每日观察:风险投资虎落平原,让老人们告诉未来
产业萧条、股市大跌,所有人都在承受各自的痛苦。而风险投资经历的痛苦与辉煌的落差无疑是最大的。如今,这个神奇的行业虎落平原,甚至遭遇生存危机。这个紧要关头大家最需要倒倒苦水,发发牢骚,互相鼓劲,彼此安慰。于是,风险投资行当最资深的7位元老元老很难得地汇聚一起,以前大家都忙着挣钱,现在都想起来会会老朋友。他们一发言,整个产业自然要洗耳恭听,毕竟“不听老人言,吃亏在眼前”这句话在这样的形势下还是有一定影响力的。今天出版的《波士顿环球报》对这次元老聚会作了简单的报道,题目为“向老手们学习”(Learning from the veterans)。
其中有VC教父之称的Arthur Rock,1957年促成第一笔风险投资,为仙童公司“叛逆八人帮”融资150万美元,人称是他“把硅带到了硅谷”。面对这场大萧条,他说:“我们在走出来之前,还要经历漫长的重围”。
70年代成功投资游戏公司Atari和PC公司Apple的Donald Valentine。著名风险投资公司创始人之一的Thomas Perkins,以他的“Perkins法则”著称:“市场风险与技术风险成反比”。还有Burton J. McMurtr,他1969年投身硅谷的风险投资公司,在前面的6年2个月中毫无所获,直到第一笔收益开始出现,才从此开启了辉煌之路。3年内,他的330万美元就升值到1亿美元以上,给Microsoft,Compaq,Sun和Quantum都提供过资金,成为VC界的大鳄之一。
大伙讨论了这次VC行业的低潮,并对如何走出目前的投资泥沼各抒己见,在一些问题人也分歧颇大,争论热闹。不过,主要还是相互鼓劲。更详细一点的内容,大家可以看原文。
“我相信我们还会看到另一次创新浪潮,但是在我们重新获得尊重之前,我们还需要5-10年时间。”William Draper如此总结道。
附录原文:
Learning from the veterans
By Chris Gaither, Globe Staff, 10/7/2002
OUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Venture capitalists discouraged by going-nowhere investments and mounting losses can perhaps take some solace from the career of Burton J. McMurtry.
In 1969, McMurtry joined his first venture capital fund in Silicon Valley. It didn't realize its first gain until six years and two months later. But glory was soon to follow.
Within another three years, the $3.3 million fund had blossomed into a then-monstrous $100 million. McMurtry's partnership, Technology Venture Investors, went on to finance such high-tech luminaries as Microsoft Corp., Compaq Computer Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc., and Quantum.
''Not bad, even for the bubble,'' said Gordon Davidson, chairman of the high-tech law firm Fenwick & West LLP. In a panel moderated by Davidson, McMurtry and five other remaining pioneers of the venture capital trade gathered last week at the Computer History Museum, created in Boston and moved here to Silicon Valley in the late 1990s.
The men - William Draper, Franklin ''Pitch'' Johnson, Arthur Rock, Thomas Perkins, Donald Valentine, and McMurtry - shared stories of the industry's early days and thoughts on everything from investing strategies to the fallout from the Internet crash.
''I think we are going to be in a long, long siege before we get out of this,'' Rock said. Known as the ''dean of venture capital,'' Rock orchestrated the Silicon Valley's first VC deal in 1957 when he persuaded Sherman Mills Fairchild to invest $1.5 million in the so-called Traitorous Eight, a group of scientists defecting from Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. That start-up became Fairchild, which in turn spawned Intel Corp. Rock arranged Intel's financing as well.
''This brought the silicon to Silicon Valley,'' Rock said of the Fairchild deal.
Rock invested in the team of scientists, but the illustrious panelists could not agree on which is more important to a venture capitalist considering a deal: a brilliant management team or a brilliant idea for an untapped market.
While McMurtry and Johnson said the team makes the difference, Perkins, the general manager of Hewlett-Packard Co.'s first computer division and founder of the celebrated venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, said a start-up cannot hire ''the best marketing man in the world'' without a great product for him to sell.
His insight has become known as Perkins's Law: ''Market risk is inversely proportional to technical risk,'' which means the more difficult the product is to develop, the fewer competitors are likely to spring up - a message clearly lost during the Internet boom.
Valentine, the founder of Sequoia Capital, has financed some of the companies that cracked new markets wide open, including the video game maker Atari and the PC maker Apple Computer. But one deal that Valentine says sticks out was started with a phone call from a friend with an insufferable group of engineers who couldn't find funding for a great technical plan to build computer networks.
''We did that investment despite the fact that there was not one person even remotely genetically close to being able to manage anything,'' Valentine said.
That company became Cisco Systems Inc., the maker of networking equipment, which briefly surpassed Microsoft as the world's most valuable company during the height of the Internet bubble.
Some of the venture capitalists took their younger brethren to task for irresponsible investments during that heady time in the late 1990s. Noting that he sat on Teradyne Inc.'s board for 35 years and on Intel's for 34 years, Rock said the panelists were ''company builders,'' while many of the stars of the Internet age were mere ''promoters.''
But while Rock sat out most of the bubble, the firm that Perkins created - which has suffered through its share of well-publicized flops among its successes - helped fuel the boom with hefty investments in a host of now-defunct dot-coms. Yet in February 2000, at a conference in New Zealand, Perkins predicted the burst of the Internet bubble and backed up his claim by shorting many of his stock holdings.
Investment bankers, he said, ''would take anything public. Anything. Just a complete lack of discipline, and now we're paying the price.''
Valentine floated another theory: The bubble was created by extraterrestrials who invaded Santa Clara County bearing Kool-Aid ''laced with stupid pills.'' And Silicon Valley drank. ''Happily, I think we've all weaned ourselves from that diet,'' he said.
Still, Draper, whose son, Timothy, is a third-generation Silicon Valley venture capitalist, said it will take years before his profession regains a measure of esteem.
''I think we'll see another wave [of innovation], but I think it will be five or 10 years before we get respect,'' he said.
其中有VC教父之称的Arthur Rock,1957年促成第一笔风险投资,为仙童公司“叛逆八人帮”融资150万美元,人称是他“把硅带到了硅谷”。面对这场大萧条,他说:“我们在走出来之前,还要经历漫长的重围”。
70年代成功投资游戏公司Atari和PC公司Apple的Donald Valentine。著名风险投资公司创始人之一的Thomas Perkins,以他的“Perkins法则”著称:“市场风险与技术风险成反比”。还有Burton J. McMurtr,他1969年投身硅谷的风险投资公司,在前面的6年2个月中毫无所获,直到第一笔收益开始出现,才从此开启了辉煌之路。3年内,他的330万美元就升值到1亿美元以上,给Microsoft,Compaq,Sun和Quantum都提供过资金,成为VC界的大鳄之一。
大伙讨论了这次VC行业的低潮,并对如何走出目前的投资泥沼各抒己见,在一些问题人也分歧颇大,争论热闹。不过,主要还是相互鼓劲。更详细一点的内容,大家可以看原文。
“我相信我们还会看到另一次创新浪潮,但是在我们重新获得尊重之前,我们还需要5-10年时间。”William Draper如此总结道。
附录原文:
Learning from the veterans
By Chris Gaither, Globe Staff, 10/7/2002
OUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Venture capitalists discouraged by going-nowhere investments and mounting losses can perhaps take some solace from the career of Burton J. McMurtry.
In 1969, McMurtry joined his first venture capital fund in Silicon Valley. It didn't realize its first gain until six years and two months later. But glory was soon to follow.
Within another three years, the $3.3 million fund had blossomed into a then-monstrous $100 million. McMurtry's partnership, Technology Venture Investors, went on to finance such high-tech luminaries as Microsoft Corp., Compaq Computer Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc., and Quantum.
''Not bad, even for the bubble,'' said Gordon Davidson, chairman of the high-tech law firm Fenwick & West LLP. In a panel moderated by Davidson, McMurtry and five other remaining pioneers of the venture capital trade gathered last week at the Computer History Museum, created in Boston and moved here to Silicon Valley in the late 1990s.
The men - William Draper, Franklin ''Pitch'' Johnson, Arthur Rock, Thomas Perkins, Donald Valentine, and McMurtry - shared stories of the industry's early days and thoughts on everything from investing strategies to the fallout from the Internet crash.
''I think we are going to be in a long, long siege before we get out of this,'' Rock said. Known as the ''dean of venture capital,'' Rock orchestrated the Silicon Valley's first VC deal in 1957 when he persuaded Sherman Mills Fairchild to invest $1.5 million in the so-called Traitorous Eight, a group of scientists defecting from Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. That start-up became Fairchild, which in turn spawned Intel Corp. Rock arranged Intel's financing as well.
''This brought the silicon to Silicon Valley,'' Rock said of the Fairchild deal.
Rock invested in the team of scientists, but the illustrious panelists could not agree on which is more important to a venture capitalist considering a deal: a brilliant management team or a brilliant idea for an untapped market.
While McMurtry and Johnson said the team makes the difference, Perkins, the general manager of Hewlett-Packard Co.'s first computer division and founder of the celebrated venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, said a start-up cannot hire ''the best marketing man in the world'' without a great product for him to sell.
His insight has become known as Perkins's Law: ''Market risk is inversely proportional to technical risk,'' which means the more difficult the product is to develop, the fewer competitors are likely to spring up - a message clearly lost during the Internet boom.
Valentine, the founder of Sequoia Capital, has financed some of the companies that cracked new markets wide open, including the video game maker Atari and the PC maker Apple Computer. But one deal that Valentine says sticks out was started with a phone call from a friend with an insufferable group of engineers who couldn't find funding for a great technical plan to build computer networks.
''We did that investment despite the fact that there was not one person even remotely genetically close to being able to manage anything,'' Valentine said.
That company became Cisco Systems Inc., the maker of networking equipment, which briefly surpassed Microsoft as the world's most valuable company during the height of the Internet bubble.
Some of the venture capitalists took their younger brethren to task for irresponsible investments during that heady time in the late 1990s. Noting that he sat on Teradyne Inc.'s board for 35 years and on Intel's for 34 years, Rock said the panelists were ''company builders,'' while many of the stars of the Internet age were mere ''promoters.''
But while Rock sat out most of the bubble, the firm that Perkins created - which has suffered through its share of well-publicized flops among its successes - helped fuel the boom with hefty investments in a host of now-defunct dot-coms. Yet in February 2000, at a conference in New Zealand, Perkins predicted the burst of the Internet bubble and backed up his claim by shorting many of his stock holdings.
Investment bankers, he said, ''would take anything public. Anything. Just a complete lack of discipline, and now we're paying the price.''
Valentine floated another theory: The bubble was created by extraterrestrials who invaded Santa Clara County bearing Kool-Aid ''laced with stupid pills.'' And Silicon Valley drank. ''Happily, I think we've all weaned ourselves from that diet,'' he said.
Still, Draper, whose son, Timothy, is a third-generation Silicon Valley venture capitalist, said it will take years before his profession regains a measure of esteem.
''I think we'll see another wave [of innovation], but I think it will be five or 10 years before we get respect,'' he said.