【精译求精系列】华尔街太傅：风投，一个定价，而非估值的游戏（上）

编者按：中国投资者对巴菲特以及其经典的投资心得耳熟能详。但实际上，这个世界仍然有大量可以与巴菲特比肩的投资大师精心撰写的投资心得，但多以英文或者其他语言撰写，国内几乎没有介绍。格隆汇特意组织力量制作《精译求精系列》，力求将这些含金量十足的大师心得，呈现在广大会员眼前，体现他们的价值，为大家的投资，保驾护航。

本文的作者是纽约大学金融系教授Aswath Damodaran，号称“华尔街太傅”，目前在NYU的商学院教授估值课程，是华尔街最热门的教授之一，为华尔街培养了大量精英。在本文，Aswath Damodaran主要讨论了风投行业的本质：一个关于定价，而非估值的游戏。

Venture capitalists (VCs) don’t value companies, they price them! Before you explode, implode or respond with righteous indignation, this is not a critique of what venture capitalists do, but a recognition of reality. In fact, not only is pricing exactly what you should expect from VCs but it lies at the heart of what separates the elite from the average venture capitalist.

风投公司为公司定价，而不是估值。在你们义愤填膺的大开骂戒之前我要先说一句，我并不是在批判风投专家的所作所为，我只是在帮你们认清现实。实际上，为公司定价这种能力不止是我们从风投资本家身上应该看到的品质，还是将一般的风投资本家和优秀的风投资本家区别开来的重要因素。

I was reminded of this when I read a response from Scott Kupor of Andreessen Horowitz, to a Wall Street Journal article about Andreessen, that suggested that the returns earned by the firm on its funds were not as good as those earned at other elite funds. While Scott’s intent was to show that the Wall Street Journal reporter erred in trusting total returns as a measure of VC performance, I think that he, perhaps unintentionally, opened a Pandora’s box when he talked about how VCs attach numbers to companies and how these numbers get updated, and how we (investors, founders and VCs) should read them, as a consequence.

我还是读到霍洛维次基金的Scott Kupor回复华尔街日报一篇关于霍洛维茨的文章时才想起来这事儿的，文章里说公司内部基金的盈利远不如公司投资的其他优秀基金好。尽管Scott的初衷是想说华尔街日报的记者错误的将基金回报率当做衡量风投资本家表现的标准，我认为他同时也无意的开启了一个潘多拉魔盒——当他谈到风投资本家是如何将数字和公司联系在一起并随时更新的时候，我们（投资者包括风投资本家）应该如何解读。

The WSJ versus the VC: A Recap

华尔街日报VS风投资本家：一个小回顾

Let’s start with the Wall Street Journal article that triggered the Kupor response. With the provocative title of “Andreessen Horowitz’s returns trail venture capital elite”, it had all the ingredients for click bait, since a big name (Andreessen Horowitz) failing (“trail venture capital elite”) is always going to attract attention.

我们先从激起Kupor反击的华尔街日报那篇文章开始说起吧。文章起了一个极具煽动性的标题：“霍洛维次基金回报率落后于风投资本家”，说它是标题党来骗取流量毫不夸张，因为具备了标题党的所有特征——一个家喻户晓的名字（霍洛维次基金）的失败（落后于风投资本家）总是能吸引眼球。

I must confess that I fell for the bait and read the article and walked away unimpressed. In effect, Rolfe Winkler, the Journal reporter, took the three VC funds run by Andreessen and computed an IRR based upon the realized and unrealized gains at these funds. I have reproduced his graph below.

我也得承认我上了钩，结果却发现文章索然无味。实际上，日报记者Rolfe Winkler是选取了三只霍洛维次基金管理的风投基金然后依据已实现和未实现利润算了一个内部资本回报率。

While the title of the story is technically correct, I am not sure that there is much of a story here. Even if you take the Journal’s estimates of returns at face value, if I were an investor in any of the three Andreessen funds, I would not be complaining about annual returns of 25%-42%, depending on the fund that I invested in. Arguing that I could have done better by investing in a fund in the top 5% of the VC universe would be the equivalent of claiming that Kevin Durant did not having a good NBA season last year, because Lebron James and Stephan Curry had better seasons.

尽管文章的标题起的没错，但是我不确定是不是真的有故事可讲。即使就拿记者估算出来的回报的票面价值来说，要是我投资了这三个基金的任意一个，面对25%-42%（看我投的是哪个了）的年回报率我可抱怨不出来。在风投界争论我本来可以投个更好的位于前5%的基金就相当于在篮球界谴责凯文·杜兰特去年打得不好是因为勒布朗·詹姆斯和斯蒂芬·库里打得比他好一样。

In the hyper-competitive business of venture capital, though, the article must have drawn blood, since it drew Scott Kupor's attention and a response. Scott focused attention specifically on what he believed was the weakest link in the Journal article, the combining of realized and unrealized gains to estimate an internal rate of return. 

在风投这种高度竞争的行业里，这篇文章确实让人恼火，毕竟它引起了Scott Kupor的注意并且激起了他的反击。Scott主要攻击的点是他认为整篇文章最站不住脚的地方，也就是将已实现和未实现利润合并起来算内部回报率。

Unlike investments in public equities, where the unrealized returns are based upon observed market prices for traded stocks and can be converted to realized returns relatively painlessly, Scott noted that unrealized returns at venture capital funds are based upon estimates and that these estimates are themselves based upon opaque VC investments in other companies in the space and not easily monetized. 

和投资上市公司不同的一点是，上市公司的未实现利润是通过检测市场上已交易股票的价格来预测的，同时也可以毫不费力的将未实现利润转换成已实现利润，Scott指出风投公司的未实现利润尽管也是预测出来的，但根据的却是不对外公开的风投公司在其他公司的投资，而且很难套现。

Implicitly, he seemed to be saying that not only are unrealized returns at VC funds subject to estimation error, but also to bias, and should thus be viewed as softer than realized returns. I agree, though I think it is disingenuous to go on to argue that unrealized returns should not be considered when evaluating venture capital performance, since VCs seem to have qualms about using them in sales pitches when they serve their purpose.

他还含蓄的指出风投基金的未实现利润不仅会出现预估误差，还会受到偏见的影响，因此未实现利润不应该看得和已实现利润一样重要。即使我认为在衡量风投资本家表现的时候不算未实现利润还挺狡猾的，但是我还是同意他说的这一点，因为风投资本家们自己在要实现某种目的的时候使用未实现利润来推销都会觉得良心不安。

The VC Game

风投游戏

The Kupor response has been picked in the VC space, with some commenters augmenting legitimate points about return measurement but many more using the WSJ article to restate their view that non-VC people should stop opining about the VC business, because they don’t understand how it works. 

Kupor的回应被选中放在了VC space上（类似于我们的论坛贴吧），其中有些评论进一步阐述了文章里面关于回报计算方法合理的部分，但是更多的是借助华尔街日报这篇文章来重申他们的观点，他们认为不是风投界的人就趁早别瞎猜了，因为他们根本就不知道风投这个行业到底是怎么运作的。

Having been on the receiving end of this critique at times in the past, you would think I would know better than to butt in, but I just can’t help myself. I may not be qualified to talk about the inner workings of the venture capital business, but I do believe that I am on firmer ground on the specific topic of how VCs attach numbers to the companies that they invest in.

以前时不时就会收到类似的社评，你们也知道的我一般不插手，但是这次我实在控制不住啊。可能我还不够格去插嘴风投行业的内部运作，但是我相信我在刚刚提到的关于风投资本家们是如何将数字与他们所投资的公司联系在一起这个话题上还是非常专业的。

VCs price businesses, not value them!

风投资本家为企业定价，而不是估值！

I have made the distinction between value and price so many times before that I sound like a broken record, but I will make it again. You can value an asset, based upon its fundamentals (cash flows, growth and risk) or price it, based upon what others are paying for similar assets, and the two can yield different numbers.

为了防止我这段话听上去没头没尾我要再次重申我之前已经说过很多次估值和定价的区别了，但是在这里我再说一次。你可以根据基本面（现金流、增长和风险）给资产估值，或者根据别人为其他类似资产支付的钱来给资产定价，往往这两种方法算出来的数字是不一样的。

In public investing, I have argued that this plays out in whether you choose to play the value game (invest in assets where the price < value and hope that the market corrects) or the pricing game (where you trade assets, buying at a lower price and hoping to sell at a higher).  

在投资中，我已经说过这个市场就是看你想玩哪种了。估值，就是你投资给被低估的资产并希望有一天市场会修正它这个错误；定价，则是资产的买卖，你低价买入，希望以一个高价再卖出。

I would be glad to be offered evidence to the contrary but based upon the many VC "valuations" that I have seen, VCs almost always play the pricing game, when attaching numbers to companies, and there are four ways in which they seem to do it:

我倒是很希望我错了，但是据我观察过的很多风投公司所谓的“估值”，他们干的其实都是定价，就是给公司一个具体的数值。定价的方法不外乎以下四种：

1.Recent pricing of the same company: In the most limited version of this game, a prospective or existing investor in a private business looks at what investors in the most recent prior round have priced the company to gauge whether they are getting a reasonable price. Thus, for an Uber, this would imply that a pricing close to the $62.5 billion that the Saudi Sovereign fund priced the company at, when it invested $3.5 billion in June 2016, will become your benchmark for a reasonable price, if you are investing close to that date. 

1、该公司最近的定价：最保守的过程是，私企里面想要投资或者已经开始投资的人会翻翻最近这个公司的报价，根据这个价格来判断他们给的数值是否合理。因此，我们就拿优步来举例，如果Saudi Sovereign基金在2016年6月的时候投了35个亿给优步，那么这就意味着优步的价格是接近Saudi Sovereign基金之前给出的625亿的，那么要是你也想在这个时间投资，这个价钱就是你的参考基准。

The dangers in doing this are numerous and include not only the possibility of a pricing mistake (a new investor who over or under prices the company) spiraling up and down the chain, but also the problems with extrapolating to the value of a company from a VC investment in it.

这样做的风险太多了，不仅包括定价错误（新手投资者总会误判公司的价格）引发的一系列后果，还包括有资金投入的风投公司对该公司估值不断扩张引起的很多问题。

2.Pricing of “similar” private companies: In a slightly more expanded version of this process, you would look at what investors are paying for similar companies in the “same space” (with all of the subjective judgments of what comprises “similar” and “same space”), scale this price to revenues, or lacking that, a common metric for that space, and price your company. 

2、给类似的未上市企业定价： 再心大一点整个过程就是， 看看投资者给在“同行业”中类似的公司多少钱（同行业和类似公司全靠自己主观判断），然后把这个价钱跟营收比较一下，如果占不到数据的话，就直接给该行业统一度量一下，来给自己想投的公司定价。

Staying in the ride sharing space, you could price Lyft, based upon the most recent Uber transaction, by scaling the pricing of the company to its revenues (relative to Uber) or to rides or number of cities served.

我们就还是来看拼车行业吧（就是我们说的网约车），根据最近一笔优步的交易我们来给Lyft定一下价，先看看优步的价格和公司营收的比例是多少，或者价格和车辆总数的比例，再或者看看价格和所服务城市的比例。

3.Pricing of public companies, with post-value adjustments: In the rare cases where a private business has enough operating substance today, in the form of revenues or even earnings, in a space where there are public companies, you could use the pricing of public companies as your basis for pricing private businesses. 

3、用估值之后调整过的数值来给上市企业定价： 在某些行业里，有的未上市企业可能会操纵营收甚至利润，如果该行业有上市公司，你就可以根据上市公司的价格来给没上市的定价。

Thus, if your private business is in the gaming business and has $100 million in revenues and publicly traded companies in that business trade at 2.5 times revenues, your estimated value would be $250 million. That value, though, assumes that you are liquid (as publicly companies tend to be) and held by investors who can spread their risks (across portfolios). Consequently, a discount for lack of liquidity and perhaps diversification is applied, though the magnitude (20%, 30% or more) is one of the tougher numbers to estimate and justify in practice.

因此，如果你想投资的还没上市的企业营收是1亿美金，同行业里上市公司的营收大约是它的2.5倍，那么这家没上市的价格就是2.5亿。这个估值还是假设你的现金流动性强（一般上市公司都这样）同时投资者还可以分散风险（通过调整自己的投资组合）。这样就会导致一旦流动性没那么强或者情况复杂点这个数字就会大打折扣，而且企业的体量既在预测中很难估算，又在实际中很难证明。

4.Forward pricing: The problem with young start-ups is that operating metrics (even raw ones like riders, users or downloads) are often either non-existent or too small to be base a pricing. To get numbers of any substance, you often have to forecast out the metrics two, three or five years out and then apply a pricing multiple to these numbers. , it can be revenues, and the pricing multiple can be obtained not just from private transactions but from the public market (by looking at companies that have gone public). 

4、远期股价：对于新手来说比较棘手的一点就是设置指标（即使是像乘客、用户、下载量这样的原始数据也很难），要么是找不到要么就是对于定价来说数值还太小无法作为依据。想要给任何东西定价，你得先预测出未来两年三年甚至是五年之后的情况然后再乘以价格收益倍数，我们可以拿营收来做指标，最后的价格收益倍数不仅要包括场外交易还要考虑交易市场中的各种因素（参考已经上市的公司）。

That forward value has to be brought back to today and to do so, venture capitalists use a target rate of return. While this target rate of return plays the same mechanical role that a discount rate in a DCF does, that is where the resemblance ends.

这种远期估值实际上应该放在现在使用，风投资本家管这个叫做目标回报率。目标回报率和现金流量贴现法一样是起到一个比较机动的作用，然后就没有别的共同点了。

Unlike a discount rate, a number designed to incorporate the risk in the expected cash flows for a going concern, a target rate of return incorporates not just conventional going-concern risk but also survival risk (since many young companies don’t make it) and the fear of dilution (a logical consequence of the cash burn at young companies), while also playing role as a negotiating tool. 

跟贴现率不一样，贴现率中包括了衡量一个可以持续经营的企业在预期现金流中可能出现的风险的概率，目标回报率是不仅包括传统的以后持续经营的风险，还算上了企业现在存活的风险（这一点很多初创公司根本熬不过去）和对于稀释的恐惧（初创公司烧钱的后果），同时还扮演着谈判工具的作用。

At the time of a VC investment, the VC wants to push today’s pricing for the company lower, so that he or she can get a greater share of the equity for a given investment in the company. Subsequent to the investment, the VC will want the pricing to go higher for two reasons. First, it makes the unrealized returns on the VC portfolio a much more attractive number. 

在风投公司投资的时候，风投公司很喜欢给出一个很低的价格，于是之后他们就可以多分点股份。在接下来的投资中，他们就希望价格一路走高了，原因有两点。第一，这样他们投资组合里面的未实现收入这个数字会很漂亮。

Second, it also means that any subsequent equity capital raised will dilute the VC’s ownership stake less. If you reading this as a criticism of how venture capitalists attach numbers to companies, you are misreading it because I think that this is exactly what venture capitalists should be doing, given how success is measured in the business. 

第二点，这也意味着任何接下来的股权资本的提高都会稀释风投公司的所有权权益比率。如果你把本文当做一篇批评风投公司的文章就大错特错了，因为考虑到在这个行业中你如何衡量成功这个大前提，我认为给公司定价正是风投公司应该做的。

This is a business where success is measured less on the quality of the companies that you build (in terms of the cash flows and profits they generate) and more on the price you paid to get into the business and the price at which you exit this business, with that exit coming from either an IPO or a sale. Consequently, how much you are willing to pay for something becomes a process of judging what you will get when you exit and working backwards.

这个行业的成功不怎么看你这个公司的质量（就现金流和产生的利润而言），看得更多的是你进入这个行业花了多少钱、功成身退时又获得多少钱，当然IPO和卖掉公司都算退出。因此，你为一件东西想花多少钱就变成了判断当你不玩了和逆向操作的时候到底能拿到多少。

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