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风投小子初长成

风投小子初长成

Scott Cendrowski 2013年06月20日
他是投资界最年轻的风险投资人。投资公司签下他的时候,他还是一个在校的大学生。他精力充沛、多才多艺,不仅是兰登书屋一位签约作家,还曾经同时接到过MTV和环球唱片公司的工作邀约。而投资公司看中的正是他身上的活力。目前,他正在物色自己的第一笔大买卖。

    现在是晚上11点,地点是在奥斯丁城区,我们坐在一辆不像校车的校车里面兜着圈子:校车装着深色的车窗,车尾有一个吧台,发动机的护栅上绑着扩音器,墙上挂着九寸钉乐队(Nine Inch Nails)海报,一个看上去和听上去都非常昂贵的系统大声播放着电子乐whomm-whomm-whomping。车上坐了25个人,大部分都抓着车顶的扶手,每次转弯的时候都歪歪斜斜。几个女人在自顾自地跳着舞。

    我们正在参加西南偏南音乐节(South by Southwest)。以前,这个音乐节是为给一些不出名的乐队提供与唱片公司签约的机会。如今,它似乎完全演变成了科技界的盛宴。Zappos.com公司CEO谢家华预定了派对巴士。车上坐的都是谢家华的朋友:其中一位把来自奥斯丁的创业家把上一家公司卖给了社交游戏公司Zynga,还有谷歌(Google)风险投资基金的一位成员;一位彼得•泰尔创始人基金会(Founders Fund)的合伙人;还有一位女士,在拉斯维加斯城区附近创办了一家烤辣味干酪玉米片的餐厅,谢家华在其中投入了数百万资金用于餐厅重建。车上还有一位20岁的风险投资人阿历克斯•班纳言:他是车上最年轻的一位,早已把自己介绍给大家认识。听着刺激的音乐,我已经不止一次听到他大喊:“太棒了!”

    班纳言是世界上最年轻的风险投资人。他目前在旧金山风险投资公司Alsop Louie任职,公司旗下管理着1.5亿美元资金。此外,他还是兰登书屋(Random House)旗下皇冠出版社(Crown Business)最年轻的签约作者,可能也是唯一一位同时接到MTV(拍摄个人真人秀节目)和环球唱片公司(Interscope Records)一位唱作人邀请(担任经纪人),但都婉言谢绝的大学生。

    斯图尔特•奥尔索普表示,之所以聘用班纳言,是因为这个20岁的年轻人身上有一种比技术专业能力更重要的东西:积极活跃。班纳言跟奥尔索普和他的合伙人吉尔曼•雷讲了他在《价格竞猜》(The Price Is Right )中获胜的经历(他赢得了3,2000美元奖金,包括一艘18英尺长的帆船,一张台球桌,还有一次零重力飞行之旅),尽管他从来没有完整地看过哪怕一期节目。他还讲到了自己在派对上遇到的那些南加州大学(University of Southern California)的创业新人,还有他的图书合约。这位新生代作家从这份合约中获得了高达六位数的天价预付款。他说,为了写这本书,他希望能采访世界上最成功的那些人,比如沃伦•巴菲特、比尔•克林顿、比尔•盖茨、坎耶•韦斯特、马克•扎克伯格等,描写一下当他们在人生初期无人问津的时候,如何寻求突破。不过,人们倒是很愿意与班纳言见面。

    奥尔索普说:“他的自信心令人难以置信。”奥尔索普曾经是一名记者【曾为《财富》杂志(Fortune)供稿】,他的联合创始人雷曾负责运营美国中情局(CIA)的风险投资基金。奥尔索普和雷都希望能有人替他们跟踪洛杉矶的初创企业。班纳言正是他们心目中的人选,班纳言被选中时还是南加州大学的大三学生。尽管还只是奥尔索普口中的“孩子”,但班纳言已经承担了巨大的责任。现在他面临着每一个新入行的风险投资人都需要面对的挑战:完成投资任务。我在奥斯丁见到他时,他与Alsop Louie签约已经满了一年,仍然在寻找第一笔大买卖。(财富中文网)

    译者:刘进龙/汪浩

    阅读英文全文请点击此处>>

    It's 11 p.m. in downtown Austin, and we're driving in circles in a very un-school-bus-like school bus: blacked-out windows, a bar in the back, bullhorns strapped to the grille, Nine Inch Nails posters on the walls, dubstep whomm-whomm-whomping through what looks and sounds like an expensive, very loud sound system. There are 25 of us onboard. Most hang on to overhead straps, leaning into each turn. A group of women is dancing, somehow.

    We are at South by Southwest, a festival that used to be about undiscovered bands getting signed by record labels and is now seemingly wholly given over to Tech with a capital T. The party bus was booked by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com. All Hsieh's friends are aboard: There's an Austin entrepreneur who sold his last company to Zynga (ZNGA); a member of Google's venture capital fund; a partner at Peter Thiel's Founders Fund; and a woman who started a nachos restaurant near downtown Las Vegas, where Hsieh is sinking hundreds of millions of his own money into redevelopment. Also aboard: a 20-year-old venture capitalist named Alex Banayan. He's the youngest person on the bus by a decade, and he has already introduced himself to everyone. More than once, over the sonic assault I hear his voice shout, "That's awesome!"

    Banayan is the world's youngest venture capitalist. He works for the San Francisco firm Alsop Louie, which manages $150 million. He's also the youngest author signed at Crown Business, a Random House imprint, and probably the only college student in the world to have received offers from MTV (for his own reality-TV show) and from a singer-songwriter at Interscope Records (to manage him) and turned both down.

    Stewart Alsop says that he hired Banayan because he saw something in the 20-year-old that was, to him, more important than tech expertise: hustle. Banayan told Alsop and his partner, Gilman Louie, about how he won on The Price Is Right despite never having watched a full episode. (He earned $32,000 in prizes, including an 18-foot sailboat, a billiards table, and a zero-gravity plane trip.) He told them about all the budding University of Southern California entrepreneurs he was meeting at parties and, later, his book deal, for which the first-time author got a substantial six-figure advance. For the book, he told them, he hoped to interview some of the world's most successful people -- Warren Buffett, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Kanye West, Mark Zuckerberg -- and write about how they broke through early in life when no one would take their meetings. People take Banayan's meetings.

    "He's incredibly self-confident," says Alsop, who used to be a journalist (and wrote forFortune) and whose co-founder, Louie, used to run the CIA's venture investment fund. Alsop and Louie wanted someone to track startups across L.A. for them. In Banayan, a USC junior, they had found their man. Banayan has been given an enormous amount of responsibility for someone Alsop still calls a "kid," and he now faces the challenge that greets every new VC: closing. A year after signing with Alsop Louie, when I met him in Austin, he was still searching for that first big deal.

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