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Pile-ins, payouts, and pacing pressure: the investors behind the VCs open up

The limited partners who provide the capital to venture firms — the “money behind the money” — are feeling great right now. They’re in uncharted territory in many ways, but also potentially exceedingly lucrative territory. Normally, LPs typically spread their bets across many firms to diversify their own portfolios. They write checks to emerging managers and established ones, to generalist firms and specialists. The goal is a strong return, but also to minimize risk. That’s the typical playbook. But typical is out the window.

为风险投资公司提供资金的有限合伙人（LP）——即“金主背后的金主”——目前感觉非常棒。他们在许多方面处于未知的领域，但同时也可能处于极其有利可图的领域。通常情况下，LP会通过向多家公司注资来分散投资组合。他们会向新兴基金经理和资深经理人、全能型公司和专业型公司开出支票。其目标不仅是获得高额回报，还要降低风险。这是典型的操作手册，但现在“典型”已经过时了。

OpenAI and Anthropic’s valuations have shot up so quickly that nearly everyone has piled into the same two companies on the way up, often inside the same venture firm, despite the longstanding venture convention of avoiding investments that conflict with one another. No one is complaining, either. The LPs I speak with seem unbothered by this big gamble, given the potential returns; they’re expecting a bonanza. But they do see danger ahead, even if they describe this as a “yellow light” situation, and they’re uneasy about how quickly VCs are coming back to raise new funds.

OpenAI和Anthropic的估值飙升得如此之快，以至于几乎每个人都在其上涨过程中涌入了这两家公司，而且往往是在同一家风险投资公司内部，尽管风险投资界长期以来一直有避免投资相互冲突项目的惯例。然而，没有人对此抱怨。我交谈过的LP似乎并不担心这种豪赌，考虑到潜在的回报，他们期待着一场盛宴。但他们确实看到了前方的危险，即使他们将其描述为“黄灯”预警情况，而且他们对风投公司回归募集新基金的速度感到不安。

I talked about all of it recently with Beezer Clarkson of LGT Capital Partners, a Zurich-based diversified asset manager, and Amit Bhatti of TrueBridge, a Chapel Hill firm that focuses solely on venture. This conversation has been edited for length. These are strange days — exciting but also scary. How are you feeling about your roles right now, and your place in this startup ecosystem?

最近，我与总部位于苏黎世的多元化资产管理公司LGT Capital Partners的Beezer Clarkson，以及专注于风险投资的教堂山公司TrueBridge的Amit Bhatti讨论了所有这些问题。本次对话内容经过删减。现在是一个奇怪的时期——既令人兴奋又令人恐惧。你们目前对自己所扮演的角色以及在创业生态系统中的位置有何感想？

Beezer Clarkson: It’s very busy, but I wouldn’t say it’s scary. There’s a lot of change and a lot of variables at play. I love venture, so I find the chaos fun. I’ve been doing this for a couple of decades, so seeing the cycles makes it less scary. You appreciate that these things happen, and that we should enjoy the upside, because sometimes there’s downside, and the up is a lot more fun than the down.

Beezer Clarkson：非常忙碌，但我不会说这很可怕。有很多变化和变量在起作用。我热爱风险投资，所以我发现这种混乱很有趣。我已经从事这一行几十年了，所以见证过周期，这让一切变得不那么可怕。你明白这些事情总会发生，我们应该享受上行空间，因为有时会有下行风险，而上行总是比下行更有趣。

Amit Bhatti: If anything, it’s exciting. Venture is sometimes looked at as a niche, and now that AI is all-consuming, all the attention is on venture. This feels like our moment more than it is like, “Oh gosh, what’s going to happen?” The pace of investing and the valuations may be different, but really meaningful stuff is happening, and all the attention is focused on this corner of private equity.

Amit Bhatti：如果说有什么感觉，那就是兴奋。风险投资有时被视为一个小众领域，而现在人工智能占据了主导地位，所有的注意力都集中在风险投资上。这感觉更像是属于我们的时刻，而不是“天哪，会发生什么？”那种担忧。投资节奏和估值可能有所不同，但真正有意义的事情正在发生，所有的目光都聚焦在私募股权的这个角落。

Your funds all hold the same brands now, OpenAI and Anthropic, multiplied across however many funds you back, and your job is to keep your institutions diversified. How do you think about that? Obviously it’s great right now, but if things turned, it would be less great.

你们的基金现在都持有相同的品牌，即OpenAI和Anthropic，并且在你们支持的众多基金中重复出现，而你们的工作是保持机构投资的多元化。你们对此有何看法？显然现在情况很好，但如果形势逆转，情况就不会那么乐观了。

Amit Bhatti: Venture has always been a power law business, so I actually view the concentration as a good thing. If we were getting to the maturity of one of our funds and there were still lots of tiny positions, something’s gone wrong. Our funds that are 10-plus years old are starting to consolidate into a few names. There’s a lot of Databricks, a lot of SpaceX, a lot of Stripe. In this generation of funds, I would hope there’s a lot of Anthropic and a lot of OpenAI. That’s a feature, not a bug. Not every one of these companies is going to work out, but that consolidation is typical. What’s different is how quickly it’s happened. I don’t view it as an immediate panic signal.

Amit Bhatti：风险投资一直是一个幂律业务，所以我实际上认为这种集中化是一件好事。如果我们的一只基金即将到期，却仍然持有大量微小的头寸，那说明出了问题。我们那些超过10年的基金正开始整合为少数几个名字。比如大量的Databricks、SpaceX和Stripe。在这一代基金中，我希望看到大量的Anthropic和OpenAI。这是一个特性，而不是缺陷。并非每一家公司都能成功，但这种整合是典型的。不同之处在于它发生的速度。我不认为这是一个即时的恐慌信号。

Beezer Clarkson: At the early stage, you still see quite a diversity of opportunity sets, and the dollars are smaller. It aggregates up into the same companies, but early-stage funds obviously aren’t doing the big late-stage stuff, so you have more diversity there, if that’s what you’re looking for.

Beezer Clarkson：在早期阶段，你仍然可以看到相当多样化的机会组合，而且资金规模较小。虽然最终会汇聚到相同的公司，但早期基金显然不会参与大规模的后期投资，所以如果你在寻找多样性，那里会有更多选择。

Funds that invested on four-year cycles have shrunk that to three, then two, then 18 months. Is the pacing okay, or is it concerning?

那些原本以四年为一个周期的基金，现在已经缩短到三年、两年，甚至18个月。这种节奏正常吗，还是令人担忧？

Beezer Clarkson: We’re seeing funds come back on one-year pacing, which is fast. The norm was probably two to two and a half years. Some funds are deploying much faster because they’re taking concentrated, big-check positions. That could be a worrisome sign. It could work out, we don’t know, but it’s typically harder to do a one-year vintage and get it right.

Beezer Clarkson：我们看到基金以一年为周期回归，这太快了。常态通常是两年到两年半。一些基金部署资金的速度快得多，因为它们在进行集中化、大额支票的投资。这可能是一个令人担忧的信号。结果可能会好，我们不知道，但通常情况下，一年期的基金要做好是更难的。

Amit Bhatti: Similar for us. I would have said 24 to 36 months was roughly normal. Now 12 to 18 is not crazy for some of the funds going really quickly. A lot of funds are bumping up their fund sizes mid-cycle, which is definitely unusual. That’s partly because rounds have gotten so large. If Anthropic is raising a giant quantum of capital and you put 20% of the fund into it, you’re obviously going to be ahead of pace. Seed round sizes have gone up almost 2x, too, so if you want to lead, you’re writing 2x the check. It’s definitely a yellow light. It gives us a little bit of heartburn. But when we look at what these managers actually bought, the numbers are different. The last time we had accelerated pacing, there was a lot of investing in zero-revenue crypto moonshots. Now we’re seeing a lot of companies go from zero to $100 million in revenue, which was totally unheard of before.

Amit Bhatti：我们也有类似的感觉。我过去会说24到36个月大致是正常的。现在，对于一些行动非常迅速的基金来说，12到18个月也不算疯狂。许多基金在周期中期提高基金规模，这绝对是不寻常的。部分原因是融资轮次变得太大了。如果Anthropic正在筹集巨额资金，而你将基金的20%投入其中，你的进度显然会超前。种子轮融资规模也几乎翻了一番，所以如果你想领投，你开出的支票金额就是原来的两倍。这绝对是一个黄灯信号，让我们有点心焦。但当我们审视这些经理人实际购买的资产时，数据却不同。上次我们经历加速节奏时，大量投资流向了零收入的加密货币投机项目。而现在，我们看到许多公司从零收入增长到1亿美元收入，这在以前是闻所未闻的。

If you’ve got a great manager who comes back every year but the returns are still on paper, can you say “call me next time,” or do you lose your seat at the table?

如果你有一位优秀的经理人每年都回来募资，但回报仍然只是账面上的，你能说“下次再找我”吗，还是说你会失去参与的机会？

Beezer Clarkson: It’s very hard to leave a manager and then come back. It happens, but it’s more typical to downsize your check. In 2021, a lot of LPs said, “If I was going to give you $10 million, I’ll do $5 million, because $10 million was for two years.” In our portfolios, the pacing gets pulled through, so we think about our pacing as well as yours.

Beezer Clarkson：离开一位经理人后再回来是非常困难的。这种情况确实会发生，但更典型的是缩减你的出资额。在2021年，许多LP说：“如果我原本打算给你1000万美元，现在我只给500万美元，因为1000万美元是两年的额度。”在我们的投资组合中，节奏会被拉动，所以我们既要考虑我们的节奏，也要考虑你们的节奏。

Amit Bhatti: Same here. We’re building out a calendar of when we expect to make commitments, so if someone goes way off that map, we need to make sure the capital is there. You see people downsize or communicate it up front. It’s hard to say you’re sitting it out altogether, because then you’re not reliable capital. That’s also why you’re seeing upsizes; managers don’t want to come back and say they’re raising a whole new fund, so they bump up the old one.

Amit Bhatti：我们也是如此。我们正在制定一个预期做出承诺的时间表，所以如果有人严重偏离了这个计划，我们需要确保资金到位。你会看到人们缩减规模或提前沟通。很难说你完全不参与，因为那样你就不是可靠的资本了。这也是为什么你会看到基金规模扩大的原因；经理人不想回来宣布他们要募集一只全新的基金，所以他们就扩大了旧基金的规模。

Beezer Clarkson: People also rotate out of venture sometime.

Beezer Clarkson：人们有时也会从风险投资领域撤出。