????現在是晚上11點，地點是在奧斯丁城區，我們坐在一輛不像校車的校車里面兜著圈子：校車裝著深色的車窗，車尾有一個吧臺，發動機的護柵上綁著擴音器，墻上掛著九寸釘樂隊（Nine Inch Nails）海報，一個看上去和聽上去都非常昂貴的系統大聲播放著電子樂whomm-whomm-whomping。車上坐了25個人，大部分都抓著車頂的扶手，每次轉彎的時候都歪歪斜斜。幾個女人在自顧自地跳著舞。

????我們正在參加西南偏南音樂節（South by Southwest）。以前，這個音樂節是為給一些不出名的樂隊提供與唱片公司簽約的機會。如今，它似乎完全演變成了科技界的盛宴。Zappos.com公司CEO謝家華預定了派對巴士。車上坐的都是謝家華的朋友：其中一位把來自奧斯丁的創業家把上一家公司賣給了社交游戲公司Zynga，還有谷歌（Google）風險投資基金的一位成員；一位彼得?泰爾創始人基金會（Founders Fund）的合伙人；還有一位女士，在拉斯維加斯城區附近創辦了一家烤辣味干酪玉米片的餐廳，謝家華在其中投入了數百萬資金用于餐廳重建。車上還有一位20歲的風險投資人阿歷克斯?班納言：他是車上最年輕的一位，早已把自己介紹給大家認識。聽著刺激的音樂，我已經不止一次聽到他大喊：“太棒了！”

????班納言是世界上最年輕的風險投資人。他目前在舊金山風險投資公司Alsop Louie任職，公司旗下管理著1.5億美元資金。此外，他還是蘭登書屋（Random House）旗下皇冠出版社（Crown Business）最年輕的簽約作者，可能也是唯一一位同時接到MTV（拍攝個人真人秀節目）和環球唱片公司（Interscope Records）一位唱作人邀請（擔任經紀人），但都婉言謝絕的大學生。

????斯圖爾特?奧爾索普表示，之所以聘用班納言，是因為這個20歲的年輕人身上有一種比技術專業能力更重要的東西：積極活躍。班納言跟奧爾索普和他的合伙人吉爾曼?雷講了他在《價格競猜》（The Price Is Right ）中獲勝的經歷（他贏得了3,2000美元獎金，包括一艘18英尺長的帆船，一張臺球桌，還有一次零重力飛行之旅），盡管他從來沒有完整地看過哪怕一期節目。他還講到了自己在派對上遇到的那些南加州大學（University of Southern California）的創業新人，還有他的圖書合約。這位新生代作家從這份合約中獲得了高達六位數的天價預付款。他說，為了寫這本書，他希望能采訪世界上最成功的那些人，比如沃倫?巴菲特、比爾?克林頓、比爾?蓋茨、坎耶?韋斯特、馬克?扎克伯格等，描寫一下當他們在人生初期無人問津的時候，如何尋求突破。不過，人們倒是很愿意與班納言見面。

????奧爾索普說：“他的自信心令人難以置信。”奧爾索普曾經是一名記者【曾為《財富》雜志（Fortune）供稿】，他的聯合創始人雷曾負責運營美國中情局（CIA）的風險投資基金。奧爾索普和雷都希望能有人替他們跟蹤洛杉磯的初創企業。班納言正是他們心目中的人選，班納言被選中時還是南加州大學的大三學生。盡管還只是奧爾索普口中的“孩子”，但班納言已經承擔了巨大的責任。現在他面臨著每一個新入行的風險投資人都需要面對的挑戰：完成投資任務。我在奧斯丁見到他時，他與Alsop Louie簽約已經滿了一年，仍然在尋找第一筆大買賣。（財富中文網）

????譯者：劉進龍/汪浩

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????It's 11 p.m. in downtown Austin, and we're driving in circles in a very un-school-bus-like school bus: blacked-out windows, a bar in the back, bullhorns strapped to the grille, Nine Inch Nails posters on the walls, dubstep whomm-whomm-whomping through what looks and sounds like an expensive, very loud sound system. There are 25 of us onboard. Most hang on to overhead straps, leaning into each turn. A group of women is dancing, somehow.

????We are at South by Southwest, a festival that used to be about undiscovered bands getting signed by record labels and is now seemingly wholly given over to Tech with a capital T. The party bus was booked by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com. All Hsieh's friends are aboard: There's an Austin entrepreneur who sold his last company to Zynga (ZNGA); a member of Google's venture capital fund; a partner at Peter Thiel's Founders Fund; and a woman who started a nachos restaurant near downtown Las Vegas, where Hsieh is sinking hundreds of millions of his own money into redevelopment. Also aboard: a 20-year-old venture capitalist named Alex Banayan. He's the youngest person on the bus by a decade, and he has already introduced himself to everyone. More than once, over the sonic assault I hear his voice shout, "That's awesome!"

????Banayan is the world's youngest venture capitalist. He works for the San Francisco firm Alsop Louie, which manages $150 million. He's also the youngest author signed at Crown Business, a Random House imprint, and probably the only college student in the world to have received offers from MTV (for his own reality-TV show) and from a singer-songwriter at Interscope Records (to manage him) and turned both down.

????Stewart Alsop says that he hired Banayan because he saw something in the 20-year-old that was, to him, more important than tech expertise: hustle. Banayan told Alsop and his partner, Gilman Louie, about how he won on The Price Is Right despite never having watched a full episode. (He earned $32,000 in prizes, including an 18-foot sailboat, a billiards table, and a zero-gravity plane trip.) He told them about all the budding University of Southern California entrepreneurs he was meeting at parties and, later, his book deal, for which the first-time author got a substantial six-figure advance. For the book, he told them, he hoped to interview some of the world's most successful people -- Warren Buffett, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Kanye West, Mark Zuckerberg -- and write about how they broke through early in life when no one would take their meetings. People take Banayan's meetings.

????"He's incredibly self-confident," says Alsop, who used to be a journalist (and wrote forFortune) and whose co-founder, Louie, used to run the CIA's venture investment fund. Alsop and Louie wanted someone to track startups across L.A. for them. In Banayan, a USC junior, they had found their man. Banayan has been given an enormous amount of responsibility for someone Alsop still calls a "kid," and he now faces the challenge that greets every new VC: closing. A year after signing with Alsop Louie, when I met him in Austin, he was still searching for that first big deal.