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投资音乐业务:在“没钱赚”的地方赚钱
 作者: Brad Svrluga    时间: 2011年04月28日    来源: 财富中文网
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别人遵守法则,我选择例外。
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    今天早上我与一位朋友一起吃了早饭,他是一家风投的合伙人,我已经和他的公司合作过几次了。他是一个很好的人,也是个聪明的投资人。我们讨论了我最近在音乐业务领域看到的一桩交易。它是一个很有趣的商机,尽管它也有自己各种各样的问题,但它却是一个由几家非常值得信赖的重量级音乐业务公司发起的,而且有成为一个“大创意”的可能。

    在我说起这桩交易的时候,我的朋友说了一番话,这番话近年来我已经听过很多次了:“音乐业务太惨淡了——向那个市场进行投资是赚不到钱的。”

    我对自己笑了笑。

    午饭的时候,我和另一位投资人同行聊天,他来自一家受人尊重的硅谷公司,在跻身风投业之前,他是音乐业务领域里的一位成功企业家。没有我的刺激,他也自动说出了同样的话:“投资音乐业是赚不到钱的。”

    我又笑了。

    我认为对于投资来说,唯一牢靠的法则就是投资没有任何牢靠的法则。如果你应用了所谓的标准法则,那么你就是在按照传统的套路走。这样一来,你就很难找到真正独特的、颠覆性的商机。风险投资尤其是个难做的生意,我们总是在不断的寻找新事物,寻找还没有很多其他人干的事。有鉴于此,在我们投资的时候,如果我们所投资的公司看起来没有一丝特立独行的味道,那也就很难指望这笔投资会有多重要。

    因此,我总是寻找与传统意见相左的投资机会。所以当我发现一个与音乐有关的商机时,我会格外留心。因为我知道风投业的其他同行不太可能会留心这一机会。毕竟大家都深信“在这个市场进行投资是赚不到钱的。”每个法则都有例外,而商机就隐藏在这些例外之中。

    我们近年最成功的投资是对Pump Audio公司的投资,该公司更具吸引力的用户体验和网络分销方式彻底打乱了音乐发行和版权业务(原声音乐和背景音乐业务)。这家公司获得了异乎寻常的成功,在我们投资后18个月内,它就被盖蒂图片社(Getty Images)收购了。大家都皆大欢喜。

    考虑到音乐公司要与唱片公司这头“狼”共舞,因此要想通过选歌手、推专辑和数字下载等方式生钱,的确非常困难,而且要了解流媒体服务的生财之道也绝非易事。这种担忧是正常的,但我们不应因此而对整个音乐行业望而却步。以我们对Pump Audio的投资为例,如果当时我们因为担心音乐的消费者分销模式问题而缩手缩脚,没能趁着有线电视网络和网络视频业务迅速繁荣的东风,抓住网络视频内容暴涨的机会,向消费者提供更好的原声音乐解决方案的话,我们也就不会取得这样巨大的成功。

    在Pump Audio大获成功后,又有许多音乐交易涌现(好的企业家知道如何找出对他们的业务感兴趣的投资人),但却很少有能让我感兴趣的交易。不过我一直记得Pump Audio的创始人兼首席执行官史蒂夫•埃利斯对我说过的话:“音乐行业大多数业务都是垃圾,但是有两个地方你可以赚钱——版权和现场音乐。

    2009年夏天,我有幸见到了Ticketfly的共同创始人安德鲁•德雷斯金和丹•特里。Ticketfly的雄心壮志是打破票务大师(Ticketmaster)公司在票务业不可撼动的垄断地位。为达到这一目标,它们采取了两种途径:(1)利用社交网站的力量,为消费者提供更好的体验,同时帮助演出场馆卖出更多的票。(2)先力求包办中小场馆的票务,这些客户的需求与麦迪逊花园广场这种大场馆,以及芝加哥黑鹰队这种大球队的需求存在着很大的差异。而大场馆、大球队自然是票务大师的重点公关对象。

    去年秋天,我有幸在Ticketfly的第一轮融资中拔得头筹。自从那时起,这家公司走上了异乎寻常的发展轨道。他们2010年的预算非常具有进攻性,而2010年是他们开张的第一个全年。到了去年四月,Ticketfly的董事会不得不批准对年收入预测进行修改——修改后的预测比初始预测高出了40%。到去年年末,他们的最终业绩又比修改后的预测高了将近20%。他们对今年的业绩预测高出去年100%,如果他们这个季度的业绩不超过第一季度25%,我会很惊讶。

    本周早些时候,我们宣布了莫尔•达维多风险投资公司(Mohr Davidow Ventures)已经领衔Ticketfly的第二轮融资。这轮融资相对简单一些,许多投资人都递来了风投协议。莫尔•达维多风投公司的报价并不是最高的,但显然他们是一个很好的合作伙伴,而且他们的报价还是比我们16个月前在第一轮融资中投入的资金高出了五倍多。我也急切地再次参与了这轮融资。

    当然,我们从不把成功的融资与成功的投资成果混为一谈,这一点很重要。我们只是往油箱里加了更多的油,并且提高了我们对Ticketfly的最终成果的预期。不过这家公司财务表现的确十分强势,而且它在这一轮融资中收到了多份报价,他们的报价数倍于我们的初始投资,我们也完全可以数倍于初始投资的价格将公司出手。这一事实让我可以确信地说,Ticketfly目前对于我们来说的确是笔成功的投资。

    这样看来,在这么一个你认为不可能赚到钱的投资领域,我们已经是两战两胜了。(注:尽管我在这些冷门领域取得了成功,但我不得不承认,我以前也曾在别人认为很容易挣钱的领域上进行过失败的投资。)

    正如沃伦•巴菲特的名言:“对(一家公司)感兴趣的时机,就是其他人都不感兴趣的时候。你不可能买入了热门股,而且还能赚得很多。”

    所以我会继续抱着开放的思维关注音乐业务,同时也会努力在其他你认为“没钱赚”的市场上寻找机会。如果你自己也是个投资人的话,不妨设立一套自己的法则,并虔诚地笃信你自己的法则。不过我很愿意把别人视为例外的点子,当成自己的机会。

    译者:朴成奎

    I had breakfast this morning with a friend who is a partner at a VC firm I've worked with a few times. He's a great guy and a smart investor. We were discussing a deal that I had recently seen in the music business. It's an interesting opportunity – not without its complications, but a potentially 'big idea' started by some very credible music biz heavyweights.

    As I described it, my friend said something I've heard dozens of times in recent years: "The music business is too screwed up – you just can't make money investing in that market."

    I smiled to myself.

    Then at lunch I was chatting with another fellow investor – a partner at a venerable Valley firm who, prior to his venture career, had been a successful entrepreneur in the music business. Without prompting from me at one point, he said the same thing: "You can't make money investing in the music industry."

    I smiled again.

    I think the only hard and fast rule in investing is that there can be no hard and fast rules. Apply standard rules and suddenly you're playing with conventional wisdom, and it becomes pretty damn tough to find unique, truly disruptive opportunities. Ours is a difficult business – we're forever looking for the next new thing that isn't being done by a dozen other people. Given that challenge, if the companies we back don't seem pretty contrarian when we invest, it would be foolhardy to expect that we've found anything that important.

    So I try to look for investment opportunities that run counter to conventional wisdom. It is in that spirit that I pay attention when I see a music opportunity. And I pay attention knowing that, fortunately for me, it's unlikely that many of my peers in the business will also pay attention. After all, "you can't make money investing in that market." There are exceptions to every rule, and it is in the exceptions that opportunities lie.

    Our biggest investment success of recent years was an investment in Pump Audio, a business whose better mousetrap user experience and Internet distribution disrupted the music publishing and licensing business (the soundtrack and background music business). The company was extraordinarily successful, selling to Getty Images less than 18 months after we invested. A great win for all.

    It is indeed difficult to make money picking artists and pushing albums or digital downloads, and a real challenge to figure out the economics of streaming services, given the need to dance with the record label wolves. But those valid concerns should not taint the entire music industry. If we had let the broader challenges of consumer distribution of music obscure the opportunity inherent in providing a better solution for soundtrack music to an explosion of video content for rapidly proliferating cable networks and web video businesses, we would've missed a real winner.

    As I considered the flood of music deals that came in following the Pump exit (good entrepreneurs know how to seek out investors who have some demonstrated affinity for what they're doing), I saw very little that interested me. But I kept in mind what Pump founder/CEO Steve Ellis had said to me, "Most of the music industry is for shit, but there's two places you can make money – licensing and live."

    In the summer of 2009, I had the great fortune to meet Andrew Dreskin and Dan Teree, co-founders of Ticketfly. Ticketfly has the audacious goal of knocking Ticketmaster from its perch as the unchallenged hegemon of the live ticketing market. They're doing that two ways: (1) Harnessing the power of the social web to provide a better experience for consumers while helping venues sell more tickets and (2) Starting out by catering primarily to small and medium venues – customers whose needs are very different from the big venues and teams, like Madison Square Garden or the Chicago Blackhawks, where Ticketmaster is understandably focused.

    I was fortunate to lead Ticketfly's Series A financing late that fall. The company has been on an extraordinary run ever since. They had a pretty aggressive budget for 2010, their first full year in business. By April, the board had to approve a reforecast – up 40% from the original. At the end of the year, they beat the reforecast by nearly 20%. Their plan for this year forecasts greater than 100% growth over last year. I'll be damned if they didn't beat their Q1 number by 25%.

    Earlier this week we announced that Mohr Davidow Ventures had led a $12 million Series B financing for Ticketfly. It was a relatively simple fundraising process and it led to a lot of term sheets. The MDV offer wasn't the highest price, but it was clear they'd be a great partner, and it was still more than 5x what we had paid for the Series A 16 months earlier. I eagerly re-upped for this round, as well.

    It's important, of course, that we never confuse successful financings with successful investment outcomes in this business. We've merely put more fuel in the tank and raised expectations for our ultimate outcome at Ticketfly. But the company's strong financial performance, and the fact that we had multiple offers for that financing that would have bought us out completely at multiples of our original investment, leaves me confident calling Ticketfly an interim winner, anyway.

    So we appear to be on our way to being two for two in an industry you allegedly can't make money investing in. (Note: As I trumpet these contrarian successes, I am obliged to report that I've also more than once managed to find the loser in a sector where others have made it look easy to make money before.)

    As Warren Buffett famously said, "The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can't buy what's popular and do well."

    So I'll continue to pay attention to the music business with an open mind, and look hard for other markets where "you can't make money." And if you're an investor yourself, feel free to set and religiously follow your rules. I'll be glad to have the interesting ideas left in their exceptions to myself.




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@关子临: 自信也许会压倒聪明,演技的好坏也许会压倒脑力的强弱,好领导就是循循善诱的人,不独裁,而有见地,能让人心悦诚服。    参加讨论>>
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