連續創業家掘金 帶動營銷自動化
It didn't take long for Brad O'Neill to get back in the game.
時隔不久，布萊德·奧尼爾又回來了。It was late 2007, and StumbleUpon -- the popular content discovery service and his highest-profile investment at the time -- had just a few months earlier been scooped up by eBay (EBAY) for $75 million in cash. O'Neill, an angel investor for the company, could have easily sat back and enjoyed the return on what one reporter called "your typical dot-com Cinderella story." Instead, he started another company.
那是在2007年末，幾個月前StumbleUpon（熱門的內容發現網站，也是當時他最受關注的一項投資）剛剛被eBay (EBAY)以7,500萬美元現金收購。StumbleUpon的天使投資人奧尼爾本可就此收手，坐享這筆豐厚的投資回報，有位記者將此稱爲典型的互聯網灰姑娘故事。但是，他轉而創立了另一家公司。"I had just sold StumbleUpon to eBay with Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith and was starting to think about a new problem to go solve," O'Neill says. "My technical co-founder Steve Norall and I were talking. He was working as an industry analyst and overwhelmed with all the writing he had to do. And we were talking about how content automation was becoming increasingly possible. I was in the British Virgin Islands on vacation and ruining it by Skyping with Steve and brainstorming what would become TechValidate."
“我和蓋瑞特o坎普、傑夫o史密斯將StumbleUpon賣給eBay不久，就開始考慮一個新的、要解決的問題，”奧尼爾說。“我在和懂技術的共同合夥人史蒂夫o諾埃爾談。他是一位行業分析師，總是爲必須要寫的東西忙得暈頭轉向。我們討論的是內容自動化正在如何變得越來越有可能。當時我在英屬維爾京羣島度假，結果卻變成了與諾埃爾在Skype上聊天並醞釀後來成爲TechValidate的種種設想。”
O'Neill describes TechValidate's namesake product as a "software-as-a-service content automation platform for B2B companies." Custom content has become a popular approach to marketing, but corporate teams are too busy to create content targeted enough to be effective, O'Neill says. TechValidate's tool imports content it deems relevant for verified customers of B2B companies from its library. Marketers then review it in private and publish it across platforms, whether in a marketing automation platform, in a customer relations management tool, on social media channels, or on the web.
奧尼爾將TechValidate的同名產品描述爲“B2B公司軟件即服務的內容自動化平臺”。奧尼爾表示，自設內容已成爲受歡迎的營銷手段，但企業團隊很忙，難以提供足夠的定向內容來保證有效性。TechValidate的工具可以從資料庫中導入它認爲對於B2B公司認證用戶重要的內容。營銷人員審覈後可在不同平臺上發佈，包括營銷自動平臺、客戶關係管理工具、社交媒體渠道、網頁等等。"We invented the space. Nobody was doing it before we showed up," he says."We built a content robot that is designed to make it simple for a marketing team that is already overstretched to build targeted content -- so targeted that a human couldn't do it."
“我們開創了這個市場空間。我們出現之前沒有人做過這件事，”他說。“我們打造了一個內容機器人，簡化了營銷團隊的工作，以前他們總是爲打造定向內容而忙得暈頭轉向——工具實現的定向性是人類難以企及的。”TechValidate introduced its product in the middle of 2008 and now counts GE (GE), Hewlett Packard (HP), IBM (IBM), Dell, Hitachi, CA Technologies (CA), SAP (SAP), and Intel (INTC) as customers. O'Neill says the company -- which did not accept outside investment -- made $5 million in revenue in 2013 and is on track to make $12 million, profitably, this year.
TechValidate於2008年年中推出了產品，如今通用電氣(GE, GE)、惠普(Hewlett Packard, HP)、IBM、戴爾(Dell)、日立(Hitachi)、CA Technologies (CA)、SAP (SAP)和英特爾(Intel, INTC)都已經是它的客戶。據奧尼爾稱，這家不接受外部投資的公司2013年實現營收500萬美元，今年有望達到1200萬美元，實現盈利。"Steve and I had a very conscious decision that we weren't going to seek venture money for this," O'Neill says. "We kept comparing ourselves to SurveyMonkey, which also has these very positive feedback loops. If we're charging the right amount of money, we won't need venture money. We turned profitable in our first year and we still are."
“諾埃爾和我做出了一個非常清醒的決定，這家公司我們不打算尋求風險投資，”奧尼爾說。“我們總是將自己與在線調查網站SurveyMonkey相比，後者也有這樣的正反饋迴路。如果我們收取的價格合理，我們不需要風險投資。我們第一年就實現了盈利，目前仍是如此。”Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital, which invested in StumbleUpon, says O'Neill and Norall have the right approach. "I don't believe many teams could have accomplished what Brad has without outside investment. We just don't see too many bootstrapped businesses getting to scale in enterprise software. It's a viable path, but uncommon."
First Round Capital的約什o考普曼曾經投資StumbleUpon。他說，奧尼爾和諾埃爾的做法是對的。“我認爲，很少有團隊能像奧尼爾那樣不借助外部投資就取得這樣的成就。我們很少看到創業公司能在企業軟件領域達到規模化。這是一條可行的道路，但不常見。”On Tuesday, the company announced a partnership with Oracle (ORCL) to integrate its service into Eloqua, that company's marketing automation software. O'Neill describes the deal as a way to make it easier for the 35% of his customers who use Eloqua and TechValidate together, but the arrangement also exposes his company to a larger audience through its presence in the EloquaAppCloud software hub.
週二，這家公司宣佈與甲骨文(Oracle, ORCL)合作，把自己的服務與甲骨文的營銷自動軟件Eloqua相整合。奧尼爾表示，TechValidate有35%的客戶同時使用Eloqua和TechValidate，整合能簡化他們的工作，也能讓TechValidate通過EloquaAppCloud軟件樞紐到達更多受衆。"The challenge they have is that they don't have all this content to fill these pages," O'Neill says. "Companies have gone out and spent millions of dollars for marketing automation, and they realize that the deployment doesn't achieve its objectives without content. Eloqua customers were asking for a more streamlined way to pull our assets into that environment. So now any of our joint customers have the ability to build and distribute and syndicate our content in Eloqua -- they don't have to leave it."
“他們的挑戰是沒有這樣的內容來填充頁面，”奧尼爾表示。“企業已經做出了努力，花費了數百萬美元實施營銷自動化。他們意識到如果沒有內容，這些努力並不能實現目標。Eloqua的客戶要求以一種更簡單的方式，將我們的內容提取至他們的工作環境。現在，我們的任何共同客戶都能在Eloqua中建立、發佈和集成我們的內容——無需離開Eloqua。”Just how big an opportunity is content automation? O'Neill would only say that his company sits in between the "multibillion-dollar" marketing automation industry and the $44 billion content marketing industry -- "the single largest line item in the marketing budget." It's not a bad place to be.
內容自動化蘊藏着多大的商機？奧尼爾只是說，他的公司處於“幾十億美元”的營銷自動化行業與440億美元內容營銷行業之間——“營銷預算中最大的單一支出。”這個領域真不賴。"Because we're one of a kind, it's difficult to talk about a total addressable market," he says. "When you're a unicorn it's a self-serving thing. But we're sitting between two wonderful trends that are both increasing."
“因爲我們是其中一個，很難談論總的可到達市場，”他說。“當你是獨角獸時，這是一件不言自明的事。但目前我們處於兩股令人激動的趨勢之間，兩股趨勢都在快速增長。”
