牵头进行本轮融资的Institutional Venture Partners公司丹尼斯•菲尔普斯应该知道上述问题的答案。不幸的是，他不接受关于此交易的采访。但他写了一篇名为《IVP投资Snapchat的十大理由》的博客文章。这篇文章使我产生了两个想法：

    1、要么菲尔普斯是位蹩脚的风险资本家，根本不懂行；

    2、要么菲尔普斯其实心里跟明镜似地，只是故意兜圈子，不想让博文读者弄明白。

    我猜后一种更可信。

    说真的，菲尔普斯给出的好几条原因可谓宽泛至极，可以适用于几十家乃至数百家新创企业。比如说移动至上？专注于图像而非文字？创始人是“数码原生代”？公司总部设在南加州？

    另外，菲尔普斯给出的有些原因根本不是好的投资理由，比如说追随聪明的首轮投资者【基准资本（Benchmark）和光速创投（Lightspeed）】，还有“因为他们让我们投”。

    所以，我不禁怀疑Snapchat其实有一个宏伟的计划，只不过这家公司及其投资者目前都不愿透露。就连就此发布一条10秒钟就自行销毁的“快照”消息也不行。（财富中文网）

    译者：项航

    One person who should know the answer is Dennis Phelps of Institutional Venture Partners, which led the new financing round. Unfortunately, he isn't doing interviews on the deal. Instead, he wrote a blog post titled Ten Reasons Why IVP Invested in Snapchat. It left me with two thoughts:

    1. Either Phelps is a lousy venture capitalist who doesn't know what he's doing, or

    2. He knows exactly what he's doing, and has expertly talked around telling readers of the blog post.

    My guess is the latter.

    Seriously, many of the reasons Phelps gives are generic enough that they could apply to dozens of startups, if not to hundreds. Mobile-first? Focused on imagery rather than text? The founders are digital natives? The company is based in Southern California?

    And some of them just aren't good reasons to invest. Namely the ones about following smart Series A investors (Benchmark and Lightspeed) and the one about "because they let us."

    So that's why I come back to the idea that Snapchat has a grand plan that neither it, nor its investors, are willing to divulge. Yet. Not even in a 10-second message that self-destructs.