Khosla Ventures is opening a New York office this fall — its first outpost outside Sand Hill Road
Khosla Ventures is opening a New York office this fall — its first outpost outside Sand Hill Road
Khosla Ventures 将于今年秋季在纽约开设办事处——这是其在 Sand Hill Road 之外的首个据点
Keith Rabois has spent most of his 13-year career in venture capital associated with Khosla Ventures’ longtime home in Menlo Park, California. But that’s changing. Speaking Thursday night at TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC event in New York’s West Village, Rabois confirmed that Khosla Ventures is opening its first-ever office outside Sand Hill Road.
Keith Rabois 在风险投资领域 13 年的职业生涯中，大部分时间都与 Khosla Ventures 位于加州门洛帕克的总部紧密相连。但这种情况正在改变。周四晚上，在纽约西村举行的 TechCrunch StrictlyVC 活动上，Rabois 证实 Khosla Ventures 正在开设其在 Sand Hill Road 之外的首个办事处。
The new outpost will be in New York, on 14th Street, and is expected to open this fall. “It’s actually allegedly being built out now,” said Rabois, who has clearly dealt with a missed construction timeline or two. “We’ll see. This fall opening date is very vague in my mind.”
新据点将位于纽约第 14 街，预计于今年秋季开放。“据说现在正在施工，”Rabois 说道，显然他曾经历过工程延期，“走着瞧吧。在我看来，这个秋季的开业日期非常模糊。”
The move is notable partly because of how unusual it is for Khosla Ventures specifically. “We don’t even have an SF office, so this is a very big step for us,” said Rabois. The office will house a handful of Khosla investors, Rabois among them, but its more unusual feature is what he called an “executive briefing center.”
此举之所以引人注目，部分原因在于这对 Khosla Ventures 来说非常罕见。“我们甚至在旧金山都没有办公室，所以这对我们来说是非常大的一步，”Rabois 说。该办公室将容纳少数 Khosla 的投资人（包括 Rabois 本人），但其更独特的功能是他所称的“高管简报中心”。
That will be a space where the firm will bring 10 or 12 portfolio companies at a time to meet with a Fortune 500 company, four days a week. “The portfolio companies love this,” he told attendees. “They get pilots and customers, and so it’s going to be a very vibrant office because of that.”
这将是一个空间，公司每周四天会邀请 10 到 12 家投资组合公司前来与一家财富 500 强企业会面。“投资组合公司很喜欢这样，”他告诉与会者，“他们能获得试点项目和客户，因此这将是一个非常有活力的办公室。”
The announcement comes months after Rabois himself relocated to the East Coast, moving to be closer to his husband, Jacob Helberg, the Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, and their children, who are currently based in Washington, D.C.
这一消息发布前几个月，Rabois 本人已搬迁至东海岸，以便与他的丈夫——负责经济增长、能源和环境事务的副国务卿 Jacob Helberg 以及他们目前居住在华盛顿特区的孩子们团聚。
That move prompted an obvious question from this editor, which is whether he thinks New York has the density of talent that he has spent his career recruiting from in the Bay Area. He paused, then said it depends on seniority. At the junior end, Rabois was unequivocal.
这一举动引发了本文编辑的一个显而易见的问题：他是否认为纽约拥有他在湾区职业生涯中一直招募的那种人才密度？他停顿了一下，然后说这取决于资历。在初级人才方面，Rabois 的态度非常明确。
“Individual contributor level, right out of school, absolutely,” he said, pointing to Ramp, the fintech company he has backed repeatedly, as proof. “We’ve been tapping into right-out-of-school graduates and been able to create a critical density of talent from the intern class [onward] that is extraordinary.”
“个人贡献者级别，刚毕业的学生，绝对有，”他说道，并以他多次投资的金融科技公司 Ramp 为例作为证明。“我们一直在挖掘刚毕业的学生，并能够从实习生群体（及以后）中创造出非凡的人才密度。”
Senior technical talent is a different story. “Senior engineers, architect-level — no, I think that’s a challenge,” he said, adding: “Fortunately, maybe in the modern age, you need less of these people per company than you have historically.”
高级技术人才则不同。“高级工程师、架构师级别——不，我认为这是一个挑战，”他说，并补充道：“幸运的是，也许在现代，每家公司对这类人才的需求比过去要少。”
But the biggest pain point for companies is talented senior executives, Rabois said, explaining that it has less to do with supply than with geography and lifestyle. “If you have an in-office culture, most of the more senior people that live and reside in the New York area live outside the city, and the commute in and out of the city for an office environment can be very painful,” said Rabois, who grew up in a New York commuter suburb himself.
但 Rabois 表示，公司最大的痛点是优秀的高级管理人员，他解释说这与供应关系不大，更多与地理位置和生活方式有关。“如果你有办公室文化，大多数居住在纽约地区的高级人才都住在城外，为了办公室环境而往返于城市通勤可能会非常痛苦，”Rabois 说，他本人就是在纽约的通勤郊区长大的。
“We were like a 32-minute express train into the city, but many people live two concentric circles further away. When you need to recruit proven executive talent, and you really believe in an in-office culture, [that has] been very challenging.”
“我们当时坐快车进城大约需要 32 分钟，但许多人住在更远的地方。当你需要招募经验丰富的高管，并且你确实坚持办公室文化时，这（一直）是非常具有挑战性的。”
Ramp’s solution, he said, has been to mostly opt out of that problem entirely. “We don’t hire senior people. We just build from the bottom up, ground up. It’s been a very conscious strategy, very intentionally, for the last three years,” he said.
他说，Ramp 的解决方案是基本完全避开了这个问题。“我们不雇佣资深人士。我们只是从底层做起，白手起家。在过去三年里，这一直是一个非常自觉、非常有意的策略。”
“That can work,” he continued. “But if you need a CFO, a SVP of sales, someone who’s got a lot of gravitas and experience, it’s really hard to have them in the office five days a week, because unless they’re very independently wealthy, they really can’t afford to raise a family right in the middle of the city.”
“这行得通，”他继续说道，“但如果你需要一位首席财务官、销售高级副总裁，或者一个非常有威望和经验的人，让他们每周五天都在办公室工作真的很难，因为除非他们非常富有，否则他们真的负担不起在市中心养家糊口。”
Khosla’s move puts it in a small but, potentially, growing club. Other major Bay Area venture firms have maintained a New York presence for years, though typically a modest one. For example, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz both employ New York-based partners, if in comparatively small numbers relative to the Bay Area.
Khosla 的举动使其进入了一个规模虽小但可能正在增长的俱乐部。其他主要的湾区风险投资公司多年来一直保持着在纽约的存在，尽管规模通常不大。例如，红杉资本 (Sequoia Capital) 和 Andreessen Horowitz 都聘用了常驻纽约的合伙人，尽管相对于湾区而言人数较少。
It also comes on the heels of a report released last month by commercial real estate services firm CBRE that found New York has narrowly overtaken the San Francisco Bay Area in total tech talent headcount for the first time in the 13 years CBRE has tracked the data.
在此之前，商业房地产服务公司世邦魏理仕 (CBRE) 上个月发布的一份报告显示，在世邦魏理仕追踪数据的 13 年中，纽约的科技人才总数首次以微弱优势超过了旧金山湾区。
This has been driven largely by finance firms hiring aggressively for AI talent while Bay Area tech employers cut staff. Could it be coincidence? Judging by the room Thursday night, plenty of New Yorkers aren’t ready to believe the headline yet. “I heard about that study,” said one attendee. “I don’t buy it.”
这在很大程度上是由金融公司积极招聘人工智能人才，而湾区科技雇主裁员所推动的。这会是巧合吗？从周四晚上的现场来看，许多纽约人还不愿相信这个头条新闻。“我听说过那项研究，”一位与会者说，“我不买账。”