硅谷資本市場興起私人融資

In a very pleasant corner of San Francisco, Nasdaq is quietly expanding its West Coast operations. But it is not in town merely to persuade Silicon VAlley’s hottest tech companies to prepare their initial public offerings. Far from it.

在舊金山一個非常舒適的角落，納斯達克(Nasdaq)正悄悄擴大其西海岸業務。但納斯達克來到舊金山不僅僅是爲了說服硅谷最炙手可熱的科技公司籌備首次公開發行(IPO)。遠非如此。

In March last year, the New York-based stock exchange quietly established a private platform for “pre-IPO” companies to raise capital and trade secondary shares. Some 60 companies now sit on the Nasdaq Private Market. And Nasdaq officials admit that some of these tech groups plan never to list at all.

去年3月，這家總部位於紐約的證交所悄悄爲“上市前”(pre-IPO)企業籌集資本和進行股票的二級市場交易推出了一個私人平臺。目前有大約60家企業通過納斯達克私人股票交易市場Nasdaq Private Market融資。納斯達克高管承認，其中一些科技公司根本沒有上市計劃。

This is a striking quirk of today’s American “markets” — and it should give investment groups and regulators pause for thought. Back in the last tech boom at the end of the 20th century, when a tech company swelled it usually tried to list swiftly on an exchange. Getting on to a public market gave a young company credibility — and it was essential if a company needed large chunks of capital for investment, or a mechanism to enable its early employees to cash in their options.

這是當今美國“市場”一件引人注目的奇事，它應會讓投資集團和監管機構停下來思考。回首20世紀末上次科技熱潮時，當一家科技公司擴張時，通常會努力迅速在證交所上市。上市會給一家年輕公司帶來信譽，如果一家公司需要大量資金用於投資，或者需要一種機制讓早期員工將手中期權變現，那麼上市是重要之舉。

This boom-time around, tech listings on the main market are certainly under way: huge recent IPOs have included names such as Alibaba, the Chinese internet giant, and Lending Club, the world’s biggest peer-to-peer lender.

在本次熱潮中，當然也有科技公司正在主板上市：最近的大規模IPO包括中國互聯網巨頭阿里巴巴(Alibaba)，和全球最大P2P貸款機構Lending Club等公司的上市。

But many other fast-swelling companies are not listing, instead raising private money through so-called “late-stage” financing rounds, which often enable the company’s owners (be they employees, founders, or even earlier investors) to sell. Some sales occur through platforms such as Nasdaq; many sidestep even these “private” markets.

但很多其他迅速壯大的公司沒有上市，而是通過所謂的“晚期”(late-stage)融資籌集私人資金，這通常能夠讓這些公司的所有者（不管是員工、創始人還是早期投資者）出售股權。一些股權出售通過納斯達克等平臺進行；很多甚至連這些“私人”市場也避開。

You have to spend only a few hours in Silicon Valley to realise that the scale of this cyclical boom is astonishing. For those of us who saw the first dotcom bubble, the sight of hot money rushing into hot tech start-ups creates a sense of déjà vu. But what makes the current pattern startling is not simply the scale of money swirling around, but the channels it is moving through.

在硅谷待上幾個小時，你就會意識到這種週期性熱潮的規模是驚人的。對於目睹過首次網絡泡沫的我們而言，看到熱錢涌入熱門科技初創企業，會有一種似曾相識的感覺。但目前的模式令人吃驚的方面不僅僅是資金規模，而是資金移動的渠道。

Just last week Uber, Snapchat and Pinterest all revealed large new rounds of private funding. Uber, for example, is raising $1bn, on top of almost $4bn of private finance it has already garnered. Seven weeks into 2015, late-stage tech companies had already raised $16bn, according to PrivCo, a research group. Crunchbase, another data group, estimates that the overall funding provided by venture capital to tech companies reached $66.5bn last year, twice the previous year’s funding levels.

就在最近，Uber、Snapchat和Pinterest都透露了新的幾輪大規模私人融資。例如，Uber正融資10億美元，之前該公司已籌集近40億美元私人資本。根據研究機構PrivCo的數據，在2015年頭7周，“晚期”科技公司已融資160億美元。另一家數據機構Crunchbase估計，去年，風投機構向科技公司提供的資金總規模達到665億美元，是之前一年融資規模的兩倍。

This has helped to create more than 60 so-called “unicorns” (private companies valued at more than $1bn.)

這幫助締造了逾60家所謂的“獨角獸”公司（指估值超過10億美元的私人公司）。