谢谢关注缓慢思考。我的好朋友常斌说每周日晚不看我更新睡不着，特发此文：-）。

　　原文来自美国A16Z基金的Benedict Evans的博客。文章分析了其LP投资的风险投资基金从1985年到2014年所投资的7000个公司的回报，总结了顶级VC（基金回报超过5倍）的成功之道：最好的VC基金，不只是有更多的失败和更多的大赢家 — 他们有更大更大的大赢家（10倍以上的投资平均回报64.3倍)。

　　In most jobs and most industries, if you do something that doesn't work out, that's a bad thing, and you might get fired. If you write a cover story for a newspaper that turns out to be untrue, you have a problem. If you ship a product that breaks, you have a problem.

　　对大多数工作和行业，如果你做的东西失败了，这肯定是件坏事，你可能会被解雇。如果你为报纸写的封面故事不真实，你会有麻烦。如果你交付的产品不工作，你会有麻烦。

　　If you do something that doesn't work out, that means you screwed up.

　　如果你做的事情失败了，那意味着你搞砸了。

　　Startups and startup investing don't quite work like this.

　　创业公司和创业投资不是这样。

　　Last year Horsley Bridge(one of our LPs - investors in a16z'sfunds) shared some aggregate data with us on just over 7,000 investments made by funds in which it invested, from 1985 to 2014. This gives a good way of visualising the world of VC-backed startups. First, the high level:

　　去年， Horsley Bridge（我们的LP之一 A16Z基金的投资人）和我们分享了一些汇总的数据，覆盖了它投资的基金从1985年到2014年所做的7000多个投资。这些数据形象的描绘了VC所支持的创业公司的世界。首先，概括来看：

Around half of all investments returned less than the original investment

6% of deals produced at least a 10x return, and those made up 60% of total returns

大约一半的投资不能拿回本金

6%的投资产生了产生10倍以上的回报，并构成了总回报的60％

　　Digging into the data to look at the returns of different funds, below:

　　进一步挖掘数据，可以看到不同基金的回报表现：

With the exception of funds that simply flamed out (concentrated in the dotcom bubble), everyone lost money on around half of their deals

But the best-performing funds actually had more <1x deals - more deals that lost money in absolute terms. You could call this the 'Babe Ruth effect' - you take more risks to get the best returns

A fund gets better returns by having more really big hits, not by having fewer failures

除了少数消失了的基金（集中在网络泡沫的年代），每家基金一半左右的投资都是赔钱的

但是，表现最好的基金拥有更多的<1X回报的投资 — 即绝对数量上讲拥有更多赔钱的投资。你可以称之为“Babe Ruth效应” — 你冒更多的风险，以获得最佳的回报

一家基金获得更好的回报，要通过拥有更多真正的高回报项目，而不是减少失败投资的数量

　　That concentration continues when you ask just what a '10x deal' really is - in fact, there’s no such thing. For funds with an overall return of 3-5x, which is what VC funds aim for, the overall return was 4.6x but the return of the deals that did better than 10x was actually 26.7x. For >5x funds, it was 64.3x.

　　这集中度会进一步展现出来，当你问什么是真正的“10倍回报”投资 — 事实上，没有所谓的“10倍回报”。对于那些总体回报达到3~5x的基金（这是风险投资基金的目标），atv，整体回报率为4.6倍，但这些基金中所谓“10倍回报”以上的投资的真实回报倍数是26.7倍。对于总体回报>5x的基金，这个数字是64.3x。

　　The best VC funds don’t just have more failures and more big wins - they have bigger big wins.

　　最好的VC基金，不只是有更多的失败和更多的大赢家 — 他们有更大更大的大赢家。

　　If you're a portfolio manager in a conventional public equities fund and you invest in a bunch of stocks that go down (or underperform the index), you could well lose your job, because your other investments can't make up for that loss. And if a public company went to zero, that would meant that a lot of people had screwed up really badly - public companies aren't ever supposed to go to zero, in the ordinary run of things.