12 Things I Learned from Chris Dixon about Startups

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A Dozen Things I’ve Learned from Chris Dixon About Venture Capital and StartupsPosted by trengriffin

1. “If everyone loves your idea, I might be worried that it’s not forward thinking enough.”
Anyone thinking about starting a business should be searching for mispriced opportunities.  While markets are mostly efficient in eliminating opportunities for extraordinary profit, there are always areas of an economy in which there are significant uncertainty. These areas are excellent places for a startup to look for opportunities.
The best entrepreneurs have learned that large businesses are investing huge amounts of capital in areas in which extensive information is already available, and that it’s most advantageous to create new businesses where information is not available. In other words, the best opportunities for startups tend to be in areas that are overlooked and less well-known by others. What Chris Dixon is saying is that if everyone loves your idea, this may be a “tell” that there will not be opportunities for extraordinary profit. The venture investor Peter Thiel has said: “The best startups are good ideas that look like bad ideas. Good ideas that look like good ideas are already being worked on by big companies.”
Dixon also says in this insightful postthat “you shouldn’t keep your startup idea secret.” He identifies a range of positive benefits that flow from sharing the idea and getting feedback, while pointing out “there are at best a handful of people in the world who might actually drop everything and copy your idea.”
While most businesses do not require a result that generates extraordinary profit to be a success, this is not the case for a startup that seeks to raise venture capital. Venture capitalists invest in a portfolio of startups, knowing that only one to three in every fund could likely be a massive success. Chris Dixon’s partner Marc Andreessen describes the approach of a venture capitalist more technically as ‘buying a portfolio of long–dated, deeply–out-of-the-money call options’. Entrepreneurs are in the business of creating those options and selling some of them to investors to fund the business.
Like a startup or any other investor, a venture capitalist is seeking a mispriced opportunity.  All intelligent investors seek mispriced assets and if you want to explore this topic you can do no better than reading Howard Marks.  Why do large businesses and others leave this opportunity in areas with significant uncertainty available for startups? Howard Marks traces the source to bias and closed mindedness, capital rigidity, psychological success, and herd behavior. Markets are not fully efficient. Private, emerging and obscure markets are especially inefficient.

2. “How do you develop a good idea that looks like a bad idea? You need to know a secret — in the Peter Thiel sense: something you believe that most other people don’t believe. How do you develop a secret? (a) know the tools better than anyone else; (b) know the problems better than anyone else; and/or (c) draw from unique life experience.”
“Founders have to choose a market long before they have any idea whether they will reach product/market fit. In my opinion, the best predictor of success is whether there is what David Lee calls ‘founder/market fit.’ Founder/market fit means the founders have a deep understanding of the market they are entering, and are people who ‘personify their product, business, and ultimately their company’.”  
Chris Dixon is saying that the people most likely to know the “a secret” about a business opportunity are people who have deep domain expertise. In other words, it is not nearly as likely that someone without deep domain expertise will be successful without understanding the technology, the best methods to create the product, the best ways to bring products to market or the needs of the customer. Another way to think about this point is in terms of a moat or sustainable competitive advantage. Founders and employees of the startup are themselves contributors to the moat of a company, both directly and indirectly.
People who work for the startup who have deep domain knowledge are a likely source of what is called “optionality” which I have explained in a previous blog post. When a team of people in a startup have what Dixon called “secrets” as a result of deep domain expertise, their ability to adapt and innovate gives the startup and the investors optionality. Teams that do not have this optionality usually can’t adapt to changing environments, and fail more often.
The other skill that people with deep understanding have is the ability to see a phenomenon that is emerging within a complex adaptive system. When something bigger than the sum of its parts is emerging in an economy, some people with deep domain expertise are going to see the potential (the secret) before other people.

3. “[The] business of seed investing, and frankly, early-stage entrepreneurship, is so much about getting good information. And almost all of that information, unfortunately, is not published.”
The fact that information about a business is hard to get is actually a great thing for a startup, since it can help create the mispriced opportunity they seek. Uncertainty in the early stages of a startup is the friend of the entrepreneur. As the team pushes forward to reduce technology risk, find product/market fit and discover methods to scale the business, uncertainty is retired and value is created. The job of a great venture capitalist is in no small part to provide entrepreneurs with an entry into networks that allows them to quickly and cost-effectively find this private information. The same principle applies to the venture capitalists themselves. Great venture capitalists are always trying to find good sources of information, particularly information that is not published.

4. “Ideas …matter, just not in the narrow sense in which startup ideas are popularly defined. Good startup ideas are well developed, multi-year plans that contemplate many possible paths according to how the world changes.”
“Characteristics of the best ideas: (a) powerful people dismiss them as toys; (b) they unbundle functions done by others; (c) they often start off as hobbies and/or (d) they often challenge social norms.”
“The best ideas come through direct experience. …When you differentiate your direct experience from conventional wisdom, that’s where the best startup ideas come from.”
My deepest exposure to what Chris Dixon is talking about immediately above (direct experience) came during the time I worked for Craig McCaw, who without question is a savant when it comes to ideas that can be developed into great businesses.  In the very early days, the “cell phone” only offered enough value to be a commercial success to a very small number of users. In the beginning, the device was so big it required a suitcase or a car installation to be useful. I remember real estate agents and construction sites as the biggest users. On the infrastructure side, a city like Seattle could be served by radios on only three very tall towers.
Eventually mobile phones appeared, but they were very expensive, analog, heavy and large. During that time period, McKinsey famously predicted that no one would ever use a mobile phone if a land line phone was available. McKinsey placed little or no value on what Craig McCaw called the ability of people to be “nomadic.” The mobile phone had each of the attributes Chris Dixon noted above. Some people thought of the mobile phone as a toy. Since my first mobile phone cost more than $4,000 dollars I actually felt awkward using it in some social settings. Talking into a mobile phone in some pubic settings would cause people to frown at you.
To continue my example, Craig McCaw was also an enthusiastic personal user of what we then called “cellular” phones. Craig McCaw loved working out of the ‘mobile office’ – meaning cars, planes, boats and ships. Which meant he was a natural enthusiast for the product. When the time came to sell his cable TV business in order to double down on the mobile phone business, the choice was made easy by his love of the mobile phone.

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5. “There is a widespread myth that the most important part of building a great company is coming up with a great idea.” “What you should really be focused on when pitching your early stage startup is pitching yourself and your team. Of course a great way to show you can build stuff is to build a prototype of the product you are raising money for. This is why so many VCs tell entrepreneurs to ‘come back when you have a demo.’ They aren’t wondering whether your product can be built – they are wondering whether you can build it.”
Great ideas matter, as the previous quotations noted. But the ability of a team to execute is a more important consideration than a clever idea. Most everyone has said more than once “I thought of that idea first” when they see a new business being formed. The best idea in the world without a team to make it happen, won’t amount to a hill of beans. Chris Dixon is saying that the best evidence that a team can actually execute, is actually executing on something like a demo. The best evidence that you can do something like create software, is actually creating software. As the old proverb points out, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

6. “What the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years.” “Hobbies are what the smartest people spend their time on when they aren’t constrained by near-term financial goals.” Chris Dixon is not referring to smart people who play ping pong in their garage or pay fantasy baseball in their dorm rooms on weekends. He is referencing the smartest people that are building things like the first PCs, drones, or a better search engine.  The Homebrew Computer Club, an early hobbyist group which had it first meeting on March 5, 1975, is just one example. The critical element here is an advanced technology that is useful to very smart hobbyists but does not yet have obvious financial returns associated with its use. Inevitably, technologies driven by phenomena like Moore’s law drive costs to lower levels and performance to high enough levels so that what was once a hobby becomes a thriving business.
As an aside, it is easier to understand Moore’s law now. But I will say that although I am probably in the top few percent in the US who understand its power, I underestimate that power every single year.

7. “This era of technology, it seems to be the core theme is about moving beyond bits to atoms. Meaning technology that affects real word, and transportation and housing and healthcare and all these other things, as opposed to just moving bits around. And those areas tend to be more heavily regulated and, this issue is only beginning to be significant and will probably the defining issue of the next decade in technology.”
I include this quotation since it is an example of something that I value, which is an ability of a person to make a genuine non-consensus prediction about the future rather than predicting the present. Too many venture capitalists are camp followers. They are moving into a trend when others have long since moved on to other opportunities. To outperform, a venture capitalist must think like Howard Marks described here: “To achieve superior investment results, your insight into value has to be superior. Thus you must learn things others don’t, see things differently or do a better job of analyzing them – ideally all three.” Deviating from a consensus view for its own sake is suicidal, but doing it occasionally and being very right is what makes a great venture capitalist like Dixon.

8. “Anyone who has pitched VCs knows they are obsessed with market size.” “If you can’t make the case that you’re addressing a possible billion dollar market, you’ll have difficulty getting VCs to invest. (Smaller, venture-style investors like angels and seed funds also prioritize market size but are usually more flexible – they’ll often invest when the market is “only” ~$100M).  This is perfectly rational since VC returns tend to be driven by a few big hits in big markets.”
“If you are arguing market size with a VC using a spreadsheet, you’ve already lost the debate.” For early-stage companies, you should never rely on quantitative analysis to estimate market size. Venture-style startups are bets on broad, secular trends. Good VCs understand this.” “Startups that fill white spaces [areas where there is latent demand without supply] aren’t usually world-changing companies, but they often have solid exits. They force incumbents to see a demand they had missed, and those incumbents often respond with an acquisition.”
It is not possible to make silk purse out of a pig’s ear.  For a startup to generate the necessary financial return for a VC, the potential market being addressed must be massive. The entrepreneur who pulls out a spreadsheet and tries to make the case that the market is large enough based on fake quantitative assumptions does little but destroy his or her credibility. Venture capitalists hate to see hockey stick shaped distribution curves based on unrealistic assumptions that don’t map to reality. Chris Dixon is saying that what they do want to see for markets that can’t be defined with much certainty is a strongly argued narrative which explains that the market has or will attain the required size. Yes, they want to see as many related facts as possible that support the narrative. No, they don’t want to hear wild guesses presented as facts.

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9. “There are two kinds of investors: Ron Conways who try to create value by finding good people and helping them create something great, and others, who want a piece of someone else’s things. The builders and the extractors. Avoid the extractors.”
“Founders too often view raising capital as a transaction, when it is actually a very deep relationship. They think of money as money, when there is actually smart money, dumb money, high-integrity money, and low-integrity money.”
Particularly in the United States, money is not the scarce resource in venture capital.  The scarce resource is fundable startups. The outcome for any startup will increasingly be determined by access to networks of people and resources.  If a startup has a choice between (1) just money and (2) money plus access to these networks, is it wise to choose the latter.  Because startups most compete in an Extremistan environment (i.e., winner-take-all or winner-take-most-all) even the smallest advantage can end up topping the balance of success and cumulative advantage to one company.  Perhaps some founders are cheered up by a venture capitalist who is mostly a cheerleader, but the smart entrepreneurs want someone who can directly help with tasks like recruiting and problems like pricing and distribution.

10. “VCs have a portfolio, and they want to have big wins. They’d rather have a few more lottery tickets.. while for the entrepreneurs, it’s their whole life, and let’s say you raised five million bucks, and you have a fifty million dollar offer, and the entrepreneurs are like, “Look, I make whatever millions of dollars. I’ll be able to start another company.” And the VCs are like, ‘Wait! We invested billions of dollars.’ That is usually where tension comes.”
Chris Dixon has been both a founder and a VC.  He has empathy for both venture capitalists and founders on this set of issues. He is most certainly correct that this type of situation creates tension. The wave of discussion about this topic is proof of that. The question is: what is the best way to resolve the tension in ways that are mutually beneficial?  First, a brief note about what is at stake. The economist Harry Markowitz called diversification the only free lunch investing. Warren Buffett discussed the issues involved as follows:
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“Of course, some investment strategies require wide diversification. If significant risk exists in a single transaction, overall risk should be reduced by making that purchase one of many mutually-independent commitments.  Thus, you may consciously purchase a risky investment – one that indeed has a significant possibility of causing loss or injury – if you believe that your gain, weighted for probabilities, considerably exceeds your loss, comparably weighted, and if you can commit to a number of similar, but unrelated opportunities.  Most venture capitalists employ this strategy.  Should you choose to pursue this course, you should adopt the outlook of the casino that owns a roulette wheel, which will want to see lots of action because it is favored by probabilities, but will refuse to accept a single, huge bet.
Another situation requiring wide diversification occurs when an investor who does not understand the economics of specific businesses nevertheless believes it in his interest to be a long-term owner of American industry.  That investor should both own a large number of equities and space out his purchases.  By periodically investing in an index fund, for example, the know-nothing investor can actually out-perform most investment professionals.  Paradoxically, when “dumb” money acknowledges its limitations, it ceases to be dumb.
On the other hand, if you are a know-something investor, able to understand business economics and to find five to ten sensibly priced companies that possess important long-term competitive advantages, conventional diversification makes no sense for you. It is apt simply to hurt your results and increase your risk.  I cannot understand why an investor of that sort elects to put money into a business that is his 20th favorite rather than simply adding that money to his top choices – the businesses he understands best and that present the least risk, along with the greatest profit potential.  In the words of the prophet Mae West:  ‘Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.’ ”
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The wisest outcome on founder and employee liquidity issues will depend on the facts and circumstances of each case. There is no connect-the-dots-formula that is right in all cases. Fred Wilson has written a very thoughtful post on this issue. He points out that even from the view of the VC there is an incentive to create some liquidity:“providing some founder liquidity, at the appropriate time, will incentivize the founders to have a longer term focus and that will result in exits at much larger valuations because, contrary to popular belief, founders drive the timing of exit way more than VCs do.”
In addition to what Fred Wilson notes, it is one thing to concentrate your investments if you have a net worth measured in millions and quite another if you have little financial cushion if the business fails. The important point that Chis Dixon raises is that there is an issue here, and it can create tension if not dealt with intelligently. Founders are smarter and better informed than ever before and they want a venture capitalist who is empathetic and thoughtful.

11. “If you aren’t getting rejected on a daily basis, your goals are not ambitious enough. The most valuable lesson I had starting out in my career was when I was trying to break in the tech world and I applied to jobs at big companies and at startups, at VC firms. I got rejected everywhere. I had sort of an unusual background. I was a philosophy major, a self-taught programmer. It turned out to be the most valuable experience of my career because I eventually developed such thick skin that I just didn’t care anymore about getting rejected. And, in fact, I kind of turned it around and started embracing it. I eventually — that sort of emboldened me. Through those sort of bolder tactics, eventually landed a job that got my first startup funded. So every day to this day I try to make sure I get rejected.”
The ability to handle rejection in a sales process is something that has always fascinated me.  Why can some people knock on door after door and suffer rejection and after rejection and still maintain a positive attitude long enough to generate the eventual sale? For some people a single rejection turns them into a nervous wreck, while others power through to close a sale. It seem to me to be explained by a combination of innate personality and a learned skill.
In any event, starting a business and even building a successful career involves way more selling than people who have never done it before imagine. Entrepreneurs are constantly selling themselves, their business and its products to potential employees, suppliers, distributors, investors and customers. If you can’t sell, starting a business is probably unwise.

12. “Before I started my first company, an experienced entrepreneur I know said, ‘Get ready to feel sick to your stomach for the next five years.’ And I was, ‘Eh, whatever.’ Then later, I was, ‘Shoot, I should listen to the guy.'”
“You’ve either started a company or you haven’t. ‘Started’ doesn’t mean joining as an early employee, or investing or advising or helping out. It means starting with no money, no help, no one who believes in you (except perhaps your closest friends and family), and building an organization from a borrowed cubicle with credit card debt and nowhere to sleep except the office. It almost invariably means being dismissed by arrogant investors who show up a half hour late, totally unprepared and then instead of saying ‘no’ give you non-committal rejections like ‘we invest in later stage companies.’ It means looking prospective employees in the eyes and convincing them to leave safe jobs, quit everything and throw their lot in with you. It means having pundits in the press and blogs who’ve never built anything criticize you and armchair quarterback your every mistake. It means lying awake at night worrying about running out of cash and having a constant knot in your stomach during the day fearing you’ll disappoint the few people who believed in you and validate your smug doubters.”
I was the third employee of a company founded by Craig McCaw, and although I wasn’t a founder it was nevertheless a life changing experience.  It was a particularly notable day since I received two job offers the very same day. One job was a very safe position with an established company. The other was with the startup. What tipped the decision was that I wanted to have the life experience of being part of a startup. I wanted the experience more than the immediate monetary rewards that the other position offered.

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From a post by Chris Dixon on climbing the wrong hill in your career: “People tend to systematically overvalue near-term over long-term rewards.  This effect seems to be even stronger in more ambitious people.  Their ambition seems to make it hard for them to forgo the nearby upward step.”
There were lots of times I thought that I had made a mistake in not taking the safer and better-paying job. I experienced all the things Chris Dixon talks about in that post, including attacks from armchair critics. I worried often about other employees and how my family would cope with failure if that happened. The tale of this startup is actually one of the great untold stores in business history. It resulted in a 4X return for early investors which was not terrible, but not great either. That’s a story for another time.

You can see the original on 25iq.
http://25iq.com/2015/01/15/a-doz ... xon-about-startups/
作者：微软高级主管Tren Griffin，他之前是私募股权投资公司Eagle River（Craig McCaw建立）合伙人，也是五本书的作者。
About the author: Tren Griffin’s professional background has primarily involved areas where business meets technologies like software and mobile communications. He currently works at Microsoft. Previously, he was a partner at private equity firm Eagle River (established by Craig McCaw) and before that, a consultant in Asia. Griffin is the author of five books.

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创业投资12条铁律
翻译简写的参考 by 杨琳桦

“有关创业公司的传说，真的是人类商业史上，远远还没有被说或没有被说透的那一部分传奇吧。”
（翻译简写）杨琳桦  觉得非常棒的一篇文章，但奇长无比，我试着对它按中国阅读习惯做了翻译简写。

1，“如果每个人都喜欢你的点子，我可能会担心这个点子的前瞻性不够。”

任何想创业的人，都应该是在找一个“被错误定价的机会”，虽然市场很快会自动纠正消除这种机会，但总有一个经济体，它明显充满不确定性，而这些经济体，就是创业者寻找机会的最优秀区域。

通常而言，大企业会对信息流通已经很充分的地方进行投资，Chris Dixon关于这点的原话是：如果所有人都觉得你主意不错，那可能就是在说：这里不会有明显利润。

实际上，所有聪明的投资人也在渴求资产的错误定价。这方面，没有比读Howard Marks的书更好，他追溯了偏见和封闭意识的源头：资本刚性、心理学意义上的成功定义，以及从众行为。市场不是完全有效的，在私人、新兴和模糊市场，表现尤其低效。

2，“如何发现一个真正的好点子？这种感觉，就像你需要知道一个秘密，这个秘密Peter Thiel这么形容：一些你相信，但绝大部分人不信的东西。那么你到底要怎么发现？（1）这个领域你比别人更懂；（2）你比别人更清楚问题所在；（3）从独特的生活经验中借鉴。”

“我的观点，有关成功的最好预测是，是否存在着什么像David Lee所说的：‘创始人/市场验证’这样的东西。这是指：创始人对自己进入的市场，理解非常深刻；以及人们通常所说的：创始人基本上是在‘人格化’自己产品，业务以及最终的公司。”

这里的意思是：最可能知道“秘密”在哪的人，通常是那些有非常深厚专业知识的人。换句话说，创建产品的最好方法，以及把产品带向市场和消费者需要的最好方法，绝不是没有深厚专业知识、不理解技术的人能做到的。

从另一个角度思考这个问题，也就是我们平常说的企业“护城河”，及企业的“可持续竞争优势”，创始人和创业公司员工，是公司“护城河”的贡献者，他们给这个“护城河”带来直接和间接影响。

其它一项能对所在行业进行很深理解的技能则是：你能够看见一种“现象”的能力：当一些更大东西，凌驾于部分相加的总和时，有些人能通过深刻的专业知识，比其他人更先看到这种潜在机会。

3，“种子投资，以及早期创业，本质上是一件有关‘得到多少优质信息’的事，而几乎所有信息在此刻，很遗憾，都没有公布，即你不知道。”

关于商业，本质上，有质量的信息是非常难获得的，创业公司也是，真正有价值的信息，是那些能帮创业公司找到并创建他们正寻求的定价错误机会的信息，可惜的是，“不确定性”在创业早期，基本上就是企业家的朋友。

而伟大风险投资家的任务，就是给企业家支持，帮他们进入到一个网络，这个网络，允许企业家去快速及低成本找到他们需要的信息。同样原则，这种对信息的渴望，也适用风险投资本身，最好的投资人，总是在试图寻找信息，尤其是那些还没公开发布的信息。

4，“化腐朽为神奇，被普遍定义为创业点子的意思。但它只是狭义定义，好创业公司的点子，实质是多方面的。这么解释可能更好：依据世界的发展变化，来考虑延续多年这样一个时间长度的，多种可能性路径。”

“最好的创业点子基本有如下特点：（1）既有强者像扔玩具一样抛弃了它；（2）分拆别人已在做的功能；（3）一开始往往是个爱好；以及/或者（4）经常挑战社会规范。”

“同时，最好的想法总来源于直接经验……当你从传统智慧中区分出你的直接经验，这里，就是产生最好创业点子的地方。”

案例之一：十分早期阶段，“手机”只对商业人士有足够价值，且这个人群数量很少，开始时，设备装置很大，我还记得房产经纪人和建筑工地工作的人，是其中最大用户。基础设施方面，则需要像西雅图这样的城市，才能有三个非常高的塔来送达信号。

最终，手机出现，但非常贵，又重又大。过去时间段，麦肯锡曾有过非常著名的预测：只要“座机”还在，就不可能有人用手机。麦肯锡直接否定了Craig McCaw认为大有价值的东西，当时，Craig McCaw对人类拥有手机后能达到的能力，称其为“游牧”。

也就是说，当时一些人把手机看成“玩具”，实际情况也差不多：我买第一部手机花了约4000美金，当我在一些公众场合使用它，我觉得尴尬，因为谈到手机大家都会皱眉看你。

5，“比起想出一个好点子。你真正应该关注的是：早期推荐营销你项目时，实际上你应该去推销的，是你自己和你的团队。当然，展示自己的一个最优方式，就是先建立产品原型，这也是为什么这么多风投告诉企业家‘等你有Demo再回来谈”的原因。他们对这个产品是否能建立起来其实一点也不怀疑，他们真正疑惑的是：这个东西，是否能由你把它建起来。”

伟大点子当然重要，但团队的执行能力，比任何一个聪明点子更值得被考虑。许多人看到报纸上又报了什么新产品，总喜欢说：“我第一个想到了这个点子。”但这一点用也没有，世上最好的想法如果没有一个团队去把它做出来，这想法就不会达到山的高度。Chris Dixon说：一个团队可以证明自己的最好证据，就是执行一些类似Demo的东西；最好证据，是做些类似创建软件的事，就像古老谚语：空谈不如实践，布丁好不好，一尝便知。

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6，“最聪明的人周末干的事，是其他人十年时间里所有工作日干的事的总和。”“爱好，就是最聪明的人花时间的地方，而这种时间的花费，他们不会用短期财务目标去衡量。”

Chris Dixon不是在说聪明的人周末都在车库里打乒乓球或棒球，他是指：最聪明的人，正在构建一些像PC、无人机，或更好的搜索引擎这样的东西。

这里有个关键因素是：一种先进技术，对很聪明的人，非常有用，但如果只是使用这些技术，它还没带来明显经济回报。不过，几乎不可避免的一个现象是：像“摩尔定律”这种技术驱动的东西，通常有成本较低，及性能足够高的特征，这也使它从曾经的爱好，变成为一个繁荣的商业技术。

顺便说一句，现在要理解摩尔定律或许非常容易，但我要说的是：尽管我已经是当时美国人中非常少数的能理解到摩尔定律威力的人之一，但我，依然低估了摩尔定律每年产生的威力。

7，“这是技术的时代。技术正影响真实世界、交通、住房和医疗及所有一切，而这些领域，往往情况是：监管更严格。这个问题，被意识到是严重问题才刚刚开始，技术将来发展的十年中，这些问题可能成为决定性问题。”

这是我如何判断事情的一个案例，即一个人，是否能对未来做出一个真正非共识性的预测，而不是，只基于目前情况做预测。太多风投机构都在随大流，当其他人早已把机会转到其他领域，他们才奔向这些趋势。

要跑赢大盘，一个风险投资者必须思考Howard Marks讲的这些话：实现卓越的投资业绩，取决于你对价值判断的洞察力，你必须比别人优秀，这样，你就必须学习别人还没学习的东西，你必须能看到和别人不一样的东西，或对已有东西能比其他人分析得更好。基本上就是这三点的大比拼，为自身利益而与“共识”有些偏差，看起来就像自杀，但偶尔做一做，是非常正确的，这也是让Chris Dixon所以成为Chris Dixon的原因。

8，“任何向风投展示过项目的人都明白，风投对所谓的‘市场规模’着迷。”“如果你不能指出你是在解决一个市场规模达到10亿美金的事，你基本很难从风投那获得资金。（更小的，如天使和种子基金，也优先考虑市场规模要素，但通常，这种基金会更自由灵活，他们经常性投资那种‘唯一性’-1亿美金的市场。”

“如果你和VC使用电子表格争论市场规模，你早就已经不在辩论桌上。”对早期创业公司，你绝不能依赖定量分析去估计市场规模。创业公司都在对广泛和长期性的趋势做赌博，好的风投，能理解这一点。”“那些填补有潜在需求的市场空白，但不真正改变世界的公司，往往有非常扎实的退出变现，他们迫使既得利益者看到一个自己曾错过的需求，于是做出收购这些创业公司作为回应。”

对寻求必要财务回报的VC，创业公司正试图解决的潜在市场规模必须巨大。但一方面，如果哪个创业者翻出一个电子表格，并试图以此做有关市场规模的定量假设，那么基本，会摧毁创业者的信用分数。但另一方面，风投通常不喜欢看到没映射到现实的、基于不切实际假设的分布曲线，他们确实希望看到不能用非常确定性的东西去界定的市场，但他们希望看见：能支持想象力的尽可能多的相关性事实，不想听到把各种猜想当事实来谈。

9，“有两种类型的投资者，一种是像Ron Conways这样的：拼命找好的人才和帮助这些人创建伟大东西来创造价值；另一种，则只想要别人的一片天地。也就是‘创造者’和‘提取者’的差异，你要做的：是避免‘提取者’。”

“创始人常犯的一个错误是，把融资这件事看成是交易，但它其实，应该是种非常深刻的关系构建。创始人经常性地只是把钱当成了钱，但钱也分为很多种：聪明的钱、愚蠢的钱、高诚信的钱，以及低诚信的钱。”

特别是在美国，钱根本不是稀缺资源，真正的稀缺资源，是值得资助的初创公司。任何创业公司的收入，将显著性由网络中人和资源的介入，而有所提高，如果一个创业公司面临两种选择：1）钱；2）钱+访问这些资源的权利。那么当然，聪明的创业者会选后者。因为大多数创业公司的竞争环境，要么是赢家通吃，要么是赢家通吃大部分，即使是最小优势，也可能摘取成功和得到优势累积。也许有些创始人，会因为一个风险投资人是个非常会向公众造势或非常有名的“啦啦队长”而欢呼，但真正聪明的企业家，会喜欢那种能直接在像招聘或者如何对产品进行定价，以及分销等非常具体事情上帮上忙的投资人。

10，“VC们有投资组合，他们想大赢，所以宁可要更少彩票；但对创业者，创业就是他生命。假设，现在你融了500万美金，同时，你有一个5000万美金的Offer（指有收购邀约，即创业者的退出机会），企业家通常会想：‘我可以开始另一家公司了。’但风投思维可能是这样：‘等一下！我们已经投资数十亿美元了。’”

Chris Dixon同时是风投也是创业者，在这组问题上，他有双重同理心。他当然知道：这种情况下风投有紧张感是正确的，但值得讨论的一个真正问题是：什么是解决这种紧张感的最好互惠互利方式？首先，需要对其中利害关系做个简要说明，以下是巴菲特关于投资话题的一个见解：

也就是投资人面临的情况：

“当然，一些投资策略需要多元化，如果在某个单一交易中存在显著风险，那么整体风险就该通过投资多个独立项目来平摊。多数风投采用这种策略，如果你选择这种赌法，你就需要用一个“轮”的赌盘，这意味大量投资行为会发生，但这，基本是由“概率”决定的赌场，同时，这种模式也拒绝单一、巨大赌博。

另一种情况下，多元化投资也需要发生，即：当投资人不是很懂某个特定业务的经济特点，只是相信他自己对某个美国产业的兴趣而做出投资时。这种情况，投资人也该采取多元化，通过定期投资一些指数基金等等。

但如果你懂行，能理解某个特定具体行业的经济周期，并已发现5到10个价格合理、且还具备长期竞争优势的公司，那么传统多元化的投资方式对你其实是没意义的。事实上，这种做法只会伤到你投资结果，并提高你风险。我真的很不理解，为什么这种类型的投资人，有时会选择把钱放进排名自己第20个最喜欢的项目，而不是简单直接把钱再给到排名自己最喜欢的项目里去，这里的“最喜欢”是指：投资人自己懂这个项目所在行业；目前该项目展现出的风险最小；有最大盈利潜力。”

这是投资人面临的情况。

但这里还涉及的另一问题是：创始人和创业员工“流动性”（套现）问题。关于这点，最明智的答案需要具体问题具体分析，这里真没有任何所谓正确公式。

但Fred Wilson写过一个非常有见地的帖子，他说：“在适当时机，提供给创始人流动性，将激励创始人去做一个更长期时间的专注，并由此导致一个‘以更大估值退出’的结果。因为与普遍流行的看法相反，实际上，由创始人驱动什么时候公司‘退出’吧，这种情况发生机率，要多于投资人驱动。”

Chis Dixon指出的最重要一点是：如果投资人不是非常有智慧地去处理这类事，极可能制造出紧张对立感，因为现在的创始人，已比以前创始人更聪明，他们能获得的信息，也比以前更充分，他们会想要一个善解人意并体贴的风投。

11，“如果你没在每天基础性的事情上被拒绝过，那么你野心还不够大。我职业生涯中最有价值的课程，是我想打通技术世界，由此，我向一个大公司申请工作，向创业公司申请工作、向VC机构申请工作，结果，我到处被拒。我有几分不寻常的背景，我专业学的是哲学，同时我是自学成才的程序员，我从没想过我职业生涯中最宝贵的经验，竟然就是厚脸皮，竟然就是我从不会对被拒绝这件事在意。并且事实上，我非常有种地，扭转了局面并开始拥抱它，所以直到现在的每一天，我都在竭尽全力保持一种状态，那就是被别人拒绝。”

“销售”这个行业处理拒绝的能力一直让我着迷，为什么有些人能在遭受排斥和拒绝后依然契而不舍继续敲门？为什么有些人能保持长久积极心态并最终促成生意？对一些人，别人的拒绝几乎就可以让他崩溃，但其他人，却能自动充电并最终完成销售，在我看来，这可能由“先天人格”和“技能组合”这两个因素决定。

任何情况下，开始一项业务甚至哪怕是创建一个成功的职业生涯，都会遭遇比作为一个销售员面临的更糟情况，好多，是你压根都没想过的大抛盘。企业家需要不断去向潜在员工、供应商、经销商、投资者和消费者推销自己、自己业务和自己的产品，如果你不能卖也不会卖，那么开始创业可能是不明智的。

12，“在我开始我第一个公司时，一个我认识的非常有经验的企业家和我说：‘准备好你的胃，接下来五年，你会经常感觉恶心和闹胃病。结果我确实如此。”

“你要么已开始一家公司，要么还没。我这里说的‘开始’，是指：你在没有任何钱、任何帮助、任何相信你的人（除了你关系紧密的朋友和家人）情况下的那种‘开始’。并且你正通过借来的小空间和信用卡债务在建立一个组织；它几乎必然，被迟到了半小时、实际上完全没做功课，没做任何准备就匆匆跑来赴约的傲慢投资人驳回。它也意味着：眼巴巴地看着潜在员工，让他们放弃安全的工作岗位，抛弃一切，来和你一起干；也意味着：在新闻媒体和博客上，没有任何人关心你产品，没有针对你的错误，出现哪怕任何一句批评的话，一切无声无息；也意味着，你晚上睡不着觉，因为担心现金用完；而即使是在白天，你的胃也像有很多蠕虫在不停爬动，因为你恐惧，你是否会让那些非常少数的真正相信你的人失望。”

我是Craig McCaw创建的公司的第三名员工，并且尽管我不是创始人，这也是一次完全改变了我生活的人生经历。由于我在同一天同时得到两份Offer，这一天，我记忆尤其深刻。其中一个岗位，是一个建立有些时间了的公司岗位，非常安全；而另一个，则有关创业。我最终的决定是：去经历生活，我对获得更多生活经验的渴望，超过工作岗位能直接提供给我的货币报酬的渴望。

Chris Dixon有关错误选择职业生涯的情况，有过一个帖子：“人们往往会系统性地高估短期回报，而不是高估长期回报。这点，在越有野心的人格特质的人那里，表现越明显。他们的野心，促使他们很难放弃‘反正就在附近，那就向上走一步吧’这样的欲望。”

曾经有非常多次，我以为我犯了错，因为我没有选择更安全和薪酬回报更高的工作，我几乎经历了Chris Dixon在那个帖子里说的所有一切，包括来自不少批评家的攻击，我经常担心：其它雇员和我的家人，如果失败这件事真发生，他们会怎么想。

我想：有关创业公司的传说，真的是人类商业史上，远远还没有被说或没有被说透的那一部分传奇吧。

PS：文章涉及的所有机构和人物，基本是硅谷最顶级机构和投资人：
http://yanglinhua.baijia.baidu.com/article/110445
Andreessen Horowitz：顶级早期投资机构之一；

Chris Dixon：Andreessen Horowitz合伙人；

David Lee：SV Angel合伙人，5月为家人去洛杉矶离开SV Angel，惊动硅谷投资圈；

Ron Conways：SV Angel创始人；硅谷最著名天使，他一个人，基本等同硅谷整个交易流；

Fred Wilson：Lunion Square Venture联合创始人，纽约投资界最具影响人物之一；

Howard Marks：橡树资本创始人；也是非常多投资人的偶像；

Tren Griffi：在微软干了13年，他之前老板Craig McCaw，是美国电信大亨、亿万富豪，经常位列福布斯全球亿万富豪榜；

Peter Thiel：不介绍了，《从零到一》的作者……