近几周，微软（Microsoft）拟购旧金山企业社交网络公司Yammer的消息早已是传得人尽皆知。周一，微软终于对此发布了官方声明：表示将以12亿美元现金收购Yammer。

    这笔交易正式宣布后，曾领导Charles River Ventures对Yammer进行原始投资的乔治•扎恰里在推特上激动地写下了：“这是我职业生涯中最有意义的成功。我太激动了。感谢你们。”

    Microsoft (MSFT) today made official what we've all known for weeks: It has agreed to acquire Yammer, the San Franicsco-based enterprise social networking company, for $1.2 billion in cash.

    After the deal was formerly announced, the following tweet popped up from George Zachary, who led the original investment in Yammer for Charles River Ventures:

    这个评价可不低，要知道扎恰里从上世纪90年代起就一直在从事风险投资，成功的投资案例包括Millennial Media、Shutterfly等多家公司。为此，我特地联系到正在加勒比度假的扎恰里进行了一次简短的采访。以下是采访内容的录音整理。

    《财富》杂志：您将此称为个人职业生涯中最有意义的成功。为什么这么说？

    扎恰里：因为在我们开始商业合作前，（Yammer的创始人兼CEO）戴维•萨克斯和我就是非常亲密的朋友，能够从一开始就为朋友提供支持，然后看着他和他的公司取得成功，意义重大。

    那么，CRV最初投资Yammer时主要考虑的因素是戴维，还是商业设想？

    哦，Yammer源于我们曾经提供资金、如今已经盈利的Geni。当时，戴维和我在谈论Twitter，像这样的东西怎么能为一家公司所用。当时的人们都在自己的格子间里工作，依赖电子邮件进行沟通。我还记得我们第一次谈到要改变这一切、创造企业环境中的Twitter时，我们感受到的兴奋和激动。

    这宗交易的投资回报是你作为风投家获得过的最高回报吗？

    这宗投资给CRV带来的收益略超2亿美元（总投资约1,200-1,500万美元），我在上世纪90年代曾获得过3.30亿美元收益。因此，这不是最高的投资回报，但从数量来看，这使得我职业生涯以来实现的投资收益超过了10亿美元。

    今年初Yammer进行最后一轮风险融资时所获估值据称仅为微软此次收购价的一半。你对这次的收购价感到意外吗？

    不，我一点也不意外。我们已经开始看到用户数量呈指数式增长，而且从一些用户公司的首席信息官处也直接听到，他们可以看到Outlook和Yammer使用量的此消彼长。

    对于Yammer并入微软后有何担忧？

    你永远都不知道一家大公司里会发生些什么，但斯蒂夫•鲍尔默同戴维见了面，他们都非常兴奋。他们都知道Outlook必须改变。我相信随着时间推移，Yammer和Outlook将进行结合。在此之前，Yammer将整合入SharePoint。

    译者：早稻米

    That's a big claim, considering that Zachary has been a venture capitalist since the 1990s, with a track record that includes such companies as Millennial Media (MM) and Shutterfly (SFLY). So I briefly spoke with Zachary, who is vacationing in the Caribbean. What follows is a transcript of our conversation:

    FORTUNE: Most meaningful success in your career. Why?

    Zachary: Because [Yammer founder and CEO] David Sacks and I were very close friends before we got into business together, and it's great to be able to back a friend from the beginning and watch him and his company succeed.

    So when CRV first invested in Yammer, was it mostly about David or the idea?

    Well, Yammer came out of Geni, which we had funded and is now profitable. David and I were talking about Twitter, and we talked about how useful something like that would be inside of a company. People were all working in their cubicles, stuck with just their inboxes for communication. I remember the moment when we first talked about changing that, creating something like Twitter for business environments, and the spark and sense of excitement we felt.

    So is this the largest return you've ever generated as a VC?

    It's slightly over a $200 million gain to CRV [on around $12m-$15m of total investment], but I had a $330 million gain in the 1990s. So it's not the biggest, although from a quantitative perspective it puts me at over $1 billion of gains in my career.

    Yammer raised its final round of venture funding early this year at a valuation reported to be just half of what Microsoft is paying. Are you surprised at the sale price?

    No, I'm not surprised at all. We were beginning to see exponential user increases, and were hearing directly from CIOs that they could see decreasing their use of Outlook and increasing their use of Yammer.

    Any worries about what will happen to Yammer inside of Microsoft?

    You never know what will happen inside of a large company, but Steve Ballmer met with David and they both are incredibly excited. They both know that Outlook has to change and I think, over time, that there will be a combination of Yammer and Outlook. Before that, Yammer will be integrated into SharePoint.