When we first saw this happening in December of 1999, January of 2000 right after we launched,
1999年12月到2000年1月我们发布了产品
there was a sense that these were all, it was such a small market it was terrible.
我们有种感觉,市场也就这么点,这是个很小的市场
We thought these were terrible customers to have.
上面都是屌丝
It's just people selling junk on the internet.
卖的东西都是垃圾
Why in the world do we want to be going after this market?
我们为什么要进入这个市场?
But, you know, there was a way to get a product that was much better for everybody in that market.
我们可以为这个市场里的顾客提供更好的产品
You could, and we got to something like 25, 30%, you know, market penetration in two or three months.
两三个月后,我们差不多就有了25%到30%的市场份额
And you got some walk in.
我们迈出了第一步
You got brand recognition and your able to build the business from there.
有了一定的品牌知名度,生意就从这里开始了
So I always think these, these very small markets are quite underrated.
我始终认为,这些小的市场被低估了
The Facebook version of this I always give is that you know
Facebook最开始也一样,我也经常举这个例子
if the initial market of Facebook was 10,000 people at Harvard,
Facebook最初的市场只是哈佛大学的1万人
it went from zero to sixty percent market share in ten days.
它从建立到占据60%的市场只用了10天
That was a very auspicious start.
这是一个非常好的开始
The way this gets analyzed in business schools is always, that's ridiculous,
但这个例子总被商学院认为是非常荒谬的
it's such a small market it can't have any value at all.
因为市场太小了,根本没有价值
And so, I think the business school analysis of Facebook early on, or of PayPal early on,
我认为,商学院对于早期的Facebook,PayPal或者
or of eBay early on is that the markets were perhaps, so small as to have, almost no value.
eBay的分析是:市场太小,几乎没有价值
And they, they would have had little value had they stayed small,
当然,如果市场一直那么小的话,就真没什么价值了
but it turned out they were ways to grow them concentrically and,
但事实是,他们后来都做大了
that's what made them, that's what made them so valuable.
成为了非常有价值的公司
Now I think the opposite version of this, is always where you have super big markets.
与此相反的一个例子是进入了巨大市场的公司