另类种子投资策略

    播种，祈祷。先试再买。迈出第一步。

    所有这些正是描述了当前硅谷主导性的种子投资策略。当前创业圈对于Series A融资短缺的种种忧虑与笔者的种子投资经验大相径庭。依我的经验，创业企业获得后续融资是常态，而且我们有几笔种子投资甚至成为Venrock投资组合中最成功的案例。

    在我看来，种子投资绝不是是无需投入多少时间的A轮低成本选择。种子投资需要投入大量的时间和精力，深入参与到一家公司的成型阶段，而资金投入和持股比例可能还达不到一般风投基金的衡量指标。既然这样的投入可能领先于资本和股权，只有我们完全折服于这些人和他们的理念时才会这样做，我们必须在它具有“传统”意义上的投资价值之前早早参与其中。我们的使命是尽一切可能提供帮助，希望加快它成功的速度，提高成功的概率和规模。我们的方式是强调长期性、支持性和绩效导向性。

    说实话，金钱有价，但时间和精力弥足珍贵——对于创业家和风投家都是如此。

    “深度参与”方式要求投资少而精，不能像近年来参与种子投资的大多数投资者（无论是天使投资，还是风险投资）那样投资很多交易。笔者每年会进行一笔投资，涉及资本效率相对较高的各类医疗保健子行业——医疗保健IT、诊断和服务行业。移动医疗公司Castlight Health和Ariosa Diagnostics诊断公司是近年来较能反映我们投资方式的案例之一。

    2008年年中，我先是与托德·帕克（前Athenahealth联合创始人, 如今是美国国家技术官），后来是和吉欧·科莱勒（前RelayHealth创始人）合作，寻找机会在网络/医疗保健/消费者的交互领域打造一家公司；Venrock过去曾为帕克和科莱勒的公司提供过融资。2008年初，我们为一个项目忙了6个月，进行了种子投资，孵化建立了Castlight Health。

    我们在第一轮融资中投了33.3万美元，一砖一瓦地建起了这家公司。最终，我们投资了1,700万美元，获得了近20%的所有权。过去四年中，Venrock投入了所有可能的资源和关系——无数的策略商讨，客户会议，高管招募和后续投资者介绍等等。如今Castlight的董事会已包括了第二位Venrock合伙人（鲍勃·科契），他每周都要会花超过1天的时间与Castlight的团队在一起。今天，Castlight已经有机会成为市场的关键参与者，打造实用的医疗保健提供市场，在改善医疗保健品质的同时为用户节省几十亿美元。

    Ariosa的故事与此类似，但它最初是源于Venrock一笔不成功的种子投资。我们对一家诊断初创企业投资9个月后亏损了30万美元，这时CEO约翰·斯图尔普纳格（前Illumina创始人，Venrock也投资过Illumina）告诉董事会，除了继续推这块大石头上山，我们可以有更好的事情去做。此后不久，我们对宋肯（音译）和约翰的新公司Ariosa进行了种子投资：宋肯是一位出色的首次创业者，担任CEO（此前是Venrock副总裁），约翰出任执行董事长，开拓孕期分子诊断新方法。三年后，在这场为准妈妈们提供全新优质诊断服务的竞赛中，他们已处于领先地位——他们可以为最早孕期十周的胎儿提供无风险的基因异常诊断服务。

    Spray and pray. Try before you buy. Foot in the door.

    All of these describe the dominant seed investment strategy today in Silicon Valley.  The start-up world's current angst around the "Series A crunch" is in great contrast to my seed experience, where follow-on financings are the norm and several of our seed deals are on their way to being standout successes in the Venrock portfolio.

    For me, seed investing is not a low cost, little-time-required option on the A round.  It is a big investment of time and effort in order to be intimately involved in the formative stages of a company, despite the fact that the dollars-in and percentage ownership don't hit usual venture fund metrics. Since the commitment front-runs the money and ownership, it is something we only do when we are so compelled by the people and the idea that we must to jump in long before it makes "traditional" sense. Our mission is to help in whatever way we can, in hopes of increasing the company's speed, likelihood and scale of success. It also allows us to emphasize our approach as long term, supportive, performance oriented company builders.

    Let's face it, money is cheap, but time and effort are really expensive – for both entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.

    A "deep involvement" approach requires making far fewer commitments than most others who have embraced seed investing in recent years – whether angels or venture funds. I have done about one per year across a variety of the more capital efficient healthcare subsectors – healthcare IT, diagnostic, and services.  Castlight Health and Ariosa Diagnostics are among several recent examples that illustrate our approach.

    In mid-2008, I partnered with Todd Park (ex-Athenahealth, now CTO of the U.S.) and then Gio Colella (ex-RelayHealth), both of whom Venrock had funded previously, to explore the opportunity to create a company at the intersection of web/healthcare/consumer.  We worked for six months on the project and, in early 2008, seeded and incubated Castlight Health.

    In that initial round, we invested $333,000 and proceeded to build the company brick by brick, eventually investing $17 million for nearly 20% ownership. Over the last four years, Venrock has devoted every possible resource and connection possible – countless strategy sessions, customer meetings, management recruiting, follow on investor introductions, and the board now includes a second Venrock partner (Bob Kocher) who still spends more than a day a week with the team.  Today, Castlight has the opportunity to become a pivotal participant in the creation of a functional healthcare delivery market, improving care while saving billions of dollars.

    Ariosa is a similar story, but one whose roots are found in an unsuccessful Venrock seed investment.  We lost $300,000 after nine months in a diagnostic start-up when the CEO, John Stuelpnagel (ex-Illumina, a Venrock investment), came to the board with the message that we all had better things to do than continue to push that particular rock uphill. Soon thereafter,we seeded the combination of a terrific first time entrepreneur/CEO in Ken Song, then at Venrock, with John as executive chairman to tackle new approaches to prenatal molecular diagnostics.  Three years later they are leading the race to provide an entirely new and improved standard of care to expectant mothers – where they can confidently assess genetic abnormalities with no risk to the baby at ten weeks of pregnancy.