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San Francisco-based BrightRoll raised around $40 million in venture capital funding since being founded in 2006, but its most recent round was a full three years ago. Instead, BrightRoll kept its cash burn in check and focused intently on execution — becoming profitable with what Yahoo says will be more than $100 million in net revenue this year (a figure that I hear is a significant underestimation).
BrightRoll总部设在旧金山，2006年成立以来，该公司筹集的风投资金约有4000万美元，但BrightRoll上次融资已经是整整三年前的事了。该公司一直在控制自身烧钱的速度，同时全力关注执行。BrightRoll已经实现盈利，据雅虎估算，BrightRoll今年的净收入将超过1亿美元（我了解到的情况是，这个数字大大低估了BrightRoll的收入水平）。
“The key is that the company’s sales and marketing efficiency was phenomenal,” says a source familiar with BrightRoll. “They really managed to scale from very small to very large by increasing sales productivity, rather than by raising money to hire more and more salespeople. It was unusual, in a good way.”
熟悉BrightRoll的消息人士称：“关键在于，该公司的销售和营销效率极高。他们真的是靠提高销售生产率，从一家非常小的公司，成长为规模非常大的企业，而不是靠筹钱雇佣更多的销售人员来实现增长。这一点非同寻常，BrightRoll可谓鹤立鸡群。”
BrightRoll has been talking to Yahoo about an acquisition for quite some time, with talks really heating up in September. Had the deal not come together, however, there wasn’t much appetite for another venture capital round. Instead, BrightRoll likely would have tried going public sometime in 2015 (depending on the broader market receptivity to ad-tech).
BrightRoll和雅虎就收购磋商了相当长的时间，谈判从9月份开始真正升温。不过，如果未能达成协议，BrightRoll也不大愿意再去寻找风投资金。相反，该公司可能会试图在2015年上市（具体时间取决于整个市场对广告科技公司的接受程度）。
All of this is a major departure from the recent trend in Silicon Valley, which is for companies like BrightRoll to keep raising large new rounds of VC funding at ever-larger valuations. Not only to fund operations, but also as a sort of rainy day fund in case the markets turn and the venture well runs dry.
所有这些都与硅谷最近的趋势大相径庭。通常在硅谷，像BrightRoll这样的公司，会一轮接一轮地筹集大笔风投资金，在此过程中，公司估值也水涨船高。这些资金不光用于经营，还有点未雨绸缪的意思，以免市场急转直下，风投资金来源枯竭。
To be sure, BrightRoll didn’t ultimately become a so-called unicorn, selling for $1 billion or more like prior Yahoo acquisition Tumblr. But BrightRoll also raised less than one-third of the venture funding of a company like Tumblr, meaning that its founders likely experienced much less dilution. Just goes to show that there is no “right” path for tech entrepreneurs to follow when financing their companies…
确实，BrightRoll最终未能像此前被雅虎收购的Tumblr那样，卖出10亿美元或更高的天价。但BrightRoll筹集的风投资金，也不到Tumblr的三分之一，也就是说，BrightRoll创始人的股权被稀释的程度也要小得多。这恰恰表明，科技创业者为自己公司筹资时，并无既定之规。
