外部资本总是带着附加条件。但融资并不一定是与魔鬼做交易——特别是鉴于新企业资金需求和可利用资金来源的近期发展。
有大量悲惨的故事可供借鉴。以查尔斯•恩特里金(Charles Entrekin)的经历为例，他是一位加利福尼亚的连续创业者，他的科技服务公司吸收了外部资本，以帮助公司拓展至软件行业。他抱怨道：“那帮投资的家伙上门时，都是有预谋的，想要把你搞掉”。
与许多公司创始人一样，作为获得风险投资的条件，恩特里金和他的合作伙伴接受了一位外来的首席执行官。后来，旨在追求迅速增长的大举支出，使得公司需要更多的现金，在这种情况下，恩特里金他们被迫接受了新一轮的融资，自身的股权被稀释。
许多公司创始人担心，冷酷无情、追逐高额回报的风险投资家会毫不顾及他们的担心。但情况并不一定如此。
首先，初创企业感觉自己要做的第一件事就是冲出去筹一大笔钱的日子已经过去。目前在硅谷工作的德国企业家弗雷德里克•弗莱克(Frederik Fleck)表示，这在一定程度上反映出企业家一种更为成熟的态度。在硅谷，赢得一轮先期风险投资曾经是值得吹嘘的事情。
他同时指出，初创企业的资金需求在不断下降。现在他们可以在网上租得信息技术资源的使用权，而不是必须从零开始，建立自己的技术系统。Ebay前总裁梅纳德•韦伯（Maynard Webb）补充称：“眼下，用比过去少得多的资金建立一家公司，难度已大为下降”。
韦伯是日渐壮大的天使投资人群体中的一员——这是一些富裕的个人，通常自己就是企业家，他们用自己的钱冒险。尽管天使投资人已出现了一段时间，但他们正成为早期投资方面一支日益重要的力量。
天使投资人过去投资额为2.5万美元至10万美元，但现在许多人都乐于出资25万美元，甚至50万美元。鉴于他们的投资额相对较小，他们宣称自己不需要风险投资家所寻求的巨大成功，这让他们更有耐心。
谷歌(Google)前高管艾丁•森库特(Aydin Senkut)表示：“对于应该怎样退出，我们并没有先入之见；我们也不会给企业创始人设定太多苛刻的条件”。他刚刚从一批其他天使投资人手中筹集到4000万美元，以支持初创企业。
显然，这样的言论包含着大量的自我宣传。但与风险投资家相比，天使投资人运作的规模较小，他们可以考虑具有更温和长期前景的投资项目。
于所有的外部投资人一样，了解与你打交道的人是值得的。天使投资人倾向于依靠广泛的人际关系网，并借此帮助他们所支持的企业家。
例如，弗莱克表示，在创立他最新的业务（一项名为TVMoment的网上服务）时，他找到了在电视产业拥有人脉的支持者，来此弥补自己在该行业中的经验不足。
拥有正确的支持者也开启了其他机遇。Inkling创始人马特•麦金尼斯(Matt MacInnis)表示，他表示，找到拥有良好人脉的投资者，降低了他公司第一年实现增长的难度。该公司的技术被用于改善苹果(Apple)iPad上的文本。
在他的案例中，早期的支持者包括森库特和拉姆•施拉姆(Ram Shriram)——谷歌最早的投资人之一。麦金尼斯表示，这些投资人可能在商业运营方面没有提供很多直接的帮助或建议，但随着公司的壮大，其人脉在引入更大的投资者方面的价值难以估量。
选择富有的个人支持者也可能适得其反。有些投资人想要过度介入。
韦伯警告称：“有一些天使不再工作，他们想与你共度太多时光”。
不过，归根结底，选择风险投资上最重要的考量，同样也适用于天使投资人的选择：弄清楚他们是否认同企业家对于业务的目标，以及对于实现这一目标，他们有多大的耐心。
译者/杨卓
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001034488
Outside capital always comes with strings attached. But raising money does not have to feel like doing a deal with the devil – particularly given recent developments both in the funding needs of young companies and the sources of money available.
There are plenty of horror stories to learn from. Take the experience of Charles Entrekin, a serial entrepreneur based in California whose technology services company took outside money to help expand into the software business. “When the big boys come to play, they come with an agenda,” he complains. “They want to get rid of you.”
Like many company founders, Mr Entrekin and his partners accepted an outside chief executive as a condition of taking venture capital money. Then, when heavy spending in pursuit of rapid growth left the company in need of more cash, they were forced to accept another round of capital-raising that diluted their interests.
Many founders fear that heavy-handed venture capitalists, chasing high returns, will ride roughshod over their concerns. But it doesn’t need to be that way.
For a start, the days when start-ups felt the first thing they had to do was rush out and raise a large amount of money are over. That partly reflects a more mature attitude among entrepreneurs, says Frederik Fleck, a German entrepreneur who now works in Silicon Valley, where winning an early venture capital round was once something to brag about.
He also points to the declining capital needs of start-ups, now that they can rent access to IT resources over the internet rather than having to set up their own technology systems from scratch. “It’s a lot easier today to start a company with a lot less money,” adds Maynard Webb, a former president of Ebay.
Mr Webb is part of a growing band of angel investors – wealthy individuals, often entrepreneurs themselves, who put their own money on the line. Though they have been around for a while, angels are becoming a bigger force in early-stage investment.
Angels used to write cheques for $25,000-$100,000, but many are now happy to put up $250,000 or even $500,000. Given the relatively small amounts they put to work, they claim not to need the big successes that venture capitalists seek, enabling them to be more patient.
“We don’t have a preconception about what an exit should be and don’t put a lot of onerous conditions on founders,” says Aydin Senkut, a former Google executive who has just raised $40m from a group of other angels to back start-ups.
Such claims, clearly, contain a large amount of self-promotion. But, operating on a smaller scale than venture capitalists, angel investors can consider investments with more moderate long-term prospects.
Like all outside investors, it pays to know who you’re dealing with. Angels tend to rely on extensive networks of personal contacts, and can use these to support the entrepreneurs they back.
For instance, when setting up his latest venture, an online service called TVMoment, Mr Fleck says he found backers with personal connections in the TV business to make up for his own lack of experience in the field.
Having the right backers also opens other doors. Matt MacInnis, founder of Inkling, whose technology is used to enhance textbooks for Apple’s iPad, says that finding well-connected investors has eased his company’s growth in its first year.
In his case, early backers included Mr Senkut and Ram Shriram, one of the first investors in Google. These investors may not have provided a lot of direct help or advice in running the business, but their networks were invaluable when it came to bringing in bigger investors as the company has grown, says Mr MacInnis.
Picking wealthy individual backers can also backfire. Some want to get too closely involved.
“There are some angels who no longer work and who want to come and spend too much time with you,” warns Mr Webb.
Ultimately, though, the same overriding consideration applies to picking angels as VCs: to work out whether they share an entrepreneur’s goal for the business, and how impatient they are to get there.
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