A look forward, not backward

    Just a few years ago the narrative in the venture capital industry was that performance over the past 15 years was poor and that venture wasn’t an asset class worthy of limited partner’s investment. As I pointed out in presentation with much data, these analyses were flawed in that they considered only rear-view mirror data. The data set only considered only a period at the peak of Internet hype, with the launch of many over-capitalized businesses against a limited market size of consumers and businesses, and a venture capital industry that had tripled in size in just three years.

    Where are we today?

    • We have 2.4 billion Internet users, or 50x more than before.

    • Online connections are 180x faster at 10.5 Mbps.

    • 164m US smartphone users gives us “always-on” mobile connectivity

    • We’re all socially connected, so great businesses spread faster.

    • We all have one-click purchase power through Apple, Google, Amazon and eBay.

    • The VC market has right-sized, returning back to mid 90′s levels with less competition.

    • The cost to start a business is 95% lower, meaning many more companies are created and funded by angel and seed investors.

    • It still takes venture capital to scale a business, which means large amounts of capital go into industry winners like Uber, Airbnb and Snapchat.

    It doesn’t take a huge leap to see how well the VC industry is positioned for the immediate future. LPs have taken notice as 2014 is by all accounts the busiest year for LPs since the Great Recession began as it is forecast that between $25-30 billion to be invested in some 200 venture funds. Where will these dollars go and how is the industry changing?

    向前看，而不是向后看

    就在几年前，对风投行业的评价还是，过去15年的表现较差，风投这种资产类别并不值得采取有限合伙投资形式。我已经用大量数据说明，这些分析的缺陷在于它们只考虑了“后视镜”数据。它们所用的数据只涵盖了互联网泡沫的高峰期，在这期间出现了许多资本过剩的公司，消费者和企业市场则规模有限。在短短三年内，风投行业的规模就增长了两倍。

    目前情况如何？

    • 互联网用户达24亿人，是之前的50多倍。

    • 网络连接速度比以前快180倍，达到每秒10.5Mb。

    • 1.64亿美国智能手机用户给我们带来了“全天候在线”的移动连接。

    • 社交渠道把我们所有人都联系在一起，因此好公司扩张得更快。

    • 苹果公司（Apple）、谷歌（Google）、亚马逊（Amazon）和易趣（eBay）等公司给予我们一键购物的畅快体验。

    • 风投市场重返20世纪90年代中期的水平，规模适当，竞争减少。

    • 设立公司的成本下降95%，这意味着天使投资者和种子投资者能够为更多的初创公司提供融资支持。

    • 公司的规模化仍然需要风投资金，也就是说，大量资金都流向了Uber、Airbnb和Snapchat这样的行业佼佼者。

    无需跳跃式思维也可以观察到，在即将到来的未来，风投行业处于一个多么有利的位置。有限合伙人们已经注意到，从任何标准判断，2014年都是自2008-2009年“大衰退（Great Recession）”以来最繁忙的一年，原因是预计将有250-300亿美元资金投入到200多只风投基金中。这些资金将流向何处？风投行业又将出现什么样的变化呢？

    Money Bifurcating into Small & Large

    Just 3 years ago there was talk of LPs “not being able to write small enough checks” to fund seed-stage VCs. The new narrative is seed-stage is here to stay, but “will my seed funds be able to fund the prorata of their winners?” Stated simply — if you seed funded Uber at $4.5m pre-money valuation you certainly would want to exercise your right to continue investing if you had pro-rata rights. The race is on to plug this gap in the private markets.

    Seed funds now represent 67% of all funds being created now, which is up 100% from 6 years ago. And while it only represents 6% of the total capital of the VC industry — this is a meaningful shift in structure.

    资金分别流向小型和大型风投公司

    就在三年前，还有人说有限合伙人“根本不会开具小面额支票”来为种子阶段风投提供资金。最新动态是，种子阶段已经被广为接受，但问题是“我的种子基金有能力按既定比例为那些最终的赢家提供资金吗？”简单来说就是，如果你按450万美元的融资前价值为打车服务商Uber公司提供了种子基金，而且你有权保持自己的股权份额，你当然希望继续行驶投资权。在私募市场中填补这个缺口的竞赛正在进行之中。

    目前种子基金占所有新设立基金的67%，是六年前占比的两倍。虽然它们只占整个风投行业总资本的6%，这依然是一个重大的结构性变化。

    At the other end of the spectrum large funds have gotten even larger in the past few years which has massively increased the amount of consolidation in our industry as 66% of LP money into venture is now concentrated in late-stage or full-cycle VCs, which is likely $17-20bn in 2014.

    Why is this?

    • Many pension funds are simply too large to write small checks and favor the ability to write $50-100 million checks to funds. If you don’t want to be more than 10% of a fund that implies fund sizes in the $500 million-$1 billion range.

    • Fund of funds (who take money from large pensions, sovereign wealth funds, etc. and break it into smaller sizes) often sell “access.” What they’re really saying is that they have the relationships to be able to invest in Sequoia, Benchmark, Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, Accel, etc. and the bigger funds often can’t get in directly.

    Of course it’s much harder to identify “emerging managers” who it turns out have been some of the best performers over the past 5-7 years such as Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, First Round Capital, True Ventures, Greycroft, Foundry Group, Thrive and Upfront Ventures. The challenge is that if you don’t get into the first 1-2 funds you don’t get in at all because they, too, become “over subscribed.”

    The pioneering fund of funds realize that their source of differentiation is much more about getting into the newer market leaders than the established venture capitals since most historic fund-of-funds have some level of old-line access.

    The most puzzling bit of data was that “traditional VC” — funds in the $100 million-$500 million range — seemed to be shrinking since the Great Recession in both numbers of VCs getting funded and in terms of total dollars in this class of VC and this seemed to fly in the face of the rise of successful emerging funds. By 2014, traditional VC would have halved in just 6 years in both number of funds and dollars allocated to category as dollars are shifting earlier & later.

    另一方面，在过去几年中大型基金变得更大，这大幅提高了风投行业的整合规模——目前在风投领域，66%的有限合伙人资金都集中在后期或完整周期风投公司手里，此类资金在2014年的规模可能达到170-200亿美元。

    为什么会这样？

    • 许多养老基金规模过大，无法进行小额投资，它们都愿意按0.5-1亿美元的规模向其他基金提供资金。如果它们不希望自己在一只基金中的份额超过10%，相应的基金规模就应该在5-10亿美元之间。

    • 基金中的基金（它们从大型养老基金、主权财富基金等基金那里融资，然后将这些资金分解成更小的单位）所销售的经常是“渠道”。它们所说的其实是自己可以通过关系来投资红杉资本（Sequoia）、基准资本（Benchmark）、格雷洛克（Greylock）、凯鹏华盈（Kleiner Perkins）和加速资本（Accel）等风投巨擘，而规模较大的基金往往无法实现直接投资。

    当然，找到过去5-7年中最佳“新兴经理人”的难度要大得多，合广投资（Union Square Ventures）、星火资本（Spark Capital）、首轮资本（First Round Capital）、真资本（True Ventures）、格雷克罗夫特（Greycroft）、晶圆集团（Foundry Group）和Thrive and Upfront Ventures等公司的表现都不错。难点在于如果没能进入前一两轮融资，你就再也无法投入资金，原因是它们也会出现“超额申购”现象。

    走在前列的基金中基金意识到，它们的差异化源泉更多地在于把资金投入新出现的市场领跑者，而不是老牌风投公司，原因是大多数有历史的基金中基金都有一定的老关系。

    最让人困惑的数据是那些资金规模在1-5亿美元之间的“传统风投公司”。自2008-2009年“大衰退”以来，这些风投公司一直处于萎缩状态，从获得资金的风投公司数量以及此类风投公司的总资金规模来说都是这样，这种情况似乎和成功的新兴基金的崛起形成了鲜明对比。截至2014年，传统风投公司的数量及其所获资金在短短六年时间里减少了一半，原因是资金转向了更早或更晚的投资阶段。

    But there is another major factor at play in the concentration of capital in larger funds: many traditional VC firms were now setting up “opportunity funds” or “growth funds.” The data ends up looking skewed towards larger funds when it actually involves traditional VC funds now geared up to take capture more of the value in private funds before they went public.

    This is a structural shift in our industry few have talked about publicly.

    The Opportunity Set Ahead

    The trends of faster-growing startups due to social networking, credit card enabling and mobile-first consumers, show many startups becoming very large financially before needing to go public. Many of them could be profitable if they chose to. But markets value high growth over short-term profitability. As long as private-market capital is available, these companies would rather remain private for longer before going public.

    Thus, the amount of money that companies have raised before going public doubled since the Great Recession from $49 million median financing pre-IPO to $101 million in 2013. The overall trends in our industry have breathed a new life into the venture capital industry. From a period of veering off target with the laziness & riches of the dotcom era, our industry has righted itself.

    The biggest changes in our industry have been driven by technical changes themselves to which venture capitalists are observers and fortunate beneficiaries. I highlighted how these tectonic technical shifts have altered the VC industry in this post: How Open-Source & Horizontal Computing Spawned the Micro VC Market. 2007 was the watershed year. Facebook went mainstream after the F8 conference and its big push beyond college campuses. Twitter spread through the tech crowds at SxSW and raised its first venture capital round led by Fred Wilson. The iPhone was released.

    The seeds of cheap cloud computing, social networking & mobile were planted and then the 2008 financial crisis brought a hurricane that swept much of the old, dead brush from the venture capital industry and ushered in a new phase perhaps best punctuated by Sequoia’s famous and now ironic 2008 presentation “RIP Good Times.” The “big boom” in startup financing started around March 2009 — more than 5 years ago — and hasn’t abated.

    Cheap, mobile, social, global, massive, always-on, one-click-purchase has led to the most successful companies of our era hitting unprecedented scale early in their development and has massively shifted the value captured from post-IPO investors to pre-IPO investors. Whereas the market caps of Cisco, Amazon and Microsoft at IPO were $200 million, $400 million and $800 million respectively, the market caps of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook were $4.3 billion, $18 billion and $104 billion. Thus the rapid rise of DropBox, Airbnb, Pinterest, Maker Studios, Uber, Lyft, SnapChat, Tinder, Waze, KickStarter and so many more great standouts that have been a boon to private-market investors.

    不过，资金集中到较大基金手中还有另一个重要影响因素，那就是许多传统风投公司现在都开始设立“机会型基金”或者“成长型基金”。最终数据看起来侧重于大型基金，而实际上其中也包括了投入传统风投公司的资金，这些公司正以更大的力度来更多地捕捉私募基金上市之前的价值。

    在风投行业，很少有人公开讨论这一结构性变化。

    今后的机遇

    拜热衷于社交网络，倾向于刷卡消费，信奉移动优先原则的消费者所赐，许多初创公司正在以更快的速度发展壮大。这些趋势表明，许多初创公司在需要上市前就已经拥有了非常多的资金。如果愿意，许多这样的公司都能实现盈利。但市场看中的是高增长，而非短期盈利能力。只要还有私募资金可用，这些公司就愿意更长久地保持私营身份，而不是急于上市。

    因此，2008-2009年经济衰退以来，公司上市前（pre-IPO）融资规模增长了一倍，融资中位数从4900万美元上升到了2013年的1.01亿美元。风投行业的整体趋势形成了一种新气象。互联网泡沫时期的懒惰致富经历一度让风投行业偏离航行，现如今，风投业已经开始自我矫正。

    风投行业最大的变化源自技术革新自身，风投人士既目睹了这一切，又幸运地从中受益。我曾经在本专栏探讨过这些重大技术变化怎样改变了风头行业，详见《开源及水平计算如何催生了微风投市场》一文。2007年是座分水岭。经过F8开发者大会和该公司在大学校园的大力推广，Facebook成为主流社交网络。Twitter在西南偏南大会（SxSW）上得到科技界广泛认同，并在风投人士佛瑞德•威尔逊牵头下进行了首轮风投融资。iPhone也在当年上市。

    廉价云计算、社交网络以及移动化的种子已经在那时种下。接下来，2008年金融危机引发的风暴卷走了风投行业中大部分陈旧而腐朽的业务，并且开启了一个新阶段。红杉资本于2008年发布的著名报告《安息吧好时光》（RIP Good Times）也许是对这个阶段的最佳写照——现在看来，这篇报告具有一些讽刺意味。初创公司融资的“大爆发”始于2009年3月前后，也就是5年多以前，至今尚未衰退。

    廉价、移动化、社交化、全球化、规模化、全天候在线以及一键购物已经让我们这个时代那些最成功的企业在发展初期就达到了前所未有的规模，同时将大量价值从上市后投资者那里转移到了上市前投资者手中。思科（Cisco）、亚马逊和微软（Microsoft）的IPO市值分别为2亿、4亿和8亿美元，而领英（LinkedIn）、Twitter和Facebook的IPO市值分别达到了43亿、180亿和1040亿美元。因此，DropBox、Airbnb、Pinterest、Maker Studios、Uber、Lyft、SnapChat、Tinder、Waze和KickStarter等公司的迅速崛起，一直都是私募市场投资者的福音。

    From a technology perspective, our journey is nowhere near over. Even the most somber of industry analysts must acknowledge that the shift from computers as devices controlled by humans to smart devices that are all computers connected to an Internet cloud — the so-called “Internet of Things” — is breeding massive new opportunities. Just see the growth of Dropcam, GoPro and Nest for the tip of the iceberg in what is to come.

    Of course, the strongest industry players don’t stand still.

    Early-stage VCs have realized that they need to capitalize on this trend, which is why many traditional VCs have set up “opportunity” funds that sit alongside their core funds as a means of capturing more private-market (pre IPO) value. Opportunity funds typically have better economics for the LPs who invest in them.

    Traditional VC isn’t being gutted — it’s being supplemented.

    Many prominent LPs have also recognized the “pro rata opportunity” and have set up “direct investment vehicles” themselves to take pro rata stakes in their managers portfolio companies. Expect this trend to continue. The biggest response to the public-turned-private value capture, however, has been the push for public market investors to move into the private sphere. Public-company tech investors creates competition in late-stage financings and these investors can afford to be less price sensitive if they choose.

    The value capture in the private markets has also led some hedge funds and other major non-private-market investors to become late-stage VCs. Many of these investors lack the skills, focus, experience and temperament to make great, patient, long-term, private-market investors. Trying to shoe-horn a hedge-fund mentality into venture capital markets cannot portend a happy outcome. Marc Andreessen captured some of this sentiment in his recent “10 Ways to Damage Your High-Growth Tech Startup” Tweetstorm.

    从技术角度讲，这趟旅程还远未结束。计算机已经从由人操控变为所有计算机和互联网云端相连，也就是所谓的“物联网”，就连最悲观的行业分析师也必须承认，这样的转变孕育着众多新机遇。Dropcam、GoPro和Nest的发展只是冰山一角，但从中可以看到将来的趋势。

    当然，最强大的业界成员绝不会停滞不前。

    早期风投已经意识到需要利用这种趋势，这就是为什么许多传统风投公司在核心基金之外还设立了“机会型基金”，其作用就是要更多地抓住私募市场（即上市前市场）的价值。对于有限合伙人来说，机会型基金通常是更加经济的投资对象。

    传统风投业并没有遭受灭顶之灾——它得到了补充。

    许多知名有限合伙人也已经看到了“既定比例机遇”，并成立“直接投资实体”，以便更迅速地获得已经纳入其经理人投资组合的公司既定比例的股份。这种趋势预计将持续下去。不过，价值从公募市场转向私募市场所引发的最强烈反应是把公募市场投资者推向私募市场。上市公司的技术投资者在后期融资阶段造成了竞争，如果愿意，这些投资者可以变得对价格不那么敏感。

    在私募市场获取的价值还让一些对冲基金和其他大型非私募市场投资者参与到后期风投中。其中有许多机构都缺乏技能、专注力、经验和气质，无法成为优秀而有耐心的私募市场长期投资者。试图在风投市场套用对冲基金思维无法让人预见到什么好结果。马克•安德烈森的文章《毁掉高增长科技初创公司的十种方法》（10 Ways to Damage Your High-Growth Tech Startup）最近在Twitter上引发激烈探讨，其中就谈到了一些这样的问题。

    When the tech markets goes through their next inevitable bear cycle, every public market investor will return to their day jobs and abandon the hard work of rebuilding and restructuring the remaining over-capitalized companies. We saw this movie already after the dotcom collapse and the sequel will be no different. Publics sold many of their positions to secondary investors. It’s hard to work out the cap table with your peers when one of them has no real intent in fixing the problem.

    Why do VCs stick around and fix problems in a massively changing financial market? Because this is all VCs do, and if we intend to work with all of our fellow VCs and entrepreneurs when the rain ends and the sun shines again, our reputations matter greatly. This “game theory” of mutual interests in collaboration — even as we occasionally compete fiercely — is what forces better behavior in our industry than otherwise might exist.

    The result of these new market trends of pro rata takers, corporate investors and public market entrants has led to a sharp spike in the valuations of late-stage financings. While this might not matter for the industry’s best companies, the definition of what is “best” will clearly be stretched as people compete to get in on perceived great deals.

    当科技市场不可避免地进入下一个下行周期后，所有公募市场投资者都将重新捡起自己的日常工作，并且放弃重建和重组剩下的那些资本过剩公司这项艰难任务。互联网泡沫破裂后我们曾经见识了这样的场面，而这次的结果也不会有什么不同。公募投资者把许多头寸出售给了二级市场投资者。如果某位同行并不真的打算解决问题，就很难和他们一起确定相应的股权结构。

    为什么风投公司会坚守岗位并在金融市场经历巨变时去解决问题呢？因为这就是它们的工作。如果我们想在雨过天晴之后和所有的风投界同行以及企业家共事，我们的声誉就极为重要。尽管我们有时候会激烈竞争，但这种合作则互利的“博弈理论”将迫使风投行业展露更好的行为。

    在份额固定的权益持有者、公司投资者和公募市场新生力量带来的市场新趋势作用下，后期融资的价值陡然上升。对一个行业中的顶尖企业来说这或许不算什么，但随着人们竞相参与他们所认为的绝佳融资活动，“顶尖”的定义显然会变得牵强起来。

    Venture capital valuations are up across every segment of the industry as can be expected by our 5-years of growth markets but they are up most pronounced in the late-stage financings. There, the median valuation has risen from $66 million in 2010 to $155 million in 2014 (a 24% compound annual growth rate).

    .

    But about that “bubble” we always hear about?

    It certainly doesn’t yet seem to be the case regarding private tech market companies going public. Not only are they going public later, when they are larger & stronger, but the valuations upon their debuts are significantly more rational than the public dotcom bubble. From DotCom 1.0 to now we have seen the following: Years to IPO went from 3.1 years to 7.4, revenue of a startup at IPO went from $35m to $102m, and the valuation (market cap / revenue multiple) went from 13.3x to just 5.3x. Certainly the public markets for now are more rational than the last time around.

    风投行业各个细分领域的估值全面上升，从5年来市场的增长就能预见到这一点，但估值水平增幅最大的是后期融资，它的中位数已从2010年的6600万美元上升到了2014年的1.55亿美元（年均复合增长率为24%）.

    那么，我们总是听到的“泡沫”怎么样了呢？

    对于即将上市的私营科技公司来说，当然还不存在泡沫问题。它们不仅上市时间较晚——此时它们规模更大，实力更强，它们上市时的估值水平也比互联网泡沫时期合理得多。从DotCom 1.0时期到现在，我们看到的情况是，公司从设立到上市的时间从3.1年延长到了7.4年，初创公司IPO时的收入规模从3500万美元增至1.02亿美元，估值水平（市值/收入比例）从13.3倍降到了5.3倍。当然，目前的公募市场比上次更加理性。

    Summary

    Cheap, mobile, social, global, always-on, one-click-purchase leads to unprecedented revenue growth and companies staying private longer. That means there are more opportunities than ever in history for venture capital firms and lots of new entrants moving to capture this value. All of that means there are amazing opportunities, risks and uncertainties for the coming decade.

    总结

    廉价、移动化、社交化、全球化、全天候在线和一键购物让初创公司的收入增速达到前所未有的水平，也让这些公司的私营身份保持更长时间。也就是说，风投公司面临的机遇比以往任何时候都多，而且许多市场新军都在捕捉这样的价值。所有这些都意味着今后十年将存在绝佳的机会、风险以及不确定性。(财富中文网)

    译者：Charlie