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????Yesware本周二結束了保密模式，開始為銷售人員提供基于云計算的電子郵件工作解決方案。該公司還正式宣布，它已經(jīng)獲得了來自谷歌風投（Google Ventures）和Foundry集團的小額種子風投。為此，我通過電話和公司創(chuàng)始人兼首席執(zhí)行官馬修?貝勒斯聊了一會，探討為什么銷售人員需要更出色的工作軟件。下文即我們談話內(nèi)容的編輯版。 ????《財富》雜志：你們創(chuàng)辦Yesware公司的目的是什么? ????貝勒斯：最初的創(chuàng)意來自我作為銷售人員的工作經(jīng)歷。當時，我是一個銷售團隊的主管，我需要花費大量的時間要求我的銷售人員及時更新他們的客戶關系管理系統(tǒng)（CRM）。只有他們向我匯報情況，我才能把匯總情況向董事會匯報。不光我累得夠嗆，他們也好過不到哪兒去。最后卻落得“無效輸入，無效輸出”（garbage in, garbage out）的局面，大家白忙一場。 ????就算他們真的把精力放在數(shù)據(jù)處理上，我還是覺得糟糕透頂。他們都是勤奮的銷售，應該把精力放在抓到客戶，而不是輸入數(shù)據(jù)上。我們當時用的客戶關系管理軟件是Salesforce，于是我們開始尋找其他CRM，希望能找到更好的解決方案。但是它們都是半斤八兩。 ????銷售人員成天泡在電子郵件里。他們的數(shù)據(jù)都在電子郵件里。合同、作廢的合同也都在電子郵件里。但這些電子郵件跟公司里其他員工無緣——因為企業(yè)無法利用保存在Gmail賬戶里的PDF格式文件。我覺得，銷售人員使用的是普通的電子郵件工具，其他領域的專業(yè)人士卻使用高級工具，這實在不可理喻。 ????于是我就有了這個創(chuàng)意：為銷售人員開發(fā)一套優(yōu)化的工具，幫助他們處理工作，同時讓企業(yè)可以從銷售人員的資料中獲取有價值的信息。 ????貴公司最初的產(chǎn)品是專為Gmail開發(fā)的。你們未來會向Outlook Exchange拓展嗎？ ????Gmail中有約400萬家企業(yè)，這已經(jīng)是一個頗具規(guī)模的市場，但我們不會永遠局限于Gmail。我們當然會向Outlook Exchange擴展，因為它占有余下的97%的市場，我們必須進入這個市場。我們之所以選擇谷歌公司（Google）的軟件和Gmail作為始發(fā)平臺，是因為它提供了一個理想的試驗環(huán)境。一旦我們完善了產(chǎn)品的各種功能，我們就會開始拓展。 ????你們最新的投資者包括谷歌風投，他們的團隊中恰好有Gmail最初的開發(fā)人員。到目前為止，他們這類專長對你們來說有何意義？ ????谷歌風投能夠加入我們的團隊真是太好了。他們?nèi)际歉黝I域的專家，這一點使他們與其他風投公司完全不同。比如，布萊登?科維茨是用戶界面設計專家，戴維?克萊恩是公關專家。此外，正如你所說，他們是谷歌軟件產(chǎn)品的開發(fā)者，對這些產(chǎn)品的功能知根知底。他們把我們當成真正的投資組合公司，沒有胡里花哨的東西，也不會替我們搞什么小動作，但是一直都在給予我們巨大的幫助。 |
????Yesware came out of stealth mode today, offering a cloud-based email productivity solution for salespeople. It also formally announced a small round of seed funding from Google Ventures and Foundry Group. So I spent some time on the phone with company founder and CEO Matthew Bellows, to understand why salespeople need better apps. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation. ????Fortune: Why did you launch Yesware? ????Bellows: The basic idea was inspired by my experience as a sales guy and running a sales team. I spent so much of my time asking my guys to update their CRMs, so that they could report it to me and I could report it to the board. It became frustrating not only for me, but for them too – which led to a 'garbage in, garbage out' situation. ????Even when they got to it, I felt terrible. These were hardworking guys who should have been getting clients, not doing data entry. We were using Salesforce (CRM), but we started looking at other CRMs to see if they had a better solution. They didn't. ????Sales guys live in email. Their data is in email. Their contracts, and redlined contracts, are in email. But it's isolated from the rest of the organization – because the enterprise doesn't have access to the stuff in Gmail accounts of .PDF files. It was baffling to me that salespeople use generic email tools whereas other types of professionals have highly-toned tools. ????So that's the idea: Give salespeople tools optimized to do their jobs, and then extract out of that information for the enterprise. ????Your initial product is focused on Gmail. Will you expand to Outlook Exchange? ????There are about four million businesses on Gmail, which is a reasonable-sized market but we won't be Gmail only forever. We will definitely do Outlook Exchange, since that's the other 97% of the market and we need to be there. We chose Google Apps and Gmail as the launch platform because it's a great testing environment. Once we get the feature set really right, then we'll expand. ????One of your new investors is Google Ventures, whose team happens to feature the original creator of Gmail. How important has that type of expertise been so far? ????It was a fantastic thing to be able to get Google Ventures on our team. They really distinguish themselves among VCs by having a whole staff of people who are experts in their fields. People like Braden Kowitz in UI design or David Krane in PR. And, as you say, they have built the products and know intimately how they function. They treat us like a portfolio company – not doing anything weird or pulling any Google (GOOG) strings – but have been super-helpful. |
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????今年4月你們向監(jiān)管機構提交的文件表明募資金額略少于100萬美元。當時指的是現(xiàn)在這輪融資嗎？ ????沒錯。當時我們并沒有聲張，因為我們想等到銷售人員真正開始使用我們的產(chǎn)品時再宣布這個消息。所以看到你們公布這個消息時，我嚇了一跳，不過事情進展得很順利——我們完成了這輪融資，總共募得了100萬美元。 ????你對進一步融資的近期計劃是什么？ ????今年晚些時候，我們會進行首輪融資（Series A，風投募資周期術語——譯注）。新一輪融資計劃于假期前結束，金額可能在400萬左右。 ????消費類應用軟件或許只需要進入蘋果應用軟件商店（app store）銷售就萬事大吉了，但你們是企業(yè)級軟件，你們真的不打算組建實打實的營銷隊伍嗎？還有專職培訓用戶的人員呢？ ????到目前為止我們還沒有開展過任何營銷，一直都是靠口碑效應實現(xiàn)擴張。個人用戶可以免費使用這款產(chǎn)品，而且我們已經(jīng)看到，它正在銷售人員中以極快的速度大量普及。未來，我們會需要開展一些營銷活動，以便能觀察銷售隊伍，發(fā)現(xiàn)熱點消費人群。接下來，我們就能理直氣壯的對公司的銷售副總說：“嗨，貴公司很多銷售人員都在用這款軟件，您難道不希望整個銷售團隊都用上這款產(chǎn)品嗎？”到時候，我們就可以收錢了。 ????萬一他們都以個人身份注冊免費使用呢？ ????如果他們都來注冊，我們再高興不過。到了某個階段，我們就可能向他們提供包含特別功能的專業(yè)版，但我們目前還沒發(fā)展到那一步。 ????我們盈利模式是，我們的軟件能夠生成銷售報告，公司只需查看報告就能一目了然地掌握銷售人員的工作進度，客戶是否查閱了他們發(fā)送的電子郵件，是否點擊了他們提供的鏈接。另外，公司還能使用我們的軟件創(chuàng)建一個銷售團隊的模板庫，在銷售團隊中實現(xiàn)共享，這樣所有銷售人員就能擁有共同語言了。如果有重大營銷活動或新產(chǎn)品的發(fā)布，營銷部門也不用再費事把相關信息放到wiki里了，因為根本沒人會看（wiki，網(wǎng)絡上開放、可供多人協(xié)同創(chuàng)作的系統(tǒng)——譯注）。這就是我們基本的價值定位。 ????譯者：清遠 |
????You had a regulatory filing in April showing a bit less than $1 million raised. Is that this round? ????Yes. We never announced back then because we wanted to wait until the product was actually being used by salespeople. I had a small heart attack when I saw you announced it, but things worked out okay – and we topped off the round with a total of $1 million. ????What is your near-term plan for additional funding? ????We'll be raising a Series A later this year that we plan to close by the holidays. Probably in the $4 million range. ????Consumer apps just go into the app store, but don't you need a real marketing team for an enterprise app? And maybe people to train users? ????To date we haven't done any marketing, it's just been word of mouth. The product is free to use for individuals, and we've seen a lot of viral spread among sales colleagues. We will need to have some marketing, so that we can look at a sales team, identify the hot spots – the people using it – and then say to the VP of sales, "Hey, a few of your guys are using it, don't you want your entire group using it? And we charge for that. ????What if they all sign up individually for free? ????We're totally happy if they all sign up. At some point we might offer a pro version with extra features, but we aren't there yet. ????The main way we earn revenue is by giving an enterprise the ability to see reports about how salespeople conversations are going, whose emails are getting opened or links getting clicked. Plus they can create a team library of templates they can share so that all salespeople are speaking on the same page. Or if there's a breaking event or product launch, the marketing department doesn't have to put information on a wiki no one really sees. That's our basic value proposition. |
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