Bill Gurley（编者给其起了个中文名：毕嘉利）是Benchmark Capital的合伙人。 Benchmark Capital是硅谷最为高产、但也最为奇葩的VC  机构，他们投中了Ebay、Dropbox、Twitter、Uber、Snapchat、Instagram、WeWork、Yelp、Zendesk、 Zillow、Zipcar、CyanogenMod、Domo、New Relic、Nextdoor、Stitch Fix、Juniper Networks等诸多牛逼的公司。但是人家很低调，低调的得国内大部分VC都不闻其大名，更谈不上膜拜了（但编者这里要拜三下！）。

Bill Gurley（Partner of Benchmark）

迄今20载，Benchmark基金规模才30亿美金，但他们给LP们返还的现金，累计已高达226亿美金，给LP们带来10倍的回报。如果让编者给硅谷VC排个名，那么Benchmark以其20年来的卓越、稳定的业绩，当之无愧是No. 1！

Benchmark的奇葩之处在于：１）Fully equal partnership，其合伙人在投票权和利益上完全平等，但却运作的十分流畅； 2）只有Partner，没有VP、Associate、Analyst，老板居然事必躬亲，合伙人都是干体力活的，天朝的VC们你们脸红不？ 3）合伙人优胜劣汰，能进能出，绝不武大郎开店。

作为Benchmark的元老级合伙人，Bill Gurley被广泛誉为顶尖的技术派风险投资家，是资本对开源软件的主要推动者！请程序猿们这里先跪拜一下。Bill是科技界最早洞见2008金融风暴的人之一，他也对当前一级市场的独角兽成群现象深为担忧。话说这位老兄没有光鲜的学历，只有一个特点引人注目----- Bill是个出名的大块头儿，身高2.1米；再牛逼的创业者，见到此君后气焰顿时消了半截儿。Bill投的主要项目包括Uber、Zillow、Nextdoor、Stitch Fix、Vessel、OpenTable、Sailthru、Scale Computing、Brighter、DogVacay、 GrubHub、HackerOne、Linden Lab、LiveOps等一长串儿。

编者曾经和赛富、红杉、IDG的若干朋友探讨过Benchmark的模式，结论是：由于文化和认知上的差异，Benchmark的组织结构目前还不适合中国VC效仿。但是，Benchmark的投资逻辑，却是每个天朝VC都要去不断研究和学习的。

下面就让我们一起，膜拜Bill Gurley朴素之语背后的洞见。

1“All the great investors I’ve ever studied have felt macroeconomics is one of the silliest wastes of time possible.”

“我研究过的成功投资人都认为，宏观经济学对于搞风投的人简直是浪费时间。”

There is a nonlinear relationship between the simplicity of the system you are trying to understand and your ability to make bets which can generate alpha. The simplest system that one can work at understanding is an individual company. Every great investor in this series of blog posts thinks like Bill does about the futility of making bets based on macroeconomicforecasts.

你所研究的体系，其复杂程度和你赌中大钱的能力之间，并没有线性关系。琢磨透单个公司，则要来的简单的多！和Bill一样，我所讲述的每个成功投资人都认为基于宏观经济的预测是徒劳的。

2“Venture Capital has long been a trailing indicator to the NASDAQ.  Venture capital is a cyclical business.”

“相反，VC行业一直以来却都是纳斯达克的风向标。VC自身是一个周期性的行业。”

The Howard Marks maxim “most things are cyclical” definitely includes venture capital. Mr. Market’s bipolar nature impacts the venture capital business like anything else.  When Mr. Market is depressed and pessimistic a hard working venture capitalist with dry powder can find opportunities which don’t exist when Mr. Market is euphoric. Being “long term greedy” often means investing despite the pessimism of others.

Howard Marks（Founder of Oaktree Capital Management） 的理论是：大多数事情是周期性的，VC也不例外。市场兴衰交替是影响VC和其它行业的本质。当市场不好时，如有充足弹药并且努力战斗的风险投资人可以找到非常优质的机会，但是当市场好的时候这种机会很难找到。 “长期贪婪”，通常意味着在别人悲观的时候要加大赌注。

3“There’s a lot of luck involved [in venture capital].” Bill Gurley is a longtime friend and former colleague of Michael Mauboussin who literally wrote the book on “skills versus luck.”

“风险投资充满运气”。 Michael Mauboussin是Bill Gurley是的老朋友和前同事，他写了本著作：《能力与运气》。

Everyone should read Mauboussin’s work. No exceptions.  People who acknowledge the role of luck in life are as a rule far more humble and less susceptible to mistakes caused by hubris.

每个人都应该阅读Mauboussin的著作，一定要读！认同运气在生活中的作用的人，通常更加谦虚，不大会由于傲慢而犯错。

4“If you can’t sell, venture capital is not a good industry to be in.”

”如果你不会营销，那么风险投资可能并不适合你。”

The idea that the venture capital business is about sitting around in boardrooms thinking about strategy is false and maybe 5% at most of what a venture capitalist does.  If you are not selling a product or service you are selling a potential hire or another investor or board member or something.

如果你认为VC只是坐在公司董事会上制定公司战略那就错了，这只是工作中很少的一部分。你要么是在销售产品和服务，要么是在向意向员工、投资人、董事会成员或者其他人推销公司的未来。

5“[Venture capital is] not even a home run business. It’s a grand slam business…. If your idea is not something that can generate $100 million in revenue, you may not want to take venture capital.”

“风险投资哪儿是什么本垒打的营生？这分明就是个大满贯的行当！如果你的创意不能产生1亿美元以上的收入，那你最好别拿风投的钱。”

The distribution of returns in venture capital is a power law. When investing it is magnitude of correctness and not frequency that matters (the Babe Ruth Effect).  The failure rate is high enough in the venture business that the math dictates that a very small number of winners will determine whether a particular fund will be financially successful.  Venture capitalists are looking for significant optionality (an asymmetric upside) with a downside limited to what they invest (i.e., you can only lose 1X what you invest but the potential upside is many multiples of what you invest).

风险投资的项目回报符合长尾效应。投资最重要的，是项目回报的牛逼程度（即回报倍数），而不是你投中了多少个项目。VC的失败率可以比较高，只需投中少数几个大项目，就能保整个基金取得成功。风险投资家就是在寻找的超有价值的投资-----即回报和风险不对称性。 对于一个项目最坏的结果，是血本无归（例如，你投资一个标的，最坏的结果是亏损完本金，但是最好的结果是赚了非常多倍本金）。

6“Good judgment comes from experience, which comes from bad judgment.”

“失败是成功之母，准确的判断力往往来自此类经验。”

Warren Buffett says that there is nothing like walking on land for a day if you are a fish.  Actually doing something and failing is a great teacher.  Reading about people who actually do things and fail or succeed can definitely be better than “peeing on the electric fence” yourself.  But all of us make mistakes and personal mistakes are a fantastic teacher.

巴菲特说，如果你是鱼，没有什么事情比让你去陆地上走一天更糟糕的。事实上，失败是一个伟大的老师。通过解读他人失败和成功学习经验，比自己摸着石头过河强得多。人人都会犯错，只要吃一堑长一智就好。

7“We like to say that ‘more startups die of indigestion than starvation.’ We are all fascinated by the stories of Steve Jobs and Jack Dorsey, who work on two companies at once, but this is not the norm.”

“更多的创业公司死于消化不良，而非饿死”，我们津津乐道史蒂夫·乔布斯和杰克·多尔西同时在经营两家公司的传奇故事，但这不是常态。

The root cause of “running out” of cash is often that the business lost focus and diverted resources to things not on the critical path toward success.  Starvation is often a symptom of things like premature scaling and wild goose chases.  Sometimes when a company tries to do everything, it ends up doing nothing.

企业现金流不足往往是由于业务失去专注，把钱花在非核心业务上。早熟和多动会导致饥饿。有时当一家公司什么都想做时，它最终却什么都做不了。

8“With great companies the consumers buy because the product is so good. They aren’t spending [tens of millions] on marketing.”

“伟大的公司靠产品去吸引消费者，它们不用花重金去营销。”

These words could just as easily been spoken by Jeff Bezos who thinks just the same way (which is not surprising since Amazon was one of the companies that Bill Gurley covered as a young Wall Street analyst). Too often a lifetime value (LTV) analysis ends up being a justification for too much spending on non-organic marketing. The essence of business is arguably acquiring customers in a cost effective way.

亚马逊的CEO Jeff Bezos几乎能说出同样的话 （这并不奇怪，因为Bill Gurley当时作为华尔街分析师，长期研究过亚马逊）。通常全周期价值（LTV）分析方法，最终成为广告花销过度的一个借口。生意的本质无疑是如何低成本获客。

9“High price/revenue multiple companies have wide moats or strong barriers to entry.”

“产品售价/收入高的公司，有很深的护城河。”

This is straight up Warren Buffet/Michael Porter.  If the supply of what your competitors offer is not limited in some way the price of that offering will drop to your cost of capital. Yes, sometimes you figure out your business model after you have wide adoption, but thinking about generating networks effects in some way is wise before your business model is fully formed. Bill Gurley has also said “Strong form network effect companies are far and few between. Fortunately, when they do exist, they are typically leading candidates for the 10X+ price/revenue multiple club.”

巴菲特和迈克尔·波特都同意上面观点。如果您的竞争对手生产的竞品在供应量上没有限制，那么他应该降低产品售价至你的成本价。是的，有时候你在广泛采纳意见后打磨出商业模式，但是在你的业务模型完全形成之前，考虑以某种方式产生规模效应是明智的。Bill Gurley还说，拥有强大的规模效应公司凤毛麟角。如果公司够幸运地拥有强大规模效应，他们通常会获得超过10倍的利润和收入水平。

10“DCF is an unruly valuation tool for young companies. This is not because it is a bad theoretical framework; it is because we don’t have accurate inputs. Garbage in, garbage out.”

“用贴现现金流法给初创公司估值很不合理。这不是因为该方法存在什么理论缺陷，而是因为我们没法做准确的输入参数（即没法准确预见未来现金流）数据。因此，这种情形下做DCF估值，纯属胡扯！

Spreadsheet disease is a byproduct of people not thinking hard about the assumptions that go into a model.  Valuing the optionality of a business is not simple.

依赖电子表格来进行估值的坏毛病，是人们对估值模型中的一系列假设考虑不周的缘故。评估一家企业是否有超额回报的机会，其实没那么简单。

11“If a disruptive competitor can offer a product or service similar to yours for “free,” and if they can make enough money to keep the lights on, then you likely have a problem.”

“如果竞争对手提供与你相似的的产品或服务，并且是颠覆式的“免费”模式，只要他能赚点钱维持不死，那你的麻烦就来了。

Digital offerings have very strange economics in that multi-sided markets are often involved and offerings in such a market can have close to zero marginal cost once it has been created. Solving the “chicken and egg” problem inherent in any platform business usually involves either a free egg or free chicken on one “side” of the market.  It’s easy to wake up in a digital world and have whatever you were selling now being offered “for free.”

”数字化产品带来奇特的多边经济效应：这些产品一旦被创造出来，其边际成本几乎为零。任何商业平台如果想解决 “鸡与蛋”问题，一般只可选边站，要么蛋免费，要么鸡免费。在数字世界中醒来，你也许会吃惊发现，任何你曾经维持生计的产品现在都免费了。

12“Being ‘right’ doesn’t lead to superior performance if the consensus forecast is also right.”

“如果大家预测都是正确的的，这种正确预测就不会产生超额回报”。

作者：Tren Griffin  译者：傅磊（名川资本） 编审：王求乐（名川资本）

原文请见：25iq 【转载请注明出处、并并注明作者／译者／编者及文章出处】