My Age of Investment

  Chapter 1042 Let the people who can hear the gun make decisions

   Hearing this, Ricky's face was as black as the bottom of a pot.

  He first took out one hand, and found that it was not enough, and then silently took out the other hand, “It’s the sixth one. This year, Sequoia has robbed six projects.”

Xia Jingxing frowned and said, "Do you know why Sequoia targeted you?"

  Ricky glanced at Xia Jingxing, and said courageously: "I asked someone to inquire about it. I heard that Moritz was very dissatisfied with Darren, and thought that you broke Sequoia China."

  Xia Jingxing's secret path, as expected, is the same as she thought, but this should be only one of the reasons.

   "Are there any other reasons? Moritz doesn't look like that kind of voluptuous person."

  Ricky pondered for a moment, and suddenly said: “There is another more important possibility that the investment success rate of the Vision Capital Silicon Valley office is too high.

   LinkedIn, Workday hours, Tesla, Yelp, Palantir, Slide, Xingjia...

  In recent years, almost all of the best star startups in the United States have been wiped out by us.

  Although these companies have not yet been listed, they have all become leaders in their respective segments. The market valuation has soared and the development prospects are very good.

  It seems that Sequoia has noticed this phenomenon.

  If all of these companies are listed, and one or two will become Facebook and Google companies again, I can't imagine what kind of sensation it will cause. I am afraid that the whole industry will learn from us and watch our every move. "

   "So, is it a trouble to invest in a good vision?"

  Xia Jing pedestrian is often not in the United States, and in order to cultivate Ricky, he gave the other party certain rights to choose projects independently and make decisions on investment.

  In a few years, in addition to investing in Shopify, a small Canadian company, the other party has harvested a lot of failed projects.

  Although the fund has many failed projects, it still cannot conceal the fact that the hit rate of Vision Capital's US VC funds is too high.

People don’t look at the number of failed projects. They just look at how many companies you have succeeded and what the highest rate of return is. This is also an industry practice. Is the winner.

  Ricky smiled bitterly: “Once Sequoia finds out which Internet segment or project we are tracking, it will immediately send someone to contact and make adjustments.

  But they don’t invest in all projects, they have their own logic of judgment. "

  Xia Jingxing squeezed his eyebrows, Moritz was too old and cunning, it would be difficult to get him off.

  Compared with Sequoia China, Sequoia America has a very good reputation and industry resources. If it is used to deal with Sequoia China, it will be difficult to deal with Sequoia America.

The simplest point is that although the Chinese name of Sequoia has the word Sequoia, it is actually a start-up fund and has no previous record. Once it encounters a setback, it will become like this. The second phase of fundraising funds are stumbled. Entrust the relationship to Huashan to alms.

  And Sequoia America is different. Even if one or two funds fail, they cannot shake its foundation. Some people still believe that this legendary fund invested in well-known companies such as Wisdom Fruit, Cisco, Oracle, Yahoo, Google and so on.

  More importantly, Xia Jingxing found that Moritz had his own judgment ability, instead of blindly copying prospective capital operations, the other party just used prospective capital to expand its project library, and would conduct re-screening and due diligence.

  I believe that with the seasoned Sequoia American team and accustomed to seeing all kinds of coquettish goods, even if you run into a big pit like Thousand Oaks, you will not sink too deep into it.

  The multi-treasure box invested by the other party is not strictly robbed from Envision Capital. It is just that the other party got stuck in advance and refused to let it go.

  For the other five stolen projects, Xia Jingxing has read the introduction materials, but has no memory. It should not be a particularly successful project.

  Therefore, Sequoia America has not yet caused significant loss of profits to Vision Capital America, but this phenomenon is worthy of vigilance and attention.

  "How did they quickly discover which projects we were dealing with?"

  Xia Jingxing's eyes were cold, "I now suspect that there is an inner ghost in our team!"

  Ricky said frankly: "I have the same suspicion. I am currently investigating internally. If there is a commercial espionage, I will definitely get him or her out."

"There is also our internal mechanism. We have to change it. Don't engage in too many unnecessary due diligence processes and voting by the investment committee. If you find a good company, you will immediately win it! Don't give other people or other companies too much time to react. .

  You did a great job with a company like Shopify. I heard that you went to Canada in person and signed the investment agreement on the same day.

  This work efficiency is very high, it is worth learning and promoting internally. "

  Ricky hesitated: "If you do this... it will inevitably make a lot of mistakes.

  Shopify is actually just an example, it doesn’t mean anything.

  And I have been following this company for several months beforehand. I found that the e-commerce SaaS software they are doing is very distinctive, and I am sure that this is an important future development direction.

  It doesn’t matter if the investment fails this time. The key is to explore and summarize. You can avoid many pitfalls by investing in similar companies next time.

  As long as one e-commerce SaaS company succeeds, the previous 99 companies can make money back together. "

  "Let’s try different models of business operation first, it doesn’t matter if the investment fails, the right to accumulate experience.

  And the most important point, we have to make a clear-cut attitude to Sequoia, and don't want to take advantage of us.

  If they insist on having a faster decision-making speed and investment speed than us, and do not do too much due diligence and analysis, then it is just what I want, everyone hurts each other! See who can't stand it first. "

  Ricky thought about it carefully, and found that the idea proposed by the boss could be regarded as a response plan. Sequoia should not leave too much time to grab the project, so that over time, the other party will give up, unless they make some changes like Envision Capital.

  Changeable is very difficult, especially for an established organization.

  For Vision Capital, it is also very difficult, and serious problems will occur if it does not operate well.

  Looking at Ricky's tangled and hesitating face, Xia Jingxing was angry and funny.

  A good anger is to give the other party and the team more authority, and the other party does not want to accept it; it is funny because it is a manifestation of responsibility.

Xia Jingxing said: "Tell me about the process of investing in Shopify."

  Ricky one fifty one ten is introduced.

  Shopify was founded in 2004. The founder Tobias Luke is a German software engineer. Since his work visa is about to expire, in order to stay in Canada, he simply chose to start his own business.

  As a ski enthusiast, Luke's first thought was to build an online store selling snowboards.

  But in the process of starting a business, he found that the website building software on the market was not easy to use, so he simply made a website building software Shopify, and then used Shopify to develop a snowboard sales platform called Snowdevil...

  After listening to the introduction, Xia Jingxing’s mouth twitched, feeling absurd and funny, "So, his subsidiary product Shopify has become a major entrepreneurial project?"

  Ricky nodded, "Yes, but Snow Demon is also developing well and has become a well-known snowboard e-commerce website in Canada."

  "How did you learn about Shopify and decide to invest in it? You judge that it represents an important future development direction, and what is your basis for judgment?"

  Ricky replied unhurriedly: “I have had more contact with the founder of Workday, so I am very concerned about entrepreneurial projects in the SaaS software field.

  Besides, I also like skiing very much. I went to Canada to ski with my family last year, so I learned about Snow Demon and then about Shopify.

  Actually, I have been following this company for half a year.

  In the beginning, the charging strategy they adopted was a transaction rake, that is, an e-commerce seller builds a website through Shopify, and then every time it makes a transaction, it needs to pay a certain percentage of the fee to Shopify according to the transaction amount.

  Many merchants are dissatisfied with this charging strategy, especially those with huge transaction volume.

  In response to this situation, Luke and his partners decided not to adopt this charging strategy and instead charge a subscription fee according to the service time, supplemented by a small credit card fee.

  It is this kind of change that prompted me to make up my mind to invest in this company.

  This shows that the founder is not obsessed with making small money, he has the ambition and vision to build a large enterprise.

  In addition, this shift has turned Shopify into an on-demand service company, which is an important feature of SaaS companies.

  Its business model is exactly the same as working hours, except that one serves the e-commerce industry and the other serves the human resources industry.

  The same logic, I think SaaS can also be applied to more industries, such as finance, catering, foreign trade, and so on.

  This is a new industry with a lot of business imagination, which can reshape the software industry structure! "

  Xia Jingxing pursed her mouth and smiled, very satisfied with Ricky’s analysis.

  Some of the functions of Shopify are equivalent to the domestic Weimeng and Youzan, which can help small and medium-sized business owners build their own online stores.

  Because each store is independent, it is also called Independent Station, which is different from the big bazaars and shopping malls like Amazon and Ari.

  But because independent stations also need traffic, they are generally built on social media platforms.

  According to Xia Jingxing's knowledge, TikTok, a previous benchmarking project for overseas trips, has established in-depth cooperation with Shopify to jointly explore social e-commerce.

  After the ad revenue growth of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter hits the ceiling, they are all making e-commerce ideas.

  This is a big trend. After all, the Internet industry has only three and a half profit models. Games, advertising, and e-commerce count as three, and finance counts as half.

  In addition, SaaS software has indeed begun to empower traditional industries and reshape the software industry, as Ricky said. Traditional enterprise software vendors, such as CRM and ERP, are all accelerating SaaS.

  For example, Xia Jingxing ate in a small restaurant in the previous life. Using the QR code to scan the QR code posted on the dining table, you can select dishes and place orders.

  It is obviously impossible for a small restaurant to raise a software development team or custom software. The services behind it are all SaaS software service providers, such as two-dimensional fire, Keruyun, Yummy, etc.

However, the domestic SaaS software payment rate is very low. Generally, the software services used by small and medium-sized catering companies are gifted by the manufacturers to expand new customers. After the expiration, you can change to a new SaaS system and continue to use it for free. , You don’t have to spend any more money.

  Ricky continued: “Shopify is secretly developing a feature, and they plan to open up the API interface and transform to a platform-based enterprise.

  This is a significant change. If they are really made, it may have a significant impact on Amazon and eBay.

The e-commerce industry is no longer dominated by one or two companies. Independent e-commerce websites will spring up like bamboo shoots after a rain, to compete and cannibalize the market of e-commerce giants—I call them the e-commerce empire crack. "

  Looking at Ricky talking more and more, his nostrils turned upright, Xia Jingxing said that he could break you.

  In fact, Shopify does have two brushes.

Until his rebirth, the transaction volume of merchants on his platform had surpassed that of eBay, occupying 6% of the global e-commerce industry market share, and the company's market value was as high as 200 billion US dollars. Challenged competitors provide another development path for e-commerce sellers.

  Of course, now it is just a very humble small company. Ricky invested $500,000 on behalf of Envision Capital, and got 15% of the company's equity.

  Xia Jingxing began to analyze Ricky’s investment motives bit by bit: “Because you came into contact with a working hour company, you learned about SaaS software and formed your own investment judgment theory. This is the most important reason for your investment in Shopify.

  In the future, you may also invest in SaaS software for different industries and business usage scenarios, such as business management services, office communication tools, business process outsourcing, data analysis services, information security services, and vertical industry-specific categories.

  In fact, just a SaaS industry, thoroughly researched, will be enough for your life.

  In China, you have found your way, and you have begun to preach. "

  Ricky chewed on Xia Jingxing, the more he chewed, the more interesting, especially the other party's industry segmentation of SaaS software, obviously more than one level higher than himself.

  The boss is the boss, and the level is high. When it comes to working hours, the boss actually discovered it and discussed it personally. He just took over halfway and was responsible for several additional rounds of investment.

  Xia Jingxing looked at Ricky’s eyes, "But have you ever thought, can partners who struggle together find their way like you?"

  Ricky wondered: "Aren't they responsible for the specific implementation at this stage?"

Xia Jingxing shook his head and laughed, "Your thinking is obviously wrong, and employees need to grow with the company all the way. Envision Capital wants to go higher and farther, and even build a store like Sequoia for decades. We need a set of training. Talent mechanism."

  "How can we cultivate talents?" Xia Jingxing looked at Ricky's eyes.

Ricky was prepared for this and blurted out: "I plan to find out how to track the company's working hours and find that the SaaS industry has buried a golden mountain. Then I will invest in Shopify's experience and summary to create a set of internal sharing courses to train employees. ."

  Xia Jingxing nodded and said: "You belong to the theory. You can't cultivate a real investment expert if you don't pull the trigger yourself.

  I thought of a plan. How about everybody in the investment team having the right to make their own investment decisions once a year? It is limited to the Angel round or A round, and the amount is controlled within 5 million U.S. dollars.

  Whether it is the lowest level analyst or investment manager, there is an opportunity like this.

  Maybe someone like you has found their own way by taking this opportunity?

  The process of information transmission is attenuated. Sometimes the big men of the investment committee are not as capable of judging a certain project as the frontline soldiers.

  Let the people who can hear the guns make decisions. I think most people will cherish this precious opportunity to shoot.

  There have never been any extraordinary investors, who have summed up, summarized, and reflected in actual combat, and then have grown up step by step. "

  Ricky was lost in thought. He didn't think the boss's proposal was absurd, because the other party really paid attention to talent training, and he paid too much attention to it.

  The venture capital industry does not have too many unique skills. If there are any, brands and resources must be in the back, and talent training and excavation must be in the forefront.

Kaipeng Huaying is such a colossal investment institution that was able to compete with Sequoia in the last century. Now that the talents are broken down, it is beginning to go downhill. No matter how much money it raises, it won’t work. If you give you money, you just can’t invest. In the middle.

   After thinking about it for a long time, Ricky finally asked: "If we fail a hundred projects, we finally cultivate a person, and then this person has changed jobs?"

  "As long as the mechanism is correct, I believe the second and third will be cultivated soon!

  Even if these people quit after working for a period of time, or set up their own businesses, it doesn’t matter.

  This just shows that our training mechanism is correct, and talents are coming out in large numbers, but the talent retention mechanism needs to be improved. We can't run out of people, and I will be the boss. "

  Ricky smiled and scratched his head. The Silicon Valley VC fund team is not large, not counting the business support departments, such as legal affairs, finance, etc., only an investment team of more than a dozen people, taking the elite route.

  Most of them do not have the authority to make investment decisions. If this authority is really opened, it will cost tens of millions of dollars a year, which is not a small expenditure.

  Good or bad is not easy to define for the time being, and it may take hundreds of millions of dollars to see a certain effect.

  "The American team will try for a few years first. If it works well, I will also consider introducing China to give young people more opportunities. After all, they represent the future and understand emerging markets best.

  If you are asked to vote for a beauty brand that young girls like, can you name one, two, three? "

  Ricky shook his head hurriedly. He is not gay, so he has nothing to know about beauty brands.

  However, Xia Jingxing really tempted him. He had the opportunity to try to be an innovator and changer in the industry. Why should he be a follower at the same time.

  A few years later, I might be able to become a venture capital godfather.

  Well, the godfather is now worthless, and all cats and dogs are calling themselves godfathers.

  　 pay off the owed one.

  (End of this chapter)