如何成为天使投资人，第二部分

嘿。

Hey.

我是Nivi。

This is Nivi.

你可能知道，Nivi和我还有另一个播客叫Spearhead，我们在那里讨论天使投资。

As you might know, Nivi and I have another podcast called Spearhead, where we discuss angel investing.

几个月前，我把所有Spearhead的短小剧集收集起来，在这里发布了一个完整的大合集。

A few months ago, I collected all the short little Spearhead episodes and published them here in one big episode.

那是天使投资理论的第一部分。

That was part one of the theory of angel investing.

你现在收听的是第二部分。

What you're listening to now is part two.

如果你想订阅Spearhead，可以去spearhead.co。

If you wanna subscribe to Spearhead, you can go to spearhead.co.

我也会在节目备注里放一个链接。

I'll also put a link in the show notes.

好的。

Alright.

我们开始吧。

Here we go.

我们在前几期节目里讨论了为什么要进行天使投资。

We've spent the last few episodes talking about why you should be angel investing.

我们谈到了如何获得自己的独家项目源，简而言之就是打造个人品牌。

We talked about how to get your own proprietary deal flow, and the short answer on that was build a brand.

现在我们要讨论判断力，它有多重要，以及如何培养。

Now we're going to talk about judgment, how important is it, how to develop it.

长期判断力绝对至关重要，因为缺乏判断力会导致投资组合糟糕。

Long term judgment is absolutely critical because without judgment, you'll end up with a bad portfolio.

你将得不到其他投资者的支持。

You won't have other investors backing you.

你会亏损资金，品牌声誉也将受损。

You'll lose your money and your brand will suffer.

优秀的企业家不愿与判断力差的人为伍。

Good entrepreneurs won't want to be associated with bad judgment.

归根结底，判断力实际上是最重要的因素。

At the end of the day, judgment is actually the single most important thing.

它比获取交易机会更重要。

It's more important than access to deals.

它比获得资金渠道更重要。

It's more important than access to capital.

关于判断力的问题是，每个人都认为自己已经具备。

The problem with judgment is everybody thinks they already have it.

所以你的判断力受限于你自身的判断水平。

So your own judgment is subject to your own judgment.

如果你的判断力差，你甚至不会意识到自己判断力差。

If you have poor judgment then you won't know you have poor judgment.

这被称为邓宁-克鲁格效应。

This is called the Dunning Kruger effect.

这也是常识。

It's also common sense.

不够聪明的人通常意识不到自己不够聪明。

People who are not that intelligent usually don't know they're not that intelligent.

部分源于自我防御机制，部分则与判断力和智力的本质相关。

Some of it being an ego defense mechanism, some of it just being intrinsic to the nature of judgment and intelligence.

所以你无法知道自己是否具备良好的判断力。

So you don't know if you have good judgment or not.

此外，你可能在某些领域、某些垂直行业具备良好判断力，或擅长识人，但可能缺乏市场判断力。

Furthermore, you may have good judgment in certain areas, certain verticals, or you might have good people judgment, but you may not have good market judgment.

检验判断力好坏的唯一方法需要长期观察——遗憾的是在早期投资中，需要五到十五年才能验证你的判断力。

The only way to tell if you have good judgment is to look over a very long period of time and unfortunately in early stage investing it takes five to fifteen years to figure out if you have good judgment.

首先要诚实地评估自己的判断力水平并进行校准。

The first thing to do is to be very honest about where your judgment is and calibrating it.

然后我们可以制定长期计划来提升判断力。

And then there's a longer term plan we can work on to improve our judgment.

第一步是校准判断力。

Step one will be calibrate judgment.

第二步是提升判断力。

Step two will be improve judgment.

判断力真的重要吗？

Does judgment really matter?

在种子阶段确实重要，但更侧重于对人的判断、产品及市场潜力，而非评估现金流、客户获取成本或病毒式传播指标——因为你没有足够的数据支撑。

At the seed stage, it does matter, but it's much more about people judgment and product and market potential than being able to size up a cash flow stream, cost customer acquisition, or virality metrics because you don't have that much data.

你的判断力较低，并非因为你自身有什么不足，而是因为数据不足，这时你需要一个更多样化的投资组合。

As your judgment is lower, not because of some failing on your part, just because you don't have enough data, then you need a more diversified portfolio.

从某种意义上说，多样化是对知识不足的一种对冲。

In some sense, diversification is a hedge against a lack of knowledge.

你的知识越少，就越需要多样化。

The less knowledge you have, the more you're going to diversify.

到了沃伦·巴菲特的水平，你可以详细考察一家存在二十年的老牌公司，这时你不需要太多判断力。

At Warren Buffett's level where you can examine an existing company that's been around for twenty years in great detail, you don't need to have a lot of judgment.

你需要的是大量的勤奋工作。

You need to have a lot of diligence.

是的，判断力仍然重要，但在对大量项目进行充分调研后，你可以挑选出一个交易。

Yes, judgment still applies, but you can pick one deal after having done lots of diligence on a whole bunch.

在种子阶段的初创企业中，你掌握的数据非常有限。

At a seed stage startup, you have very little data.

你可能只是在观察周围其他人的判断。

You may just be looking at other people's judgment around you.

这就是为什么社会认同在其中扮演如此重要的角色。

And this is why social proof plays such a big role.

但归根结底，在早期投资阶段你必须建立一个投资组合，因为早期没有人掌握足够的数据来形成高度确信或万无一失的判断。

But at the end of the day, you're gonna have to build a portfolio in early stage investing because nobody has enough data to have very high conviction or foolproof judgment early on.

帕克·汤普森（Parker Thompson），在Twitter上使用L Jackson这个账号，曾引用过一句有趣的话——我记得他也是转推别人的推文——他说：'在我之后投资的都是表格骑师，在我之前投资的都是扔飞镖的猴子'。

Parker Thompson, had the startup L Jackson handle on Twitter, had a funny quote, and I think he was quoting somebody else on Twitter where he said, everyone who invests after me is a spreadsheet jockey, and everyone who invests before me is a dart throwing monkey.

我觉得这个比喻非常贴切。

I thought that was very appropriate.

人们往往倾向于将先于自己的人视为在胡乱猜测。

It is the tendency to look at people who come before you as making wild guesses.

在后期投资者眼中，种子投资者就是这副模样；而在早期投资者看来，后期投资者不过是电子表格操作员。

That's what seed investors look like to later stage investors, and later stage investors look like spreadsheet jockeys to early stage investors.

但他们只是运用了不同层级的判断力——由于可获得的数据不同，他们采用的判断方式各异，进而形成不同规模的投资组合和决策信心，这取决于他们能够及无法运用的判断力。

But they're just applying different levels of judgment, different kinds of judgment because they have different data available to them and they're going to then have different sized portfolios and conviction because of the judgment they can and cannot apply.

考虑到种子阶段涉及的运气成分，判断力究竟有多重要？

How important is judgment given the amount of luck involved at the seed stage?

种子阶段投资就像买彩票，区别在于你可以通过资源渠道和判断力提前获知一两个中奖号码，这能提高胜算——但你依然需要投资组合效应。

Investing at the seed stage is like playing the lottery, except that you can use your access and judgment to get one or two of the winning numbers in advance, which increases the odds, but you still need a portfolio effect.

你的判断力越强，就能提前知晓越多号码。

The better your judgment, the more numbers you know in advance.

因此培养和磨砺判断力绝对值得。

So it's absolutely still worth cultivating and honing judgment.

这是场长期博弈，需要经历数十次甚至数百次投资才能见分晓。

This is a long term game that will be played out over dozens and eventually hundreds of investments.

考虑到交易推进的速度，我实际能有多少时间运用判断力？

How much time do I really have to apply my judgment given how quickly deals move?

如果花时间深入思考，难道不会错过交易机会吗？

Aren't I gonna miss out on a deal if I take time to really think things through?

判断力未必等同于尽职调查甚至思考过程。

Judgment isn't necessarily diligence or even thinking.

判断力是你所做的全部准备。

Judgment is all the preparation you did.

所以当交易来临时，你的潜意识能非常迅速地处理它。

So when the deal arrives, your subconscious can process it very quickly.

我认为早期投资的最佳判断不是通过详尽的尽职调查完成的。

I don't think the best judgment for early stage investing is done through extensive due diligence.

是的。

Yes.

明智的做法是核查背景、与领域内的其他人交流并深思熟虑。

It's smart to check references, talk to other people in the space, and think it through.

但我们谈论的是几天内就能完成的事，而不是几周。

But we're talking about something that takes days, not weeks.

随着时间的推移，你会建立起足够的直觉，需要越来越少的数据就能做出评估。

Over time, you will build up your gut instinct enough that you'll need less and less data to make an assessment.

你会知道创始人说话的方式是否可信。

You'll know if a founder is speaking such a way that they're credible.

你知道他们的背景网络意味着你不需要做太多背景调查。

You know if the network that they come through means that you don't have to reference check as much.

你已经掌握了该领域客户的思维和行为模式，因此会对实际能向他们销售什么有自己的直觉判断。

You will already have established how customers in the space think and behave, so you'll have your own gut feel for what's really possible to sell them.

现在很多初创公司都受过训练，尤其是加速器培养的，会进行非常紧凑快速的融资流程。

A lot of startups are now trained, especially by accelerators, to run a very tight, fast fundraising process.

他们可能会给你很大压力要求你做出决定。

They can pressure you hard to make a decision.

更优秀的投资者完全不受这种错失恐惧症效应的影响。

The better investors are absolutely immune to that FOMO effect.

即便面对炙手可热的交易，如果你施压要求对方48小时内做决定，他们总会说：'我从不做48小时内的决策，这不适合我'。

If you push them hard even on a really hot deal and say, have to decide within forty eight hours, They'll always say, well, I don't decide within forty eight hours so it's not a fit for me.

完成。

Done.

结束。

Finished.

他们根本不会考虑。

They'll not look at it.

错失恐惧对多数投资者确实有效，但对顶级投资者超过某个临界点就会失效。

FOMO works on many investors up to a point, but it will not work beyond a certain point on the absolute best investors.

我不得不给自己制定24小时冷静期规则，即便决定投资后也强制自己等待24小时。

I have had to institute a twenty four hour cooling off period rule for myself, which is even after I decide to invest, force myself to wait twenty four hours.

在种子阶段，判断力是否被高估了？

Is judgment overrated at the seed stage?

很多公司不都会经历软转型和硬转型吗？

Don't a lot of companies do soft and hard pivots?

即便发生转型，对人的判断依然至关重要。

Even when there's a pivot, the judgment about the people matters.

真正的转型就像保持一条腿不动，移动另一条腿。

And a pivot is really defined as keeping one leg in place and moving the other one around.

这不是跳跃。

It's not a jump.

不是完全跨入另一个行业的飞跃。

It's not a leap into a completely different industry.

通常当企业进行战略调整时，它们会转向相邻领域，但仍在大市场范围内运作。

Oftentimes when there are pivots, they're into adjacent spaces, but you're still operating within the broader market.

这时你会更看重团队和执行力的评估，更关注他们所在市场是否有足够的调整空间，而可能相对弱化具体产品方案。估值必须反映公司可能经历调整，资金消耗和财务规划也要为此预留空间。

You will then overweight your team and execution evaluation and overweight that the market that they're operating in has enough room to pivot around and maybe underweight the exact product approach, the valuation has to reflect that the company might go through some pivots and the company's cash burn and cash planning has to reflect that it might go through some pivots.

所以这依然需要判断力。

So again judgment applies.

考虑到企业可能进行软调整（我称之为硬调整，即团队不变但完全转换市场），投资者该如何判断该投资哪些公司？

How is the investor supposed to know which companies to invest in given how much they can do a soft pivot or what I'm calling a hard pivot, which is same team but completely different market?

Twitter最初是从Odeo转型而来。

Twitter originally started off as Odeo.

Instagram的前身是Bourbon。

Instagram started off as Bourbon.

Slack最初叫Glitch。

Slack was Glitch.

Uber最初只提供黑色轿车服务。

Uber started off with just black cars.

Lyft曾用名ZenRide。

Lyft was ZenRide.

我认为Uber从专车服务扩展到拼车服务甚至算不上真正的转型。

I would argue that Uber's movement from black rides into shared rides wasn't really even a pivot.

这只是一次业务延伸。

It was just an extension.

Zimride从长途拼车转向短途拼车同样属于业务延伸，是他们非常出色的创新之举。

Zimride's movement from long range shared rides to short range shared rides was also an extension and a very brilliant innovation on their part.

所以这算不上什么重大转型。

So it wasn't much of a pivot.

从Odeo到Twitter确实是一次转型，但这是由威廉姆斯学院那位重新定义博客的人从播客领域转向微博客领域的转变。

Odeo to Twitter was a pivot, but it was a pivot from podcasting to microblogging from a person who had popularized blogging as we know it at Williams.

所以这实际上是对一个坚守本业的杰出人物的押注。

So it was really a bet on a great individual staying very much within their space.

这是一次转型，但不是跨越式的转变。

It was a pivot, but it wasn't a jump.

从Bourbon到Instagram几乎称不上转型。

Bourbon to Instagram was barely a pivot.

我甚至不确定该称之为转型，更像是一小步调整。

I'm not even sure I'd call it that, more of a step.

如果你看从Genie到Yammer的转变，那确实是一次跨越，但那是大卫·萨克斯的手笔——他是科技领域我们见过最伟大的产品设计师之一。

If you look at Genie to Yammer, that was a jump, but that was David Sachs, who was one of the greatest product designers we've ever seen in the technology space.

他是PayPal的创始人。

He was the founder of PayPal.

他将Genie转型为Yammer。

He pivoted Genie into Yammer.

他执掌过Zenefits，早期还投资过许多如今大获成功的项目，成绩斐然。

He ran Zenefits and he's been an incredible investor early on in some of the greatest hits that are out there.

那是对大卫的押注，就像押注埃隆·马斯克一样，那些曾经押注过大卫的人会毫不犹豫再次下注。

That was a David bet, like an Elon Musk bet and the people who bet on David would bet on him again all day long.

另一个重大跨越是从游戏公司Glitch转型到Slack。

Another big jump was Glitch, which was a game company to Slack.

那是斯图尔特·巴特菲尔德。

That was Stewart Butterfield.

就连他之前的成功之作Flickr，某种程度上也是一种跳跃。

Even Flickr, his previous hit, had also been a jump of sorts.

我认为那是个非常难以预测的案例。

That's a case that I think was very unpredictable.

投资他游戏公司的人其实是在押注斯图尔特本人，只能期待最好的结果，而斯图尔特确实不负众望。

People who invested in his gaming company invested in Stewart and just hope for the best, and Stewart delivered.

但每有一个这样的成功案例，就有十个失败案例。

But for every one of those, there's 10 failures.

当你想要培养判断力时，第一步是校准它。

When you wanna develop your judgment, the first step is to calibrate it.

我的判断力到底准不准？

Do I have good judgment or not?

当然，如果能直接查看数据并确认自己判断正确与否就太好了。

Obviously, it would be great if you could just look at the data and say, was I correct?

但这个答案可能要等十年、十五年才能揭晓。

But you won't know that for ten years, fifteen years.

到那时，行业格局早已改变。

And by that time, the industry will have changed.

你的判断可能符合十年前的行业状况，但这个行业进化迭代的速度极快。

You may have been correct for the way the industry was ten years ago, but this is an industry that evolves and adapts very quickly.

另一种方法是观察中间轮次的估值调整——比如红杉资本、安德森霍洛维茨或Benchmark等机构在你之后轮次以更高估值进入时给出的定价。

Another way to do it is you can look at intermediate markups where Sequoia or Andreessen or Benchmark or whoever are marking up your rounds, and they're coming in after you and paying higher prices.

这是个有趣的指标。

That's an interesting metric.

不过说到底，你的品味其实取决于其他品味引领者的喜好。

Although there, it's really your taste in what other taste makers like.

这就像凯恩斯选美比赛，每位评委的得分都取决于下一轮评委的想法。

It's a Keynesian beauty contest where each judge is being rewarded based on what the judge in the next round thinks.

你正在成为未来品味的优秀仲裁者。

You're becoming a good arbiter of future taste.

这确实有一定价值，因为如果你擅长预测风投会资助什么，那么你的公司就能获得资金。

This does have some value because if you're good at predicting what the VCs are going to fund, then your companies will get funded.

通过融资，它们很可能获得某些竞争优势并取得成功。

And through the funding, they're likely to have some competitive advantage and to win.

但当比特币刚起步时，这种方法就无济于事了——它当时极其怪异，没人理解，也没有后续的风投轮次可供押注。

But this won't help you when Bitcoin is first starting up and it's incredibly strange and nobody understands it, and there's no subsequent round of VC funding to bet on.

你只能自己做出决定。

You just have to make the decision yourself.

那种判断力是一种人群代理机制。

That kind of judgment is a people proxy mechanism.

它并不能真正帮助你建立和校准自己的判断力。

It's not really a way to build and calibrate your own judgment.

投资时，你也可以观察其他投资者是否跟投同一轮次。

When you invest, you can also look at what other investors are coming into the same round, but right behind you.

如果他们先于你投资，那就不能作为你判断力的良好参照，因为你很可能是在跟随他们。

If they're coming in front of you, then it's not a good proxy for your judgment because you're probably keying off of them.

但如果你投资了一轮，随后那些判断力经过验证的优秀投资者也纷纷跟进，那就能合理证明你的判断力。

But if you invest in a round and then good investors who have proven good judgment pile into the round after you, then that is a reasonable indication of your judgment.

最后，你可以直接询问他人。

Finally, you can just ask people.

不要问他们你是否具备良好判断力——因为出于礼貌他们总会说你判断力很好，而要询问他们认为你的弱点在哪里。

Don't ask them if you have good judgment or not because they'll always tell you that you have good judgment if they're polite, but ask them where your weaknesses are.

当然，这个问题只能向那些自身具备良好判断力的人提出。

Of course, only ask this of people who themselves have good judgment.

我发现拥有良好判断力的人，在生活的各个方面都具备这种能力。

I find that people who have good judgment have good judgment in all aspects of life.

判断力是一种保持谦逊、批判性思考、广泛阅读、拥有多元思想、在脑中容纳矛盾观点、保持较低自我意识以免过度执着于早期决策、持续自我质疑的能力，最好还具备科学训练或技术背景，曾在需要应对现实世界反馈（而非他人看法）的行业工作，并愿意承受不被认同。

Judgment is an ability to be humble, think critically, be well read, have a broad range of ideas, hold conflicting ideas and opinions in your head, to have a relatively low ego so you don't get too attached to your earlier decisions, and be constantly questioning yourself, preferably have scientific training or technical background, have worked in an industry where you have to deal with the real world consequential feedback and not just what other people think of you, and the willingness to be unpopular.

思维清晰的人会从基础出发思考，他们在推理中大量运用第一性原理，因此最终能依靠自己的权威。

Clear thinkers think from the ground up, and they use first principles in a lot of their reasoning, so they end up relying on their own authority.

长期来看会导致判断力下降的因素包括：群体思维、判断过度社会化、选择那些你明知在政治或社交层面会受欢迎的事物。

Things that will lead to poor judgment over time are groupthink, over socialization of judgment, picking things that you know are going to be politically or socially popular.

这个行业里很多人亏损，就是因为他们追逐自己希望成真的事物，而非最终被证实为真的事实。

Lots of people lose money in this business, chasing things that they wish were true as opposed to what actually turns out to be true.

PayPal黑手党以极度封闭著称。

The PayPal mafia is famous for being very insular.

他们都具备出色的判断力。

They all have good judgment.

他们都很特立独行。

They're all strange.

他们都非常政治不正确。

They're all very politically incorrect.

他们中许多人极不受欢迎，且不畏惧持有非主流观点，但他们真心尊重并珍视彼此的见解与判断。

Many of them are extremely unpopular, and they're not afraid to hold unpopular viewpoints, but they really respect and value each other's insights and judgment.

无论人们如何评价彼得·蒂尔，没人愿意与他正面辩论，因为他才华横溢、逆势而行，且是个彻头彻尾的第一性原理思考者。

Whatever people say about Peter Thiel, no one wants to go head to head in a debate with him because he's brilliant and he's contrarian and he's a first principles thinker from the ground up.

如果在职业生涯中始终与那些才华横溢、逆势思考、坚持第一性原理的人为伍，你将培养出极其卓越的判断力。

If you surround yourself with people who are brilliant contrarian first principles thinkers over your career, you will develop extremely good judgment.

不过，你可能最终不会太受欢迎。

You may not end up being very popular, however.

伟大的交易在最初起步时看起来真的那么正常吗？

Do great deals even look that normal when they're first getting started?

这个行业的本质就是需要做到'非共识正确'。

It's a nature of the industry that you want to be nonconsensus right.

换句话说，你需要在众人皆错时保持正确。

In other words, you want to be right when everybody else is wrong.

如果在众人皆对时你才正确，那你的回报将十分有限。

If you're right when everybody else is right, you won't make enough of a return.

当然，如果你错了，那就根本不会有任何回报。

And, of course, if you're wrong, then you're not gonna make any return.

所以最好的交易要么古怪离奇，要么社会难以接受，要么通常不被视为风投范畴，要么看起来过于小众无趣，要么由不符合传统创始人模板的创业者提出，要么位于非典型地理区域，要么存在股权结构问题。

So the best deals are either weird or socially unacceptable or not normally considered part of venture or look far too niche to be interesting or are brought in by a founder that doesn't fit the normal founder mold or in a geographic location that doesn't fit the normal geographic mold, or have some cap table problem.

但最好的交易总是存在某些破碎、怪异或与众不同的特质。

But the best deals always have something broken, strange, or different about them.

这并不意味着你只投资古怪的交易就能获得最佳回报。

That doesn't mean you're going to make the best investments if you only invest in weird deals.

这有点像那句老话：天才与疯子之间只有一线之隔。

This is a little bit like that old saying that there's a very fine line between a genius and a madman.

在获得验证之前，两者在旁人眼中都像是疯子。

Both seem like crazy people from the outside until after they're validated.

一百个里会出一个天才，而九十九个最终被证明是疯子。

And one out of a 100 turns out to be a genius and 99 out of a 100 turn out to be crazy.

你必须具备足够的反传统眼光，才能识别天才创始人——既不能因判断力低下而错失良机，也不能因标准过于离奇而让所有疯子都混进来。

You have to be iconoclastic enough yourself to recognize the genius founders without being so low in judgment or being so strange that you're letting in all the crazy ones too.

有人可能会说，从投资组合构建的角度看，投一堆疯狂项目比投一堆看似稳妥的项目更划算。

One could argue that the way portfolios are constructed, you're better off investing in a lot of crazy deals than you are in a lot of decent looking deals.

举个最近的例子，帕特里克·弗里德曼创办的Promonos风险投资基金。

To give a recent example, there's a fund started by Patrick Friedman called Promonos Venture Capital.

帕特里克正在投资各种治理实验，包括新城邦、新兴城镇或社区，探索人们如何自主管理地方政府或进行治理实验。

Patrick is going out there and investing in experiments in governance, new city states or even new towns or localities, how people are taking local government into their own hands or doing experiments in governance.

这看起来几乎是不可能完成的任务。

This seems impossibly difficult to do.

洪都拉斯海上建国的历史案例并不乐观。

The history with sea studying in Honduras doesn't look that great.

但只要你偶然发现下一个新加坡或香港——无论是虚拟还是实体——就能创造数万亿美元的财富，并彻底改变人们的生活方式。

But all you have to do is stumble into the next Singapore or Hong Kong, whether it's virtual or physical, and you have something that can create trillions of dollars in wealth plus completely change the way people live their lives.

这就是一个专门从事高难度古怪投资的基金案例。

That's an example of a fund that is doing very difficult and strange investments.

他们受益于两件事。

They benefit from two things.

其一是他们将拥有独特的品牌。

One is they're gonna have a unique brand.

没有其他人在做同样的事。

There's nobody else doing that.

所以大家都知道要找他们。

So everybody knows to go to them.

其二，他们会押注那些在大多数人看来是疯狂的投资项目，但少数天才般的异类项目将带来巨大回报，因为这些是非共识投资。

And second, they're going to bet on the kinds of things where the vast majority of their investment are going to be looked upon as mad investments, but the few genius outliers should return huge returns because they're nonconsensus investments.

同样地，Founders Fund和史蒂夫·尤尔韦松通过敢于在所有人之前资助古怪项目来建立品牌。

Similarly, Founders Fund and Steve Jervisin build their brands on being willing to fund weird things long before anybody else.

每笔交易中，你可以允许它存在一个致命缺陷——一个会让传统风投望而却步的借口。

With every deal, you can give it one fatal flaw, one thing that some established traditional venture capitalists will look at and use that as excuse to not fund the deal.

但如果缺陷不止一个，那就需要警惕了。

But if there's more than one, then you have to worry.

初创企业因创新而获得回报。

Startups are rewarded for innovating on something new.

如果他们试图在已有且运作良好的事物上创新，比如团队结构或创始人心态这类方面，就只是在额外承担风险。

If they're trying to innovate on things that already exist and work, such as team structure or founder mentality or those kinds of things, they're just taking an additional risk.

你需要运用判断力，分辨哪些规则可以打破，哪些必须遵守。

You have to use your judgment to figure out where they can break the rules and where they have to follow the rules.

一个循规蹈矩的初创企业很难引人注目。

A start up that follows all the rules is unlikely to be interesting.

一个打破所有规则的初创公司将一事无成，因为他们需要从零开始重新发明一切。

A startup who breaks all the rules is not gonna get anywhere because they have to spend time reinventing everything from scratch.

优步刚出现时显得很怪异，因为当时风投机构从不投资线下产业。

Uber, when it first came along, was strange because at the time, VCs did not invest in offline industries.

它被视为出租车行业。

It was considered the taxi business.

是的。

Yes.

虽然有个应用将所有环节串联起来，但看起来应用只占其中的5%。

There's an app stitching it all together, but looks like the app is 5% of it.

95%的部分是人们在车里四处行驶。

95% of it is people in cars driving around.

他们当时的判断是正确的。

And they were correct.

但问题在于，应用所有者能通过这种杠杆效应积累多少优势，又能通过创造新产品、吸引新用户和提供便利性，借助应用将市场扩大多少。

But the question is how much that leverage can accrue to the person who owns the app and how much they can expand the market because of the app by creating new products and bringing on new users and creating convenience.

谷歌当时显得很怪异，因为在它出现时，所有人都认为搜索引擎大战已经决出胜负。

Google was strange because everyone thought the search wars had already been won by the time Google showed up.

真正重要的是理解技术，明白哪些规则可以打破。

It really helps to understand technology, to understand which rules to break.

对投资者而言，最理想的情况是当某人带着新技术出现时，这项技术对其他人来说太难评估或理解。

The best position to be in as an investor is when somebody shows up and the technology is too difficult for other people to calibrate or understand.

因此他们会选择放弃，认为这项技术不可行，而你凭借足够的技术洞察力知道它其实是可行的。

So therefore, they pass on it because they don't think the technology is feasible, but you have enough technical insight that you know that it is feasible.

你只需要确保能将其推进到对所有人都显而易见的程度。

Then you just have to make sure that you can get it funded to the point where it's obvious to everybody.

其价值在于打破一个你明知并非真正需要遵守、但他人却认为必须遵守的规则。

The value there comes in breaking a rule that you know is not really a rule to be broken, but everybody else thinks it is.

人们很容易高估自己的判断力。

It's very easy to overestimate your own judgment.

坦然承认'我不知道'是完全没问题的。

It's perfectly okay to say I don't know.

大多数情况下，你的回答都应该是'我不知道'。

Most of the times, your answer should be I don't know.

只有极少数情况下你才应该说'我有把握'。

There's only a few times where you should say I have conviction.

即便在这些情况下，你也要非常谨慎地把握自己的确信程度。

And even there, you wanna be very careful about how much conviction you have.

在种子阶段，如果你对某家公司投入大笔资金而对另一家投入很少，这就引出一个问题：你是真的对前者有把握，还是仅仅因为能接触到某个交易才投入更多资金？

At the seed stage, if you are putting a lot of money into one company and very little into another company, that begs the question, do you really have conviction in the one or do you just have a lot of access in one deal and therefore you're putting in more capital there?

通常来说，交易质量越高，你能接触到的机会反而越少。

Generally, the better the deal, less access you're going to have.

如果你最终将大量资金投入少数交易，而对其余多数交易只投入少量资金，你会发现赢家往往不成比例地来自那些投入很少的交易，这会拖累你的投资组合回报。

If you end up putting a lot of money into a few deals and then very little money into many other deals, you'll find that your winners tend to come disproportionately out of the deals where you have very little money, which hurts your portfolio return.

一旦形成确信，就要设法在该交易中达到你的标准投资额度。

Once you have conviction, always try to get your standard bite size into that deal.

如果某个交易给你留有过大空间，这意味着你要么应该在其他交易中投入更多，要么应该减少当前投入，要么应该通过更低估值获得补偿——因为你正在释放信号，而公司将利用这个信号来筹集大部分资金。

If a deal has too much space for you, then that either means you should be investing more in the other deals or you should be investing less in this one, or you should be getting rewarded through a lower valuation because you're creating the signal than the company is actually going to use to raise the bulk of the money.

在这个行业里，追逐热门市场的人都会死得很惨。

Anyone in this business who's chasing hot markets gets killed.

曾几何时，消费者社交就是那个热门市场。

There was a time when consumer social was the hot market.

如果你在那个市场火热时开始投资种子阶段，等你的公司成熟时，那个市场已经结束了。

If you started investing in seed stage when that market was hot, by the time your company's matured, that market was done.

同理，当优步的模式变得清晰并开始获胜时，如果你投资那些排名第5到50名的大量食品配送公司（确实有很多这样的公司），你就会血本无归。

Same way once it became obvious what Uber was and it was winning, if you started investing in the masses of food delivery companies that showed up numbers five through 50 and there were a lot of them, you lost your money.

如今，SaaS（软件即服务）已被证明是赚钱机器，非常热门。

Today, SaaS is the proven moneymaker and very hot.

让我们看看它会如何发展。

Let's see how it plays out.

可能五到十年后，当你现在的SaaS种子阶段投资进入市场时，你会发现回报率低得多。

Probably five, ten years from now when your current seed stage SaaS investments hit the market, you'll find the returns are a lot lower.

最好是在一个市场的初期进入，而不是末期。

It's good to be at the beginning of a market, not the tail end of a market.

等到有相关会议召开、TechCrunch开始报道时，可能就有点晚了。

By the time there are conferences about it and TechCrunch is writing about it, it's probably a little late.

加密货币也是如此。

Same with crypto.

如果你在2017年入场，实际上已经是市场的尾声了。

If you got in in 2017, you were actually the tail end of the market.

这个市场的早期阶段是在2009年到2015年。

The early side of the market was in 2009 to 2015.

一个常见的陷阱，尤其对前创业者而言，就是你会审视一家公司，却不会真正倾听创始人的推介。

One common trap, especially for former entrepreneurs, is you'll look at a company, you won't really listen to the founder pitching it.

相反，你会幻想着自己能用这家公司做成的所有事情。

Rather you'll be fantasizing about all the things that you could do with this company.

然后你会痛苦地学到：不，实际上运营公司的不是你，而是那位创业者在运营公司。

And you'll be taught the painful lesson that no, it's actually not you who's running the company, it's the entrepreneur running the company.

关键是要非常仔细地倾听，并相信创始人所说的和他们想做的事，不要陷入'会有别人来运营公司'的幻想中。

It's important to listen very carefully and take the founder at their word as to what they're saying and what they want to do and not get caught up in this idea that somebody else is going to run the company.

这与价值投资完全背道而驰。

This is the exact opposite of value investing.

巴菲特说，要投资连傻瓜都能经营的公司，因为最终总会有傻瓜来经营它。

Buffett says, invest in a company that even a fool can run because eventually a fool will run the company.

但初创企业并非如此。

That's not the case with startups.

几乎所有价值创造都发生在创始人深度参与公司运营的阶段。

Almost all the value creation happens while the founder is intimately involved in most of these companies.

所以本质上你是在押注创始人。

So you're betting on the founder.

如果你投资了一个并不看好的创始人，只是看好市场或产品，这个创始人往往会搞砸公司，或者在你投资后很快会出现拥有更优秀创始人的竞争对手。

If you bet on a founder that you're not that excited about with a market or product that you are excited about, the founder will often fumble the company or often you will have just invested in this company and then a competitor will come along with a much better founder.

这时你就会被排除在外——要么无法投资新公司，要么新创始人根本不愿与你交谈，因为他们知道你投资了竞争对手。

And now you're blocked out or conflicted out from investing in the new company or the new founder doesn't even wanna talk to you because they know you invested in the competitor.

培养判断力有多种途径。

There are multiple ways to build judgment.

那种历久弥新的判断力、优秀的决策能力以及对人的准确评估，很大程度上源于经验积累或阅读那些横跨科学、商业哲学领域的伟大著作，这些书籍揭示了顶尖智者的思维方式，帮助构建所谓的思维模型，如微观经济学、博弈论等。

The timeless kind of judgment, good decision making and sizing people up, a lot of that comes through experience or reading great works and books that intersect science, business philosophy and cover how very smart people think, building up so called mental models, microeconomics, game theory, etcetera.

在特定领域内，可以构建具有时效性的专业知识体系。

Within a field, can build specific knowledge that's timely.

实现这一目标的途径就是深入该领域，尽可能快速地全面学习。

The way to do that is to dive into that field and learn everything as quickly as possible.

仅靠阅读TechCrunch或彭博新闻，你永远无法成为顶尖的科技投资人。

You're not going to become a great tech investor by reading TechCrunch or Bloomberg News.

你必须追本溯源，而源头往往就是那些学术研究论文。

You're gonna have to go to the source and the source is often research papers.

你必须真正享受学习科学技术的过程本身。

You have to genuinely enjoy the act of learning science and technology.

技术是科学的应用，因此你应该毫不犹豫地研读科学论文，温习数学知识，并确保理解科学期刊中的前沿动态。

Technology is applied science, so you shouldn't hesitate to read scientific papers, brush up on your mathematics, and make sure you understand what's going on in the scientific journals.

同理，你可以从投资该领域最杰出的科学家入手——即使他们未必直接为你创造财富，但这些人会为你进行专业尽调，或许可以聘他们为基金顾问，给予少量股份，或在其具备条件时允许共同投资。

Similarly, you can start out by investing in the smartest scientists in the space, knowing that even if they don't necessarily make you money, these are the people that will perform due diligence for you and perhaps you'll make them advisors to your fund or give them a small piece or let them co invest if they have the means.

他们实际上会为你验证和校准项目，同时也会将最优秀的科学家引荐给你。

They'll actually validate and calibrate things for you, and they will also send the best scientists your way.

例如早期投资加密货币公司时，我与Zcash创始人祖科·威尔科克斯·赫恩、Filecoin创始人胡安·贝内特、Blockstack创始人瑞安·谢和穆尼布·阿里都建立了友谊。

For example, early on when I was investing into cryptocurrency companies, I became friends with Zucco Wilcox Hearn who started Zcash and Juan Benet started Filecoin and Ryan Shay and Muneeb Ali who started Blockstack.

还有埃利·本·萨松、安德鲁·米勒，以及BitTorrent的创造者布拉姆·科恩。

And also Eli Ben Sassoon and Andrew Miller, Bram Cohen, creator of BitTorrent.

这些人成了我筛选和验证交易时最信赖的智囊团。

These became my go to people for vetting and validating deals.

他们会告诉我哪些技术是真实的，哪些不是，哪些科学家可信，哪些不可信。

They would tell me which technologies were real and which ones weren't, which scientists were credible and which ones weren't.

身边围绕优秀的科技人才和科学家是一种秘密武器，因为你能通过他们的关系网络获得推荐。

Being surrounded by good technologists and scientists is a secret weapon because you'll get referred in through their networks.

而且这些人通常都很实在。

And these people tend to be no bullshit.

他们会直截了当地告诉你他们对新技术的看法。

They'll tell you exactly what they think of a new technology.

你确实需要运用自己的判断力来校准，当他们过于消极或出于嫉妒时——毕竟这是人性使然。

You do have to use your own judgment to calibrate when they are being unnecessarily negative or when they're being jealous because it's just human nature.

但通常技术型人才往往极其客观，因为他们习惯于与现实世界和科学结果打交道，而不太受其他人主观因素的影响。

But usually very technical people tend to be extremely objective because they're used to corresponding with the real world and scientific results and not necessarily with other people who are more influenced by subjectivity.

如果你能找到一群极其诚实且杰出的科学家和技术专家建立联系，这将成为你投资生涯中的秘密武器。

If you can find a group of painfully honest and distinguished scientists and technologists to connect with, that will be a secret weapon throughout your investing career.

我们何不拆解判断力这个概念，谈谈它如何应用于投资团队评估、产品与市场分析、观察他们的市场表现，以及评估交易中的社会认同度。

Why don't we break down judgment and talk about how it applies to investing in teams, evaluating the product and the market, looking at their traction and also evaluating any social proof around the deal.

因此我们将判断力分解为团队、产品与市场、市场表现和社会认同四个维度。

So we are going to break up judgment into team, product and market, traction and social proof.

这是个科技行业，你要投资的是技术团队。

This is a technology business and you want to be investing in technology teams.

这意味着每个优秀团队的核心创始成员中，极有可能有一位出色的技术专家。

That means every great team is highly likely to have a great technologist as part of the core founding team.

即使不是最重要的成员，这个人也必须获得充分报酬和激励，并且其姓名和责任需与项目紧密关联。

If not as the most important member, that person has to be sufficiently compensated and motivated and has to have their name and accountability involved in the project.

如果团队中没有技术骨干，要么你投资的不是科技公司，要么其技术职能已外包且不被视为核心——这不仅是黄牌警告，更是红牌警报。

If that strong technical person isn't there, either you're not investing in a tech business or that function has been outsourced and the company doesn't consider it core, which is not just a yellow flag, it is a red flag.

并非说投资非科技企业不赚钱，像Dollar Shave Club这类项目就很成功，但我不认为它们属于科技公司范畴。

It's not to say you can't make money investing in non tech businesses, things like Dollar Shave Club, but I don't consider these to be technology companies.

非科技领域同样存在大量优质投资机会。

There are plenty of great non technology investments.

Chipotle就是非科技领域投资的典范，不过我们现在讨论的重点不在此处。

Chipotle is an example of a great non technology investment, but that's not what we're talking about here.

因此你应该寻找拥有卓越技术团队的项目。

So you want to invest in great technical teams.

创始团队中非技术背景的成员必须具备超强的销售能力。

People who aren't highly technical but on the founding team should be incredibly good at selling.

如果你不参与产品构建，就必须擅长销售。

If you're not building something, you're selling it.

而且销售对象未必是终端用户——虽然这种情况最常见。

And you're not necessarily selling the product to the end users, although that's the common case.

你还需要向投资者推销以筹集资金，并向潜在员工推销以招募人才。

You're also selling to investors to raise money and you're selling to potential employees to recruit them.

所以核心就是两大能力：构建与销售。

So there's building and there's selling.

还有第三种极具价值的人才类型——社群构建者。

There is a potential third kind of character who can be incredibly useful, and that is a community builder.

但本质上，社群构建者其实也是销售者的一种。

But a community builder is actually just a seller.

他们擅长批量销售而非一对一销售。

They're good at mass sales instead of one on one sales.

优秀的社群构建者极其罕见。

Great community builders are incredibly rare.

他们可能是当前最稀缺的人才。

They're probably the rarest thing right now.

这类人杠杆效应极高，但极难寻觅。

They're very high leverage, but they're extremely difficult to find.

人人都自称擅长此道，但关键要看实际成果。

Everyone claims that they're good at it, but you wanna see the results.

若他们尚未构建过优秀社群，便无从证明其社群建设能力。

If they haven't already built a great community, then you have no evidence that they are a great community builder.

我采用沃伦·巴菲特的三重标准筛选合作伙伴：

I use the Warren Buffett three part test of who you want to work with.

高能量、高智商、高诚信。

High energy, high intelligence, and high integrity.

高能量是基础条件。

High energy is obvious.

必须全力以赴，因为初创企业是商界的奥林匹克。

You have to work hard because startups are the Olympics of business.

你是在与全球最顶尖的对手竞争。

You're competing against the best in the world.

头等奖将赢得凯迪拉克埃尔多拉多。

First prize gets a Cadillac Eldorado.

套用《拜金一族》的台词：二等奖得主获得牛排刀，而第三名则被解雇。

Second prize gets the steak knives, and third place gets fired, to paraphrase Glengarry Glen Ross.

如果你想获胜，就需要团队成员全力以赴，这包括努力工作。

And if you're going to win, you need people who are putting in everything and that includes working hard.

推特上有种流行说法，认为朝九晚五就是工作与生活的平衡。

There's this meme on Twitter that you should just work nine to five all the time and that's work life balance.

这完全没问题。

That's perfectly fine.

不是每个人都该在工作中拼命，但我要说，你既不该妄想成为奥运选手，也不该创办赢家通吃的科技初创企业。

Not everybody should kill themselves at work, but I would argue that you should not be an Olympic athlete nor should you be a founder of a winner take all technology startup.

远离那些道德表演家和地位追逐者，要明白创业就意味着拼命工作。

Avoid the virtue signers and status seekers and realize that if you're doing a startup, you're gonna have to work your tail off.

你核心团队的每个成员也都必须全力以赴。

And everyone around you in that core team is going to have to work their tails off.

你需要高智商人才，因为智力不仅关乎宏观判断。

You need very high intelligence people because intelligence isn't just about broad judgment.

它更体现在每一个瞬间的决断力上。

It's about moment to moment judgment.

如果决策者具备高智商，他们就能做出正确决定。

If they're making decisions and they're high intellect, then they'll make the right decisions.

你必须对智力水平设立高标准。

And you have to have a high bar for intelligence.

你要做个挑剔的人。

You wanna be a snob.

不要投资那些你认为智力水平不如你的人。

Don't invest in people that you don't think are in your intellectual caliber.

否则，你就是在向下投资、向下交谈、向下思考。

Otherwise, you're investing down, talking down, thinking down.

你选错了人。

You're picking the wrong people.

高度诚信至关重要，因为如果没有诚信，你面对的就是一个聪明勤奋的骗子，能轻易欺骗你。

High integrity is critical because if you don't have that, then what you have is a smart and hardworking crook who can easily cheat you.

在这个行业里，被骗的方式数不胜数。

And there's so many ways to get cheated in this business.

话虽如此，诚信是需要很长时间才能看清的品质。

That said, integrity is something that takes a long time to figure out.

除非你曾与某人长期共事，否则很难判断谁诚信度高——而对大多数创始人你都没有这种了解机会。

It's very hard to tell who is high integrity and who isn't, unless you've worked with them a lot before, which you will not have for most founders.

但你可以观察他们当下如何对待身边的人。

But you can see how they treat the other people around them right now.

你可以看他们如何对待其他潜在投资人。

You can see how they treat other prospective investors.

你可以了解他们对联合创始人和员工的看法。

You can see how they think about their co founders and their employees.

已经开始谋取私利的人，终有一天会背叛你。

Someone who is already self dealing is going to eventually cross you.

他们不一定要做老好人，因为友善是最容易伪装的信号。

They don't necessarily need to be nice people because niceness is a signal that's easily faked.

许多技术高手往往明白这一点，因此他们不会过分强调友善。

A lot of highly technical people tend to know that and so they don't overemphasize niceness.

友善无处不在。

Niceness is everywhere.

它作为筛选标准还不够。

It's not enough of a filter.

它的重要性在于，你可能不想与不友善的人共事，因为那样会减少乐趣。

It is important in the sense that maybe you don't want to work with somebody who's not nice because it's just less enjoyable.

但这个行业里有很多不友善却依然成功的人。

But there are plenty of people in this business who are not nice and have been successful.

你真正需要的是高度正直。

High integrity is what you want.

正直意味着拥有内在的道德准则并践行它，保持可靠与诚实。

Integrity means having some sort of an internal moral code of ethics and living up to it, being reliable and being honest.

而友善往往只是礼貌，或是在没有实际后果或风险很低时，发出看似高度正直的表面信号。

Whereas niceness is often just politeness or sending off small signals of being high integrity when there's no actual consequences or when the stakes are very low.

正直会在高风险时刻经受考验。

Integrity gets tested when the stakes are high.

风险投资圈有个流行观点，认为优秀的创始人应该具备可塑性。

There's this meme among venture capitalists that a good founder should be coachable.

我认为这是业余风投的刻板印象。

I think this is a meme among amateur venture capitalists.

他们过度依赖自身能力，总认为自己正确而别人错误。

They're relying too much on their own abilities because they think they're right and the other person's wrong.

他们还过分依赖短期内可以改变人的这种想法。

And they're also relying too much on this idea that people can be changed in the short term.

真正优秀的创始人其实并不那么容易被指导。

Great founders are actually not that coachable.

他们会听取大量建议，但真正采纳的却寥寥无几。

They listen to lots and lots of advice, but they actually follow very little of it.

大多数杰出企业家都有自己内在的指南针。

Most great entrepreneurs have their own internal compass.

因此我认为'可指导性'是一个被高估的指标。

So I believe that coachability is an overrated metric.

天使投资人刚开始投资时的默认状态是倾向严苛，尤其是投入大量自有资金时。

The default scenario for an angel when they start investing is that they tend to be on the tough side, especially when it's their own money involved and they're investing a lot of it.

一般来说，你不想把资金投入到任何会让你因亏损而耿耿于怀的项目中。

Generally, you don't wanna put in money into any deal that you will care about if you lose it.

如果你在某笔投资中投入过多资金，亏损会让你寝食难安，那么在情况恶化时就会导致你对创始人采取不当行为。

If you have so much money in a deal that it will really bother you if you lose it, it will cause you to engage in bad behavior with the founder if things get rough.