硅谷顶级风投公司的成功秘诀

    风投公司安德森•霍洛维茨（Andreessen Horowitz）的合伙人跟创业者开会，如果迟到的话，就得买单。这是真的。它是公司联合创始人、一度也创过业的马克•安德森和本•霍洛维茨在2009年创办公司时制定的制度之一。合伙人每迟到10分钟，罚款10美元。这项制度是为了强调安德森•霍洛维茨所秉持的创业者值得尊重的理念。安德森和霍洛维茨希望将公司打造成为创业者在创业初期的融资首选。公司目前已经成立了三只基金，总计募集超过了27亿美元的资金，投资对象包括Facebook、Skype、团购网站Groupon和图片共享网站Instagram等。安德森•霍洛维茨现已迅速发展成为沙岭路上最具影响力的风投公司之一。

    《财富》杂志（Fortune）编辑亚当•拉辛斯基与公司创始合伙人面对面探讨他们的业务模式、投资理念和职责分工。座谈记录如下，略经修改。

    亚当•拉辛斯基： 今天我有幸邀请到来自风投公司安德森•霍洛维茨的马克•安德森和本•霍洛维茨。硅谷的传统观念认为，创业者和风险资本家并不是好战友，而你们二位曾经也是创业者，在创办自己的风投公司前也曾多次创业。因此，我想先问一下马克，究竟是什么使您有兴趣成为一位风险资本家？

    马克•安德森： 在人生职业生涯的特定阶段，我是说，部分原因出于个人因素，在人生职业生涯的特定阶段，帮助创业者比成为创业者更有意义。这属于反思的一面，在这方面我并不擅长，因此我这次采访中不想谈太多。

    但另一个原因，也是更为客观的因素，那就是我们看到了机会，可以创办一个我们曾经从它那里取得资金的风投公司。因此它也是一个经典的案例，我们成为风险资本的客户已有15年历史。我们还不是风险资本家时，就已非常了解如果成为风险资本家，谈判桌对面将会是什么情形，了解产品消费者实际将会怎么样。

    亚当•拉辛斯基： 所以你们有意采取与众不同的风投策略。能否解释一下。

    本•霍洛维茨： 确实如此。形成这一策略的原因包括多个不同的理念。第一点，创业者才是最好的经理人。当时，通过换位思考我们所考察的所有真正伟大的公司，这些公司一般都由创业者亲自经营。通过我们曾经身为创业者的经历，我们切实相信创业者有知识、有承诺、有热忱，而这一点很难移植到公司之中。因此，我们公司的宗旨并不是要用职业经理人代替创业者，而是辅导创业者如何成为经理人，帮助创业者成为经理人。

    一旦我们实现这个目标，一切都将彻底改变。因此，首先要求合伙人具有实际公司经营的经验。

    亚当•拉辛斯基： 这里的合伙人是指你们公司的合伙人，也就是风险资本家吧。

    本•霍洛维茨： 是投资合伙人。如果有人要担任你公司的董事，而你将担任CEO，那么如果该人曾经也担任过CEO，知道怎样成为一名CEO，将会很有帮助。因此，我们可以帮助创业者获得需要的能力。

    第二点，职业经理人拥有庞大的关系网络。他们熟悉媒体、客户、高管以及所有能带入公司的一切人。因此我们认为，风投公司应当为硅谷建立庞大的网络，从而在创业者到来时，我们可以为他提供好于任何职业经理人的网络。以上两点正是我们公司真正与众不同的地方。（财富中文网）

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    When partners at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz are late to a meeting with entrepreneurs, they pay for it – literally. That's one of the rules established by co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, former entrepreneurs themselves, who started the firm in 2009. Partners are fined $10 for every minute they are late to a meeting, a punishment that reinforces the belief that at Andreessen Horowitz, entrepreneurs deserve respect. Andreessen and Horowitz aimed to create the kind of firm they would have wanted to fund them in their startup days. Having raised three funds worth more than $2.7 billion--and investments that have included Facebook, Skype, Groupon, and Instagram--Andreessen Horowitz quickly has become one of the most influential firms on Sand Hill Road.

    Fortune's Adam Lashinsky sat down with the firm's founding partners to discuss their business model, investing philosophies and role models. A lightly edited transcript follows.

    ADAM LASHINSKY:So I'm here with Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. It's conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley that entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are not the best of buddies, and you guys were both entrepreneurs, were operating entrepreneurs several times over before starting your firm. And so the first question for you, Marc, is why were you interested in becoming a venture capitalist at all?

    MARC ANDREESSEN:At a certain point in your career -- I mean, part of the answer is a personal answer, which is that at a certain point in your career, it becomes more satisfying to help entrepreneurs than to be one. That's the introspective side of things, which I'm terrible at and so I'll just like -- I'll refuse to talk about that going forward in this interview.

    The other answer, though, the more sort of objective answer is we saw the opportunity to create the venture capital firm that we would have wanted to take money from had it existed. And so it's sort of the classic case of we were a customer of venture capital for 15 years. So while we hadn't been VCs, we had a very good idea of what it was like to be on the other side of the table and to actually be the consumer of the product, if you will.

    ADAM LASHINSKY:And you took a purposely different approach to venture capital. Explain that.

    BEN HOROWITZ: Right. Well, we had a couple of different ideas that led to that. And the first was founders make the best CEOs. And that was, at the time, like real counter-programming in that we had looked at all the really great companies, and they were typically run by their founders. And we really believed there was a reason for that, having been entrepreneurs, that the founder has the knowledge, they've got the commitment, they've got the passion, and that's very hard to implant into the company. And then we designed the firm rather than being a firm to replace a founder with a professional CEO, we became the firm to teach the founder how to be the CEO and enable the founder to be the CEO.

    And once we did that, there was a whole set of things that changed. So, the first thing was the partners needed to have experience running companies.

    ADAM LASHINSKY:By partners, you mean your partners, the venture capitalists.

    BEN HOROWITZ:The investing partners. If somebody's going on your board and you're going to be CEO, it will help if that person knows how to be CEO, who has done it before. So that we could help the founder get the skill set.

    And then the second thing was professional CEOs have these incredible networks. They know people in the press and customers and executives and all these guys they can bring into the company. So we thought the firm ought to build the definitive network for Silicon Valley so that when a founder comes in, we can give him a network that's better than any professional CEO. And those two things really ended up differentiating the firm in a big way.