爱思英语编者按：在风险投资领域，成功无定式，所有人都在即兴发挥。作者曾在风投巨头安德森•霍洛维茨基金担任合伙人，他的经验弥足珍贵，值得每一位风投界从业者悉心领会。

I left Andreessen Horowitz five months ago to join Imgur as director of product. Below are seven things I learned in venture capital that were particularly useful:

1. The winners always have something that looks hugely wrong with them. Like spectacularly wrong.That’s why no one else has invested/hired/built this opportunity. But you can. Value strength over lack of weakness.

2. Venture (and everything else) is a service business. That means you need to sell yourself to your customers (entrepreneurs, potential employees, partners) all day long. Everyone you talk to, especially the people you turn down, should walk away wanting to work with you even more than they did before.

3. The best way to become quickly knowledgeable is to find the right people and talk to them. Of course, do your homework first. But there isn’t a substitute to finding the three people in the world who know best and triangulating their answers.

4. Managing a portfolio as a collection of risk-reward ratios leads to superior returns. Make sure to have a mixture of low reward, low risk and high reward, high risk projects at work and in life.

5. There is no template for success, and no one knows what works. Everyone is winging it, so make sure you take apart advice to understand why it worked once. For that one person. In that one situation.

6. Big things growing really fast get really big, really fast. Bettings on these things when they seem large but are still growing is a good bet. Counter: make sure you understand why they’re growing, because there is real growth and then there is sugar growth. Sugar growth is fast but stops abruptly.

7. There is a huge advantage to being right early on. In venture, in each new job and in your career, those attached to winners are associated with success. If you have great investments early, the results can snowball.

Sam Gerstenzang (@gerstenzang) is director of product at Imgur, and previously spent 16 months as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. This post originally appeared on his blog.

我在五个月前离开了安德森•霍洛维茨基金，加入图片分享网站Imgure担任产品总监。下面是我在这家风投巨头学到的七条极其有用的经验：

1. 成功者总能找到看起来非常不合理的投资对象。有一些甚至明显有违常理。正是因为如此，才没有人投资/利用/培养这样的机会。但你可以。你要寻找的是一个人或一个项目的长处，而不是寻找一个毫无缺点的人或项目。

2. 风险投资（和其他所有事情）都属于服务业。这意味着你需要向客户（创业者、潜在员工、合伙人）推销自己。与你接触后，每一个人，尤其是被你拒绝的人，都应该比之前更愿意和你一起共事。

3. 要想迅速掌握相关知识，最好的方法就是找到合适的人，与他们交流。当然，首先要做足功课。但最有效的方法是，向世界上最了解某件事的三个人求教，用他们的回答互相印证，来支撑你的看法。

4. 将投资组合作为一系列风险回报比率进行管理，可以带来超高的收益。要保证在工作中和生活中都有低回报、低风险和高回报、高风险的项目。

5. 成功无定式，没有人知道成功的方程式。每个人都是在即兴发挥，所以要确保你接受了独立的建议，以理解为什么某种做法能够成功。为什么那个人能够成功？为什么是在那样的情况下？

6. 真正发展迅速的庞然大物，可以变得更大、发展得更快。投资看起来很大但仍在发展的公司，是不错的选择。但要谨记：一定要清楚它们发展的原因，是有实际增长还是粉饰的增长。粉饰的增长虽然迅速但会戛然而止。

7. 提早做出正确选择，可以帮你获得巨大优势。在风险投资界，以及每一份新工作和你的职业生涯中，依附于胜者的人都会取得成功。如果你能提早进行重大投资，未来你的回报将如滚雪球般增长。（财富中文网）

本文作者Sam Gerstenzang为Imgur产品总监，曾在安德森•霍洛维茨基金合伙人担任过16个月的合伙人。本文最初发表于他的博客。