Peter Thiel 与Founders Fund（二）

https://foundersfund.com/the-future/

What happened to the future?

We invest in smart people solving difficult problems, often difficult scientific or engineering problems. 

Here’s why. 

未来发生了什么？

我们投资于聪明人解决困难的问题，往往是困难的科学或工程问题。

这就是原因。

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CONCLUSION

They are not popular (popular investments tend to be pricey; e.g., Groupon at so many dozens of billions).

They are difficult to assess (this contributes to their lack of popularity).

They have technology risk, but not insurmountable technology risk.

If they succeed, their technology will be extraordinarily valuable.

结论

我们的名单绝不是详尽无遗的。最好的公司创造他们自己的部门。一般来说，最有前途的公司（至少从我们作为投资者的角度来看）往往具有以下几个特征：

他们不受欢迎（热门投资往往是昂贵的，例如Groupon有如此之多的数十亿美元）。

他们很难评估（这有助于他们缺乏人气）。

他们有技术风险，但不是无法克服的技术风险。

如果他们成功，他们的技术将是非常有价值的。

We have no idea what these companies might look like, only that they probably will share these characteristics. Entrepreneurs often know better than we do what might be enormously valuable in the future.

我们不知道这些公司会是什么样子，只是他们可能会分享这些特性。企业家们往往比我们更了解未来可能有价值的东西。

Not All Real Technology Companies Make Serious Money

Often, even great technologies fail to earn the inventors or investors a return (see, e.g., Nikola Tesla). In our experience, it really does matter who runs the business, because the world does not beat a path to the door of the better mousetrap. Shockley Semiconductor, Fairchild Semiconductor, and Intel all successfully resolved roughly similar technical problems, but only Intel truly prospered – poor management consigned the other two to “also-ran” status.

并非所有真正的科技公司都能赚大钱。

通常，即使是伟大的技术也无法获得发明家或投资者的回报（见，例如，尼古拉特斯拉）。根据我们的经验，谁来经营企业真的很重要，因为世界没有找到一条通往更好的捕鼠器的门。Shockley半导体、Fairchild半导体和英特尔都成功地解决了大致类似的技术问题，但只有英特尔真正繁荣起来——管理不善使另外两家公司处于“同业经营”的地位。

Technology matters, but so do teams.

A curious point: companies can be mismanaged, not just by their founders, but by VCs who kick out or overly control founders in an attempt to impose ‘adult supervision.’ VCs boot roughly half of company founders from the CEO position within three years of investment. FOUNDERS FUND has never removed a single founder – we invest in teams we believe in, rather than in companies we’d like to run – and our data suggest that finding good founding teams and leaving them in place tends to produce higher returns overall. 

Indeed, we have often tried to ensure that founders can continue to run their businesses through voting control mechanisms, as Peter Thiel did with Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. This approach, we believe, accords with common sense. No entrepreneur, however good, knows precisely how their company’s business model will evolve over time. When investing in a start-up, you invest in people who have the vision and the flexibility to create a success. It therefore makes no sense to destroy the asset you’ve just bought.

As a corollary, it makes no sense to shackle a company to the Procrustean bed of its original business model. Businesses really do evolve over time and changing models in the early years is anything but a sign of weakness. PayPal went through five different business models before arriving at one that worked. We do not expect that the first business model for a company will be the final or best business model and do not see evolution as a negative. The most powerful minds are the ones that can be changed.

技术很重要，但是团队也是如此。

一个奇怪的观点是：公司可能管理不善，不仅仅由创始人管理，而且由那些为了强加“成人监管”而驱逐或过度控制创始人的风险投资公司管理。FoUNDERSFund从来没有删除过一个创始人——我们投资于我们信任的团队，而不是我们愿意运营的公司——而且我们的数据表明，找到优秀的创始团队并留住他们，总体上会产生更高的回报。

事实上，我们经常试图确保创始人能够通过投票控制机制继续经营他们的企业，就像彼得·泰尔对马克·扎克伯格和Facebook所做的那样。我们相信这种方法符合常识。不管怎样，没有一个企业家确切地知道他们公司的商业模式会随着时间的推移而发展。当投资于一家初创企业时，你会投资那些有远见和灵活性的人来创造成功。因此，破坏你刚刚购买的资产是没有意义的。

作为一个推论，把公司束缚在原有商业模式的基础上是没有意义的。企业确实会随着时间的推移而变化，早年变化的模式绝不是软弱的表现。贝宝在经历了五个不同的商业模式后才开始工作。我们并不期望公司的第一种商业模式是最终的或者最好的商业模式，也不认为发展是消极的。最有权势的人是那些可以改变的人。

Swinging For The Fences Is Probably Less Risky Than People Think

VC usually depends on a few runaway hits to drive returns, supplemented with a few smaller successes and a lot of failures. It seems unlikely, as a general proposition, that a company with limited ambitions will evolve into a runaway hit – i.e., a company that aspires to crank out a single app for the iPhone probably never turns into an Oracle. So we need to invest in at least some ambitious companies – but how many? Our answer is that substantially all of the capital in our portfolio should be directed to companies with audacious vision seeking enormous markets.

Several factors command that conclusion. First, plenty of capital already pursues companies with more moderate ambitions and a lower (perceived) degree of risk. This tends to push up valuations for those companies and correspondingly depresses returns – which, of course, increases overall portfolio risk. Also, less ambitious firms, almost by definition, do not change the world.

We believe our purpose as venture capitalists is to earn an attractive return by funding positive transformation.

Another, paradoxical reason, is that companies pursuing transformational ideas are somewhat likelier to succeed in them than less ambitious companies. A company with a readily obtainable goal (checkers, for the iPhone!) lacks a technological barrier to entry because, of course, the original problem was easy. And their end markets are typically quite limited, meaning that they may not achieve the scale necessary for exit. But most importantly, we believe the brightest and most creative problem solvers seek the hardest and most interesting problems, and gathering the best technical talent is obviously a major competitive advantage.

围墙篱笆可能比人们想象的要危险

VC通常依赖于驱动返回的一些失控的点击，附带一些较小的成功和大量的失败。作为一个普遍的命题，一个雄心有限的公司似乎不太可能发展成为轰动一时的热门公司——也就是说，一个渴望为iPhone开发单个应用程序的公司可能永远不会变成甲骨文。所以我们至少需要投资一些雄心勃勃的公司——但是有多少？我们的答案是，我们的投资组合中基本上所有的资本都应该投向那些有雄心壮志寻求巨大市场的公司。

有几个因素表明了这一结论。首先，大量资本已经在追求更为温和的野心和更低的风险。这往往会推高这些公司的估值，并相应地压低回报——这当然会增加整体投资组合风险。同样，不那么雄心勃勃的公司，几乎从定义上看，并没有改变世界。

我们相信我们作为风险资本家的目的是通过积极的转变来获得有吸引力的回报。

另一个自相矛盾的原因是，追求变革理念的公司比雄心不强的公司更有可能取得成功。一个公司有一个容易获得的目标（跳棋，为iPhone！）缺少技术上的进入壁垒，因为，原来的问题是容易的。而它们的终端市场通常是相当有限的，这意味着它们可能无法达到退出所需的规模。但最重要的是，我们相信，最聪明和最有创造性的问题解决者寻求最难和最有趣的问题，而聚集最好的技术人才显然是一个主要的竞争优势。

The Vision Thing

This brings us to another counterintuitive point: the best founders want to radically change the world for the better. To many investors, visionary entrepreneurs come off as naïve or worse – isn’t it safer/easier/more profitable to create a(nother) social network for cat fanciers than to try to cure cancer, defeat terrorism, or organize the world’s information? The problem is that all start-ups are difficult – long hours, low pay, and fierce competition wear on even the most dedicated teams. 

The entrepreneurs who make it have a near-messianic attitude and believe their company is essential to making the world a better place. It doesn’t matter whether everyone agrees with the entrepreneur about the world-historical nature of the project – if the entrepreneur seeks an impact beyond his own payday and can convince employees of the same, the project is much more likely to get done. The engineers at SpaceX are passionate about commercializing and colonizing space; profit is a significant byproduct of their extraordinary effort to achieve that goal but not enough to get them to pull the thousandth all-nighter. The same is true of Jobs at Apple, or the programmers at Palantir, or the researchers at new drug companies. Early in a company’s life, an entrepreneur can make enough money to satisfy his own needs (though often not much of a return for the investor); to take a company from $50 million to $50 billion requires singular vision and dedication. Wild-eyed passion is not a bad thing by any means.

视觉事物

这给我们带来了另一个反直觉的观点：最好的创立者想从根本上改变世界。对许多投资者来说，有远见的企业家要么天真烂漫，要么更糟——为爱猫的人建立一个（非）社交网络难道不比试图治愈癌症、战胜恐怖主义或组织世界信息更安全、更容易、更有利可图吗？问题是，所有的初创企业都很困难——工作时间长、工资低，甚至最专注的团队也面临着激烈的竞争。

那些使这个世界变得更加美好的企业家，有着近乎救世主的态度，并且相信他们的公司对于使这个世界变得更美好是必不可少的。关于项目的世界历史性质，是否每个人都同意企业家的意见并不重要——如果企业家寻求的影响超出他自己的发薪日，并且能够说服员工，那么项目更有可能完成。SpaceX的工程师们热衷于商业化和殖民空间，利润是他们实现这一目标所付出的非凡努力的一个重要副产品，但不足以让他们拉上第一千个通宵。苹果公司的工作，PalANTR的程序员，新药物公司的研究人员也是如此。在公司的早期，企业家可以赚到足够的钱来满足自己的需要（虽然对投资者来说回报不多）；把公司从5000万美元提高到500亿美元需要非凡的远见和奉献精神。狂暴的热情无论如何也不是坏事。

It Pays To Be Different

People frequently say that contrarian investments outperform conformist investments. Is that true? It’s difficult to make the case directly, but the indirect evidence is suggestive: as we’ve seen, whatever the bottom 80% of the VC industry is doing now is losing money for investors. Clearly, the mainstream VC model does not work very well. (Even if it did, the problem with consensus investments is that their prices reflect broad agreement, so even if they work, they tend to produce unspectacular returns. That is not the present problem, of course, because the consensus doesn’t work at all).

And what does it mean to be contrarian? It does not mean simply doing the opposite of what the majority does – that’s just consensus thinking by a different guise, a minus sign before the conventional wisdom. The problems of reactive contrarianism are the same as those of following the herd. The most contrarian thing to do is to think independently. It is not without its risks, because there is no cover from the crowd and because it frequently leads to conclusions with which no one else agrees.

Investing in companies doing things that are breathtakingly new and ambitious is provocative. It is not what our industry is best at doing, at least, not in the past decade. And there is no way to assure a positive return – but at least it has a chance of working. Simply doing what everyone else does is not enough.

与众不同是值得的

人们常说逆向投资优于传统投资。是真的吗？直接使情况很困难，但间接证据暗示：我们已经看到，无论VC行业底部80%现在是投资者亏钱。显然，主流的VC模型并不能很好地工作。（即使那样，有共识的投资问题是他们的价格反映了广泛的协议，所以即使他们工作，他们往往会产生引人注意的回报。当然，这不是目前的问题，因为共识根本不起作用。

反之，这意味着什么呢？这并不意味着简单地做相反的是，大部分–，只是由不同的幌子思想共识，在传统智慧的减号。反应反动的问题与跟随羊群的问题是一样的。最消极的做法是独立思考。它并非没有风险，因为有从人群中无盖，因为它经常导致的结论，没有人同意。

投资那些做令人惊叹的新事物和雄心勃勃的事情的公司是挑衅的。至少在过去十年里，这不是我们的行业最擅长做的事情。而且没有办法保证一个积极的回报——但至少它有一个工作的机会。仅仅做别人做的事是不够的。

You Have To Run The Experiment

There are unknowables. Venture investments mature over long periods and there are many confounding variables, from variable economic conditions to a shifting legal landscape – everything is overdetermined. Venture is a secretive industry and legal strictures cramp down on disclosures. We have data that suggests what doesn’t work (the status quo) and implies what might. But we have no direct evidence for the proposition that we ought to be investing in smart people solving difficult technical problems. In this sense, we are in the same position as our companies, which also operate with imperfect information. SpaceX had three failed launches before making history with its fourth. PayPal went through five business models before it found something that worked, and the history of Facebook’s initiatives is by no means an unalloyed record of success. Still, you have to run the experiment.

We do believe that our method should outperform, and we also believe it’s the shortest route to social value. So, we will continue to invest in very talented entrepreneurs who are pursuing ambitious, challenging tasks. We will treat them with respect and hope for the best.

你必须参加这个实验

有不可知的东西。风险投资在长期内趋于成熟，并且存在许多令人混淆的变量，从可变的经济条件到不断变化的法律环境——一切都是过早决定的。风险投资是一个隐秘的行业，法律限制对信息披露的打击。我们有数据表明什么不起作用（现状），暗示什么可能。但是我们没有直接的证据证明我们应该投资于解决技术难题的聪明人。从这个意义上说，我们与我们的公司处于同样的地位，公司也运作着不完美的信息。SpaceX有三次失败的发射，第四次历史。PayPal在找到一些行之有效的方法之前，已经经历了五个商业模式，而脸谱网的举措的历史绝不是成功的绝对记录。不过，你必须要做这个实验。

我们相信我们的方法应该胜出，我们也相信这是通往社会价值的最短路径。因此，我们将继续投资那些非常有才干的企业家，他们追求雄心勃勃、富有挑战性的任务。我们会尊重他们，希望他们做到最好。

Written by Bruce Gibney