舱里，扳动开关，想知道如何让飞机起飞。

He later took this off the Web, but I happen to remember this choice metaphor.--> [2] Since most VCs aren't tech guys, the technology side of their due diligence tends to be like a body cavity search by someone with a faulty knowledge of human anatomy.

后来他把这个从网上删除了，但我碰巧记得这个选择的比喻。--> [2] 由于大多数风险投资人都不是技术人员，他们的尽职调查的技术方面往往就像是由对人体解剖学知识有错误的人进行的体腔搜索。

After a while we were quite sore from VCs attempting to probe our nonexistent database orifice.

过了一段时间，我们对试图探测我们不存在的数据库孔口的 VC 感到非常恼火。

No, we don't use Oracle.

不，我们不使用 Oracle。

We just store the data in files.

我们只是将数据存储在文件中。

Our secret is to use an OS that doesn't lose our data.

我们的秘诀是使用不会丢失数据的操作系统。

Which OS?

哪个操作系统？

FreeBSD.

免费的BSD。

Why do you use that instead of Windows NT?

为什么使用它而不是 Windows NT？

Because it's better and it doesn't cost anything.

因为它更好，而且不花任何钱。

What, you're using a freeware OS?

什么，您使用的是免费软件操作系统？

How many times that conversation was repeated.

这样的对话重复了多少次。

Then when we got to Yahoo, we found they used FreeBSD and stored their data in files too.

然后当我们到达雅虎时，我们发现他们使用 FreeBSD 并将数据存储在文件中。