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http://www.fortunechina.com/colu ... /content_180975.htm
风投公司披露“内部运营手册”
作者: Dan Primack 时间: 2013年10月22日 来源: 财富中文网
风险投资行业正在逐步摘下神秘的面纱，而最近新成立的风投公司Bloomberg Beta则让这类公司的透明度达到了一个新的层次。它在业界率先披露了此前秘而不宣的内部运营手册，详细阐述了它涉及投资业务的方方面面，包括常用的投资条款等信息。
风险投资行业的结构正在发生巨变，风投公司正从秘密的“老男孩俱乐部”转变为开放和透明程度都远胜前者的……嗯，“新男孩俱乐部”。它带来了正常的工作时间、产品演示活动和公开宣传，等等。
不过，有一点基本保持原状，那就是投资策略。这里所说的不是关于板块和阶段的泛泛之谈，而是风投公司的实质性决策，比如为谁提供资金以及它希望以怎样的结构进行操作。
风投公司Bloomberg Beta正打算改变这样的局面（同样值得注意的是，这家公司五名投资者中有两名女性，所以这条消息也许是恶意中伤）。
Bloomberg Beta的业务横跨整个美国。这家公司于今年早些时候由彭博（Bloomberg LP）出资7500万美元（4.60亿元人民币）成立。
在彭博资金的支持下，Bloomberg Beta正打算彻底改变这种局面。最近，这家公司通过虚拟主机服务供应商GitHub在网上公布了自己的“内部运营手册”，内容包罗万象，从如何最好地进行自我推介，到它想了解哪些参考信息，再到它常用的投资条款，几乎无所不包。
Bloomberg Beta负责人罗伊•巴哈特还就此发表了一篇博客，他说：
从某种程度上，我们受到了彭博初期产品的启发——它拿到此前受控制的金融数据（债券价格），然后通过大家都能看到的系统把这些数据公布出来。当时，这是一种很大胆的行为。对相当多的人来说，控制这样的信息就是他们的谋生手段。提高透明度的结果很难预料。把持信息可以让你处于有利位置。但是，就像我们所认为的那样，这种靠保密而获得的优势越来越象空中楼阁，至少初创型企业界的情况就是这样。
我们开始暗自思量，为什么初创型公司及其投资者往往会把投资条款列为机密信息。我们找不到什么光明正大的理由。我们认为更大程度的共享能让我们更好地理解初创型公司的融资信息。
大家可以去通读那本手册。我在这里摘录了特别让人感兴趣的五点（我给它们加了题目，具体内容则摘自手册）
1. 公司不搞民主
我们的政策是“任何人都能做决定”。是的，你不需要和其他合伙人见面。我们相信最好的创业者和最好的公司正在走向两个极端。一开始，我们中的一、两名合伙人可能会对我们最好的投资提出异议。团队非常善于收集信息和集思广益，但在决策方面的表现很糟糕。我们信任个人负责制——如果有任何人点头，那么所有人都要感受到其决策的分量（虽然如此，但我们要求所有人在做决定前将投资事项告知其他人——这样就能从团队所提供的意见中获益，而且这是一个三思而后行的好办法。）
2. 你的估值准绳
今年初以来，本公司投资对象的增资前价值平均为600万美元（3681万元人民币）（我们计划不时地更新这个数字，但不会过于频繁——以免意外泄露任何一笔投资的条款。这个平均数只包括我们作为首批投资人所动用的资金——我们没办法按同样基准来公布我们的后续小额投资）。
3. 集中、集中、集中
我们更愿意看到在某些初始市场集中取得成功的产品，而不是那些规模变得庞大却无法在用户的生活中扮演重要角色的产品。我们看好的产品至少要为一部分用户提供最重要的服务。
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| | Venture capital is in the midst of a structural sea change, evolving from a secretive old boys club into a much more accessible and transparent... well, new boys club. Office hours, demo days, general solicitation, etc.
One thing that has generally remained guarded, however, is investment strategy. Not the broad strokes of sector and stage focus, but the nitty-gritty about how a firm makes its decisions on who to fund and how it prefers to structure its deals.
Bloomberg Beta is looking to change that (also worth noting that two of its five investors are women, so perhaps a cheap shot above).
The bi-coastal VC firm, which launched earlier this year with a $75 million commitment from Bloomberg LP,
Bloomberg Beta, a new firm launched earlier this year with the financial backing of Bloomberg LP, is looking to change all that. The firm recently posted its "internal operating manual" online, via GitHub. Included is everything from how to best pitch the firm, what it wants to know from references and its typical investment terms.
Bloomberg Beta head Roy Bahat also wrote a blog post about the decision,saying:
In part, we're inspired by what Bloomberg's product did in its earliest days — it took previously-controlled financial data (the prices of bonds) and posted them on a system where everyone could see the same price. At the time, that was daring. Plenty of people made their living by controlling that information. Being transparent is chancy. You can gain advantages by keeping information to yourself. Though, as we thought about it, more and more of those advantages to secrecy — at least in the world of startups — seem like mirages.
We started asking ourselves why startups and investors generally keep the terms of their investments confidential. We didn't have a great answer. We think that more shared data on funding startups will make us all better at it.
Again, you can read the whole thing here. But below are five items that were of particular interest (titles are mine, text is theirs):
1. This is not a democracy
We have an "anyone can say yes" policy. No, you don't have to meet my other partners. We believe the best entrepreneurs and companies are polarizing. Our best investments might have been, originally, opposed by one or more of our partners. Teams are great at gathering information and surfacing wisdom, but terrible at making decisions. We believe in individual accountability -- if anyone can say yes, then everyone feels the weight of making a decision. (That said, we do require that before anyone says yes they mention the investment to the rest of us -- that way they get the benefit of the team's input, and it's a good way to slow down and think for a second.)
2. Your valuation benchmark
The average pre-money valuation of our investments for the year to date in 2013 was $6M. (We intend to update this number from time to time, but not too frequently -- to avoid inadvertently disclosing the terms of any one deal. This average includes only our investments where we were part of the first money into a company -- we could not figure out a way to make our small number of later-stage investments comparable on an apples-to-apples basis).
3. Focus, focus, focus
We prefer to see products that are intensely successful in some initial market, over products that grow to large numbers but don't play an important role in the lives of their users. We like for a product to be the most important service to at least some of its users.
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4. 简化推介书
一次产品演示要比演示文稿（PPT）有用50倍。一个是对事物的描述，另一个则是这个事物本身。产品是我们的食物；为我们提供给养……我们不喜欢让创业者花大量时间来制作演示文稿。如果看到一份演示文稿的名称含有“第36版”的字样，我们会受到惊吓。
我们喜欢的东西没有固定的模式，但我们可能会用2-5分钟来看推介书，然后决定是否和这家公司见面。那样的演示文稿有多少页呢？要看情况而定，但如果你需要20页内容详尽的演示文稿来讲述自己的故事，那就意味着你的故事需要修改。在我们投资的公司中，约有五分之一的公司在获得投资前根本就没有拿出推介书——通常是因为它们的产品本身已经很能说明问题，或者我们对这个团队或这个行业非常熟悉，所以不需要推介书。
5. 人们对你有何评价？
我们极端信任参考信息，对于那些开诚布公、毫不掩饰地和我们分享其观点的朋友、同事以及合伙人，我们都欠他们一个人情。我们会设法避开那些毫无意义的问题（比如“他们的优势和弱点在哪里？”）。相反，我们重点关注的东西能帮助我们决定是否为创业者提供支持，这些问题包括：
• 他和你认识的其他创业者相比怎么样？排名前10%？5%？1%？
• 哪些东西让你相信他与众不同？
• 如果你是我们，而且你决定对这家公司投资，你觉得他在哪些方面最需要帮助？
我们会尽可能多的寻找参考信息。
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不知道其他风投公司是不是也有类似的内部文件；如果有的话，不知道它们会不会也在网上公布这些文件，这是一件很有意思的事。（财富中文网）
译者：Charlie
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| | 4. Sweep the deck
A demo is 50 times more useful than slides. One is a description of a thing, the other is the thing itself. Product is our sustenance; feed us... We don't like the idea of entrepreneurs spending lots of time making presentations. When we see "v36" in the filename of a presentation, it terrifies us.
There is no standard format we like, but we probably spend 2-5 minutes reading a deck when we are deciding whether to meet a company. How many slides? Depends, but if you need 20 detailed pages to tell your story, your story needs work. In roughly one-fifth of our portfolio companies, we never saw a deck before investing -- usually because the product spoke so loudly for itself, or we knew the team and business so well we didn't need a deck.
5. What are people saying about you?
We put great faith in the value of reference calls, and we owe a debt to the friends, colleagues, and partners who are willing to share open, unvarnished views. We try to skip nonsense questions ("what are their strengths and weaknesses") and instead focus on things that will help us decide whether to back a founder:
• How does this person compare to other founders you've known? Top 10%? 5%? 1%?
• What makes you believe this person is extraordinary?
• If you were us, and decided to invest in the company, in what areas would you guess this person would need the most help?
We call as many references as we can find.
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It should be interesting to see if other VC firms have similar internal documents and, if so, whether or not they'll post them online.
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雷达卡
发表于 2013-10-25 00:19:58
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