风投小子初长成

    现在是晚上11点，地点是在奥斯丁城区，我们坐在一辆不像校车的校车里面兜着圈子：校车装着深色的车窗，车尾有一个吧台，发动机的护栅上绑着扩音器，墙上挂着九寸钉乐队（Nine Inch Nails）海报，一个看上去和听上去都非常昂贵的系统大声播放着电子乐whomm-whomm-whomping。车上坐了25个人，大部分都抓着车顶的扶手，每次转弯的时候都歪歪斜斜。几个女人在自顾自地跳着舞。

    我们正在参加西南偏南音乐节（South by Southwest）。以前，这个音乐节是为给一些不出名的乐队提供与唱片公司签约的机会。如今，它似乎完全演变成了科技界的盛宴。Zappos.com公司CEO谢家华预定了派对巴士。车上坐的都是谢家华的朋友：其中一位把来自奥斯丁的创业家把上一家公司卖给了社交游戏公司Zynga，还有谷歌（Google）风险投资基金的一位成员；一位彼得•泰尔创始人基金会（Founders Fund）的合伙人；还有一位女士，在拉斯维加斯城区附近创办了一家烤辣味干酪玉米片的餐厅，谢家华在其中投入了数百万资金用于餐厅重建。车上还有一位20岁的风险投资人阿历克斯•班纳言：他是车上最年轻的一位，早已把自己介绍给大家认识。听着刺激的音乐，我已经不止一次听到他大喊：“太棒了！”

    班纳言是世界上最年轻的风险投资人。他目前在旧金山风险投资公司Alsop Louie任职，公司旗下管理着1.5亿美元资金。此外，他还是兰登书屋（Random House）旗下皇冠出版社（Crown Business）最年轻的签约作者，可能也是唯一一位同时接到MTV（拍摄个人真人秀节目）和环球唱片公司（Interscope Records）一位唱作人邀请（担任经纪人），但都婉言谢绝的大学生。

    斯图尔特•奥尔索普表示，之所以聘用班纳言，是因为这个20岁的年轻人身上有一种比技术专业能力更重要的东西：积极活跃。班纳言跟奥尔索普和他的合伙人吉尔曼•雷讲了他在《价格竞猜》（The Price Is Right ）中获胜的经历（他赢得了3,2000美元奖金，包括一艘18英尺长的帆船，一张台球桌，还有一次零重力飞行之旅），尽管他从来没有完整地看过哪怕一期节目。他还讲到了自己在派对上遇到的那些南加州大学（University of Southern California）的创业新人，还有他的图书合约。这位新生代作家从这份合约中获得了高达六位数的天价预付款。他说，为了写这本书，他希望能采访世界上最成功的那些人，比如沃伦•巴菲特、比尔•克林顿、比尔•盖茨、坎耶•韦斯特、马克•扎克伯格等，描写一下当他们在人生初期无人问津的时候，如何寻求突破。不过，人们倒是很愿意与班纳言见面。

    奥尔索普说：“他的自信心令人难以置信。”奥尔索普曾经是一名记者【曾为《财富》杂志（Fortune）供稿】，他的联合创始人雷曾负责运营美国中情局（CIA）的风险投资基金。奥尔索普和雷都希望能有人替他们跟踪洛杉矶的初创企业。班纳言正是他们心目中的人选，班纳言被选中时还是南加州大学的大三学生。尽管还只是奥尔索普口中的“孩子”，但班纳言已经承担了巨大的责任。现在他面临着每一个新入行的风险投资人都需要面对的挑战：完成投资任务。我在奥斯丁见到他时，他与Alsop Louie签约已经满了一年，仍然在寻找第一笔大买卖。（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪浩

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    It's 11 p.m. in downtown Austin, and we're driving in circles in a very un-school-bus-like school bus: blacked-out windows, a bar in the back, bullhorns strapped to the grille, Nine Inch Nails posters on the walls, dubstep whomm-whomm-whomping through what looks and sounds like an expensive, very loud sound system. There are 25 of us onboard. Most hang on to overhead straps, leaning into each turn. A group of women is dancing, somehow.

    We are at South by Southwest, a festival that used to be about undiscovered bands getting signed by record labels and is now seemingly wholly given over to Tech with a capital T. The party bus was booked by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com. All Hsieh's friends are aboard: There's an Austin entrepreneur who sold his last company to Zynga (ZNGA); a member of Google's venture capital fund; a partner at Peter Thiel's Founders Fund; and a woman who started a nachos restaurant near downtown Las Vegas, where Hsieh is sinking hundreds of millions of his own money into redevelopment. Also aboard: a 20-year-old venture capitalist named Alex Banayan. He's the youngest person on the bus by a decade, and he has already introduced himself to everyone. More than once, over the sonic assault I hear his voice shout, "That's awesome!"

    Banayan is the world's youngest venture capitalist. He works for the San Francisco firm Alsop Louie, which manages $150 million. He's also the youngest author signed at Crown Business, a Random House imprint, and probably the only college student in the world to have received offers from MTV (for his own reality-TV show) and from a singer-songwriter at Interscope Records (to manage him) and turned both down.

    Stewart Alsop says that he hired Banayan because he saw something in the 20-year-old that was, to him, more important than tech expertise: hustle. Banayan told Alsop and his partner, Gilman Louie, about how he won on The Price Is Right despite never having watched a full episode. (He earned $32,000 in prizes, including an 18-foot sailboat, a billiards table, and a zero-gravity plane trip.) He told them about all the budding University of Southern California entrepreneurs he was meeting at parties and, later, his book deal, for which the first-time author got a substantial six-figure advance. For the book, he told them, he hoped to interview some of the world's most successful people -- Warren Buffett, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Kanye West, Mark Zuckerberg -- and write about how they broke through early in life when no one would take their meetings. People take Banayan's meetings.

    "He's incredibly self-confident," says Alsop, who used to be a journalist (and wrote forFortune) and whose co-founder, Louie, used to run the CIA's venture investment fund. Alsop and Louie wanted someone to track startups across L.A. for them. In Banayan, a USC junior, they had found their man. Banayan has been given an enormous amount of responsibility for someone Alsop still calls a "kid," and he now faces the challenge that greets every new VC: closing. A year after signing with Alsop Louie, when I met him in Austin, he was still searching for that first big deal.