斯坦福：YC创业课 - 第12集：企业软件的开发

视频信息

• 标题: 斯坦福：YC创业课 - 第12集：企业软件的开发
• BV号: BV1oWKpzoE1Z
• 时长: 46分20秒（2780秒）
• 作者: 常春藤中英字幕课
• 原始链接: B站视频

视频摘要

Box CEO Aaron Levy在斯坦福大学分享如何打造一家企业软件公司。演讲回顾了Box从2004年大学创业到2014年上市的历程，核心论点是为什么企业软件是比消费级更大的机会：企业IT市场年规模达3.7万亿美元，而消费者移动应用加广告市场仅1700亿美元。他分析了云技术、移动设备、全球化平台、用户导向IT模型等四大变化如何降低企业软件的进入门槛，强调现在是建立企业软件公司的最佳时机，并提供了发现技术颠覆点、从细分市场切入、寻找不对称性、倾听客户但不盲目服从、将消费者DNA融入产品等实用建议。

核心要点

1. 企业IT市场 vs 消费者市场：企业IT年支出3.7万亿美元远大于消费者市场的1700亿美元，价值等式完全不同，企业愿为提升生产力付费。

2. 云计算降低门槛：云技术让初创公司无需在每个客户数据中心部署，客户采用新方案的摩擦降低，为初创企业创造大量机会。

3. 移动设备改变IT模型：近20亿部智能手机和30亿网民使企业IT从IT导向转向用户导向，用户可自带技术进入企业，创造新的进入路径。

4. 每个行业都在被颠覆：零售、医疗、媒体、建筑等各行业面临商业模式和技术变革，都需要新软件来驱动新的用户体验。

5. 从小楔子切入市场：先在小问题上做到极致用户体验，像Zen Payroll从工资管理切入小企业，再向上市场扩展，不要试图与老牌企业正面竞争。

6. 找到不对称性：做老牌企业因经济学、技术架构或商业模式原因不能或不会做的事，如Zenefits从保险公司获佣金而非向客户收费。

7. 将消费者DNA融入企业软件：注重设计和用户体验，利用互联网和用户导向方式降低销售阻力，同时保持必要的顾问式销售。

8. 推荐阅读三本书：《跨越鸿沟》《创新者的困境》《云背后的故事》，结合这三本书的视角可以更好理解企业软件创业。

视频全文转录（中英双语）

以下为完整中英双语转录，已加标点。英文在前，中文在后，逐段对照。

由 Groq Whisper 转录 → M2.7 B 方案整文标点 + 分段 → M2.7 段号保留翻译 → 逐段对照。

[段 1]

Can we keep playing the… Okay, good. Can we turn it up a little bit so it’s more pump up? Okay, here we go. Okay. Okay, so we gotta clap. We gotta climb the beat and then we gotta clap to the beat. Okay. Alright. Okay, that’s pretty good, guys. We’re good. We’re good. Thank you. Okay, please stop. Okay, stop the music. Thank you. Okay, cool. Can you put on the presentation? Thank you. That’ll be about the most pump-up thing that ever happens in enterprise software. So the rest is sort of downhill from here. So thank you for that intro, that well-rehearsed intro. Thank you. Confirming the facts as you’re saying them. Very good. So, I’m Aaron Levy, CEO and co-founder of Box.

[译文 1]

我们能继续播放那个… 好的，好。我们能把它调大一点让它更有激情吗？好的，我们开始吧。好的，所以我们要拍手。我们要跟上节拍然后跟着节拍拍手。好的。好了。好的，挺好的，各位。我们可以了。我们可以了。谢谢。好的，请停下来。好的，把音乐关掉。谢谢。好的，很酷。你能放一下演示文稿吗？谢谢。那大概会是有史以来企业软件领域最有激情的事情了。所以剩下的就往下走了。所以感谢你们刚才的介绍，那个排练得很熟练的介绍。谢谢。确认一下你们说的这些事实。很好。所以，我是 Aaron Levy，Box 的 CEO 兼联合创始人。

[段 2]

Welcome to this edition of how to build an enterprise software company. That’s my understanding this is the course that you’re taking, right? Is that correct? No. Okay. So, here’s my job today. My job is to try and convince you that everybody else who speaks throughout this sort of whole classes wrong and that you actually want to build an enterprise software company, and that you actually want to build an enterprise software company. And so hopefully we’ll be able to kind of work through this and you’ll have a good sense of why it’s super cool to be in the enterprise and why a lot of the sort of perceptions of going into the whole consumer space where it’s so much fun and everything, why that’s wrong and why you want to do enterprise software.

[译文 2]

欢迎来到本期节目：如何打造企业级软件公司。我理解这就是你们正在上的课程，对吧？是这样吗？不，好吧。那么，我今天的工作是：我的工作就是试图说服你们，在整个课程中其他所有发言者说的都是错的，而且你们实际上是想打造企业级软件公司的，而且你们实际上是想打造企业级软件公司的。所以希望我们能够通过某种方式来处理这个问题，你们会很好地理解为什么在企业级领域是非常酷的，以及为什么很多人对进入消费者领域的印象——那里有很多乐趣和一切——是错误的，以及为什么你们想做企业级软件。

[段 3]

Who wants to build an enterprise software company? Good. All right. Thank you very much. Hopefully we’ll do a vote at the end and hopefully that will not have shrunk. So, that’s really actually the only goal I have at this point. So, we’re going to talk about three things today. The first is the quick background and kind of history of Box, because when we started the company, we didn’t know that we wanted to do enterprise software. And so I want to kind of get through a little bit about why we decided to go after the enterprise and what we do today. And then we’re going to talk a little bit about what are the major kind of factors that have changed in enterprise software that make it possible to do a startup today in this category.

[译文 3]

谁想创办一家企业软件公司？很好。好的。非常感谢。希望最后我们能进行投票，也希望人数不会减少。所以，这实际上是我目前唯一的目标。那么，今天我们要讨论三件事。首先是Box的背景和历史，因为当我们创业时，我们并不知道自己想要做企业软件。所以我想讲一下我们为什么决定进入企业市场，以及我们今天在做什么。然后，我们要讨论一下企业软件领域发生了哪些重大变化，使得如今在这个类别中创办初创公司成为可能。

[段 4]

And then finally, we’ll talk a little about some patterns that you can kind of exploit and some ways to recognize and ways to actually go and build an enterprise software company yourself. And hopefully, that’ll be some practical, useful advice. Just as a forewarning, my voice is I’ve been speaking a lot past couple days. So hopefully I’ll be able to get to that third part of the advice and actually be able to talk. So we’ll see how we make it. But I’m going to be drinking a lot of it. So we’ll see how we make it, but I’m going to be drinking a lot of water, so I apologize for that. So building for the enterprise.

[译文 4]

然后最后，我们会稍微谈谈一些你可以利用的模式，以及一些识别方式，还有如何真正自己去建立一家企业软件公司的方法。希望那会是有一些实用的、有用的建议。作为一个预先提醒，我的嗓子——我过去几天说了很多话。所以希望我能够讲到第三部分建议，并且真的能够说话。所以我们看看能不能坚持下来。但是我会喝很多水，所以我们看看能不能坚持下来，但我会喝很多水，所以为此道歉。所以，今天的主题是面向企业进行构建。

[段 5]

This is what we’re going to talk about. So just quick kind of high-level stats about Box. We have about 240,000 businesses that use the product. There are over 27 million users that have brought Box into their organization and use it as individuals. And we’re in about 99% of the Fortune 500. Unfortunately, that last 1% is really just Microsoft, and they don’t seem to want to buy from us. So we have to work on that a little bit. But certainly, a decent amount of scale, a lot of users that have brought Box into enterprise environments. These are some of the large organizations that are using the product. So a very wide range of industries, everything from manufacturing and consumer products to companies like General Electric.

[译文 5]

这就是我们今天要讨论的内容。那么先快速介绍一下Box的高层数据。我们约有240,000家企业使用我们的产品。有超过2700万用户将Box引入自己的组织并个人使用。我们进入了约99%的Fortune 500强企业。不幸的是，剩下的1%主要是Microsoft，他们似乎不打算购买我们的产品。所以我们还得在这方面努努力。但可以肯定的是，我们已有相当大的规模，大批用户已把Box引入企业环境。以下是使用该产品的一些大型组织。涵盖非常广泛的行业，从制造业和消费品到General Electric等公司。

[段 6]

Stanford Healthcare actually uses the product for collaboration within the hospital environment and some of the research, but between healthcare, media, manufacturing, these are the sort of range of industries that we serve. So the question is how did we get here? Because we didn’t really start the company to try and go build an enterprise software company, even though that is how things ended up happening. So when we started the product, we launched the company in 2005. We got the idea actually in college back in 2004. And so was anybody using the Internet back in 2004? Okay, great. So, Ben, okay, great. So basically, I don’t know if millennials use the Internet back then. Sorry. Okay, no more age jokes.

[译文 6]

Stanford Healthcare实际上在医院环境和部分研究中使用该产品进行协作，但在医疗、媒体、制造业之间，这些是我们服务的行业范围。所以问题是我们是如何走到这一步的？因为我们创立公司时并不是真的想尝试建立一个企业软件公司，尽管事情最终就是这样发展的。所以当我们启动这个产品时，我们在2005年成立了公司。实际上我们在2004年上大学时有了这个想法。那么在2004年有任何人使用互联网吗？好的，很好。所以，Ben，好的，很好。所以基本上，我不知道千禧一代那时是否使用互联网。抱歉。好的，不再开年龄玩笑了。

[段 7]

All right, here’s the point. So back in 2004, you might remember that there wasn’t a lot to do on the Internet. It was actually kind of boring, right? This was before Facebook. This was certainly before Snapchat. So not a lot of things that you could go do. You couldn’t send people 15-second messages and photos that disappeared because you didn’t even have a phone to send them photos. So in the internet in 2004, there wasn’t a lot going on. This is basically what the internet looked like. Sort of a barren, deserted landscape. And this was the internet. And just to clarify, the happy camel is Google and the sad camel is Yahoo. And that was effectively, this was the internet.

[译文 7]

好的，重点来了。回到2004年，你可能还记得互联网上没有太多事情可做。实际上挺无聊的，对吧？那时候Facebook还没出现，更别说Snapchat了。所以没有什么太多可以做的事。你不能给人发送15秒后消失的消息和照片，因为那时候你甚至没有手机来发送照片。所以在2004年的互联网上没太多事情发生。这基本上就是互联网的样子，一片荒芜的沙漠。而这就是互联网。澄清一下，那只快乐的骆驼是Google，那只悲伤的骆驼是Yahoo。而这基本上就是互联网的样子。

[段 8]

And this is accurate. This is the internet in 2004. Yahoo has done a lot better since then. But back in the middle 2000s, they were certainly trying to find their way, and Google was sort of, you know, kind of taking over the world. But this was the entire, this was the extent of the world. So what we noticed in 2004 in college was that it was, for some reason, and this isn’t so much the case today, but back in 2004, it was like really hard to share files. And as simple of an idea as that is now, you go back 10 years and it was either really expensive or it was really hard to move data through different corporate networks.

[译文 8]

这是准确的。这就是2004年的互联网。雅虎从那以后已经做得更好了。但在2000年代中期，他们确实在努力寻找自己的方向，而Google，你知道，几乎是在接管整个世界。但这就是全部，这就是当时互联网的边界。所以我们在2004年大学时注意到，出于某种原因——现在不太是这样了——但在2004年，共享文件真的非常困难。如今这个想法很简单，但回到10年前，要么真的非常昂贵，要么真的很难通过不同的企业网络传输数据。

[段 9]

So I had an internship at the time, and in the internship, most of my job using data was actually just to copy data. My job using data was actually just to copy, print it out pages, and then put them in cabinets. That’s what you do as an intern if you’re not a computer science student. So I was really, really good at copying paper. And unfortunately, not a skill that has really been useful today. But it was really hard to share files. And then in classroom environments, you’re constantly working with lots of other people. It was also hard to share files. I went to USC, and USC gave you 50 megabytes of online storage space in your email account.

[译文 9]

当时我有一份实习工作，在实习期间，我使用数据的大部分工作实际上就是复制数据。我使用数据的工作实际上就是复制、打印出来，然后放进文件柜里。如果你不是计算机科学专业的学生，作为实习生你做的就是这些。所以我真的很擅长复印文件。不幸的是，这项技能在今天真的没什么用了。但当时分享文件真的很困难。然后在课堂环境中，你经常要和很多人一起合作，分享文件也很困难。我去了USC，USC给你的邮箱账户提供了50 megabytes的在线存储空间。

[段 10]

50 megabytes. So you could basically store about one file. And then it would auto-delete every six months. So basically, I don’t know who was running IT at the time, but they certainly didn’t buy hard drives. So it was just really, really hard to store and share files. And so we said, well, why don’t we make it really easy to store and share files from anywhere? And so we got this idea for, at the time it was called Box.net. And what we noticed was there were a bunch of factors that had changed in the software world. The first was that the cost of storage was sort of dropping dramatically. So in our business, basically every year or two, you can double the amount of data and storage that goes into a hard drive.

[译文 10]

50 megabytes。所以你基本上只能存储一个文件。然后每 six months 就会自动删除。所以基本上，我不知道当时是谁在负责IT，但他们肯定不会买硬盘。所以存储和分享文件真的真的很难。所以我们说，为什么不让从任何地方存储和分享文件变得超级简单呢？所以我们有了这个想法，当时它叫 Box.net。我们注意到软件世界已经发生了很多变化。首先是存储成本正在急剧下降。所以在我们的业务中，基本上每 year or two，你可以把放入硬盘的数据和存储量翻倍。

[段 11]

So what was uneconomical two or three years ago all of a sudden becomes feasible because the cost of computing and the cost of storage has dropped. We had more powerful browsers and networks. So Firefox was just emerging. People were using the much faster internet in both their homes and in the classroom. And then people had more locations that they wanted to store and share information from. And so we had these sort of three factors that all of a sudden were emerging. And I’m going to pull these factors back later when I give some kind of tactical advice. But sort of the first point to remember is always sort of look for these changing technology factors.

[译文 11]

所以，两三年前不经济的东西突然变得可行了，因为计算成本和存储成本下降了。我们有了更强大的浏览器和网络。所以Firefox刚刚兴起。人们在家里和教室里都在使用速度快得多的互联网。然后人们有了更多的位置想要存储和分享信息。所以我们有了这三个因素突然出现。稍后当我给出一些战术建议时，我会回过头来谈这些因素。但要记住的第一点始终是要关注这些不断变化的技术因素。

[段 12]

Because any market that has a significant change in the underlying either raw materials or enabling factors is in an environment that’s about to change in a very significant way. And so we were very fortunate that basically the need for data in the cloud was growing in importance. And the cost and the feasibility of doing it was also improving rapidly. And so we decided to put together this really quick version of Box. We launched it as Box.net. And the idea was let’s make it really easy to share files. And it turned out that the idea clicked. We got angel funding from this guy named Mark Cuban. And this was before Shark Tank, But it was very similar.

[译文 12]

因为任何底层原材料或赋能因素发生重大变化的市场，都正处于即将发生重大变革的环境中。所以我们非常幸运，云端数据的需求日益重要，而且实现它的成本和可行性也在快速改善。所以我们决定快速拼凑出这个版本的Box，把它作为Box.net发布。这个想法是让文件分享变得非常简单。结果证明这个想法奏效了，我们从这个叫Mark Cuban的家伙那里获得了天使投资。那是在Shark Tank之前的事，但非常类似。

[段 13]

And so we got this funding, and we decided that, okay, this is going to be super exciting. We are going to drop out of college. We’re going to move to the Bay Area, and it’s going to be totally awesome. And when you drop out of college, anybody drop out of college yet? Okay, good. Stay in school. So when you drop out of college, like everyone sort of pictures that it’s just going to be incredible. Bill Gates dropped out of college. It’ll be like Bill Gates or Michael Dell dropped out of college. And it’ll be super exciting like Michael Dell or Steve Jobs dropped out of college. So this is what people imagine. But nobody ever remembers that this guy dropped out of college also.

[译文 13]

于是我们拿到了这笔融资，我们决定，这太激动人心了。我们要从大学退学，搬去 Bay Area，这绝对超棒。当你从大学退学时——有人退过学吗？好的，很好，留在学校吧。当你从大学退学时，大家都会觉得这一定超厉害。Bill Gates 从大学退学了。会觉得像 Bill Gates 或者 Michael Dell 从大学退学一样。会觉得超激动人心，就像 Michael Dell 或者 Steve Jobs 从大学退学一样。这就是人们的想象。但没人记得这家伙也从大学退学了。

[段 14]

And so it’s not really a guarantee, obviously, that it’s going to be successful. But it’s what you do. And actually, funny enough, I don’t even know if this guy dropped out of college. But it just sort of looks like he had to. And I apologize if anybody’s related to me. It’s just a funny picture on the internet. So basically, we decided we would drop out of college. We moved up to first Berkeley, and then we moved to Palo Alto a little bit thereafter. And we decided that we were going to open up the product for free. We got hundreds of thousands of people that would sign up for the product every single month. So we had a free version of the product.

[译文 14]

所以，这显然不能保证它一定会成功。但这就是你要做的事情。说来好笑，我甚至不知道这家伙有没有从大学退学。但看起来好像他不得不这样做。如果有人和我有关系，我很抱歉。这只是网上的一个搞笑图片。所以基本上，我们决定从大学退学。我们先搬到了Berkeley，然后不久之后又搬到了Palo Alto。我们决定免费开放这个产品。我们每个月都有数十万人注册这个产品。所以我们有了免费版本的产品。

[段 15]

If you went to box.net, you got a free one gigabyte of file storage space, which was, again, quite a bit back in 2006 at this point. But we were getting so many users, and we were trying to figure out what to do. And what we ran into was a common problem that really any startup runs into, but was really pronounced by our business model, which was that for consumers, we had built a very robust, a very comprehensive product. And for enterprises, we had actually built two sort of insignificant of a product. So for consumers, what we were running into was we had all these features that you could pay for, but a lot of the consumers didn’t need all of those features.

[译文 15]

如果你访问 box.net，你会获得免费的 1 gigabyte 文件存储空间，这在 2006 年当时是相当大的容量。但我们的用户增长得非常快，而我们正在试图弄清楚该怎么做。我们遇到的是一个任何 startup 都会遇到的常见问题，但在我们的商业模式下尤为突出，那就是对于消费者，我们打造了一个非常强大、非常全面的产品。而对于企业客户，我们实际上只做出了两款相当不重要的产品。所以对于消费者而言，我们遇到的问题是，我们有这些需要付费才能使用的功能，但很多消费者并不需要所有这些功能。

[段 16]

And for enterprises, we didn’t really have enough security, and we didn’t have enough capabilities around how enterprises wanted to use their data. So we basically had more functionality than what a consumer wanted, unless they wanted what an enterprise wanted. And so we found ourselves at this juncture, and we found ourselves basically in this period where it was very difficult to figure out what we wanted to go do with the business. So we had to make a choice, right? And so we were at this path where there were basically, we just had to choose, we were at a juncture where we had to choose which path to go down. And this was back in early, mid-2006 up to late 2006.

[译文 16]

对于企业来说，我们当时没有足够的安全保障，也没有足够的能力来满足企业想要如何使用其数据。所以我们基本上提供的功能比消费者需要的更多，除非消费者需要的是企业需要的功能。于是我们发现自己处于这个关节点，我们发现自己基本上处于这段时期，很难弄清楚我们想要如何经营这个业务。所以我们必须做出选择，对吧？所以我们当时在这条路上，基本上，我们只能选择，我们处于一个关节点，必须选择走哪条路。这要追溯到2006年初、中期一直到2006年末。

[段 17]

So I was, I think, 23 at the time. My co-founder was 22. Our founding team was even younger. We’d all dropped out of college. And so back in 2006, 2007, we imagined these two paths. And sort of the worlds were very, very different. Like when you do a consumer startup, it’s basically just lots of fun. And you have parties all the time. And it’s just super exciting. And then in the enterprise, you basically are battling these just large incumbents. It’s a fairly thankless model because people just generally hate enterprise software. So that was…generally hate enterprise software. So that was sort of how we imagined the two paths was we had to choose one of these two worlds.

[译文 17]

所以我想我当时是23岁。我的联合创始人是22岁。我们的创始团队甚至更年轻。我们都从大学退学了。所以在2006年、2007年，我们设想了这两条道路。而这两个世界非常非常不同。比如当你做一个消费者创业公司，基本上就是乐趣多多。你随时都在开派对。而且真的超级刺激。然后在企业端，你基本上是在和这些大型在位企业竞争。这是一个相当不讨好的模式，因为人们普遍讨厌企业软件。所以那就是…普遍讨厌企业软件。所以这就是我们设想的这两条道路——我们必须选择这两个世界中的一个。

[段 18]

And so we looked at that and we said, okay, well, consumer looks really fun, enterprise looks really hard, and there’s a lot of competition. At the same time, in the consumer space, you are always fighting this issue of how do you monetize? How do you actually get people to pay for products? And in the consumer space, there’s really only two sort of business models that you can do. You can have people pay for your application, or you can provide advertising on the application. And so just to give you a little bit of perspective, these are today’s numbers, just to give you a little bit of a sense of the scale difference. In the consumer world, there’s about $35 billion spent on mobile apps every year.

[译文 18]

于是我们看了看那个，然后我们说，好吧，消费者市场看起来确实很有趣，企业市场看起来确实很难，而且竞争非常激烈。与此同时，在消费者市场，你总是在和这个问题作斗争：你如何变现？你如何真正让人们为产品付费？在消费者市场，你实际上只能做两种商业模式。你可以让人为你的应用程序付费，或者你可以在应用程序上提供广告。所以只是想给你一点参考，这是今天的数据，只是让你了解一下规模差异。在消费者世界，每年在移动应用程序上的支出大约是 $35 billion。

[段 19]

Pretty big number, right? $35 billion, that’s a lot of money being spent on mobile apps today. For advertising, the global digital advertising market is $135 billion. So, you know, basically combined, most consumer companies are going after, if you’re not doing e-commerce, going after about $170 billion of either sort of purchasing power on applications or global advertising around these kinds of services. So big numbers, a lot of opportunity there. However, in the enterprise, there’s actually $3.7 trillion spent on enterprise IT every single year. So these are the servers, the infrastructure, the software, the networking, the services. Software, the networking, the services, all of that stack of technology equates to a few trillion dollars spent every single year.

[译文 19]

很大的数字，对吧？350亿美元，这是今天在移动应用上花费的大量资金。在广告方面，全球数字广告市场是1350亿美元。所以，基本上加起来，大多数消费类公司——如果你不做电商的话——在应用方面的某种购买力或围绕这些服务的全球广告方面，大约在追1700亿美元的市场。所以数字很大，这里有很多机会。然而，在企业领域，实际上每年在企业IT上花费3.7万亿美元。这些包括服务器、基础设施、软件、网络和服务。软件、网络、服务，所有这些技术栈加起来相当于每年花费数万亿美元。

[段 20]

And so what we realized was, okay, there’s a pretty wide delta between these two markets. We are going to be fighting over trying to get consumers to pay a few dollars a month. And Google and Microsoft and Apple will probably try and make this product be free over time. And there were sort of rumors that Google Drive was coming out and these kind of products that eventually happened were going to come out. But in the enterprise, it’s not so much about that they are trying to always save money on IT. They’re actually trying to increase productivity. They’re trying to get higher performance from their businesses. So the value equation is very different. In a consumer, we have a limited amount of money that we want to actually make sure that we can serve for as few things as possible that we’re going to spend.

[译文 20]

于是我们意识到，好吧，这两个市场之间有很大的差距。我们将会在争取消费者每月支付几美元的问题上展开竞争。而 Google、Microsoft 和 Apple 可能会试图让这个产品随着时间推移变成免费的。当时有各种传言说 Google Drive 即将推出，而这类最终确实出现的产品也即将面世。但在企业市场，情况并不主要是他们试图节省 IT 费用。他们实际上是在努力提高生产力。他们试图从业务中获得更高的绩效。所以价值方程式是非常不同的。在消费市场，我们的钱是有限的，我们想确保我们花钱的事情越少越好。

[段 21]

In the enterprise, it’s a little bit of a different shift where you’re trying to think about actually what can I get out of technology and how much value is that for me? So that was a really important data point. However, the problem was that enterprise software was really, really unsexy, right? So again, very competitive, very difficult to build a business. It wasn’t something that really you should have shot out of bed in the morning and said, okay, I’m super excited to build an enterprise software company. And the reason for that was actually pretty straightforward at the time. The way that you built software was very slow. So you had to be very slow because you couldn’t break anything for customers.

[译文 21]

在企业领域，这是一个略有不同的转变，你需要真正思考的是我能从技术中得到什么，以及它对我有多大价值？所以这是一个非常重要的数据点。然而，问题是企业软件真的、真的很不吸引人，对吧？所以再说一次，竞争非常激烈，建立一家企业非常困难。这真的不是那种你早上从床上跳起来说"好吧，我超级兴奋要建立一家企业软件公司"的事情。而当时的原因实际上相当简单。当时构建软件的方式非常缓慢。所以你必须非常缓慢，因为你不能破坏客户的任何东西。

[段 22]

The sales process was very slow because customers take a long time to get to the point where sales process was very slow because customers take a long time to purchase technology. So I think everyone’s sort of used to this concept that, you know, usually when you try and sell enterprise software to a company, it can take up to a couple years for them to actually just buy the software. And then it can take a couple more years for them to even implement the technology in the first place. So a lot of companies are around for a few years without having their technology even used in the enterprise. That felt like a huge problem and not like something we wanted to be a part of.

[译文 22]

销售过程非常缓慢，因为客户需要很长时间才能达到购买技术的阶段。所以我认为每个人都已经习惯了这种概念，你知道，通常当你试图向一家公司销售企业软件时，他们实际购买该软件可能需要长达几年的时间。然后他们甚至可能需要更多年的时间才能首先实施这项技术。所以很多公司在其技术甚至被企业使用之前就存在了好几年。这感觉是一个巨大的问题，而不是我们想要参与的事情。

[段 23]

The technology itself is fairly complex. So the user experience, I don’t know how many people have had to use most enterprise software, but it’s generally really complicated. You find yourself asking why in God’s name did a designer put 47 buttons on the page and you just can’t even understand it. And the reason is something we’ll get into in a second, but basically there’s just no love or care for the design and the user experience. The software is just really complex. And then finally, if that wasn’t bad enough, all of a sudden you had to think about how do you actually sell the software. And for anybody who loves the power of the internet, this notion of having a sort of sales intermediary to get to your customer seemed like really unappealing.

[译文 23]

技术本身相当复杂。所以用户体验，我不知道有多少人被迫使用过大多数企业软件，但通常都相当复杂。你会不由自主地问，天哪，为什么设计师要在页面上放47个按钮，你根本看不懂。原因我们稍后会讲到，但基本上就是设计师对设计和用户体验缺乏关爱。软件就是非常复杂。然后最后，如果这还不够糟糕，你突然还得思考该如何真正把软件卖出去。而对于任何热爱互联网力量的人来说，这种需要通过某种销售中介来接触客户的想法看起来真的很不吸引人。

[段 24]

Like you’re going to have to go hire a bunch of people that are going to be everywhere in the country and they’re going to be the only interface you have to your customer. You’re going to have to hire these guys named Chuck, and Chuck’s going to roll in with a briefcase, and he’s going to just try and sell lots of enterprise software to the customer. Just so we’re clear, this is what Chuck looks like. And that was the sales process in the enterprise that we at least imagined in our head. I mean, Chuck looks like a happy guy, but he’s still an intermediary to getting your software. We were saying, well, why can’t we take the power of the internet and actually get our technology out to people directly?

[译文 24]

就像你得去雇佣一大群人，他们会在全国各地出现，而你与客户之间的唯一接触方式就是通过他们。你得去雇佣这些叫Chuck的家伙，Chuck会拎着公文包走进来，然后他会试着向客户推销大量的企业软件。为了让大家清楚明白，这就是Chuck的样子。这就是我们至少在脑海中想象的企业销售流程。我是说，Chuck看起来像个快乐的家伙，但他仍然是获取你软件的中间人。我们当时在说，嗯，为什么我们不能利用互联网的力量，让人们直接获取我们的技术呢？

[段 25]

Why should we have to go through this sales intermediary as we scale up the business? Now, I’ll get into in a minute why we were wrong about the sales process, but this was the sort of fear that we had at the time. And then, if that wasn’t hard enough, we had investors in 2007 saying basically there’s no way you’re going to make it in the enterprise. You basically are, again, a founding team of early 20-year-olds. You don’t have anybody on your team that has been in the enterprise. The Microsoft and Google and all these things, not Google, but Microsoft, EMC, Oracle, IBM, these companies are going to stomp on you, and it’s going to be very, very hard to actually succeed.

[译文 25]

为什么我们在业务扩张时必须通过这个销售中间商？好了，我待会儿会讲为什么我们在销售流程上犯了错误，但当时我们确实有这种担忧。然后，如果这还不够难的话，2007年有投资者基本上在说，你们不可能在企业市场立足。你们基本上又是一支由二十出头的年轻人组成的创始团队。你们团队里没有任何人有过企业市场的经验。微软和谷歌以及所有这些公司——不是谷歌，是Microsoft、EMC、Oracle、IBM——这些公司会碾压你们，想要真正成功会非常、非常困难。

[段 26]

And to be fair, they were right on a number of areas, right? So we were a very inexperienced team. This is a stage where we’re just still early in our careers. My co-founder, for instance, looked like he was 13 years old. So just not really, just to be clear, this is what he looked like. So it sort of made sense, right? This is him as our CFO at, I think this is him at 20. Him as our CFO at, I think this is him at 29, but it looked like we were going to go run off with the money and go to Disneyland. So I totally can appreciate why they didn’t think we would be able to pull it off.

[译文 26]

说句公道话，他们在很多方面都是对的，对吧？所以我们是一个非常缺乏经验的团队。那时的阶段，我们还处于职业生涯的早期。例如，我的联合创始人看起来像13岁。所以不只是真的，为了说清楚，这是他当时的样子。所以这在某种程度上是合理的，对吧？这是他担任我们CFO时的样子，我认为这是他20岁时。他作为我们CFO的样子，我认为这是他29岁时，但看起来我们像是会拿着钱跑掉去Disneyland。所以我完全能理解为什么他们认为我们做不到。

[段 27]

I can’t imagine giving him money. So basically, we decided, okay, well, we still have to go do it. We have to just give this our best shot. We’re going to take the sort of scale, the consumer experience, the DNA of our company. We’re going to see if we can bring this into the enterprise. And we were very fortunate where actually we had an investor who was equally early in his career and made a bet on us because sort of with the belief that there was something fundamentally changing with the enterprise that we would be able to take advantage of. And so we decided that if we’re going to do the enterprise, if we’re going to go after the enterprise, that we would have to play by a very different set of rules.

[译文 27]

我无法想象把钱给他。所以基本上，我们决定，好吧，我们还是得去做。我们必须尽最大努力。我们要利用这种规模、消费者体验和我们公司的基因。我们要看看能否把这个带入企业市场。我们非常幸运，确实有一位投资者，他当时也处于职业生涯的早期，他对我们下了赌注，因为他相信企业领域正在发生一些根本性的变化，而我们能够利用这一点。因此我们决定，如果我们要做企业市场，如果我们要进军企业市场，我们就必须遵循一套完全不同的规则。

[段 28]

So what about the complexity of software can change in this new era? What about the fact that the sales process is very slow can change in this new era? How do we move and go directly to the user and to the customer as opposed to having this very sort of indirect process of getting our technology out there? How do we build and design for that user as opposed to just for the sale and sort of for the RFP process that a customer is going to go through? And so we looked at all of the factors that were true of the enterprise. And we said, we’re going to do, maybe not in all cases, the opposite.

[译文 28]

那么，在这个新时代，软件的复杂性会发生什么变化？销售流程非常缓慢这一事实，在这个新时代会发生什么变化？我们如何才能直接面向用户和客户，而不是通过这种非常间接的流程来推广我们的技术？我们如何为那个用户而不仅仅是销售以及客户将要经历的RFP流程来构建和设计产品？因此，我们审视了企业所有的真实因素。我们说，也许并非在所有情况下，但我们会做相反的事。

[段 29]

But we’re going to find what has changed about the technology world where we can take advantage of that shift and build a better and a newer enterprise software company. And so that was the decision that we embarked on. This is the path that we embarked on about eight years ago. And that is why we’ve been focused on the enterprise. And so today, again, we have about 240,000 businesses that use the product. And the reason is we architected the business model. We architected the software. We architected the solution to work in sort of one specific version of the world. And it turned out that that version ended up being the sort of the one that happened.

[译文 29]

但我们要找出科技世界发生了哪些变化，以便利用这种转变，建立一个更好、更新的企业软件公司。这就是我们做出的决定，这是大约8年前我们开始走的道路。这就是为什么我们一直专注于企业市场。而今天，我们大约有240,000家企业使用这个产品。原因是，我们精心设计了商业模式，精心设计了软件，精心设计了解决方案，使其适应世界的某种特定版本。结果证明，这个版本正是最终成为现实的版本。

[段 30]

And I’ll go into a little bit about what has changed about the world that we sort of built our company around. And what I would highly recommend you, if you’re building an enterprise software company, make sure to orient your technology and solution around. So that was sort of why we made the decision, kind of how we started to take on the problem. Now I’d like to talk a little bit about what has changed about the enterprise that makes it sort of so possible to enter it today better and more seamlessly than ever before. So everything about the enterprise and then, by definition, the software that an enterprise uses has changed just in the past five years.

[译文 30]

我想稍微介绍一下这个世界的变化，我们公司就是围绕这个世界建立的。我强烈建议你们，如果你们要建立一家企业软件公司，务必确保你们的技术和解决方案以此为导向。这就是我们做出决定的原因，也是我们如何开始着手解决这个问题的方式。现在我想谈谈企业发生了什么变化，使得今天进入这个领域比以往任何时候都更好、更无缝。所以关于企业的一切，以及企业使用的软件，在过去五年里都发生了变化。

[段 31]

This is probably the most magical time, if there could have ever been a magical time to build an enterprise software company, now is absolutely that time, just in terms of how much change is going on within organizations. So let’s just go through a couple of these things. Okay. So let’s just go through a couple of these things. So the first is that most application categories are moving to the cloud. And the big difference is this idea that if you were going to start a customer relationship management software company or a business intelligence software company or even a content management company 10, 15 years ago, you basically had to go have your technology be implemented in every single customer location, no matter how many customers you sold to, no matter what regions they were in, every single customer had to put that in their data center.

[译文 31]

这可能是最神奇的时代，如果曾经有过创建企业软件公司的神奇时代，现在绝对是那个时候，仅从组织内部正在发生的巨大变革来看就是如此。好的，那让我们来看看其中几个要点。首先是，大多数应用类别都在向云端迁移。最大的区别在于这个理念：如果你想在10年或15年前创办一家客户关系管理软件公司，或商业智能软件公司，甚至内容管理公司，你基本上必须让你的技术在每一个客户现场实施，无论你销售了多少客户，无论他们在哪些地区，每一个客户都必须把它放在他们的数据中心里。

[段 32]

And that was the flaw with on-premise computing, was you were repeating all of this work, you were creating so much redundancy, and it was then slowing down the entire process of delivering and building software for the enterprise. And then all of a sudden the cloud came around, things like Salesforce.com, things like Amazon Web Services, that basically said, why is it that every customer that wants to just implement a couple servers has to go procure the servers, put them in their data center, put all the security, all the networking around those servers, and then six months later they go live and then a developer can use them in the organization or same thing with an application.

[译文 32]

这就是本地计算的缺陷——你需要重复所有这些工作，造成大量冗余，而这大大拖慢了企业软件交付和构建的整个流程。然后，云计算突然出现了，像Salesforce.com、亚马逊AWS这样的服务，它们基本上在说：为什么每个只想部署几台服务器的客户，都必须自己去采购服务器、把服务器放进数据中心、为这些服务器配置所有安全措施和网络，然后六个月后才能上线运行，之后开发者才能在组织中使用这些服务器？或者说，应用程序的情况也是一样的。

[段 33]

Amazon said, why does that make any sense today when we could just put together thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of servers and make them available on demand and you just use what you want when you need that? And that’s obviously the definition of cloud computing. What is happening, though, is finally CIOs and large enterprises are taking advantage of this. So it seems obvious for everyone in this room because you would never build a company by buying your own servers. You would start it on Amazon or Google or Azure or whatever. But to an enterprise, there are decades, literally decades of investment in infrastructure that now has to move to the cloud. And so that’s obviously a massive shift that is finally happening.

[译文 33]

Amazon说，为什么今天还要这样做呢？我们可以把成千上万、成千上万、成千上万台服务器整合在一起，按需提供，你只需要在需要的时候使用你想要的就行了？而这显然就是云计算的定义。然而，正在发生的是，首席信息官们和大型企业终于在利用这一点。所以这对在座的每个人来说都是显而易见的，因为你绝不会通过购买自己的服务器来创建一家公司。你会在Amazon或Google或Azure或其他平台上开始创业。但对于一个企业来说，已经有几十年了，真的是几十年的基础设施投资，现在必须迁移到云端。所以这显然是一个正在最终发生的大规模转变。

[段 34]

We are moving to a world of cheaper, low-cost, on-demand computing from a world of expensive computing. The benefit to building a startup is that customers don’t have the same kind of friction when they’re going to go adopt new technology. As soon as the computing is so much cheaper, it becomes easier to adopt new solutions, which means that their barrier for having a conversation, their barrier for introducing you into their enterprise is a lot lower, which creates a massive opportunity for startups. We were going from a world of customized software to really standardized platforms. So it used to be that you had to build custom integrations and all of the custom experiences on top of the software itself, and now customers are realizing that actually they want open platforms and they can customize the layer above the product.

[译文 34]

我们正在从一个计算成本昂贵的世界转向一个计算更便宜、低成本、按需计算的世界。构建创业公司的好处是，客户在采用新技术时不会再遇到同样类型的阻力。一旦计算成本大幅降低，采用新解决方案就变得更加容易，这意味着他们进行对话的门槛、将他们引入企业的门槛都低了很多，这为创业公司创造了巨大的机会。我们正在从一个定制软件的世界走向真正标准化的平台。过去你必须在软件本身之上构建定制集成和所有定制体验，而现在客户开始意识到他们实际上想要开放平台，他们可以在产品之上的层面进行定制。

[段 35]

It used to be that when you were building an enterprise software company, you could only really sell to the top 5,000 or 10,000 companies in the world because only those companies had the wherewithal, the talent, the infrastructure and the budget to deploy your technology into the enterprise. Today, literally a 2% market share of those top 10,000 companies is a massive business. And so what we’ve seen is the addressable market has actually grown dramatically for enterprise software. And then the last thing I’d say is that there is just an overall shift, and it really goes back to the consumerization of IT, where the end user now has a lot more power than they used to. And that means that you can actually go and market and sell directly to the end user, which is something that you could never really do before.

[译文 35]

过去，当你创办一家企业软件公司时，你实际上只能向全球前5,000或10,000家公司销售，因为只有这些公司才有能力、人才、基础设施和预算来部署你的技术进入企业。如今，仅凭这些前10,000家公司中2%的市场份额就能成就一家大企业。因此，我们看到企业软件的可触达市场实际上已经大幅增长。最后我要说的是，这是一场全面的转变，而这要追溯到IT消费化，即终端用户现在比过去拥有更多的权力。这意味着你现在实际上可以直接向终端用户进行营销和销售，这是以前从未真正能做到的事情。

[段 36]

So these are all things that are changing about the enterprise. And I think if you’re going to go and build a company, these are the trends that you want to align yourself with. And what I’d encourage you to do is, number one, you want to build a company that is built around these changes. And number two, you want to try to find ways to accelerate the changes as opposed to going against the grain of these changes. So that’s kind of the background. Now let me talk a little bit about what we did at Slack and how we built our company around these principles. And the reason I’m going to go through this is because I think it gives a concrete example of how you can think about this problem.

[译文 36]

这些都是企业正在发生的变化。我认为如果你打算创办一家公司，这些就是你希望与之保持一致的趋势。我鼓励你做的第一件事是，你想建立一家围绕这些变化而建立的公司。第二，你想尝试找到加速这些变化的方法，而不是逆势而行。这就是背景。现在让我谈谈我们在 Slack 所做的事情，以及我们如何围绕这些原则建立我们的公司。我之所以要讲述这些，是因为我认为这提供了一个具体的例子，说明你如何思考这个问题。

[段 37]

So what did we do? Well, first of all, we built our product to be cloud-first. So Slack is a cloud application. We have no on-premise version. Our software runs in the cloud. And the reason we did that is because we wanted to make it incredibly easy for companies to adopt our product. And if you have to go install software in a data center, that is a massive friction point in the sales process. And we wanted to eliminate that friction as much as possible. So we built it so that you can sign up for Slack in literally seconds. You can be talking to your team in minutes. And that was a very intentional decision. And I think it’s paid huge dividends for us.

[译文 37]

那么我们做了什么？嗯，首先，我们的产品采用云优先的设计。Slack 是一个云应用。我们没有本地部署版本。我们的软件运行在云端。我们这样做的原因是我们想让各家公司能够非常容易地采用我们的产品。如果必须去数据中心安装软件，那就是销售过程中一个巨大的摩擦点。我们想尽可能消除这种摩擦。所以我们设计成这样：你可以几秒钟就注册 Slack。你可以在几分钟内就开始和团队聊天。这是一个非常深思熟虑的决定。我认为这为我们带来了巨大的回报。

[段 38]

The second thing we did is we built our product to be open. So we wanted to make it very easy for other developers to build on top of Slack. And we built an open platform with an API that allowed developers to integrate their applications with Slack. And that has been a huge growth driver for us. And I think it’s also made our product stickier, because once you have all of your tools integrated with Slack, it’s much harder to switch away from it. The third thing we did is we built our product to be consumer-grade. And what I mean by that is we spent a lot of time and energy making Slack feel like a consumer application rather than a traditional enterprise application.

[译文 38]

第二件事是我们把产品打造成开放式的。我们希望让其他开发者能够非常容易地在 Slack 之上进行开发。我们构建了一个开放平台，提供 API 让开发者将他们的应用程序与 Slack 进行整合。这对我们来说是巨大的增长驱动力。我认为这也让我们的产品更具粘性，因为一旦你把所有的工具都与 Slack 整合在一起，想要切换到其他平台就难得多。第三件事是我们把产品打造成了消费级体验。我所说的消费级是指，我们花费了大量时间和精力让 Slack 感觉像一款消费级应用程序，而不是传统的企业级应用程序。

[段 39]

And that was a very deliberate choice. And I think it’s one of the reasons that Slack has been so successful in driving adoption bottom-up rather than top-down. And the fourth thing we did is we built our product to be social. So we built in features like channels, which are like chat rooms, and direct messages, and the ability to share files and images and code snippets and all of that. And that has made Slack feel much more like a social network than a traditional enterprise tool. And I think that has contributed to its viral growth. So these are the four things that we did. We built it cloud-first, open, consumer-grade, and social. And I think those are the principles that allowed us to succeed in the enterprise.

[译文 39]

这是一个非常深思熟虑的决定。我认为这是Slack在推动采用方面能够自下而上而非自上而下取得成功的的原因之一。我们做的第四件事是让产品具有社交属性。所以我们内置了频道（类似聊天室）、私信、分享文件和图片、代码片段等功能。这让Slack比起传统的企业工具，更像是一个社交网络。我认为这促进了它的病毒式增长。以上就是我们所做的四件事。我们以云优先、开放、消费级和社交的理念来打造产品。我认为这些原则让我们在企业市场取得了成功。

[段 40]

And I think if you’re going to go build an enterprise software company today, those are the principles that you should try to emulate. So that’s my talk. Thank you very much. Literally, a two-person company can sign up for Box, as well as we work with General Electric, which has over 300,000 employees. So the fact that you can now serve a small business anywhere in the world, as well as some of the largest companies on the planet, means that there are much larger markets that you can go after, which makes it, obviously, even a better economic proposition to go after the enterprise. The platforms themselves are becoming more global, so our customers were international literally within the first couple of weeks of starting the company.

[译文 40]

我认为，如果你今天要创建一家企业软件公司，这些就是你应该努力效仿的原则。这就是我的演讲。非常感谢。实际上，一家两个人的公司可以注册使用Box，我们也同样与General Electric合作，该公司拥有超过300,000名员工。所以，事实是你现在可以为世界各地的小型企业服务，也可以为地球上一些最大的公司服务，这意味着你可以进入更大的市场，这使得进入企业市场显然是一个更好的经济命题。平台本身正变得越来越全球化，所以我们的客户在公司成立的头几周内就已经是国际化的了。

[段 41]

It would have been unusual if you had done enterprise software the traditional way; that would have taken years to actually be able to go international. And then finally, and probably the most profound shift of all, is that because of mobile devices, iPhones, iPads, tablets, Android devices, the IT model of the enterprise has become a lot more user-led. And that’s fundamentally important because in an IT-led world, incumbents generally win because they have the existing relationship with the IT organization, with the CIO, with the spending power within that company. In a user-led model, users are bringing in their own technology. They’re bringing it in on the sales team. They’re bringing it in in the marketing team. They’re bringing it in in finance.

[译文 41]

如果不按传统方式做企业软件，那会是很不寻常的；那样的话，要真正做到国际化需要花上数年时间。然后最后，也许也是最深刻的转变是，由于移动设备、iPhone、iPad、平板电脑、Android设备，企业的IT模式已经变得更加用户主导。这一点从根本上很重要，因为在IT主导的世界里，现有厂商通常会赢，因为他们与IT组织、与CIO、与公司内的支出权力有现有的关系。在用户主导的模式中，用户正在引入自己的技术。他们把它引入到销售团队。他们把它引入到市场营销团队。他们把它引入到财务部门。

[段 42]

And you can build software then around the user, which means that they can bring the technology in. Then you can sell to the enterprise when they want to have better control, better security, better scalability. So you still have the same business model as a traditional enterprise software company, but the way to get into the company is now through the end user. Okay, so those are qualitative factor changes, just a couple quantitative factor changes. There’s over nearly 2 billion smartphones on the planet. That changes every single IT model on the planet, because it used to be 10 years ago, if you were managing technology for an enterprise, you just had to manage the computers and the network that were inside of your building.

[译文 42]

然后，你可以围绕用户构建软件，这意味着他们可以引入技术。然后，当企业想要更好的控制、更高的安全性、更好的可扩展性时，你可以向他们销售。所以，你仍然拥有与传统企业软件公司相同的商业模式，但进入公司的方式现在是通过最终用户。好的，这些都是定性因素的变化，只是一些定量因素的变化。地球上已经有近2 billion部智能手机。这改变了地球上的每一个IT模式，因为10年前，如果你为企业管理技术，你只需要管理建筑物内的计算机和网络。

[段 43]

But now, with billions of mobile phones, you fundamentally have to be able to manage the network and the computing that is going to be anywhere at any time on any network. And that creates a massive opportunity for software companies because no incumbent has built the technology stack. Sorry for my voice breaking again. So no incumbent has built a technology stack that powers this next generation of work and how enterprises are using their data. So that creates a massive startup opportunity. There’s nearly 3 billion people online. What that means is that every single enterprise is equally changing how they’re going to get their own products to their customers, which means that every industry changes. And so there are really only two times, there are only two moments of opportunity where a technology revolution will happen in the enterprise.

[译文 43]

但现在，随着数十亿部手机的出现，你基本上必须能够管理网络和计算，这些可以在任何时间、任何网络、任何地点运行。这为软件公司创造了巨大的机会，因为没有现有企业构建了技术栈。对不起，我的声音又出问题了。因此没有现有企业构建了能驱动下一代工作方式以及企业如何使用数据的技术栈。所以这创造了一个巨大的创业机会。近30亿人在线。这意味着每一家企业都在同样地改变他们将如何把自己的产品送到客户手中，这意味着每个行业都在发生变化。所以实际上只有两个时机，只有两个时刻，技术革命会在企业领域发生。

[段 44]

The first is if the raw materials change. So cost of computing goes down, and then it’s better to centralize and then let people use it on demand. The second major change is that the very customers that these enterprises have to go after need new experiences of working with those enterprises’ products. Let me give you an example. When you go off campus, you probably use something like Uber or Lyft. As an example, if you are in the transportation business, if you’re in the shipping business, if you’re in the logistics business, Uber represents a massive change to your industry. So you can’t just let Uber exist and do its own thing without understanding what are the implications of Uber, what are the implications of Instacart, what are the implications of Lyft to my business model.

[译文 44]

第一个是，如果原材料发生变化。所以计算成本下降，集中化就变得更好，然后让人们按需使用。第二个重大变化是，这些企业必须去争取的客户需要与这些企业的产品互动的新体验。让我给你举个例子。当你走出校园，你可能用类似Uber或Lyft这样的服务。举个例子，如果你从事运输业，如果你从事航运业，如果你从事物流业，Uber代表着你所在行业的巨大变革。所以你不能放任Uber存在并做自己的事情，而不去理解Uber对我的商业模式意味着什么，Instacart对我的商业模式意味着什么，Lyft对我的商业模式意味着什么。

[段 45]

And so in a world where enterprises are dealing with that kind of change, they’re going to need new technology to help them evolve their business models and how they adapt to this disruption. And so in every industry, and this is why it’s an amazing time to even build vertical software companies for industries, right now every single industry is going through a major business model and technology oriented disruption, which means that they’re going to need technology from startups to help them work through this. I’ll give you a couple examples. So, in the retail industry, there’s this notion of sort of omni-channel or multi-channel commerce. You’re going to shop online, you’re going to shop on your phone, you’re going to shop in a store, and you want things to be delivered to you as well.

[译文 45]

在这个企业正在应对这种变革的世界里，它们将需要新技术来帮助它们演进商业模式，以及如何适应这种颠覆。因此，在每个行业——这也是为什么现在即使是建立面向行业的垂直软件公司也是一个绝佳的时机——目前每个行业都正在经历一场以商业模式和技术为导向的重大颠覆，这意味着它们将需要来自初创公司的技术来帮助它们应对这一切。我来给你们举几个例子。所以，在零售行业，存在这种全渠道或多渠道商务的概念。你会在线上购物，你会用手机购物，你会到实体店购物，而且你也希望东西能送到你手上。

[段 46]

So, most of the incumbent technology in the retail industry doesn’t power multi-channel commerce. Nobody is prepared for what does it mean when consumers want to go actually buy goods at any time from anywhere with better information and better intelligence. So every retailer in the world is going to need a new technology stack to power their retail experiences. In the healthcare space, every single healthcare institution is trying to find ways of building more personalized experiences, more predictive experiences. They want to have medicine be adapted to the individual. As the business model of health care changes from being about charging for the surgery, charging for the checkup, and instead really where the customer pays for wellness and staying healthy, then all of a sudden every health care institution needs better technology to deliver health care experiences.

[译文 46]

所以，零售行业的大部分现有技术并不能支撑多渠道商务。当消费者想要随时随地购买商品，并且希望获得更好的信息和智能服务时，没有人真正准备好迎接这意味着什么。因此，世界上每一个零售商都将需要一个新的技术堆栈来驱动其零售体验。在医疗健康领域，每一家医疗机构都在寻找方法建立更加个性化的体验、更加可预测的体验。他们希望医学能够适应个人需求。随着医疗健康行业的商业模式从按手术收费、按检查收费转变为客户为健康和保持健康付费，突然之间，每一家医疗机构都需要更好的技术来提供医疗健康体验。

[段 47]

They’re going to want to deliver telemedicine. They’re going to want to deliver health care in more regional locations as opposed to just in the monolithic hospital environment. There’s going to be new use cases around how do our electronic health records get connected to one another so doctors can make far better decisions. All of these things are going to require new enterprise software to power these businesses and these industries. In the media space, as an example, you have a world where an industry is going from really linear programming, so whether that’s television, whether that’s music, or whether that’s movies, this sort of very linear supply chain oriented business model where a film gets made, it goes to the movie theater for three months, and then afterwards it goes to iTunes and these other platforms, to a world where people want experiences on demand.

[译文 47]

他们将希望提供远程医疗服务。他们将希望在更多的地区性场所提供医疗服务，而不是只在大型医院环境中。将会有新的用例出现，围绕如何让电子健康记录相互连接，以便医生能够做出更好的决策。所有这些都将需要新的企业软件来驱动这些业务和行业。在媒体领域，举个例子，你有一个行业正在从非常线性的节目编排转变，无论是电视、音乐还是电影，这种非常线性的供应链导向商业模式，电影制作完成后，会在电影院上映三个月，然后才会到 iTunes 和其他平台，转向一个人们想要按需体验的世界。

[段 48]

So that’s going to change how distribution works on the scale of 3 billion people that are on the internet. And again, no media company has a platform that is going to be able to actually power how content and data and information moves through the system at scale. I was just in LA yesterday meeting with a media company that has basically done predictive analytics to find their potential movie goers in the population of 3 billion internet users, they want to be hyper targeted on how do they get to the specific 30 million people that are fans of different kinds of film types. And so all of a sudden you have a movie company that actually needs big data and they need business intelligence and they need marketing automation to go power how they’re going to go market and distribute their movies.

[译文 48]

所以这将改变 distribution 在互联网 30 亿人口规模上的运作方式。而且，没有任何媒体公司拥有一个平台，能够真正为内容和数据及信息在系统中的大规模流动提供动力。我昨天刚在 LA 与一家媒体公司会面，他们基本上已经通过 predictive analytics 来在这 30 亿互联网用户群体中找到他们潜在的电影观众，他们想要 hyper targeted，想知道如何精准触达那 3000 万不同类型电影的粉丝。于是突然之间，你就有了一家真正需要 big data 的电影公司，他们需要 business intelligence，需要 marketing automation 来驱动他们如何营销和发行他们的电影。

[段 49]

So again, totally unpredictable mashup of two industries coming together where all new kinds of software is going to be necessary. So every industry is going through some form of this change. You can pick any industry you want and sort of zoom into it and say what are the underlying technology factors that are going to change the business model of this industry in the next couple of years and then there’s going to need to be software that goes and powers those experiences. Cool? Are we all on the same page? Great. I just need to drink water. So if you could say something, that’d be great. Can we also edit out my water drinking so it doesn’t make it look like I have some weird water problem?

[译文 49]

所以再说一次，两个行业的融合是完全不可预测的，这种融合将需要各种全新的软件。所以每个行业都在经历某种形式的变革。你可以选择任何你想要的行业，然后深入了解它，问问看未来几年里有哪些底层技术因素会改变这个行业商业模式，然后就需要有软件来驱动这些体验。明白了吗？我们都理解了吗？很好。我需要喝点水。所以如果你能说点什么就好了。我们能把我喝水的部分剪掉吗？这样看起来好像我有什么奇怪的水问题一样。

[段 50]

Okay, cool. I mean, Think about the future of water. Who’s going to power that, right? That’s going to need software, I’m sure. So, so basically, every company in the world, we think of, you know, the good fortune of being in Palo Alto, being at Stanford, is we’re so hyper-focused on technology. And we think of the technology industry as an industry. But in reality, what’s happening is every company, every industry is going to have a technology component of what they do. You won’t be able to survive in the future. Enterprises will not be able to survive in the future if they don’t get good at technology, if they don’t have a competency in leveraging data and using these new tools.

[译文 50]

好的，酷。我是说，想想水的未来。谁来驱动它，对吧？我确信那将需要软件。所以，基本上，世界上最棒的公司，你知道的，在Palo Alto、在Stanford的幸运之处，就是我们非常专注于科技。我们把科技行业当作一个行业。但现实中正在发生的是，每家公司、每个行业都会在其业务中有一个科技成分。在未来你将无法生存。如果企业不擅长技术，如果他们没有利用数据和运用这些新工具的能力，他们将在未来无法生存。

[段 51]

But they’re going to do that through working with what we consider the technology industry as opposed to everybody building out these pockets of expertise themselves. So there’s going to be a lot of partnership over the next five to ten years where companies are going to need to use technology to work smarter, to work faster. They’re going to need to do this more securely and this is going to change not only how individuals work in these environments but ultimately change the business models of these companies. So, that was chapter two of this. That’s all the things that have changed. Now some practical advice to kind of help you get started. And to be fair, most of this advice is looking through the sort of lens of retrospect, which means that this is not always how things happen, but I can look back in time and say these are the things that led certain things to be true.

[译文 51]

但他们将通过与我们所认为的科技行业合作来实现这一目标，而不是每个人自己去建立这些专业知识孤岛。因此，在未来的五到十年里，将会有大量的合作关系，公司将需要利用技术来更聪明地工作、更快速地工作。他们将需要更安全地做到这一点，这将不仅改变个人在这些环境中的工作方式，最终还会改变这些公司的商业模式。那么，这是本次的第二章节。现在是一些实际的建议，帮助你入门。公平地说，这些建议大部分是通过回顾的视角来看的，这意味着事情并不总是这样发生的，但我可以回顾过去说，正是这些事情导致某些结论成为现实。

[段 52]

So it’s hard to be super deterministic about building a company, and you might not have all of these things totally figured out, but this will give you a sense of some of the patterns to recognize and opportunities to exploit as you’re building or thinking about building an enterprise software company. So the first is spot technology disruptions, and this is going to be true whether you’re building consumer or enterprise, the rest are more enterprise oriented, but this is just fundamentally fundamental to entrepreneurship if you’re going to build a tech company. So you have to look for new enabling technologies or major, major trends like fundamental trends that create a wide gap between how things have been done and how they can be done.

[译文 52]

所以创业很难做到完全确定，你可能无法把所有事情都完全弄清楚，但这会让你了解一些可识别的模式和可利用的机会，在你创业或考虑创办企业软件公司时。So the first is spot technology disruptions，这无论你是做消费者业务还是企业业务都适用，其余的更多面向企业，但这从根本上是创业的基本要素，如果你要建立一家科技公司。所以你必须寻找新的赋能技术或重大趋势，比如基础性趋势，在事物的传统做法和可以做的方法之间创造巨大差距。

[段 53]

And so looking back in time at our business, the gap was basically storage was getting cheaper, internet was getting faster, browsers were getting better, yet we’re still sharing files through this very complicated, very esoteric, very slow and cumbersome means. So any time where the delta between what is possible and how things work today is at its widest, that is an opportunity to go build new technology to go solve a problem. And so as you’re looking at the enterprise, the question is, what about the cost of computing dropping so rapidly changes what enterprises can do with their data? What does it change about what you can do from a business model standpoint? What was impossible because of either economic feasibility or technical feasibility 10 or 15 years ago that now all of a sudden is possible?

[译文 53]

回顾我们的业务发展历程，差距主要在于：存储越来越便宜，互联网越来越快，浏览器越来越好，然而我们仍然通过这种非常复杂、非常晦涩、非常缓慢且繁琐的方式来分享文件。因此，每当可能实现的事物与当今运作方式之间的差距达到最大时，那就是一个机会，去开发新技术来解决一个问题。所以，当你看企业领域时，问题在于，计算成本如此快速地下降会如何改变企业用数据可以做的事情？从商业模式的角度来看，它会改变什么？10 or 15 years ago因为经济可行性或技术可行性而不可能的事情，现在突然变得可能了？

[段 54]

And a fun thing you can do sometimes is if you go look at articles from the 1990s or even the 1980s, business articles about technology, all we’re really doing is repeating a lot of the technologies that were tried 10, 20, 30 years ago. It’s just that it was too expensive, it was too unusable, and we didn’t have the enabling technologies to make it possible. So you can kind of see this pattern emerge constantly where something that was impossible 5 or 10 years ago all of a sudden becomes very practical. So I’ll give you an example. There’s a company called PlanGrid. Does anybody know what PlanGrid does? Okay, cool. Are you in the construction industry? You are?

[译文 54]

有趣的是，有时候如果你去看看1990年代甚至1980年代的商业科技文章，你会发现我们实际上只是在重复10、20、30年前尝试过的很多技术。只是那时候太贵了，太难用了，而且我们没有促成这些技术实现的支持技术。所以你可以看到这种模式不断出现，即5年或10年前不可能的事情突然变得非常实用。所以我来给你们举个例子。有一家叫 PlanGrid 的公司。有人知道 PlanGrid 是做什么的吗？好的，很好。你从事建筑行业吗？你是吗？

[段 55]

Yes, I am. Oh, my God. What does that even mean? In terms of PlanGrid or, like, in construction? Construction. I work at a job site. We build buildings. Holy crap, that’s great. Okay. Thank you. So basically, PlanGrid is a mobile application that lets you manage construction projects, lets you get access to your blueprints, lets you manage all of the data around a construction process. And what this team realized was that $4 billion, I believe, are spent every year printing out blueprints and making all of the prints and updates to those blueprints any time there’s a change. And then that has to ripple and cascade through a very wide network of contractors and construction people every time that there’s even just one slight minute change.

[译文 55]

是的，我是（面试者）。哦，我的天。这是什么意思？是在PlanGrid方面，还是建筑业方面？建筑业。我在一个工地工作。我们盖楼。哇，那太棒了。好，谢谢。那么基本上，PlanGrid是一个手机应用，让你可以管理建筑项目，访问你的蓝图，管理整个建筑过程中的所有数据。而这个团队意识到，每年有40亿美元——我相信——被花在了打印蓝图上，以及每次有变更时制作所有这些打印件和更新这些蓝图。然后每次哪怕只有一点点微小的变化，都必须通过一个非常广泛的承包商和建筑人员网络来层层传递。

[段 56]

And they realized that with the iPad, all of a sudden we have the perfect form factor to be able to load up blueprints and load up content. And this is something that could ripple through the construction industry, which isn’t necessarily notoriously known for kind of high technology except for on the design side. How could they build technology that would make the data access, data collaboration problem really, really seamless and easy to do in a very traditional industry that hasn’t quite changed for a while? So it was a sort of perfect sort of discovery of a technology change in a market and figuring out how do those two things converge. And then this team built a great startup out of it that is doing incredibly well and totally taking over the construction industry as proven by this individual.

[译文 56]

他们意识到，有了 iPad，突然之间我们就有了完美的形态因素，能够加载蓝图和加载内容。这件事可能会波及建筑业，而建筑业除了设计方面外，并不以高科技著称。他们如何才能构建技术，让数据访问、数据协作问题在一个相当传统、很长一段时间没有太大变化的行业中变得非常、非常无缝和易于实现？所以这是一次完美的发现——市场中的技术变革，然后弄清楚这两者如何融合。然后这个团队从中建立了一个很棒的 startup，它发展得非常好，并且正在彻底占领建筑业——正如这个人所证明的那样。

[段 57]

Thank you. So the next thing is in the enterprise, you want it to start intentionally small. And what I mean by that is you want to find, and this is again true of a lot of companies, but even more true in enterprise in a user-led paradigm, you want to find the wedge that is sort of the very natural place where you can create a product that will slip in between the gaps of other existing products, but is something that you think over time expands to become a more important part of the enterprise architecture. So what you want to start to do is say, we’re going to take this sliver of a problem, we’re going to totally make the user experience on that incredible.

[译文 57]

谢谢。那么接下来的事情是，在企业领域，你要让它有意地从小型开始。我说的意思是，你要找到那个楔子——这在很多公司都适用，但在用户主导的范式中对企业来说更加适用——这是一个非常自然的位置，你可以创造一款产品，它能够嵌入现有其他产品之间的缝隙，但你认为随着时间的推移，它会扩展成为企业架构中更重要的一部分。所以你要开始做的事情是，我们要把这个问题的一小片彻底解决，让那个方面的用户体验变得难以置信的好。

[段 58]

We’re going to either change the business model. We’re going to create new technology that makes this previously difficult problem really, really simple. And it might feel small at first. Maybe you’re going after small businesses and then you’re going to move up market. Maybe you’re starting at just a sliver of the use case and then you’re going to expand out. But you intentionally start small because you will not be able to compete with an incumbent because the incumbent is going to always go for the full solution. So you have to find what are the gaps in the full solution that are significant enough where a customer is going to want to solve the problem with the discrete technology, but that over time you’re going to be able to expand, again, either to larger customers or to more use cases over time.

[译文 58]

我们要么改变商业模式，要么创造新技术，让之前很难的问题变得非常简单。一开始可能看起来规模很小。也许你一开始针对小型企业，然后逐步向更大的市场扩展。也许你一开始只是切入用例的一小部分，然后逐步扩展。但你故意从小开始，因为你无法与现有企业竞争，因为现有企业总是追求完整的解决方案。所以你必须找到完整解决方案中的缺口，这些缺口足够大，以至于客户会想要用离散技术来解决问题，但随着时间的推移，你将能够扩展，再次扩展到更大的客户或更多的用例。

[段 59]

A great example is Zen Payroll. So Zen Payroll started by Stanford graduates a couple of years ago, basically discovered that the payroll process in small businesses is an incredibly complicated and annoying and cumbersome process. And that’s because we use the same vendors that we’ve been using for decades to do that. And they weren’t sort of digitally oriented. You didn’t get your payments as a receipt over email, it was very complicated. You didn’t really get to see graphs of your salaries. Um, there was no real good data around this. And then they said, we’re just going to take off the slice. Um, that is most painful to startups around hiring people, um, and around, uh, paying people, which is just that payroll management process.

[译文 59]

一个很好的例子是 Zen Payroll。Zen Payroll 由斯坦福大学毕业生几年前创立，基本发现小型企业的工资单流程是一个非常复杂、烦人和繁琐的过程。这是因为我们使用几十年来一直使用的相同供应商，而这些供应商并不是数字化的。你没有通过电子邮件收到付款收据，这非常复杂。你无法真正看到工资图表。嗯，关于这个没有真正好的数据。然后他们说，我们只打算做这一块。嗯，对于初创公司来说，在招聘人员和支付人员方面最痛苦的，也就是工资单管理流程。

[段 60]

We’re going to plug into a lot of existing infrastructure, but we’re going to make it dead simple to go do this. And now they’re able to move both up market over time as well as deliver new services over time. And what happens is the incumbents in this market initially look at something like Zen Payroll, And they say, Well, that’s small. It’s only for small businesses. It’s not going to be very powerful. But that’s just the start, because as they get that wedge and as they fit into the market, they’re going to be able to expand again over time, build out more services and more capabilities, but they found just the exact right opening to build a new company and have that emerge.

[译文 60]

我们将接入大量现有基础设施，但我们会让你做这件事变得非常简单。现在他们能够随着时间推移向高端市场移动，同时也能不断推出新服务。发生的事情是，这个市场的现有竞争者最初会看像 Zen Payroll 这样的产品，他们会说，哦，那很小。只适合小企业。不会有太大影响力。但这只是开始，因为当他们找到切入点并适应市场后，他们将能够随着时间推移再次扩展，建立更多服务和更多功能，他们找到了一个完美的切入点来建立一家新公司并让它脱颖而出。

[段 61]

The next is you really want to find asymmetries. You want to find… Oh, my God. Okay, so can we do some tuning of my voice later so at least it’ll sound like I’m doing rap? Okay, thank you. So you want to be able to… You want to do things that incumbents can’t or won’t do because either the economics don’t make sense for them, or the economics are so different or so unusual, or because technically they can’t. I’ll give you two examples. So if you’re going to build software today for the enterprise that goes after an incumbent category that has more of a suite-oriented approach, then what you want to go do is you want to build technology that’s going to be platform agnostic.

[译文 61]

接下来是，你真的想要找到不对称优势。你想要找到……天哪。好的，那我们之后能不能调整一下我的声音，至少让它听起来像我在说唱？好的，谢谢。那么你想要能够……你想要做那些在位者不能或不愿意做的事情，因为要么经济上对他们来说不合理，要么经济情况非常不同或非常不寻常，要么因为技术上的原因他们做不到。我给你两个例子。那么如果你今天要为企业开发软件，去挑战一个采用更多套件化方法的老牌类别，那么你想做的事情是建立一种平台无关的技术。

[段 62]

Because what suite players will do is they want everything to be integrated with itself and that there’s more value with that vertical integration. But you want to go after a different axis, which is you want your technology to work across all of the platforms so that way you can work with so many different kinds of customers and you can be an ally to so many different kinds of platforms, which a traditional incumbent is not able to do. So that’s something that is usually technically infeasible because of how either something has been architected or because it’s a fundamental component of the business model to not do that as the incumbent. But the other thing is try and do things that are economically infeasible.

[译文 62]

因为套件厂商的做法是，他们希望所有东西都与自身整合在一起，这样垂直整合能带来更多价值。但你想要切入一个不同的轴线——也就是让你的技术能够在所有平台上运行，这样你就能服务各种不同的客户，成为各种不同平台的盟友，而这是传统霸主做不到的。所以这通常是技术上行不通的，因为某个东西的架构方式，或者因为不这样做是商业模式的基本组成部分。但还有一点就是，尝试做一些经济上行不通的事情。

[段 63]

You can look at the cost structure of an incumbent company and discover where are they not going to be able to drop their prices because that business model is fundamental to the existence of the company, or where can you find ways of monetizing the customer that are unusual or unique that no one has discovered before and thus is really not practical for anyone else to do. That’s a company called Zenefits, where they have an HR management software company that helps you as a small startup manage all your benefits, all of your HR information. And instead of charging the startup, which might not value that software at the stage that they’re at, they realized that they could get commission from the insurance companies.

[译文 63]

你可以分析现有竞争对手的成本结构，发现他们在哪些方面无法降价，因为那个商业模式对公司的存续至关重要；或者你能找到哪些前所未有的独特客户变现方式，因此对其他人来说实际上不可行。这就有一家叫Zenefits的公司，他们提供人力资源管理软件，帮助像你们这样的小型创业公司管理所有员工福利和人力资源信息。他们没有向创业公司收费——因为创业公司在这个阶段可能不会重视那个软件——而是意识到他们可以从保险公司获得佣金。

[段 64]

And that basically pays for the ability to use their software. So the customer itself is not paying for Zenefits. The Zenefits platform is being paid for by the insurance company, and they’ve thus invented a business model that no other software company has been able to think of or attack, and they’re equally going and disrupting a category that hasn’t seen a lot of innovation previously, which is the health and benefits space within small businesses. The next is you want to find the really crazy but sort of still somewhat reasonable outliers within the customer ecosystem. So you need to find the customers that are sort of at the edge of their business or at their business model or of their industry and find the unique characteristics about those customers and leverage them as your early adopters.

[译文 64]

这基本上支付了使用其软件的费用。所以客户本身并不需要为Zenefits付费。Zenefits平台由保险公司支付，因此他们发明了一种其他软件公司都无法想到或挑战的商业模式，他们同样在颠覆一个之前没有太多创新的领域，这就是小型企业中的健康和福利领域。其次，你想在客户生态系统中找到那些真正疯狂但仍然有些合理的异常值。所以你需要找到那些处于业务边缘或商业模式边缘或行业边缘的客户，找到这些客户的独特特征，并将它们作为你的早期采用者。

[段 65]

So Paul Graham has a great article where he talks about living in the future and building for what is missing when you’re living in the future. So that’s a sort of easy way to spot trends and patterns about disruption that’s playing out. The same is true in the workplace. If you find customers that are working in the future, you will be able to work with them to find what is missing when you’re working in the future, and how do we build technology that supports all these new use cases that are going to emerge.

[译文 65]

Paul Graham有一篇很棒的文章，谈到生活在未来，以及为未来生活中缺失的东西进行构建。这是一种发现趋势和颠覆模式的有趣方式，这些趋势和模式正在发生。在工作场所也是如此。如果你找到那些在未来工作的客户，你将能够与他们合作，发现未来工作中缺失的东西，以及我们如何构建技术来支持所有这些即将出现的新用例。

[段 66]

This is a company called Skycatch, which does enterprise drones, and at first it seems very kind of weird, but in the construction space, in farming, in oil and gas, they’re using drones now for data capture and the ability to do modeling of different environments, and so this company is able to find all of the companies that are at the bleeding edge of their industry, what is unique or new about how those organizations operate, and they built and worked with a lot of those early adopters to establish their platform, which is, again, really one of the first enterprise drone companies. So the idea is go look at your market, find the customers that are at the bleeding edge of the market who use technology to get ahead and use technology for performance advantages, and then go work with them to discover how your product can evolve.

[译文 66]

这是一家叫做 Skycatch 的公司，从事企业级无人机业务，乍一看似乎很奇怪，但在建筑行业、农业、石油和天然气领域，他们现在使用无人机进行数据采集和不同环境建模。因此这家公司能够找到所有处于行业前沿的公司，了解这些组织在运营方面有什么独特或新颖之处，并与许多早期采用者合作建立了平台，这确实是首批企业级无人机公司之一。所以这个理念是：深入了解你的市场，找到处于市场前沿的客户，他们利用技术来获得领先优势，利用技术来获得性能优势，然后与他们合作，发现你的产品如何发展演进。

[段 67]

Two minutes. Okay. Good. Okay. So the next one is, but then there’s a part two in five minutes from now or not? Is that not the case? Okay. So listen to your customers, but don’t always build exactly what they’re telling you. This is a really key distinction around building enterprise software. Your customers are going to have a large number of requests. Your job is to distill those requests down into the ultimate product. That does not mean that you’re going to build exactly what they tell you to build. It is your job to listen to their problems, but actually translate those into what is going to build the best and simplest solution to those problems. It’s really your job, and Palantir does this as an example, with very, very complex issues, and then they distill those down into simple solutions for very, very complex problems that the customer otherwise would not have known how to ask for.

[译文 67]

两分钟。好。很好。好的。那么下一个问题是，五分钟后会有第二部分吗？还是不是这样？好吧。所以要倾听你的客户，但不要总是按照他们说的去做。这是构建企业软件时一个非常关键的区别。你的客户会有大量的需求。你的工作是把这些需求提炼成最终的产品。这并不意味着你会完全按照他们告诉你的去做。你的工作是倾听他们的问题，但实际要转化为能构建最佳且最简单的解决方案。这确实是你的工作，而 Palantir 就是一个很好的例子，他们处理非常非常复杂的问题，然后将这些问题提炼为简单的解决方案，而客户本身可能根本不知道如何提出这样的需求。

[段 68]

You want to modularize, not customize. So build a platform as opposed to building all of the custom technology and custom vertical experiences directly into the software itself. Make sure that you really think about openness and APIs as a way of delivering vertical or custom experiences. Don’t build that directly into the product. Focus on the user always. So again, the magical thing about building an enterprise software company right now is you can keep consumer DNA at the center of the product. That will always mean that adoption is easier. Your product has a much higher chance of going viral. It becomes easier to sell into the organization. So always make sure you bring consumer DNA into the product development process and your product should sell itself.

[译文 68]

你想要模块化，而不是定制化。所以要构建一个平台，而不是把所有定制技术和定制垂直行业体验直接构建到软件本身中。确保你真正考虑开放性和API，将其作为交付垂直行业或定制体验的方式。不要把这些直接构建到产品中。始终以用户为中心。所以，再说一遍，现在构建企业软件公司的神奇之处在于，你可以将消费者DNA保持在产品的核心位置。这将始终意味着采用更容易。你的产品有更高的机会实现病毒式传播。向组织内销售会变得更容易。所以始终确保你将消费者DNA带入产品开发过程，你的产品应该能自我销售。

[段 69]

But that does not mean you don’t need salespeople. So this is a really important distinction. Leverage everything about the internet. Leverage everything about users to get to your customers. But you still will likely need sales as a way to help your customers navigate your product, help your customers navigate the competitive landscape in the ecosystem. So you’re going to want consultative, very, very domain-oriented sales individuals that are going to be able to be helpful in your customer being deployed and enabled in these organizations, but don’t make that be a substitute. Do not make that be a handicap for building a great product. So you fundamentally have to keep the product at the center of that. A company called Mixpanel comes in through the developer, and then over time is able to sell to that organization with a more inside sales-led process.

[译文 69]

但这并不意味着你不需要销售人员。这是一个非常重要的区别。利用互联网的一切。利用用户的一切来触达你的客户。但你可能仍然需要销售作为一种方式，帮助你的客户驾驭你的产品，帮助你的客户在生态系统中的竞争格局中导航。所以你会需要咨询式的、非常非常以领域为导向的销售人员，他们能够在你客户的部署和组织启用方面提供帮助，但不要把这作为替代品。不要让它成为打造优秀产品的障碍。所以你必须从根本上把产品放在核心位置。一家叫Mixpanel的公司通过开发者进入，然后随着时间的推移，能够通过更加内部销售导向的流程向那个组织进行销售。

[段 70]

Also, read these three books. Crossing the Chasm, Innovator’s Dilemma, and Behind the Cloud. These three combined, especially if you binge and you just read them all, you’ll definitely come out the other end with a massive software company. And so, in closing, today, right now, when you leave this room, is an amazing time to go start an enterprise software company. So I wish you the best of luck. And of course, if it doesn’t work, we are hiring. And then the only other caveat is please do not compete with me because I have a lot of competition already. So ideally, Either come work for us or build your own company. So thank you very much.

[译文 70]

还有，读这三本书。《Crossing the Chasm》、《Innovator’s Dilemma》和《Behind the Cloud》。这三本结合起来读，尤其是如果你一口气全部读完，你最终一定会成就一家大型软件公司。所以，最后，我想说，今天，现在，当你离开这个房间时，正是创办企业软件公司的绝佳时机。所以祝你好运。当然，如果创业不成，我们正在招聘。另外一个警告是，请不要和我竞争，因为我已经有太多竞争对手了。所以理想情况下，要么来为我们工作，要么建立你自己的公司。所以非常感谢。

Source: bilibili BV1oWKpzoE1Z