Musk: After AI takes over work, human work will become gardening

Doug Leone, who steered Sequoia Capital for twenty years, said something in an interview that almost offended all his peers: The biggest mistake this venture capital industry has made is actually not investing in some bad company, but selling the real winners too early. He directly laid out the four most valuable and also most painful reductions in Sequoia's history: Sequoia once held 20% of Nvidia's shares, and sold them. They were Apple's first institutional investor, and sold. They once held a quarter of Cisco's shares, and sold them. They once held 10% of Google's shares, and also sold them. For Google alone, if not a single share had been sold, the position Sequoia holds today would be worth 500 billion US dollars. The traditional rules of venture capital are always to calculate book IRR, preserve the book return rate, and once the exit period arrives, quickly distribute cash to LPs. As long as the book shows a 10x or even 50x gain, the whole industry will advise you to take profits and lock the track record into the fund's annual report. But Doug Leone completely overturned this logic: Truly great companies will continue to compound growth for more than 20 years after the IPO bell rings. As long as you have a bit of business sense and confirm that this company essentially faces an infinite market, you should never sell a single share. People used to think making big money relied on continuously betting on the next new trend, but in fact the most terrifying super compounding is all later on. Keep the 5 billion US dollars of gains on the field, and it can automatically roll into 50 billion US dollars. Traditional venture capital uses 10-year closed-end funds to mechanically apply a game of infinite snowballing that can run for 30 years. In order to lock in the book gains in front of them, they personally handed over a batch of the most valuable assets in human history to the secondary market. This is also the same reminder for us in doing business, doing technology, and building accumulation. The hardest thing has never been choosing the right direction at the beginning, but when good assets begin to give you explosive feedback, restraining your own cleverness that wants to take profits. Only mediocre things need frequent swing trading; a flywheel that can truly cross cycles—holding on is the entire strategy. Of course, the reason this logic holds for Sequoia is that they have top-tier vision and the scale to break the rules. Sequoia later even deliberately overturned the fund model that had been in place for half a century and created an evergreen fund. For the vast majority of people, infinite markets are extremely rare, and mistaking mediocre assets for infinite winners and stubbornly holding on is a more fatal trap. And making big money does not rely on the shrewdness of frequent cashing out; the key is to hold down your hand that wants to cash out in an infinite market.

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掌舵红杉资本二十年的 Doug Leone，在访谈里说了句几乎得罪所有同行的话： 风投这行犯过最大的错误，其实不是投错了哪家烂公司，而是太早卖掉了真正的赢家。 他直接摊开了红杉历史上最值钱、也最痛的四笔减持： 红杉曾经持有英伟达 20% 的股份，卖掉了。 他们是苹果的第一位机构投资人，卖掉了。 持有过思科四分之一的股份，卖掉了。 持有过 Google 10% 的股份，也卖掉了。 光是 Google 这一家，如果一股没卖，今天红杉手里的持仓就值 5000 亿美元。 风险投资的传统规则，永远是算账面 IRR、保账面回报率、到了退出期赶紧把现金分给 LP。 只要账面赚了 10 倍甚至 50 倍，全行业都会劝你落袋为安，把战绩锁死在基金年报里。 但 Doug Leone 彻底推翻了这个逻辑： 真正伟大的公司，在 IPO 敲钟之后还会复合增长 20 年以上。 只要你稍微有点商业嗅觉，确认这家公司本质上面对的是一个无限市场，你就绝不应该卖出一股。 以前大家以为赚大钱靠的是不断押中新风口，实际上最恐怖的超级复利全在后面。 把 50 亿美元的收益继续留在场上，它能自动滚成 500 亿美元。 传统风投是用 10 年期的封闭式基金，去生搬硬套一个能跑 30 年的无限滚雪球游戏。 为了锁住眼前的账面收益，亲手把人类历史上最值钱的一批资产拱手送给了二级市场。 这对我们做业务、做技术和做积累也是同一种提醒， 最难的从来不是最初挑对了好方向，而是当好资产开始给你爆发式反馈的时候，克制住自己想要落袋为安的小聪明。 平庸的东西才需要频繁波段，真正能穿越周期的飞轮，拿住就是全部的策略。 当然这个逻辑之所以在红杉身上成立，前提是他们有最顶级的眼光和打破规则的体量，红杉后来甚至特意推翻了成立半个世纪的基金模式做出了永续基金。 对绝大多数人来说，无限市场极其罕见，把平庸资产误当成无限赢家死扛，是更致命的陷阱， 而赚大钱靠的也不是频繁兑现的精明，关键在无限市场里按住自己想套现的手。