【观点】细分市场B2B创业者如何在早期脱颖而出？
There’s a VC adage that in any new market, the start-up that emerges as the leader will be richly rewarded. The number two player attracts the would-be acquirers of the number one player, generating a decent return for employees and investors, and the number three player has a chance of generating a modest return. Beyond these top three, it generally doesn’t end well.
风险投资圈里有句老话，在任何一个新兴市场里，成为第一名的初创企业会获得最丰厚的收益；行业第二有可能被行业第一收购，给员工和投资人带来不错的回报；行业第三有可能获得普通的回报。除行业前三之外，该领域其他的公司几乎不会有好的结果。
Naturally, all investors want to bet on the number one player, but in the early stages, it’s tough to predict which companies will solidify their position at the top. Nascent B2B categories can take several years to take shape. For instance, today’s accepted markets like NoSQL or marketing automation were amorphous and uncertain six or seven years ago.
诚然，所有投资人在早期希望赌对行业第一，但是在行业形成的早期却很难预测哪个公司会稳居榜首。一个新兴的细分市场的B2B公司需要好几年的时间发展成长。例如，今天我们知道的的NoSQL数据库或者自动化营销系统在六七年前也处于模糊的状态。
Long before something can be declared a category or even a “space”, we typically see a few companies with varying strategies and products working in the same general area. Each has some market validation in the form of beta customers, partners or downloads. Determining the top player becomes easier by the time the company raises a later-stage round of financing, but with higher valuations at that point, the potential return diminishes.
在一个领域被认定为一个新的赛道之前，我们通常会看到几家具有不同的策略和产品形态的公司。每家公司都拥有了一些测试客户、合作伙伴以及下载量，得到了一定程度的市场验证。当有一家公司融了一轮大钱之后，大家才能判断行业第一是谁，但是这个时候，再投资估值这样高的公司，风险变大，潜在的投资回报会降低。
So how do we identify a front-runner? At the early stages, we’re looking for a company that is making itself synonymous with an emerging category, thus ensuring that potential customers will always consider their product.
所以我们如何辨认出领跑者呢？在早期，我们要找到这样一家公司，它让自己成为这个新兴的细分市场的代名词，以保证潜在客户总会在需要的时候想起它的产品。
Easier said than done. Defining a category is a risky and often expensive endeavor. Even if you have a great product and an extraordinary technical team, market timing and product fit have to align with your efforts.
说起来容易，做起来难。定义一个细分市场是一种有风险且代价昂贵的尝试。即使你拥有了一个伟大的产品和出色的技术团队，还必须有正确的营销时机和产品适用性的配合。
For B2B startup leaders who think they have what it takes, here’s our playbook for defining a category, gathered through working closely with a couple companies—Right Media and Blue Kai—that have done it successfully.
有两家公司（Right Media 和 Blue Kai）在这方面做的非常好，在与他们的密切交流中，我们在这里为B2B创业者们总结了3条宝贵经验。
Evangelize your vision like crazy
疯狂地宣传你的愿景
The founder or CEO of an early stage company needs a strategic vision and an obsession with storytelling. He or she must be able to credibly paint the future.
创始人／CEO必须具有战略性的眼光和讲故事的能力。他／她必须能够坚定不移地画出企业的蓝图。
I remember how Right Media founder and CEO Mike Walrath would draw his vision on a white board outlining the future of online advertising, what later became known as “the advertising exchange,” with Advertisers, Networks, and Publishers all working in real-time to match the best ad with the best impressions (see diagram below).
我还记得 Right Media的创始人兼CEO Mike Walrath当年把线上营销的未来画在白板上，这就是未来我们所说的“互联网广告交易平台”，有了广告主、交易平台、投放渠道，为所有人实时做出最好的匹配。
After hearing Mike’s pitch for the first time, we were so convinced as investors that he had the right stuff, we canceled our meetings for the following day and jumped on a redeye to meet with him in New York. He must have drawn those A’s, N’s and P’s hundreds of times, in the process convincing the entire industry that an ad exchange was inevitable and that Right Media would be the leading player in this emerging market.
在第一次听了Mike提案之后，作为投资人，我们确信，他对这个行业有了正确的洞察，因此我们取消了第二天的会议，搭乘红眼航班赶去纽约与他会面。他一定已经把这张图画了无数遍去说服整个行业，“互联网广告交易平台”必然会产生，而且Right Media会是这个新兴市场的领导者。
Similarly, BlueKai CEO Omar Tawakol could deftly articulate to marketers and publishers why audience targeting was the future of online advertising, and that they would need a Data Management Platform (“DMP”), a term he first coined, to capture the benefits of audience-based campaigns. Omar had that rare skill of taking complexity (“cookies, tags and taxonomies”) and turning it into straight talk about value for marketers.
同样的，BlueKai的CEO Omar Tawakol也能熟练的让广告主和投放渠道知道为什么“用户定向技术”是线上营销的未来，因此他们需要一个数据管理平台（DMP）——一个他缔造的新名词——来从基于用户的广告投放中获益。Omar拥有一种罕见的能力，能化繁为简，把复杂的缓存、标签和分类等概念直接转化成对广告主的价值。
Enlist an influential customer
赢得一个有影响力的大客户
Early on each company used its vision and conviction to win marquis customers that at first glance might look crazy to be betting on a scrappy startup. Right Media signed up social networking pioneer MySpace.com early on, and then Yahoo soon after. Blue Kai convinced leading marketers such as HP and Microsoft to bet on Blue Kai’s DMP at the formative stage of the company.
在早期，每个公司都用自己的愿景和信念赢得了重要的客户，让他们好像疯了一样押注一个初创的小公司。Right Media就签约了当时著名的社交网络MySpace.com, 继而与yahoo也展开了合作。Blue Kai也在成立之初成功说服了HP和Microsoft使用DMP系统。
The next step was to enlist these high-profile customers to spread the word about the problem they were facing and the needs of the broader ecosystem, thus raising awareness of the category.
接下来就是让那些备受瞩目的大客户来提出他们面临的问题以及对整个生态链的需求，从而引起对这个细分市场的关注。
In its early days BlueKai was in talks with a major carrier but that carrier’s business team couldn’t convince its privacy team to get on board to close the deal. That same year Omar found himself on a privacy panel at a major event with that carrier’s chief privacy officer. This chief privacy officer was surprised to see Omar call for the industry to provide more transparency and control to users. Immediately after that panel discussion, Omar received a phone call from the carrier’s business team conveying that the privacy group had given the green light to work with BlueKai without issuing an RFP. In sum, BlueKai’s strategy to be proactive in communicating its vision in the early days helped them close deals with some major customers.
一开始，BlueKai接触了一个主流运营商，但是运营商的业务部门不能说服他们的用户隐私部门配合完成这个交易。同年，Omar在一个主流活动上发现自己与这个运营商的首席隐私官在同一个论坛上。这个首席隐私官吃惊的发现Omar在号召整个行业向用户提供更多的透明度和控制力。很快，Omar接到了运营商的电话，说用户隐私部门给BlueKai亮了绿灯，不需要出具需求建议书。总之，BlueKai主动沟通愿景的策略推动了他们与大客户的合作。
Media coverage then ensued about these major customers which brought attention to the industry’s problems—and moreover of their chosen solutions— which helped the startups begin to define their category. Right Media minted the term “advertising exchange,” and Blue Kai chartered the term “data management platform.”
接下来，媒体大力宣传标杆客户，引起了对行业缺点的关注，继而关注他们的解决方案，这些也帮助了创业企业开始定义他们的细分市场。Right Media 借机铸造了“互联网广告交易平台”，Blue Kai 发明了“数据管理平台”。
Create an industry forum to rally the key players
召集巨头，举办行业论坛
After gaining customer momentum, each company created and gathered key industry players at its own flagship conference – Right Media’s Exchange Summit and Blue Kai’s Data Summit – where early partners and customers told stories that validated the leaders’ visions.
获得了客户广泛支持之后，每家公司都创立了他们自己的行业峰会，并通过峰会来聚集主要的行业玩家来扩大影响力。例如Right Media的广告交易峰会和Blue Kai 的数据峰会，在那里，早期的合作伙伴和用户分享经验，印证领先公司的愿景。
These events raised awareness of each CEO’s thought leadership. Soon, they were invited to events where they could discuss the market space they’d defined in broader circles. Greater name recognition led to more media coverage, which in turn led to more market-leading awareness.
这些会议让每个CEO领先的想法获得更多的关注。很快，他们被邀请在更大的场合讨论他们所定义的市场。更高的知名度带来更广泛的媒体报道，继而激发更多对他们市场领先地位的关注。
Eventually, each startup’s space became a market, and a line item on prospective customers’ budgets and strategic agendas, with Right Media and Blue Kai at the top of the short lists.
最终，每个初创公司的成长空间逐渐变成了一个市场，成为一条列在未来客户预算列表和策略议程中重要的一项，而且Right Media 和 Blue Kai成为他们的首选。
At this point in the category-defining process, more established companies in search of growth and leadership came knocking as potential acquirers. They were willing to pay a premium for the early category leader and, moreover, for the articulate visionary they hoped could spread pixie dust on their own strategy.
在定义细分市场的过程中，更多寻求发展和领导地位的成熟公司作为潜在的收购方涌现出来。他们愿意支付溢价，一方面为了早期细分市场的领导者，一方面为了那些远见者，他们希望自己的战略也能借此得到提升。
This all happened between 2005 and 2014, in the nascent days of what is now a well-established online-advertising ecosystem. Today, I’m energized to see the same patterns emerging within the mobile marketing and commerce spaces with startups like Redpoint portfolio companies Button and Looker, and others like Segment and Tune.
在我们现在称为“在线广告生态”之前的十年（2005-2014），这些都发生了，我期待在移动营销和商务领域见到更多类似的案例发生。
亲爱的读者朋友，请问你们还发现了哪些能定义新的垂直领域的好公司？欢迎随时联络我：liutr@zandh.cn
