如何选择风投基金
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过去几年，风险投资基金领域的一大趋势是大型机构投资者的钱越来越向少数风投经理、旗舰品牌和/或新兴的明星经理集中。 由于风险投资基金大多同质化，有限合伙人几乎别无选择，只能更多地倚重历史回报数据。 如今，整体市场正处于大幅收缩期（这里说的是“活跃的”风投公司数量），每家风投公司都必须回答一个根本的生存问题：为什么存在？除了将资金从A投入到B、从中抽取管理费之外，有什么确凿的理由继续存在吗？你代表什么？为什么市场需要你？ 因此，有限合伙人做了两件事： 1、将资金更多地向少数风投经理集中 2、将资金投向差异化的风投产品 风投公司可以大致分为四类： •旗舰品牌。拥有一流的风投经理，有能力赢得任何金额的光环交易，比如Accel、红杉（Sequoia）、A16Z、凯鹏华盈（KPCB)、格雷洛克（Greylock）和星火资本（Spark Capital）等。 •高度专业化的风投公司。在特定领域占据主导地位，但（大多）维持较小的规模，比如USV、Foundry、基准资本（Benchmark）、首轮资本（First Round）等。 •实现重生或大跨越的老品牌。它们在全新的一般合伙人领导下，重现活力并显现出好于行业整体表现的迹象，比如CRV、Mayfield和Atlas Venture——通常信奉“小而专”（如前述）。 •新兴的明星经理和超级天使基金，规模已经达到机构投资，是上述类型的加强版，比如IA Ventures、True Ventures、Felicis、Softtech等。 无论选择哪种策略，风投公司必须能令人信服地回答这个根本的生存问题：为什么存在？ 任何一家风投公司在自我推介时，都会把自家的策略包装成能够取得成功的策略。这些常见的讨论有时令人莞尔：小基金、还是大基金，相信或不相信种子投资。只投资种子/加速期或任何你认为在融资周期中最好的投资期。 比如，恩颐投资（NEA）信奉“大就是好”，大基金变得越来越大，是因为他们表现更好。与之形成鲜明对比的是，基准资本的比尔•格利对有限合伙人所说的：“你在场内。如果你（把你的资本）过量配置匀给排名前1/4的公司，就会影响到事态的发展。（...）如果你问人们会不会持有过多资金，回答是肯定的。” 现实的状况是，不管进行多少历史市场数据分析，都不能告诉你将来应该投资哪只基金，特别是考虑到现在市场变化如此之快。如果下次再有人告诉你，他找到了确保自己基金能够赚钱的、万无一失的方法，就把下面这张表格发给他吧。 |
The big story of the past few years in Venture Fund Land has been that large institutional investors concentrate money with fewer managers and flagship brands and/or find emerging managers. Since VC offerings have generally been undifferentiated, LP's had little choice but to overweight historical returns in their decision making algorithms. Now the market is in radical reduction mode (speaking of the number of active venture firms out there) and every venture firm has to answer a simple existential question : Why do you even exist? Is there a valid reason to continue beyond the funneling of money from A to B and the siphoning of management fees? What do you stand for? Why does the market need you? So the LP's have done two things: 1.Concentrate more money with fewer managers 2.Radically concentrate their bets into differentiated offerings You can group these offerings into four broad categories: •Flagship brands with both exceptional entrepreneur mindshare able to compete at whatever dollar amount required for halo deals (Accel, Sequoia, A16Z, KPCB, Greylock, Spark Capital, etc.) •Highly focused funds with dominant presence in their chosen field or area of focus but (broadly) choosing to remain small (USV, Foundry, Benchmark, First Round) •Turnaround stories / successful generational transition stories of strong (or formerly strong) brands being reinvigorated by hungry / rejuvenated GP teams and showing signs of out-performance (CRV, Mayfield, Atlas Venture) -- usually espousing the small / focused mantra described above. •Emerging managers and super angel funds whose size now allows institutional investments, hyper-focused versions of the above (IA Ventures, True Ventures, Felicis, Softtech etc.) Again, no matter which strategy you choose, your venture firm has to be able to compellingly answer that simple existential question: Why do you even exist? When any VC firm pitches their story, they're always presenting their strategy as the one that works. I am slightly amused by the constant back and forth between small and large funds, believers in seed and non-believers in seed, folks who pretend you should only play seed/acceleration rounds and not in the middle, or whatever flavor you think is going to work best in this cycle of fundraising. Take NEA's "Big is Beautiful" argument that bigger funds are bigger simply because they are, well, better. Compare and contrast with Bill Gurley (Benchmark Capital) and his comments to LP's ("You are Are Blowing It"): "You're in the field. And when you allocate [your capital] obsessively to firms in the top quartile, it will have an impact on how things play out. [...] If you ask if people will take an excessive amount of money, the answer is yes." The reality is that no amount of historical market data analysis is going to tell you which fund to invest in next, especially given the speed of market disruption. When the next guy comes in telling you he's found a bulletproof may to make money on his fund, send him this: |
