????快問快答。請馬上說出全球最大的風(fēng)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(xiàng)目有團(tuán)購網(wǎng)站Groupon、母嬰用品直購網(wǎng)站Diapers.com等等，可謂業(yè)績斐然，但公司非常低調(diào)而神秘——而且是刻意為之。“我們確實(shí)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(jīng)力邀阿爾?戈?duì)枺绹案笨偨y(tǒng)——譯注）加盟。恩頤投資25位合伙人中沒有一個(gè)人開通了個(gè)人博客，只有4個(gè)人有Twitter賬戶——而且7月份以來事實(shí)上只有1個(gè)人在Twitter上發(fā)過言。時(shí)下的風(fēng)投界以吸引眼球?yàn)橹兀澳阒佬┦裁础焙孟襁€不如“誰認(rèn)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(yè)家就像是藝術(shù)家，而我們應(yīng)該站在幕后，”常駐硅谷的帕特里克表示。“藝術(shù)家是天才，他們有遠(yuǎn)見，但有點(diǎn)情緒化，或者稍微有點(diǎn)不理性。我們的工作就是幫助他們揚(yáng)長避短。”

????恩頤投資從業(yè)33年以來在這方面做得相當(dāng)好。除了外界一時(shí)熱議的Groupon，該公司的投資還包括通信設(shè)備制造商3Com、數(shù)字視頻公司TiVo、制藥商Alkermes、互聯(lián)網(wǎng)醫(yī)療服務(wù)和信息提供商WebMD、閃存設(shè)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(dāng)時(shí)一家小型初創(chuàng)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).