经济学人下载:不带来好处的友谊

Finance and Economics; Choosing co-investors; Friends without benefits;
财经；选择投资伙伴；不带来好处的友谊；

Venture capitalists need to be ruthless about their relationships;
风险投资家们在他们的关系里需要更加无情；

Even in a world of algorithmic trading and automated credit scoring, good financial decisions still depend on judgment. Choosing whom to invest alongside is particularly important in the uncertain world of venture capital, where many deals are syndicated, in order to share risk and information. Paul Gompers and Yuhai Xuan of Harvard Business School and Vladimir Mukharlyamov of Harvard University have put together a dataset of 3,500 early-stage investors in almost 12,000 deals to examine why specific pairs of investors are drawn to each other, and how that affects their financial performance.
就算在一个充斥着算法式交易和自动信誉评级的世界里，好的投资决策依然依靠判断力。选择与谁并肩作战，在一个充满着未知数的风投世界里显得尤其重要。许多风投项目都是联合投资以分散风险与共享信息。哈佛商学院Paul Gompers和Yuhai Xuan跟哈佛大学Vladimir Mukharlyamov整合了一个拥有3500名早期投资者，将近12,000个案例的资料库。该数据库式用以检验为什么特定组合的投资者能互相吸引，而这种关系如何影响他们的投资表现。

Investors clearly prefer partners with whom they have something in common. People who have worked at the same company are over 60% more likely to co-invest than those who have not. Investors who belong to the same ethnic minority, or studied at the same university, are around 20% more likely to pair up. The bias towards co-investors on measures of ability is weaker: investors with degrees from the best universities are just 9% more likely to get together.
投资者明显更喜欢拥有共同点的伙伴。曾在同一家公司上班的比那些没有这种经历的伙伴共同投资的几率要高60％。同一种族，或同一大学毕业的投资者共同投资的几率也要高出20％。根据个人能力来搭伙的倾向并不明显，具有最优秀大学学位的投资者共同投资的几率仅高出9％。

Rapport is a poor basis for selecting partners. The authors examine investors' record at exiting investments through an initial public offering (IPO). An IPO is the holy grail for many start-ups, but the odds of success are 22% lower if a co-investing pair are alumni of the same university, and 18% lower if they share a past employer. By itself, ethnicity has no effect on investment success. In a pair, it is a different story. Co-investors from the same ethnic minority are 25% less likely to bring a portfolio company to an IPO (and the odds are still lower if the partners are East Asian). The data suggest that the poorer results of similar investors stem less from selecting bad companies, more from bad decisions taken together after the initial investment. It may be that a diversity of views helps investors to make better calls.
基于友善来选择伙伴是一个失败的根据。作者从现有上市的表现来检验了投资者的投资记录。上市是许多创业公司的终极目标，但校友伙伴搭配投资的成功率比非校友的要低22％，同时曾同事过的伙伴成功率则低18％。如果仅考虑种族问题，这对最终投资成功率没有影响。但一旦涉及搭配，这就完全不一样。由同一种族组成的共同投资搭配，旗下企业上市的几率要低25％（东亚伙伴的成功率则更低）。这些数据表明具有共同点投资伙伴所产生的疲弱投资结果，受选错公司的影响其实较小，而更多的是由初步投资后的错误决策而导致。这可能是因为多样化视角有利于投资者作出更好的判断。

Partnerships based on ability, not similarity, tend to do better. If one investor of a pair has a degree from a leading university, this adds 9% to the possibility of their selected firms reaching an IPO; if the second does too, that adds a further 11%. Of course, such investors still have to find each other. Research led by Alexander Ljungqvist of New York University's Stern School of Business has shown that VC firms in influential network positions perform better, as they have more opportunity to take part in syndications. The moral seems to be that investors should make friends easily, but not invest for friendship's sake alone.
基于能力而非共同点组成的搭配往往更成功。如果其中一名投资者拥有顶尖大学学位，这将使被投资公司的上市几率上升9％；如果另一名也有同样等级的学位，这将额外增加11％的上市几率。纽约大学斯特恩商学院Alexander Ljungqvist带头的研究显示，拥有具影响力关系网的风投企业表现更好，因为他们更有机会参与到联合投资里。这个寓言似乎告诉投资者应广泛交友，而不要仅因友谊就参与投资。