????快問快答。請馬上說出全球最大的風投公司。如果你說不出恩頤投資（New Enterprise Associate）的名字，那也不足為奇。雖然這家公司有100多名員工和8處辦公室，知名的投資項目有團購網站Groupon、母嬰用品直購網站Diapers.com等等，可謂業績斐然，但公司非常低調而神秘——而且是刻意為之。“我們確實沒有明星文化，”恩頤投資的一位合伙人帕特里克?鐘表示。

????先掃掃盲吧。恩頤投資的總部并不在炙手可熱的西海岸，而是在馬里蘭州切維蔡斯。恩頤投資從不聘請明星合伙人，不像凱鵬華盈（Kleiner Perkins），后者曾經力邀阿爾?戈爾（美國前副總統——譯注）加盟。恩頤投資25位合伙人中沒有一個人開通了個人博客，只有4個人有Twitter賬戶——而且7月份以來事實上只有1個人在Twitter上發過言。時下的風投界以吸引眼球為重，“你知道些什么”好像還不如“誰認識你”來得更重要，因此，恩頤投資的這幫人似乎是一群異類。

????“我對我們的工作總是這么想，企業家就像是藝術家，而我們應該站在幕后，”常駐硅谷的帕特里克表示。“藝術家是天才，他們有遠見，但有點情緒化，或者稍微有點不理性。我們的工作就是幫助他們揚長避短。”

????恩頤投資從業33年以來在這方面做得相當好。除了外界一時熱議的Groupon，該公司的投資還包括通信設備制造商3Com、數字視頻公司TiVo、制藥商Alkermes、互聯網醫療服務和信息提供商WebMD、閃存設備制造商Fusion-io和Fisker汽車公司。而且在恩頤投資成立前，董事長迪克?克拉姆里克就已是當時一家小型初創公司——蘋果（Apple）的首批投資人之一了。

????Quick, name the largest venture capital firm in the world. If you didn't come up with New Enterprise Associates (NEA), you're not alone. Although it has over 100 employees in eight offices, big-name investments such as Groupon and Diapers.com, and a fantastic track record, NEA keeps a very low profile -- on purpose. "We don't really have a star culture here," says Patrick Chung, one of NEA's partners.

????For starters, NEA is based on the wrong coast, with headquarters in Chevy Chase, Md. It has never hired a celebrity partner, as Kleiner Perkins did with Al Gore. Not one of its 25 partners has a personal blog, just four have Twitter accounts -- and only one has actually tweeted since July. It's the antithesis of today's attention-seeking VC industry, where what you know seems less important than who knows you.

????"The way I've always thought about our job is that entrepreneurs are like artists, and we're behind the scenes," says Chung, who is based in Silicon Valley. "The artists are talented people with a vision who are a bit temperamental or slightly irrational. It's our job to harness that."

????In its 33 years in business, NEA has done that job quite well. Besides the controversial Groupon, its investments have included 3Com, TiVo (TIVO), Alkermes (ALKS), WebMD (WBMD), Fusion-io, and Fisker. And before founding NEA, chairman Dick Kramlich was one of the first to invest in a little startup called Apple (AAPL).