我们投资过的一位创始人最近正在和风投接触，他问我，创业公司的创始人在 A 轮融资后依然掌控董事会的情况有多普遍。他说风投告诉他，这种事几乎闻所未闻。
Someone we funded is talking to VCs now, and asked me how common it was for a startup's founders to retain control of the board after a series A round. He said VCs told him this almost never happened.
十年前确实如此。过去，创始人很少能在经历 A 轮融资后还保住董事会的控制权。传统的 A 轮董事会由两位创始人、两位风投和一位独立董事组成。近来常见的组合则是一位创始人、一位风投和一位独立董事。无论哪种情况，创始人都失去了多数席位。
Ten years ago that was true. In the past, founders rarely kept control of the board through a series A. The traditional series A board consisted of two founders, two VCs, and one independent member. More recently the recipe is often one founder, one VC, and one independent. In either case the founders lose their majority.
但并非总是如此。马克·扎克伯格在 A 轮融资后保留了 Facebook 董事会的控制权，并且至今依然掌控着。马克·平卡斯也保留了 Zynga 董事会的控制权。但这些只是特例吗？创始人在 A 轮之后保留控制权到底有多普遍？在我们资助过的公司中，我听说过好几起这样的案例，但我不确定到底有多少，于是我给 ycfounders 邮件列表发了一封邮件。
But not always. Mark Zuckerberg kept control of Facebook's board through the series A and still has it today. Mark Pincus has kept control of Zynga's too. But are these just outliers? How common is it for founders to keep control after an A round? I'd heard of several cases among the companies we've funded, but I wasn't sure how many there were, so I emailed the ycfounders list.
回复让我大吃一惊。在我们资助过的公司中，有十几家公司的创始人在 A 轮融资后仍然拥有董事会的多数席位。
The replies surprised me. In a dozen companies we've funded, the founders still had a majority of the board seats after the series A round.
我觉得我们正处于一个转折点。许多风投仍然表现得好像创始人在 A 轮后保留董事会控制权是天方夜谭一样。他们中的许多人甚至会让你觉得提出这种要求很羞耻——就好像你想要这种控制权，要么是个什么都不懂的菜鸟，要么是个控制狂。但我收到的回信里，那些创始人既不是菜鸟，也不是控制狂。即便他们是，他们也是像马克·扎克伯格那种风投应该抢着去投资的菜鸟和控制狂。
I feel like we're at a tipping point here. A lot of VCs still act as if founders retaining board control after a series A is unheard-of. A lot of them try to make you feel bad if you even ask — as if you're a noob or a control freak for wanting such a thing. But the founders I heard from aren't noobs or control freaks. Or if they are, they are, like Mark Zuckerberg, the kind of noobs and control freaks VCs should be trying to fund more of.
创始人在 A 轮后保留控制权显然已经不是什么新鲜事了。而且，除非发生财务灾难，我认为在未来一年内，这将会成为常态。
Founders retaining control after a series A is clearly heard-of. And barring financial catastrophe, I think in the coming year it will become the norm.
控制一家公司，比单纯在董事会会议上投票压倒其他各方要复杂得多。投资者通常对某些重大决策（比如出售公司）拥有否决权，而不管他们拥有多少董事会席位。而且，董事会投票很少出现分裂。事情通常在投票前的讨论中就决定好了，而不是在投票本身，投票通常都是全票通过的。但是，如果在讨论中意见分歧，那么知道自己在投票中会输的那一方往往就不会那么坚持。这就是董事会控制权在实际中的意义。你并不能简单地随心所欲；董事会仍然必须符合股东的利益；但如果你拥有董事会的多数席位，那么你对什么符合股东利益的看法往往会占上风。
Control of a company is a more complicated matter than simply outvoting other parties in board meetings. Investors usually get vetos over certain big decisions, like selling the company, regardless of how many board seats they have. And board votes are rarely split. Matters are decided in the discussion preceding the vote, not in the vote itself, which is usually unanimous. But if opinion is divided in such discussions, the side that knows it would lose in a vote will tend to be less insistent. That's what board control means in practice. You don't simply get to do whatever you want; the board still has to act in the interest of the shareholders; but if you have a majority of board seats, then your opinion about what's in the interest of the shareholders will tend to prevail.
因此，虽然董事会控制权并不是绝对的控制，但它也绝非虚设。这不可避免地会影响到公司内部的氛围。这意味着，如果创始人在 A 轮后保留董事会控制权成为常态，整个创业界的氛围都将随之改变。
So while board control is not total control, it's not imaginary either. There's inevitably a difference in how things feel within the company. Which means if it becomes the norm for founders to retain board control after a series A, that will change the way things feel in the whole startup world.
转向这种新常态的速度可能会快得惊人，因为能够保住控制权的创业公司往往是最优秀的那些。正是它们在为其他创业公司和风投树立风向标。
The switch to the new norm may be surprisingly fast, because the startups that can retain control tend to be the best ones. They're the ones that set the trends, both for other startups and for VCs.
风投在与创业公司谈判时表现得寸步不让，很大程度上是因为他们觉得回去面对合伙人时显得自己被宰了会很丢脸。签下投资意向书时，他们希望能吹嘘自己拿到了多么优厚的条款。许多人私底下其实并不那么在乎创始人是否保住董事会控制权，他们只是不想显得自己做出了让步。这意味着，如果让创始人保留控制权不再被视作一种妥协，这种情况很快就会变得极其普遍。
A lot of the reason VCs are harsh when negotiating with startups is that they're embarrassed to go back to their partners looking like they got beaten. When they sign a termsheet, they want to be able to brag about the good terms they got. A lot of them don't care that much personally about whether founders keep board control. They just don't want to seem like they had to make concessions. Which means if letting the founders keep control stops being perceived as a concession, it will rapidly become much more common.
就像许多硬塞给风投的改变一样，这次转变最终也不会像他们想象的那样成什么大问题。风投依然能够去说服，只是无法去强迫罢了。而那些需要动用强迫手段的创业公司，本来也不是真正举足轻重的那些。风投绝大部分的收益都来自少数几个大赢家，而那些公司绝不会是这一类。
Like a lot of changes that have been forced on VCs, this change won't turn out to be as big a problem as they might think. VCs will still be able to convince; they just won't be able to compel. And the startups where they have to resort to compulsion are not the ones that matter anyway. VCs make most of their money from a few big hits, and those aren't them.
明确知道创始人会保留董事会控制权，甚至可能有助于风投做出更好的抉择。如果他们知道自己无法解雇创始人，就必须选择自己能够信任的创始人。而这本就是他们从一开始就该选择的人。
Knowing that founders will keep control of the board may even help VCs pick better. If they know they can't fire the founders, they'll have to choose founders they can trust. And that's who they should have been choosing all along.
感谢 Sam Altman、John Bautista、Trevor Blackwell、Paul Buchheit、Brian Chesky、Bill Clerico、Patrick Collison、Adam Goldstein、James Lindenbaum、Jessica Livingston 和 Fred Wilson 阅读本文草稿。
Thanks to Sam Altman, John Bautista, Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, Brian Chesky, Bill Clerico, Patrick Collison, Adam Goldstein, James Lindenbaum, Jessica Livingston, and Fred Wilson for reading drafts of this.