My Age of Investment

With the strong support of his big boss Xia Jingxing, Ricky was determined to do something big and started a vigorous restructuring within the Silicon Valley office of Vision Capital.

As the saying goes, a small boat is easy to turn around, and this principle also applies to the venture capital industry.

In addition, Ricky was also fast and resolute in getting things done. The next day he arranged to charter a small plane and bring more than a dozen members of the investment team, including legal affairs, data and finance, capital markets, public relations and marketing, and government relations. The post-investment support team of more than 20 people, including management, recruitment and other functional positions, were all transported to the sparsely populated Black Rock Desert of Nevada.

The whole company literally came together to explore the edge of the desert for three days.

Of course, we only spent the day exploring and building teams and activating the atmosphere. At night, the entire team lit a bonfire by the tent, sat around brainstorming, and discussed in depth the issue of fund restructuring.

Just as Xia Jingxing and Ricky expected, the young man with no qualifications was very excited, and was so overwhelmed by the happy gift package of "a chance to shoot once a year" proposed by the company that he almost lost his way.

Although they entered the company with the aura of Ivy League school + MBA, Ivy League school + top consulting/top investment bank, etc., they are the favored sons of the outside world and the future venture capital stars...

However, the reality is very shocking. They are just a screw in the fund. They look at hundreds of projects a year but have no investment decision-making power for any project.

If you want to enjoy the supreme glory of "hitting the mark", you must first gain qualifications, hone your abilities, and learn the most basic screening items.

Don’t be dissatisfied!

The entire venture capital industry has such a promotion rule. Although it is close to the money, no fund leader dares to hand over the money to a bunch of stupid young people who have never proven themselves to decide where to invest? How to vote?

After all, the core indicator for the survival of the fund is the rate of return and the trust of LP. No institution dares to joke about this.

Therefore, although young VC practitioners often claim to be the next John Doerr and the next Michael Moritz...

But they can only pretend to be in front of laymen. They themselves know very well how far they are from being a top investor. At the very least, they must first become a partner of the company and be qualified to join the investment committee to make decisions before they can talk about being a top investor. Investors strive for goals.

For example, being promoted to partner requires many years of hard work and a certain amount of merit.

For example, you must first upgrade from the lowest level analyst who is responsible for collecting data, organizing materials, and doing various chores to an investment manager. Only then can you be qualified to initially contact the project and learn from the VP vice president who leads the team to do the project. ability.

After being promoted to VP, even if you find a good project, you still have no investment decision-making power. The project needs to pass the investment committee.

This level is quite complicated and requires the investment committee bosses to have a high enough level to avoid making mistakes.

Destiny is not at all in the hands of the investment manager or vice president who recommends the project.

If God favors the project and the project is not killed by the investment committee bosses and is successfully invested, we have to pray that one or two of these projects will become star startups and IPO listings will create a dream return rate of dozens or hundreds of times.

If you really make it this far, even if you are well-known in the industry, you will be qualified to be a guest speaker at any venture capital conference, instead of just sitting in the audience like a follower.

At this time, various organizations will offer olive branches one after another. In order to retain talents, the company finally offers partner positions to attract outstanding young people to the top.

After mastering the investment decision-making power, the probability of passing the approval of one's own projects becomes higher. If one successively invests in several star startups, the leader will either retire and give way, or go out and start his own business.

Whether you stay in the company and take over the position of leader, or go out to found a sect, as long as you do well enough, you can become a new top investor.

Even if you are lucky enough and have a smooth journey, it will take more than ten or twenty years to complete the above steps and make the carp leap over the dragon's gate.

Envision Capital gives young team members an opportunity to be the masters of their own business, which is likely to change a young person's career development destiny and bring extremely considerable returns to the company.

For example, during Kuaishou's A and B rounds of financing, two investment managers from idg and dcm both gave ts.

But something went wrong during the project meeting. The idg internal investment committee did not pass it, but the dcm passed it.

There was an episode when the dcm investment committee voted. Because internal decision-making was too slow, Kuaishou was almost snatched away by Sequoia Capital with a bid of 1.5 times.

At the last moment, it was Su Hua who kept his word and chose DCM, which offered ts two days earlier even though the bid was low.

The completely different choices of the two institutions, idg and dcm, resulted in the returns of the two funds on Kuaishou. One was zero, and the other was tens of billions of dollars.

The young investment managers of the two funds handling the project have therefore embarked on completely different career development paths. One is unknown, and the other, Hu Boyu, founded his own fund xvc at a young age.

If there is a mechanism similar to Vision Capital within the IDG Fund, but the investment committee fails and the investment manager chooses to exercise the privilege, it may be a different story.

In short, the young people on the Silicon Valley team of Vision Capital all understand what kind of opportunity the company has given them and others. It may not be of much use, but it may change their career destiny.

Everyone is grateful for this and feels lucky to be part of Envision Capital. There are so few funds like our own in the venture capital industry that they are almost unique.

What is completely different from the reaction of young people is that several bigwigs on the investment committee have expressed varying degrees of concern about this proposal from their bosses.

Because the company's management is relatively flat, coupled with the special environment of the bonfire party, there are not as many taboos as in the office. Everyone opens up and offers suggestions, and there are also a lot of arguments and even quarrels.

After some discussions, the investment committee bosses put forward a more mature suggestion: to impose certain restrictions on privileges and only provide them to veteran employees who have worked for the company for more than one year.

It’s not that they deliberately set up obstacles for young people to come forward, but they are actually considering the issue from the perspective of the company’s interests.

If new employees have no experience in venture capital, even giving them privileges will not have much effect and will only increase costs.

After a year of systematic study, the rookies will at least have certain investment literacy, which can greatly improve the investment success rate and maximize the boss's purpose of cultivating talents and preventing missed projects.

Ricky thought this was a good suggestion and accepted it on the spot.

The young people in the team don't have much objection, because in the final analysis, the company is not doing charity. Giving them opportunities is to hope that they will be put to good use instead of wasted.

The post-investment support team also made suggestions: strengthen the review of privileged projects to avoid the transfer of interests and all malfeasance and corruption.

This is something that is very likely to happen. If all the projects submitted by an investment manager to the meeting this year were approved and there was no opportunity to use the privilege, wouldn’t it be a waste?

It's better to hook up with a company that can't get financing and earn some kickbacks.

Ricky happily adopted this suggestion put forward by the post-investment team, and at the same time, he also said something ugly at the beginning. Once abuse of privileges is discovered, he will be severely punished in accordance with the law and will never be tolerated.

In this way, one by one, one by one, a team of dozens of people brainstormed and put forward many useful suggestions around the scope of use, restrictions, review, etc. of privileges.