OLX 不爲人知的分類信息巨頭

Alec Oxenford isn’t a recognizable name in American business circles, but in South America, he’s a CEO rock star of sorts. At least, that’s what I’m inclined to believe, after experiencing the Alec Oxenford effect firsthand during a recent coffee meeting in New York.

在美國商界，亞力克o奧克森福德並不爲人熟知，但在南美洲，他可是首席執行官中的明星。至少我是這麼認爲的——前不久，我有幸與他在紐約一起喝咖啡，親身體會了一番他的影響力。

Partway through our meeting, a student in a hoodie approached our table and excitedly said, “Sorry to interrupt, but are you Alec Oxenford?”

在我們談話的時候，一名身穿帽衫的學生來到我們的桌前，激動地問道：“冒昧打擾了，您就是亞力克o奧克森福德吧？”

The student, who was Brazilian, professed his admiration for Oxenford. He was a hopeful entrepreneur himself, studying at Columbia University. He said he recognized Oxenford from his Instagram account. Oxenford was embarrassed—he swore up and down that it wasn’t a set-up to impress me. His public relations person said that sort of thing happens fairly frequently in Argentina, where Oxenford is based.

這位來自巴西的學生表達了他對奧克森福德的仰慕之情。他就讀於哥倫比亞大學（Columbia University），本身也有可能成爲一名企業家。他說自己從Instagram賬號上認出了奧克森福德。奧克森福德有些尷尬——他發誓這絕不是爲了讓我印象深刻而特意安排的。他的公關人員表示，在奧克森福德的祖國阿根廷，這類事情經常發生。

I had little choice but to believe him. Oxenford’s classifieds company, OLX, has quickly become a household name in emerging markets. This fall, OLX reached a milestone that puts it in the same category of Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and Snapchat: 200 million monthly active users.

我只能選擇相信他。在新興市場，奧克森福德的分類廣告公司OLX已經迅速成爲一個家喻戶曉的名字。今年秋天，OLX抵達一項里程碑：月活躍用戶達到2億，這讓該公司的影響力足以同Instagram、Facebook Messenger和Snapchat相提並論。

Founded in 2006, the company has grown to 1,200 employees and operates in 40 countries. With 11 billion page views, 25 million listings, and 8.5 million transactions per month, it is the largest marketplace in India, Poland, and, as of last year, Brazil. Funded by U.S. venture firms including Bessemer Ventures and General Catalyst Partners, OLX sold a majority stake to the African conglomerate Naspers in 2010. OLX is free to use and makes money selling promoted listings to users. (Payments are conducted offline, which has allowed OLX to avoid dealing with legacy payment infrastructure in each market it enters.)

OLX成立於2006年，如今擁有1,200名員工，業務範圍拓展到了40個國家。公司每月擁有110億次頁面訪問量、2,500萬條廣告，併產生850萬筆交易，是印度和波蘭的最大市場，從去年開始也成爲巴西的最大市場。OLX獲得了美國風投公司Bessemer Ventures和General Catalyst Partners等的資助，並在2010年將大部分股權賣給了非洲納斯帕斯集團(Naspers)。OLX可免費使用，並通過向用戶出售促銷廣告獲取收入。（支付則通過線下進行。如此一來，OLX就不必在進入每個市場時都要考慮當地的支付系統問題。）

But OLX’s success is not the reason for Oxenford’s status among South American entrepreneurs. (Though his co-founder and co-CEO, FabriceGrinda, who left in 2012, is also well known in American tech startup circles as an angel investor.) Rather, Oxenford’s notoriety comes from his commanding personality—he will dominate a conversation—and staunch contrarianism, a point of view he shares with Peter Thiel, who has invested in OLX through his venture firm, Founders Fund.

但OLX的成功並非奧克森福德在南美企業家中獲得顯赫地位的原因。（儘管該公司的共同創始人兼聯席首席執行官，後來在2012年離職的法布里斯o格林達同樣以天使投資人的身份聞名於美國科技創投界。）實際上，讓奧克森福德出名的是他的統治欲——他會主導和別人的談話——以及他不走尋常路的行事風格。就特立獨行這一點而言，他與彼得o泰爾可謂惺惺相惜，泰爾的風投公司Founders Fund便投資了OLX。

For example, OLX has taken the “Martian approach” to international expansion. Where most companies launch in their home countries because that’s what they understand best, OLX started with the biggest available market: India. The company didn’t launch anything in its home country, Argentina, until four and a half years later. American founders are “self-centered” for only focusing on the U.S. and developer markets, Oxenford says.

比如說，OLX採用了“火星式方法”進行國際擴張。大部分公司由於更熟悉自己的國家，都會選擇本土擴張，但OLX卻從最大的現成市場印度開始發展。公司在最早的四年半中，沒有在祖國阿根廷開展任何項目。奧克森福德表示，美國的公司創始人往往“以自我爲中心”，只關注美國本土和發達國家的市場。

“It’s rational to believe you know local markets,” he says, “but people are always the same in each country. They think the same way. They have different priorities, but they all want to progress in life and that’s what drives Internet behavior.” He believes OLX helps people progress in life by acting as a “wealth creator” in emerging markets, where users can easily monetize their possessions by selling them to each other.

他說：“認爲自己更瞭解本土市場，這種想法很合理，但不同國家的人其實本質上是一樣的，他們的想法很類似。每個人的生活重點不同，但都想在人生中取得進步，而這正是網絡行爲背後的驅動力。”他相信，通過在新興市場扮演“財富創造者”的角色，OLX可以幫助人們在人生中取得進步。用戶可以利用這一平臺將自己的物品出售給其他人，從而換取金錢。

Oxenford’s other big contrarian play is to invest heavily in television advertising. Many successful startups don’t worry about marketing until their growth has hit a plateau, relying on cultural relevance, momentum, and public relations outreach in the early days. Startups that poured money into TV ads in the dot-com era concluded they didn’t work. That characterization has stuck. Oxenford says this is a mistake because there were so few Internet users in the dot-com era. Now, almost three billion people are online, many of whom skipped desktop Internet and went straight to mobile. Television ads directing them to a website or app actually work, he says.

奧克森福德另一項與衆不同的舉動是，大筆投資電視廣告。許多成功的初創公司在成立初期會藉助文化營銷、增長造勢和公共關係活動來做推廣。在公司的增長遇到平臺期之前，它們並不擔心營銷問題。那些曾經在網絡熱潮時期投資電視廣告的初創公司得出的結論是，電視廣告並不管用，而人們對電視廣告的認識就停滯於此。奧克森福德稱，這是一個誤區，因爲網絡熱潮時期的因特網用戶其實太少了。時至今日，幾乎有30億人上網，其中許多人都不再使用臺式電腦上網，而是用上了移動設備。他表示，如果用電視廣告引導用戶訪問某個網站或使用某款應用，效果實際上相當不錯。

OLX was profitable three years ago, but was only growing by 70% to 80% each year. Citing the potential for competition, Oxenford decided that slow, organic growth was actually more risky than fast-paced, advertising-fueled growth. “If people had understood what we were doing before, we would have had a lot more competition,” he says. So OLX sold itself to Naspers to fund faster, less profitable growth with TV advertising.

OLX在三年前開始盈利，但每年的利潤增長率只有70%至80%。援引有可能出現的競爭壓力，奧克森福德認爲緩慢的內生成長實際上比廣告推動的快速增長風險更大。他表示：“如果人們更早地弄清楚了我們的做法，我們可能已經遭遇了更多競爭。”所以OLX把自己賣給了Naspers，通過斥資做電視廣告來推動業務更快速增長，儘管這樣做會導致利潤率有所下降。

Now, the company is in a position of strength in many of its markets, and its biggest three—India, Brazil and Poland—only make up 50% of user base. As Craigslist and eBay’s EBAY 0.25% lasting success have shown, it’s hard to disrupt a marketplace once it has liquidity. Which highlights another one of Oxenford’s contrarian decisions: he has no desire to compete in the U.S. or other developed countries. There’s too much opportunity elsewhere.

如今，公司在許多市場中都佔據了強勢位置，而其最大的三個市場——印度、巴西和波蘭——只佔公司50%的用戶羣。就如分類廣告網站Craigslist和eBay的持續成功所證明的那樣，一旦網上市場獲得了流動性，它就很難被摧垮。這凸顯了奧克森福德另一項逆向決定的英明：他對美國和其他發達國家不感興趣，因爲有太多的機會在別處。