硅谷传奇投资人没打算退休

    问：红杉是最有耐力的风投公司之一，而且已经成功地进行了多次转型，而大多数公司连一次成功转型都做不到，你能谈谈其中的原因吗？

    我们一直担心生存问题。我们也总是作为一个团队而非常努力地工作着，在这个团队里，没有哪个或哪些人是不可或缺的。我想这就是我们的经营方式，而且我们总是设法保持朝气和活力，设法想出一些新点子，设法让年轻人加入我们的团队。我想，是团队合作让我们受益良多。我们也不想让团队感到失望。

    问：人们都说红杉对创业者的态度非常直接，对此你怎么看？要发布坏消息时，红杉并不避讳，这和其他公司的做法相反。后者可能会说：“嗯，我们是创业者的朋友。我们和你们同进退。”这些对红杉投资态度的描述公正吗？

    这些说法都很夸张。正如我们所了解到的，其中很大一部分都是竞争对手编造的。他们需要显得和我们不同，但他们意识到自己不能说，噢，和红杉的优势进行抗衡很困难。所以他们为自己营造了一个虚假的市场地位，还想办法让别人认为红杉达不到这样的水平。但看看我们最成功的那些投资就会发现，在这些案例中，建立公司的是创始人，推动公司发展的是创始人，掌握公司前途的同样还是创始人。

    十分了解我们的人非常喜欢和我们做生意。我们和同一批人有过多次商业往来。如果哪位公司创始人对上面的说法有所耳闻，我们就会请他和所有跟我们打过交道的人谈一谈，然后做出自己的决定。据我所知，过去大约15年时间里，还从来没有谁调查过我们之后决定不和我们做生意的。

    问：你提到有些创始人在自己的公司待了很长时间，在这方面谷歌、雅虎、LinkedIn、YouTube和贝宝是否比较有代表性呢？

    当然是这样。还有现在的可充值预付卡发行商Green Dot、云技术自动化服务公司ServiceNow、网络安全公司Palo Alto Networks和存储解决方案供应商Nimble Storage。一系列的私营公司。它们和创始人的联系能保持10年之久。

    问：我想问一些简短的个人问题。我知道有些关于你受封的报道把重点放在了你的慈善活动上，包括资助牛津大学。请你略微谈一下这方面的情况。

    去年，我妻子和我为牛津大学提供了一笔资金，相当大的一笔，专门用于帮助那些来自低收入家庭、而又很有天分的学生。按照目前英国学校的学费水平，他们可能上不起牛津大学，而这笔资金让他们有机会到牛津就读。首批得到资助的学生去年秋天已经入学。我们希望这种做法有助于在英国建立一种奖学金模式。不仅是因为它在美国很流行，还因为英国政府在大学教育资金方面的参与程度要高得多。而且在私立高等教育领域，没有哪所英国学校真的能和斯坦福等美国主要私立高校相提并论。

    Q: Can you put your finger on why Sequoia has been one of the most durable venture firms that also has had more than one transitional change successfully while most firms have zero successful transitional changes?

    Well, we've always been worried about surviving, and we've also always tried very hard to work as a team where no one or two individuals are indispensable. And I think that's the way that we've approached the business, and we've also always tried to stay fresh and vital and have new ideas and young blood as part of the team. It's working on a team that I think has held us in good stead or stood us in good stead. And not wanting to let down the team.

    Q: What's your opinion of the reputation of Sequoia as being very direct with entrepreneurs. When there's bad news to be delivered, Sequoia doesn't flinch from delivering it as opposed to other firms who may say "well, we're the friends of the entrepreneurs. We're in it with you." Are those fair descriptions of Sequoia's attitude?

    They're caricatures in large part devised, as we've learned, by competitors who needed to differentiate themselves and realized that they couldn't say, oh, it was tough to compete against our strengths and therefore they had to carve out a fictional market position for themselves that they could try to delude people into thinking it wasn't Sequoia's. But if you look at our more successful investments, those are ones where the founders started the company, the founders built the company, and the founders are at the helm of the company.

    The people who know us well really like being in business with us. We've been in business multiple times with the same people and we always invite founders who've heard, perhaps, of some of these things, just to talk to all the people we've been in business with and make up their own minds. And to the best of my knowledge in the last 15 or so years we've never had people do checks on us who have then elected not to do business with us.

    Q: And when you refer to the companies where the founders stuck around a long time, Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), LinkedIn (LNKD), YouTube, and PayPal (EBAY) would be some good examples?

    Yeah, for sure. Or, today, Green Dot or ServiceNow or Palo Alto Networks or Nimble Storage. A raft of private companies. These are decade-long relationships.

    Q: A few quick personal things. I know some of the coverage around your knighthood has focused on some of the philanthropy you're doing, including with Oxford University. Talk to me a little bit about that.

    My wife and I gave a gift to Oxford last year, a sizeable gift, designed specifically to help talented students from low-income families who would be priced out of Oxford by the tuitions now being levied at British universities to afford them the opportunity to have an Oxford education. The first of those students entered Oxford last fall. We hope this will help establish a pattern of giving in Britain for these sorts of scholarships because it's just not as widely accepted as it is in the United States because there's been far greater government involvement in funding university education throughout the U.K. And at the private schools, there aren't really counterparts to the big private U.S. schools like Stanford and others.