资深人士预言风险投资黄金时代即将到来

    如上图所示，资本的过度供应导致回报在2002和2003年暴跌。这两年-20%的回报是整个十年低迷回报的主要推动力。另一个短暂的下行区间就是全球金融危机，风投行业轻松地度过了（并不存在任何系统风险）。十年间剩下的时间里，风投11%-17%的净回报率中规中矩，虽然不那么光彩夺目，但比多数投资者在公开的股票市场7%的期望回报率还是高出4%-10%。而且这只是平均回报，某些基金表现还要更好。

    从1998-2000年得到（或者说再次得到）的主要教训就是：规模在1亿-4亿美元之间的风投基金的回报率较高。资金的疯狂涌入产生了许多10亿美元级别的风投基金。但它们并没能实现高回报。哈佛商学院（Harvard Business School）的约什•勒莫尔在最近的一篇论文中写道：“我们发现那些具有较高平均内部回报率的有限合伙公司通常投资于较小型和规模增长较缓慢的基金…”

    硅谷银行（Silicon Valley Bank）在2009年分析了这一“小就是好”的现象，得出结论是：和大型基金相比，小型的基金有5倍的可能实现所谓的“风投回报”（2倍以上的净回报率）。考夫曼基金会对其风险基金组合的分析肯定了硅谷银行的发现。

    As the chart above shows, over-supply of capital caused returns to plummet in 2002 and 2003. These two years of -20% returns are the main driver of poor returns for the decade. The other downward blip was the global financial crisis, which the VC community weathered easily (no systemic risk here!). For the rest of the decade, VC produced solid returns of 11%-17% net to investors. This is not yet stellar, but it is 4%-10% above the ~7% return most investors expect from public equity markets. And these are average returns; certain funds do much better.

    A key lesson learned (or re-learned) from'98-'00 is: Venture fund returns are higher if the fund size is between $100 and $400 million. The big influx of capital created many $1 billion venture funds. They have not delivered big returns. As Harvard Business School's Josh Lerner wrote in a recent paper: "We find that LPs that have higher average IRRs also tend to invest in smaller and slower growing funds …"

    Silicon Valley Bank analyzed the "small is better" phenomenon in 2009 and concluded that smaller funds are five times more likely to deliver a "venture return" (2X+ net to investors) compared to on larger funds. The Kauffman Foundation confirmed SVB's finding with this analysis of its venture fund portfolio: