不走寻常路：从女工程师到英国风投女王

    艾琳•博比奇是伦敦最具影响力的风险投资家之一。这位来自美国的女性开创了一条有违常规的职业发展道路。她是一名训练有素的软件工程师，在硅谷积累了丰富的技术经验，曾经先后供职于多家世界最知名的科技公司，其中包括苹果、雅虎和太阳微系统公司。但在2004年，为了“迫使自己走出舒适区”，博比奇毅然前往伦敦，成为Skype最早的一批员工之一。

    后来，她与两位合伙人一起成立了Passion Capital公司。它现已成为伦敦顶级的风险投资公司之一，但三位创始人其实都没有传统的金融业背景。作为一名风险投资家，博比奇采用了一种特立独行的做法，宣称她不会给“ 令人讨厌的人”投资，她还为颇具争议的约会应用Lulu（这款应用允许女性对男性评分）提供巨额资金支持。日前在接受《财富》官网采访时，她畅谈了自己的职业历程、投资方式，以及她为何最看重创业者的激情。

    问：是什么激励你前往伦敦，成为一名风险投资家？

    我在硅谷度过了不平凡的十年。但我却感觉硅谷正在变得越来越封闭。我认为，自己或许应该进入“真实的世界”，或至少更广阔的世界，于是我把目光投向伦敦。我很幸运地收到了Skype和音乐识别软件Shazam的工作邀请，我选择了Skype。我希望与疯狂的梦想家一起共事。

    后来，我开始与几位创建Ambient Sound Investments投资公司的原Skype工程师们合作，就这样，我“一不小心”就成为一名风险投资家。我们在伦敦进行了四笔投资，其中有三笔是与斯蒂芬•格莱恩泽尔（他后来成为Passion Capital的合伙人之一）合作的。斯蒂芬和我意识到，我们或许可以在创业者/团队/初创公司身上找到类似的特质，并为其估值，于是我们开始谈论合作，并在伦敦成立了一家小型风投基金。

    问：你和另外两位创始人罗伯特•迪哥希罗与斯蒂芬•格莱恩泽尔都有创业经历，这些经历对于你的投资方式有何影响？

    我们认为，我们可以更好地评估和理解创业者，有能力为创业者增添运营和战略价值。

    在进行投资时，我们总是会考虑假如我们还是经营者，希望与什么样的风险投资者合作。我们在2009年建立了一个联合办公场所，然后开始融资，最终于2011年3月份启动价值6000万美元的风险投资基金Passion Capital。

    当时，我们是东伦敦（创业者聚集的地区，现在被称为“科技城”）唯一的风投公司。因为在历史上，金融家们大多集中在梅菲尔区或伦敦的其他地区。我们也是唯一一家在联合办公场所运营的伦敦风险投资公司——我们与另外十个或十二个团队共同使用这个开放空间。

    我们也是全世界第一家使用简明英语风险投资协议的公司，并且我们不向投资公司重复收取任何法律费用，其实几乎没有任何费用。

    问：你能否解释一下在确定符合投资条件的创业者时所遵循的标准？

    我们当然会验证他们的创业计划，他们希望解决的问题，以及他们是否理解执行计划所需的能力。但我们也会关注一些软性技能，比如万丈雄心背后的动机。

    我发现，每一位优秀的创业者都心怀抱负，这让他们充满干劲。他们可能会遭遇极端的困难。招聘、解雇、组建团队、应对挑战和障碍、与更大的竞争对手竞争等，会让他们承受巨大的压力。因此，创业者必须拥有百折不挠的意志力，才能度过最艰难的阶段。

    问：这是你投资Lulu的原因吗？

    与我们的大多数投资一样，我们之所以投资Lulu，是基于其创始人亚历山德拉•庄的实力、雄心和愿景。她真的很杰出。最初，她希望为女性创建一个“安全私密的在线平台”，彼此之间进行交际和互动，谈论人际关系、财务、教育、工作或其他任何话题。

    但这个平台正式推出后，所有内容和互动几乎都集中在与男性约会这个话题上。于是，与其他天才创始人一样，亚历山德罗根据用户的反馈，对最初的计划进行了修改，致力于针对这一特定需求提供最佳用户体验，于是便有了这款极受欢迎的应用。

    现在美国几乎四分之一的女大学生都在使用Lulu，它也在努力成为涉及不同话题、产品和主题的平台，提供与这些话题相关的内容、交易和服务——最终又回到了亚历山德罗当初的愿景，我很期待她的愿景实现的那一天。

    Eileen Burbidge, one of London’s most influential venture capitalists, is an American who built her career by going against convention. A software engineer by training, she earned her chops in Silicon Valley working for some of the world’s most prestigious tech companies, including Apple, Yahoo and Sun Microsystems. But then, she moved to London in 2004 to “push my comfort zone,” becoming one of Skype’s earliest employees.

    From there, she and two partners launched Passion Capital, a venture capital firm. It became one of London’s top VC firms — despite the fact that none of the cofounders have a traditional finance background. As a VC, Burbidge has taken a somewhat maverick approach, declaring she won’t invest in “jerks” and backing Lulu, a controversial dating app that allows women to rate men. She recently spoke to Fortune.com about her professional journey, her approach to investment and why she values passion above all else.

    Q: What inspired you to move to London and become a venture capitalist there?

    The ten years I was in Silicon Valley were phenomenal. However, Silicon Valley began to feel very insular to me. I thought it would be useful to get out “into the real world” or at least the wider world and I looked towards London. I was fortunate enough to secure job offers from both Skype and Shazam, and I went for Skype. I wanted to work with people who were crazy visionaries.

    I became an “accidental” VC in that I started working with the former Skype engineers who founded Ambient Sound Investments. We made four investments in London, three of which ended up being with Stefan Glaenzer [who became one of her Passion Capital partners.] Stefan and I realized we probably identify and value similar traits in founders/teams/startups, and so we started talking about working together and raising our own micro VC fund in London.

    Q: Given that you and your cofounders, Robert Dighero and Stefan Glaenzer, all have startup experience, how has that shaped your approach as VCs?

    We’d like to think that we’re able to assess and relate better to entrepreneurs and are better equipped to add operational and strategic value.

    We basically conduct ourselves [as the kind of company] we’d like to partner with if we were still operators ourselves. We started by establishing a co-working space in 2009 and then we were able to raise, close, and launch our $60 million fund, Passion Capital, in April 2011.

    At that time, we were the only London-based VC firm in East London (where the entrepreneurs are, now sometimes referred to as “Tech City”) as opposed to Mayfair or the other areas of London which is where financiers were historically located. And we were the only London VC with a co-working space — an open plan that we share with ten to twelve teams at any given time.

    We were also the first VC in the world to use a Plain English term sheet and to not re-charge any legal fees to our companies (no fees to a cap, literally no fees whatsoever).

    Q: Can you explain the criteria you use when deciding whether to back an entrepreneur?

    Of course we look to validate the proposition they’re planning, the problem they’re trying to solve, and their ability to understand the requirements to execute a plan. But we also look for even softer skills such as the motivation behind their ambition.

    What I’ve found is that every great entrepreneur has some driving ambition that fuels them. There will be extreme hardships. It’s super stressful to hire people, fire people, build a team, push through challenges and barriers, compete with larger players. So there has to be something that is emotionally anchored, deep-rooted and which will drive that founder through their most difficult days.

    Q: Is that why you invested in Lulu?

    Like most of our other investments, we invested in Lulu based on the strength, ambition and vision of its founder, Alexandra Chong, who is an absolute tour de force. Her original vision was to create a platform and “safe and private place online for women” to connect and interact with one another — whether it be about relationships, finances, education, work or any other topics.

    The key conclusion after its initial launch was that nearly all of the content and interactions focused exclusively on dating and guys. So as a consequence and like any genius founder, Alexandra seized on that user feedback and whittled the proposition down to offer the best user experience to address that demand — and that’s led to the massively popular app we have today.

    Now used by one out of every four college women in the US, Lulu is on its way to becoming a platform for providing content, transactions and services around a broad-range of topics, products and subject areas — coming full circle back to delivering on Alexandra’s vision which I’ll be excited to see.