我在頂級風投學到的7件事

I left Andreessen Horowitz five months ago to join Imgur as director of product. Below are seven things I learned in venture capital that were particularly useful:

我在五個月前離開了安德森o霍洛維茨基金，加入圖片分享網站Imgure擔任產品總監。下面是我在這家風投巨頭學到的七條極其有用的經驗：

1. The winners always have something that looks hugely wrong with them. Like spectacularly wrong.That’s why no one else has invested/hired/built this opportunity. But you can. Value strength over lack of weakness.

1. 成功者總能找到看起來非常不合理的投資對象。有一些甚至明顯有違常理。正是因爲如此，纔沒有人投資/利用/培養這樣的機會。但你可以。你要尋找的是一個人或一個項目的長處，而不是尋找一個毫無缺點的人或項目。

2. Venture (and everything else) is a service business.That means you need to sell yourself to your customers (entrepreneurs, potential employees, partners) all day long. Everyone you talk to, especially the people you turn down, should walk away wanting to work with you even more than they did before.

2. 風險投資（和其他所有事情）都屬於服務業。這意味着你需要向客戶（創業者、潛在員工、合夥人）推銷自己。與你接觸後，每一個人，尤其是被你拒絕的人，都應該比之前更願意和你一起共事。

3. The best way to become quickly knowledgeable is to find the right people and talk to them.Of course, do your homework first. But there isn’t a substitute to finding the three people in the world who know best and triangulating their answers.

3. 要想迅速掌握相關知識，最好的方法就是找到合適的人，與他們交流。當然，首先要做足功課。但最有效的方法是，向世界上最瞭解某件事的三個人求教，用他們的回答互相印證，來支撐你的看法。

4. Managing a portfolio as a collection of risk-reward ratios leads to superior returns.Make sure to have a mixture of low reward, low risk and high reward, high risk projects at work and in life.

4. 將投資組合作爲一系列風險回報比率進行管理，可以帶來超高的收益。要保證在工作中和生活中都有低迴報、低風險和高回報、高風險的項目。

5. There is no template for success, and no one knows what works.Everyone is winging it, so make sure you take apart advice to understand why it worked once. For that one person. In that one situation.

5. 成功無定式，沒有人知道成功的方程式。每個人都是在即興發揮，所以要確保你接受了獨立的建議，以理解爲什麼某種做法能夠成功。爲什麼那個人能夠成功？爲什麼是在那樣的情況下？

6. Big things growing really fast get really big, really fast.Bettings on these things when they seem large but are still growing is a good bet. Counter: make sure you understand why they’re growing, because there is real growth and then there is sugar growth. Sugar growth is fast but stops abruptly.

6. 真正發展迅速的龐然大物，可以變得更大、發展得更快。投資看起來很大但仍在發展的公司，是不錯的選擇。但要謹記：一定要清楚它們發展的原因，是有實際增長還是粉飾的增長。粉飾的增長雖然迅速但會戛然而止。

7. There is a huge advantage to being right early on.In venture, in each new job and in your career, those attached to winners are associated with success. If you have great investments early, the results can snowball.

7. 提早做出正確選擇，可以幫你獲得巨大優勢。在風險投資界，以及每一份新工作和你的職業生涯中，依附於勝者的人都會取得成功。如果你能提早進行重大投資，未來你的回報將如滾雪球般增長。

Sam Gerstenzang (@gerstenzang) is director of product at Imgur, and previously spent 16 months as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. This post originally appeared on his blog.

本文作者Sam Gerstenzang爲Imgur產品總監，曾在安德森o霍洛維茨基金合夥人擔任過16個月的合夥人。本文最初發表於他的博客。