When the venture capital industry in China is almost impossible to catch fire again, John? John Doerr is here.
This tall, thin man, with a long and narrow face and intellectual temperament, is about 1.75 meters tall. At first glance, his appearance and language are not surprising. He always wears a dark blue tie. Wherever he goes, his right hand carries a huge bag with Google logo printed on it, weighing 50 pounds, while his left hand only carries a very ordinary plastic watch and two wristbands, each worth 1 USD. When he sat down, his speech was steady and concise-the legendary figure with excellent digital memory, when asked by Global Entrepreneur whether he remembered how many companies listed in recent years, only spit out one word: "No".
Believe it or not, it should be pointed out that Toure is probably the last person in the global venture capital community to talk about his achievements. Since 1980 joined the partner company KPCB, there is no second person in the venture capital circle who can consistently create good performance and always throw out star projects, while Bidour can do better at the same time. During the1980s, he made a series of investments around the microprocessor revolution, such as Compaq Computer Company, Sun Microsystems Company and Lotus Software Company. All these have played an important role in the personal computer revolution. /kloc-in the 1990s, he took the lead in investing in Netscape, which finally kicked off the Internet revolution. Since then, Toure has become the most tireless advocate in the network industry, and even greatly influenced former US Vice President Al? Gore. 1at the end of 990, he invested1250,000 dollars in an exquisite search engine. A few years later, this website named Google became popular all over the world, and Toure made a profit of nearly $4.4 billion.
Aside from the star effect of this series of landmark investments, Toure's investment has also created a series of figures for his KPCB partner company that are envied by all venture capital peers: in the past 33 years, KPCB has returned more than 654.38+07 billion US dollars to investors, with a total return rate of 29 times. In this industry, which is often called "sowing prayer", its performance is steady: the annual return rate of the fund from the seventh period to 1 1 period is 142%. In the past 30 years, it has made 475 investments, of which 167 companies have successfully listed and 166 have made mergers and acquisitions. According to the latest statistics, the total income of listed companies after their investment is 90 billion US dollars, with a total market value of 375 billion US dollars.
As a long-term core investor of KPCB, Toure has won enough praise-the living legend, the Michael of venture capital, Jordan and even the God of venture capital-but how he did all this is not clear. As a private equity company, KPCB rarely reports to the outside world. Although Toure will be interviewed by the media from time to time, most of the time, he just says a few words about an industry trend. He didn't even want to appear in the photo alone, so that 1998, Fortune magazine in the United States had to call all the partners of KPCB and many CEOs of its investment companies to report and shoot.
Not surprisingly, in an interview with Global Entrepreneur in China in early March, he gave an answer close to the truth on the topic of investment rules: "Find a good entrepreneur, position himself in the big market, have leading technology, and devote himself to building a great team-so that you can have a big and lasting career".
If you want to explore the root cause of Toure's investment miracle, you need to do two things: read his memory (in the next part of this article: the growth of a king of venture capital, you will see a more complete version of Toure's investment experience) and observe how he acted.
During his short stay in China, he met with 22 local entrepreneurs as a director of Google, and two heads of Google China, Kai-fu Lee and Zhou Shaoning (he quickly found the biggest key to Google's development in China: "It can't be interfered by headquarters like Yahoo and Amazon"). After only talking with you for half an hour, he has clearly expressed his investment intention to one of them.
On the other hand, his speech in Tsinghua University at 4pm on March 2nd really reflected his style: he started asking questions to the audience without even introducing himself. He can quickly simplify lengthy questions so that his colleagues can put them on the projection. When more than a dozen questions filled a screen, he began to answer one by one, still fast, concise and without any nonsense. "Come and ask some difficult questions, the kind that makes me embarrassed ..." Toure waved his long arm and challenged the audience-the magic of this seemingly university professor is that his every movement contains great vitality and high efficiency, which can inspire others in the shortest time.
Part I: Managers of Silicon Valley
"the hand of god"
"The future has happened, but it is not evenly distributed," Toure said. "The best way to predict the future is to create the future. If you can't create it, at least you can invest in it. "
This is a typical Toure statement. Optimism, self-confidence and, most importantly, the wisdom of others. The first half of this sentence is quoted from science fiction writer William? The second half of Gibson's novel is adapted from Allen, a famous scientist of Xerox. Kay's famous words-none of them were originally written by Toure, but Toure found the best way to express them.
"Better quotation" is almost a portrayal of Toure's work: he finds the best business idea through various means, and then exhausts various means to turn it into reality. It is for this reason that KPCB investors, including Toure, call themselves "risk assistants" instead of "venture capitalists".
The difference between "assistant" and "investor" lies in the depth of their roles: in other words, Toure provides more than just financial help.
Someone in Silicon Valley once summed up Toure's work like this: "He likes to play with the hand of God in the companies he invests in: he personally selects the CEO, suggests strategies to the board of directors, introduces the leaders of various companies, and leads their mergers and acquisitions and various transactions. He is considered to be a Bole who can identify all kinds of talents at the technical and operational levels and dig them out. "
Put all these jobs together, and you can understand that its identity is "half chairman and half CEO". Moreover, Toure has played this role not only in a certain company, but also in more than a dozen invested companies.
Moreover, every job he participated in was out of the ordinary. Countless entrepreneurs who have dealt with Toure recalled that when he wanted to dig a corner, he not only called the other party directly, but also established a good relationship with the other family. He will buy a plane ticket to your city as soon as possible so that you can't refuse to meet him. For those excellent potential partners, he will not only invite them to hold important positions in the companies they invest in, but also help them plan the possibility of long-term cooperation: let them know that even if they fail this time, their careers will not be ruined.
To make this "impossible task" come true, the first thing is Toure's efficiency: in the mid-1990s, the wave of online entrepreneurship made him cry that he was "short of time", which forced him to use five telephones, two pagers, two mobile phones and three computers at the same time. Now, he has a mobile phone and a PDA that can send and receive emails at any time, and he has no pager. It is even said that when skiing, he will carry a mobile phone in his snow hat. There are two laptops and two cameras in the 50 kg schoolbag he carries with him every day.
Secondly, he has a high degree of self-discipline: Toure has maintained a very high working intensity for many years. Under great pressure, he sometimes shivers, scratches his hair, bites his lips, stomps his feet, taps his fingers on the table, and even breaks a pencil like an electric shock, but he never loses control. In order not to waste time, Toure gave up all the "luxuries" in his life: he didn't like being flattered and didn't have much sense of humor. He wants to clear everything in front of him.
But fundamentally speaking, it is Toure's understanding of the nature of his work that enables him to handle such complicated work: if you equate it with investment in the capital market or deeply participate in the management of a company, it is a big mistake. Toure's practice can best illustrate that business is an art about people. Its successful or even unsuccessful experience can prove that business is not a simple strategy and implementation, but more like the release of imagination and human vitality. The philosophy that Toure believes in is "to be ambitious". His hardest work is to weave a huge network composed of brilliant minds and entrepreneurial spirit with his own strength, and bring the power of this network into full play.
Unlike most extremely low-key or slightly arrogant venture capitalists, Toure loves to communicate with people. One of his habits is to take two cameras with him and take pictures with everyone he meets. Most of the people he has worked with have become perennial partners: for example, Jim from Stanford, whom Toure met at 1980? In the next 20 years, three of the four companies founded by jim clark were invested by Toure. Even his biggest failed investment,1betting on the handwritten computer company Go at the end of 1980, has become an "epic failure" in the history of Silicon Valley, but most people who have experienced this huge failure have become an important force in KPCB series companies.
Because of this, you can't even hear any negative words about Toure in Silicon Valley. "Why would someone attack Toure?" Someone asked, "He is the one who makes everything happen!"
Network weavers
The actual effect of Toure's work is not only a group of brilliant listed companies, but also a concrete map of Silicon Valley.
Most of the companies it invests in will be carefully incorporated into KPCB's network. When most venture capital companies call their investment targets "portfolio" or "extended family", Toure has been calling the portfolio of KPCB "Keiretsu" since 1960s and 1980s, which is a Japanese word meaning cross-controlled company system, or to use the image in the famous movie "Spider Nest City".
As for why such a complex network should be established, Toure's explanation is straightforward: "It is very difficult to start an important new enterprise, so we should try our best to help entrepreneurs in all aspects." This is not hypocrisy. For a cooperative company that has to read 2,500 business plans, meet hundreds of entrepreneurial teams and finally make more than ten investments every year, it will be more difficult for Tours to work if they can't quickly use their skills at many different levels.
The most superficial effect is that in the first wave of the Internet, when most websites grow in isolation, all websites invested by KPCB drive each other's traffic and income through cooperation. For example, Excite paid Netscape $70 million in 1998 to get the right to provide a search engine for the other website. This helped it surpass its competitor Infoseek in terms of traffic and become a search engine second only to Yahoo. In addition, after investing in the drug website Drugstore, Toure also found Amazon, which has accumulated a lot of experience in e-commerce, to train it.
The greater value is that if you believe that there are not many geniuses in the world, the cost of repeatedly searching for new geniuses is bound to be extremely high. Therefore, KPCB has spent a lot of time to contact those talents who have proved themselves.
Over the years, KPCB has invited about 50 top entrepreneurs to participate in one of their part-time funds. This affiliated fund runs together with every fund in KPCB, and a few people who participate in it often get good returns. What really deserves attention is the list of people who have this fund: including Intel's Grove, several founders of Sunrise, and Steve of AOL. Keith and Robert. Pitman, Brian from Comcast? The founders of some companies, such as Roberts, Intuit, Netscape and Excite, have helped KPCB get such high returns ... that some people say that you can do a lot of things by calling this list once.
Even in recent years, within KPCB, Huilian has been replaced by "network"-Toure said that this is because Huilian is more like a complex structure that operates based on someone's strength, but the network has no real center-but its operation mode has not changed at all.
The next big thing
Every autumn, Toure and Bill? Joey has a discussion in Apsen: What great changes will take place in science, communication, society, computer and business in the next five to ten years?
This discussion seems vague, but it is enough to help Toure prepare for various opportunities. For example, 199 1, Joey said to Toure, "John, one day you will invest in a program written by a 20-year-old child, which will change the world." Toure immediately agreed. At that time, they didn't know that this program would be called a browser, but they thought it would be some kind of game software. But when 22-year-old Mark. Anderson and Netscape appeared in front of him, and he could immediately persuade other partners of the company to agree to make this investment.
Grasping the changing trend of each era is an important reason why Dü rr can flourish in the venture capital industry. Although people usually position him as a high-tech investor, in fact Toure has changed his identity many times. In the1980s, Toure and KPCB paid most attention to the technology with microprocessor as the core: from Compaq to Lotus software, from Sunrise Microsystems to AOL, and their success was the progress of basic science and technology. /kloc-in the 1990s, Toure turned his attention to digitalization, information technology and network applications. At the end of1990s, when everyone was crazy about the Internet, Toure valued the concept of "thin client": he thought it was a greater revolution than personal computers: PCs talked directly with servers without installing a large number of software on computers. The expectation that this browser can solve all problems is being realized by Google.
And in the past two years, Toure and Bill? Joey has extended his telescope to a broader future: they think that the most important trend at present is "urbanization". In the next 50 years, the world urban population will change from 2 billion to 6 billion, especially in China and India. This process is equivalent to adding one Manhattan every year, which will increase the global demand for cleaner and more efficient energy.
Even Bill in 2005? After Joey joined KPCB ("he improved the average IQ of each of our partners by 20 points", Toure joked), his main investment direction was not computer-related business, but green technology. So far, KPCB has invested in five companies, three of which are in the confidential stage.
In order to enter the field of green technology, KPCB has been preparing for five years. Toure said: "The way to prepare for green technology is the same as preparing for networks and microprocessors. Of course, now that we have Google, use Google to search what you want to know. Other jobs are reading reports, meeting scientists and engineers, and attending various forums. We cooperate with various companies in this industry to try to find the best people and get the best ideas. "
Also optimistic is the field of life science and technology. There are many promising directions: personal medical care, drug digitalization, genetic problems, protein problems ... and ... khosla, a partner of ……KPCB for many years, believes that ethanol extracted from agricultural wastes will be 4 to 8 times more efficient than ethanol extracted from corn by traditional bioengineering technology. System biology, which imitates the operation of real organs, may also be realized in the next ten to twenty years.
The next part: the growth of the king of venture capital
"The biggest legal wealth creation in history"
Regarding what made him a venture capitalist, Toure once gave the following answers: luck, natural passion for innovation and entrepreneurship, and ambition inherited from his father.
After receiving his bachelor's and master's degrees in electronic engineering from Rice University, Toure went to Harvard University to study for an MBA. In the meantime, he has started to call the venture capital company to find a job.
That was 1974, one of the worst years in the venture capital industry. That year, only two companies raised more than1million dollars: Playboy Group and Tandem Computer Company invested by KPCB. So, although I met some heavyweight players in the industry, such as Brooke, one of KPCB's partners? Brooke byers, NEA founder Dick? Dick Kramlich, but the advice he got was: forget about venture capital and find a real job in a good company.
In fact, this is Toure's answer when asked what kind of training can cultivate excellent venture capitalists in the future: "The best preparation is to have operational experience in a high-tech company with excellent management and rapid growth."
At that time, Toure joined the newly established Intel, which won him Andy, who later became the legendary CEO? Grove * * *. Together, they trained Intel's sales teams in the United States and Europe, and won chip orders for the company from big companies such as Siemens and ICL. After school, he worked part-time for Intel when he was still studying, working 20 hours a week, and working with DEC as a field engineer.
During the six years from 1974 to 1980, Toure changed from an engineer to a marketer at Intel. The biggest lesson he learned from these experiences is that only by solving a problem can he get a sum of income-those companies that solve big problems are eligible for rich returns.
1980, Toure was recommended by a friend to be a "part-time clerk" in KPCB, whose job is to check the new business plan. In the interview, he suggested that he wanted to start his own business, and the four partners of KPCB promised that just as they successfully hatched Genentech and Tandem computers, Toure was not without opportunities.
Toure entered the venture capital industry at an extremely appropriate time: besides being young, he had a long time to prove himself. More importantly, with the listing of 1980 Apple computer, the vitality of Silicon Valley was being expanded and released. Various technological innovations around microprocessors were later summarized by Toure as "we witnessed (and benefited from) the largest legal wealth creation in history."
Let's take a look at his schedule at that time: 1980, Professor forest of Stanford University? Basket recommended a project called "Stanford University Network" to him, which was a student project to produce low-cost workstations and became Sun Microsystems. 198 1 year, Toure met two professors, Cafu? Carver Meade and Jim from Stanford? Jim clark. Silicon Compilers, a company specializing in "editing silicon wafers" founded by Mead and Toure, became the first company hatched by Toure (the company was finally sold at the price of 1 1 year later), and Clark founded Netscape after 14 years; 1982, the business plan written by three employees of Texas Instruments on the paper towels in the restaurant became Compaq, and later Compaq pulled IBM down from the position of PC overlord. ...
Of course, this is not a pure event. When Compaq's three-person entrepreneurial team first found Toure, they just wanted to start a hard disk company. Not optimistic about the sustainability of development, they were forced to turn to the production of portable computers. This time, the idea coincides with the idea that Dü rr once advocated but failed at Intel, which led Dü rr to actively persuade the partners to invest.
At that time, PC sales were in short supply, and this portable computer with a 35-pound 9-inch screen was obviously very competitive. Compaq carefully positioned its products as a supplement to IBM, so that it would not be hindered by the blue giants and manufacturers when it started. In the first year of its establishment, it achieved the sales of 1. 1 billion, becoming the fastest enterprise in history to get the income of 1 billion dollars and enter the list of the world's top 500 companies.
The story of Shengyang also belongs to the victory of the team. This project was originally started by Andy? Andy Bechtolsheim took the lead, and later gradually joined a company called Bill? Bill Joy's technical genius, a man named Vanod? Indian Vinod Ksola and a man named Scott? Scott McNealy's MBA. Even though the four entrepreneurs were only 27 years old at that time, this team with business acumen and technological innovation ability still touched Toure.
Time has proved that this investment of 1982 has created great value for KPCB: in addition to Shengyang's success, this team has also influenced KPCB's investment from all levels. After Bekto Sem quit Shengyang, he founded two companies, sold 3130,000 dollars, and provided Google with 654,380+10,000 dollars as the first start-up capital. Bill, who plays the chief scientist in Shenyang all the year round? Joey has led many heavyweight innovations, including Java, and KPCB has also set up a lucrative Java fund. Khosla just became a partner of KPCB, and the three telecom equipment companies he invested in in11990s-cerent, Juniper and Siara-* * * earned more than 4 billion dollars for KPCB.
"In today's world, there are too many technologies, too many entrepreneurs, too much money and too much venture capital. What is really scarce is a good team. Building a good team is the biggest challenge. The world is undergoing tremendous changes at all levels, some driven by technology and some driven by market. All these changes have brought unprecedented opportunities. If you want to take the initiative in this area, you must focus on the team. " Toure has said this many times for many years.
experience a miserable failure
If the previous success illustrates Toure's investment philosophy: creativity is not difficult, execution is the key, but the team wins in the end, then the painful failure he experienced later is enough to show that there is still a certain distance between a good team and a good enterprise. 1987, Go company was founded, and its handwriting operating system has always been regarded as a major change in the PC industry. But it turns out that this is an overly ambitious story.
Apart from the revolutionary nature of the technology itself, Go is almost completely out of control in other aspects: it has no business plan, and the technology it advocates is too advanced for its time. Toure and khosla are both members of the board of directors of the company. At that time, all people wanted was to hit a "home run" (venture capital industry terminology: get more than 20 times the return). In the eager atmosphere, the way of burning money in Go is totally unsustainable. Former go director Mickey? Kabe later sighed with emotion: "The most interesting thing is that if we can spend money more carefully, this company is likely to live to the present and find a real way out."
However, the extreme operation mode at that time was doomed to have only two extreme choices: to create a miracle or to go bankrupt quickly. In its final stage, the biggest topic of the company every day is, who will save Go? One day it was IBM, and the next day it became Intel, at & amp； t .
Go has long been one of the most famous failure cases in Silicon Valley because of its short life, high investment and luxurious management team. Toure himself has never been ashamed to mention this experience. He called it "acute failure of vomiting." He even joked: "that book about Go Startup (by Jerry, CEO of Go? Written by Kaplan), it should be called Screwedup. "
At this point, the story is not over. "If you want to do something big, you will definitely fall a lot." Toure said, "We got all the questions wrong. Wrong technology, wrong market and wrong pricing. The only thing that is correct is that we hired a group of smart people. " In fact, Go's management team later became an important force in the KPCB network: Kaplan was the president of OnSale, another network company invested by CEO; Bill? Campbell later became the CEO of Intuit software and is now a consultant of Google; Norm? Meyrowitz was sold to Adobe's former vice president at Macromedia; Mike. Homer once served as vice president of marketing business at Netscape; Stratton? Kravos is the CEO; Verisive; Danny? Scheedel became CEO; Good technology; Randy. G misar became a partner of KPCB; Robert? Carl works as a consultant for several internet companies.
Toure didn't deny its managers because of a fiasco, or rather, he paid the tuition for these people.
1990, a company called Intuit Software found KPCB. At that time, it had 1 10,000 customers, and its sales revenue reached $33 million. But the company founder Scott? Cook believes that he needs the help of KPCB to increase the company's annual income to 654.38+0 billion US dollars.
KPCB invested USD 4.7 million in this project in exchange for 65,438+02% shares. Toure will be one of the managers of Go, Bill? Campbell parachuted into the company as CEO. And take a series of actions to reshape Intuit: hire management team, assist Quicken to launch Windows version, release business-oriented application software, complete IPO, merge with TurboTax, the largest tax software company, and even almost merge with Microsoft.
When the merger with Microsoft finally failed, Intuit quickly entered the network under Campbell's leadership and cooperated with two other companies invested by KPcb, Excite and AOL. From 199 1 to 2005, the company's income changed from 33 million dollars to 265,438+800 million dollars.
This kind of blessing in disguise makes Toure qualified to interpret the spirit of Silicon Valley in this way: "It's nothing to try and fail, just try again, just don't fail on the same mistake twice."