It didnt take long for Brad ONeill to get back in the game.时隔不久，布莱德·奥尼尔又回去了。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. ONeill, 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，几个月前StumbleUpon（热门的内容找到网站，也是当时他最不受注目的一项投资）刚被eBay (EBAY)以7,500万美元现金并购。
StumbleUpon的天使投资人奥尼尔本可早已收手，坐享这笔可观的投资报酬，有位记者将此称作典型的互联网灰姑娘故事。但是，他转而创办了另一家公司。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, ONeill 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.“我和垫瑞特o坎普、杰夫o史密斯将StumbleUpon卖给eBay旋即，就开始考虑到一个新的、要解决问题的问题，”奥尼尔说道。“我在和不懂技术的联合合伙人史蒂夫o诺埃尔讲。
他是一位行业分析师，总是为必需要写的东西忙得晕头转向。我们辩论的是内容自动化正在如何显得更加有可能。当时我在英属维尔京群岛渡假，结果却变为了与诺埃尔在Skype上聊天并筹划后来沦为TechValidate的种种设想。”ONeill describes TechValidates 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, ONeill says. TechValidates 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.奥尼尔将TechValidate的同名产品描述为“B2B公司软件即服务的内容自动化平台”。
奥尼尔回应，自设内容已沦为热门的营销手段，但企业团队很整天，无法获取充足的定向内容来确保有效性。TechValidate的工具可以从资料库中引入它指出对于B2B公司证书用户最重要的内容。
营销人员审查后可在有所不同平台上公布，还包括营销自动平台、客户关系管理工具、社交媒体渠道、网页等等。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 couldnt do it.“我们首创了这个市场空间。我们经常出现之前没有人做到过这件事，”他说道。“我们打造出了一个内容机器人，修改了营销团队的工作，以前他们总是为打造出定向内容而忙得晕头转向——工具构建的定向性是人类无法匹敌的。
”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. ONeill 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于2008年年中发售了产品，如今通用电气(GE, GE)、惠普(Hewlett Packard, HP)、IBM、戴尔(Dell)、日立(Hitachi)、CA Technologies (CA)、SAP (SAP)和英特尔(Intel, INTC)都早已是它的客户。据奥尼尔称之为，这家不拒绝接受外部投资的公司2013年构建营收500万美元，今年未来将会超过1200万美元，构建盈利。Steve and I had a very conscious decision that we werent going to seek venture money for this, ONeill says. We kept comparing ourselves to SurveyMonkey, which also has these very positive feedback loops. If were charging the right amount of money, we wont need venture money. We turned profitable in our first year and we still are.“诺埃尔和我作出了一个十分精神状态的要求，这家公司我们不想谋求风险投资，”奥尼尔说道。
“我们总是将自己与在线调查网站SurveyMonkey比起，后者也有这样的正反馈电路。如果我们缴纳的价格合理，我们不必须风险投资。
我们第一年就构建了盈利，目前仍是如此。”Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital, which invested in StumbleUpon, says ONeill and Norall have the right approach. I dont believe many teams could have accomplished what Brad has without outside investment. We just dont see too many bootstrapped businesses getting to scale in enterprise software. Its a viable path, but uncommon.First Round Capital的约什o考普曼曾多次投资StumbleUpon。
他说道，奥尼尔和诺埃尔的作法是对的。“我指出，很少有团队能像奥尼尔那样不利用外部投资就获得这样的成就。
我们很少看见创业公司能在企业软件领域超过规模化。这是一条不切实际的道路，但不少见。”On Tuesday, the company announced a partnership with Oracle (ORCL) to integrate its service into Eloqua, that companys marketing automation software. ONeill 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.周二，这家公司宣告与甲骨文(Oracle, ORCL)合作，把自己的服务与甲骨文的营销自动软件Eloqua互为统合。
奥尼尔回应，TechValidate有35%的客户同时用于Eloqua和TechValidate，统合能修改他们的工作，也能让TechValidate通过EloquaAppCloud软件枢纽抵达更加多受众。The challenge they have is that they dont have all this content to fill these pages, ONeill says. Companies have gone out and spent millions of dollars for marketing automation, and they realize that the deployment doesnt 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 dont have to leave it.“他们的挑战是没这样的内容来填满页面，”奥尼尔回应。“企业早已作出了希望，花费了数百万美元实行营销自动化。
他们意识到如果没内容，这些希望并无法实现目标。Eloqua的客户拒绝以一种更加非常简单的方式，将我们的内容萃取至他们的工作环境。现在，我们的任何联合客户都能在Eloqua中创建、公布和构建我们的内容——需要离开了Eloqua。
”Just how big an opportunity is content automation? ONeill 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. Its not a bad place to be.内容自动化蕴含着太大的商机？奥尼尔只是说道，他的公司正处于“几十亿美元”的营销自动化行业与440亿美元内容营销行业之间——“营销支出中仅次于的单一开支。”这个领域真为不赖。
Because were one of a kind, its difficult to talk about a total addressable market, he says. When youre a unicorn its a self-serving thing. But were sitting between two wonderful trends that are both increasing.“因为我们是其中一个，很难谈论总的可抵达市场，”他说道。“当你是独角兽时，这是一件不言自明的事。
但目前我们正处于两股令人激动的趋势之间，两股趋势都在快速增长。
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