风险投资败走IPO的三大原因

    2010年和2011年间，在上市前阶段的互联网公司中，最被风险投资家看好的是通常所谓的互联网“四骑士”： Facebook、社交游戏公司Zynga、团购网站Groupon和Twitter。 这么说吧，他们无比热衷于投资这些公司，甚至不惜做出了一些前所未有的疯狂举动：从二级市场购买普通股，接受数十亿美元的超高估值，开出巨额支票。

    目前，Facebook 已经成功上市，我们再来看看四骑士中另外两个上市公司Zynga (ZNGA) 和Groupon (GRPN) 的股票表现。

•     Zynga: Zynga的生意火爆之前，前几轮风险投资募集的资金相当有限。而随着收入迅猛增长，股票的估值也直冲云霄。2010年，Zynga以每股6.44美元的价格募集了3亿美元。到了2011年，Zynga募集另外5亿美元时的价格就高达每股约14美元。这几轮的投资者包括风投基金、公共基金、投行和战略投资者。目前Zynga股票价格略高于每股7美元。很明显，2010和2011年的风投投资者所期望的并不是这个价格。他们的8亿美元投资基本上没有获得回报，甚至赔本。

•     Groupon: Groupon在2010年以接近每股2.7美元的价格募集了约1.35亿美元。然后在2011年，Groupon募集了打破风投纪录的9.5亿美元，股价约7.9美元。目前股价在每股11-12美元间震荡，所以2010年投资者都获得了可观的回报，而2011年的投资者回报不足50%。此外，锁定期还未结束。如果投资者争相套利，导致股价下滑，2011年那个巨额轮次的回报还可能更加难看。

    很显然Zynga 和Groupon都是了不起的公司：他们开拓新市场并占据了巨大的份额，收入以惊人的速度增长。然而，最后几轮的风险投资并没有获得预期的成功。原因何在？

    1. 看低成长。通常而言，风投特别看重增长率，增长越快越好。风投最大的回报都来自那些成长为大型企业的公司，而只有快速成长的公司才能迅速壮大。因此，只要看到创业公司快速成长的可能，风投从来不会在乎价格。公众投资者也喜欢成长型公司。但由于其接触的公司通常已经处于生命周期的后期，他们已经习惯认为，由于大数定律的作用，即使是处于快速成长期的公司，其成长也会随着时间推移而减弱。按照他们的经验法则，其它条件相当时，相对于增长率50%的公司，公众投资者并不会给予100%增长率的公司更高倍数的估值。他们预期两个公司的增长率都会随着时间推移而降低并最终相等，所以他们不愿为一时的极端成长额外掏钱。

    In 2010 and 2011, the four hottest pre-IPO Internet companies amongst venture capitalists were Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Twitter – the "Four Horsemen" of the Internet, as they were commonly called. To wit, demand to get into the action on these four companies was so strong that venture capital firms starting doing things they hadn't done before – buying secondary stakes of common shares, paying multi-billion valuations and writing very large checks.

    With the successful IPO of Facebook (FB) now behind us, it's interesting to look at the performance of Zynga (ZNGA) and Groupon (GRPN), the other members of the Four Horsemen who are now public.

•     Zynga: After raising a fairly modest amount of cash in its first few venture rounds, Zynga's business caught fire. With tremendous revenue growth, its valuation soared and in 2010, Zynga raised approximately $300 million at approximately $6.44/share. In 2011, Zynga raised an additional $500 million at approximately $14/share. The investors in these rounds included venture capital funds, public funds, investment banks and strategic investors. Today, Zynga's public stock price sits at just over $7/share. This price clearly isn't what the investors in the '10 and '11 venture rounds were expecting. Basically $800 million has been invested with little or negative return.

•     Groupon: Groupon raised approximately $135 million in 2010 at approximately $2.70/share. Later, in 2011, Groupon raised the mother of all venture rounds - $950 million at just about $7.90/share. Today the stock is hovering between $11- 12/share, so the 2010 investors are sitting on a solid return but the investors in the 2011 round are below 1.5x. The lock up has yet to come off as well. If these investors look to rush for the exits and the share price softens, the returns on this huge round may end up even more paltry.

    Obviously Zynga and Groupon are amazing companies – they've invented markets, captured huge percentages of these markets and have grown revenues at phenomenal rates. Nonetheless, the last few rounds of venture investments haven't panned out as planned. Why not?

    1. Discounting Growth. VCs tend to get very focused on growth rates. The faster something is growing, the better. The really big venture returns have been made in companies that got very large, and unless a company is growing fast, it won't get large quickly. So, almost no price is too high for VCs when they see fast growth in a startup. Public investors love growth as well. But, because they see companies later in their lifecycles, they've been trained to expect growth rates of high fliers to taper over time as the law of large numbers kicks in. As a rule of thumb, public investors rarely pay higher multiples for a company growing 100% versus a company growing 50%, all else being equal. They expect growth to moderate and equal out over time, so they're just not willing to pay extra for extreme growth.