????牽頭進行本輪融資的Institutional Venture Partners公司丹尼斯?菲爾普斯應該知道上述問題的答案。不幸的是，他不接受關于此交易的采訪。但他寫了一篇名為《IVP投資Snapchat的十大理由》的博客文章。這篇文章使我產生了兩個想法：

????1、要么菲爾普斯是位蹩腳的風險資本家，根本不懂行；

????2、要么菲爾普斯其實心里跟明鏡似地，只是故意兜圈子，不想讓博文讀者弄明白。

????我猜后一種更可信。

????說真的，菲爾普斯給出的好幾條原因可謂寬泛至極，可以適用于幾十家乃至數百家新創企業。比如說移動至上？專注于圖像而非文字？創始人是“數碼原生代”？公司總部設在南加州？

????另外，菲爾普斯給出的有些原因根本不是好的投資理由，比如說追隨聰明的首輪投資者【基準資本（Benchmark）和光速創投（Lightspeed）】，還有“因為他們讓我們投”。

????所以，我不禁懷疑Snapchat其實有一個宏偉的計劃，只不過這家公司及其投資者目前都不愿透露。就連就此發布一條10秒鐘就自行銷毀的“快照”消息也不行。（財富中文網）

????譯者：項航

????One person who should know the answer is Dennis Phelps of Institutional Venture Partners, which led the new financing round. Unfortunately, he isn't doing interviews on the deal. Instead, he wrote a blog post titled Ten Reasons Why IVP Invested in Snapchat. It left me with two thoughts:

????1.?Either Phelps is a lousy venture capitalist who doesn't know what he's doing, or

????2.?He knows exactly what he's doing, and has expertly talked around telling readers of the blog post.

????My guess is the latter.

????Seriously, many of the reasons Phelps gives are generic enough that they could apply to dozens of startups, if not to hundreds. Mobile-first? Focused on imagery rather than text? The founders are digital natives? The company is based in Southern California?

????And some of them just aren't good reasons to invest. Namely the ones about following smart Series A investors (Benchmark and Lightspeed) and the one about "because they let us."

????So that's why I come back to the idea that Snapchat has a grand plan that neither it, nor its investors, are willing to divulge. Yet. Not even in a 10-second message that self-destructs.