评论
打印
To fully grasp the prescience of Mihael Mikek, a co-founder of Celtra, the advertising technology company, requires an exercise of mental time travel.
要完全理解广告科技公司Celtra联合创始人米哈尔•米凯克(Mihael Mikek)的先见之明，就得先来场思想上的时光穿越。
Return, for a moment, to 2005. The iPhone is still two years away and most of us are talking on BlackBerrys or flimsy flip phones. The biggest money to be made in mobile is in the sale of ringtones and screen wallpaper.
让我们暂且回到2005年。当时iPhone还有两年才上市，我们大多数人用黑莓(BlackBerry)或者轻薄的翻盖手机打电话。移动业务中最赚钱的是销售手机铃声和壁纸。（上图为Celtra联合创始人米哈尔•米凯克和马娅•德罗克）
But Mr Mikek, then a first-year MBA student atBabson’s Olin Graduate School of Business, sees an industry with enormous potential. Although it would be a few years before he and his co-founders — his wife, Maja Drolec, also a Babson MBA and the company’s chief financial officer, and Matevz Klanjsek, Celtra’s chief product officer — begin to focus on ways to make mobile advertisements more effective, they all saw the budding power of mobile.
但当时还是巴布森学院奥林商学院(Babson Olin Graduate School of Business)一年级MBA学员的米凯克，看到了一个潜力巨大的行业。尽管他和其他合伙创始人在几年后才致力于提高移动广告的有效性，但他们全都看到了移动业务崭露头角的力量。米凯克的合伙创始人包括他的妻子马娅•德罗克(Maja Drolec)，她同样是巴布森的MBA学员，现在担任Celtra首席财务官；以及公司首席产品官马特兹•克兰烈塞克(Matevz Klanjsek)。
“We were looking for ideas and we all believed mobile was interesting,” says Mr Mikek. “But to catch a wave like this — to catch an industry that has disrupted so many things — that was big.”
米凯克表示：“当时我们正在寻找创业点子，我们全都相信移动业务很有吸引力。但要抓住这样的浪潮，抓住一个颠覆如此多事物的行业，并不是一件容易的事情。”
Founded in 2006, Celtra’s software AdCreator — now in its fourth iteration — helps businesses create rich media ads that use animation, audio, video or other interactive elements, optimised for different devices and formats. Using data, other signals and triggers such as a mobile user’s location, Celtra’s platform also ensures marketers deliver relevant ads to their intended audience.
Celtra创建于2006年，它开发的软件AdCreator（现在已是第四版）使用动画、音频和视频或者其他互动方式，帮助企业制作丰富多彩的媒体广告，并针对各种设备和格式进行优化。利用数据、信号、以及移动用户位置等其他触发信息，Celtra的平台还能确保营销人员向目标受众发送相关广告。
Ad tech is a booming industry. According to eMarketer, the internet market research group, the global mobile advertising market is projected to surpass $100bn in 2016, of which mobile will account for more than 50 per cent. Celtra has a tiny but growing sliver of that market. This year the company, which is based in Boston, will serve more than 50bn ads and earn a projected revenue of $37m, nearly double what it earned in 2014.
广告技术是一个蓬勃发展的行业。互联网市场研究集团eMarketer表示，预计2016年全球移动广告市场规模将超过1000亿美元，其中移动业务的比例将超过50%。Celtra在该市场只占非常小的份额，但规模却在不断增长。今年这家总部位于波士顿的公司将会为逾500亿美元的广告提供服务，预计实现3700万美元收入，几乎是2014年收入的两倍。
The rise of programmatic advertising, which uses automated computer systems and sophisticated algorithms to deliver ads across the internet, is another boon to Celtra.
程序化广告的兴起对Celtra来说是另一个福音。程序化广告是指使用自动计算系统和复杂算法在互联网上投放广告。
In some ways, the three founders make for an unlikely team. Mr Klanjsek studied architecture and design and previously worked in advertising. “I never had a desire to be an entrepreneur,” he says plainly. “I just wanted to do advertising.”
从某些方面来说，这3位创始人不太可能组成一支团队。克兰烈塞克学的是建筑和设计专业，早先从事广告设计工作。他坦率地说：“我从未想过当一名企业家。我只想做广告。”
Ms Drolec also admits to being a reluctant entrepreneur and still talks enthusiastically about one day pursuing a career in social work. She also had reservations about starting a company with her husband. “To be frank, I didn’t think that us working together would be [for] the best,” she says.
德罗克也坦承不想创业，仍然充满热情地说起总有一天会投身社会工作。她对与丈夫一起开公司也持保留态度。她说道：“坦率地说，我不认为我们合作将会得到最好结果。”
However, Mr Mikek, the unabashed visionary of the group, insists: “We complement each other. Maya was always really good with numbers, Matevz wanted to change advertising for the better and I wanted to build a big business. When you put those things together, it becomes pretty powerful.”
然而，作为团队中毫无疑问的远见者，米凯克坚称：“我们彼此互补。马娅一向精于数字，马特兹希望把广告变得更好，而我想创办一家大企业。当你把这些事情综合起来的时候，它就变得非常强大。”
The founders all grew up in Slovenia and came of age when the country gained independence. “After [that] the world started to open up a little bit more,” says Mr Mikek. “Many people in our generation started to go out and study abroad.”
几位创始人从小在斯洛文尼亚长大，在该国赢得独立之际成年。米凯克说：“那之后世界开始开放了一点点。我们这一代人有许多开始走出去，并去海外留学。”
Mr Mikek was the first to enrol at US-based Babson, where he won a place in the school’s signature class — the Entrepreneurship Intensity Track — a specialised elective for those who plan to launch a venture shortly after they graduate. His class project was a mobile payments company, which Bill Bygrave, professor emeritus at Babson, admits he was dubious about. “It wasn’t obvious to me that there was a great market for it. But along came the smartphone and that changed the world,” he says.
米凯克是首批进入美国巴布森学院学习的学生，并赢得了进入该校“特色班”——“创业强度追踪项目”(Entrepreneurship Intensity Track)——的一个名额，这是为那些计划在毕业后不久就创业的学员准备的专业选修班。他的班级项目是一个移动支付公司，巴布森学院荣誉教授比尔•贝格雷夫(Bill Bygrave)承认，他曾对此感到怀疑。他说：“我看不清这是否是一个大市场。但后来出现了智能手机，改变了世界。”
After they graduated, Mr Mikek and Ms Drolec toyed with a range of mobile-related business ideas. They later met Mr Klanjsek on a trip to London and began to hatch the company that would eventually become Celtra.
米凯克和德罗克在毕业后尝试过一系列移动业务的点子。他们后来在去伦敦的旅途中遇到了克兰烈塞克，并开始筹办后来的Celtra。
Their initial idea was to create a web-based marketing platform for entertainment clients, mainly Hollywood studios, to publicise their films via social channels. “Quite honestly, we knew nothing,” recalls Mr Klanjsek. “In the early stage we had the freedom to explore. It was tough but it was magical in a way.”
他们最初的想法是，为娱乐业客户（主要是好莱坞电影公司）创建一个基于网络的市场营销平台，通过社交渠道宣传他们的影片。克兰烈塞克回忆道：“说实在的，当时我们什么也不知道。一开始我们随便摸索。这很艰难，但在某种程度上来说也很神奇。”
Having raised a modest round of seed money from their families, Ms Drolec and Mr Mikek worked from their flat in Cambridge and Mr Klanjsek worked from his in London and later San Francisco. They also commissioned a small group of developers in Slovenia to write code and hustled for every scrap of business. “We probably did 15 campaigns but we pitched hundreds,” says Mr Mikek. “We went to literally every company in Hollywood.”
在从家里筹得一小笔种子资金之后，米凯克和德罗克在剑桥的公寓、克兰烈塞克在伦敦（后来在旧金山）的公寓开始了工作。他们还委托斯洛文尼亚的一个小开发团队写代码，并努力争取每一笔业务。米凯克表示：“我们大概做了15笔生意，但我们向数百家公司推销了自己。我们真的去了好莱坞的每一家公司。”
Eventually big name studios, including 20th Century Fox, New Line Cinema, and Warner Bros, signed on to use Celtra’s service for movie release campaigns such asSex and the City and What Happens in Vegas.
最终，包括20世纪福克斯电影公司(20th century Fox)、新线电影公司(New Line Cinema)以及华纳兄弟(Warner Bros)在内的大型电影公司，在《欲望都市》(Sex and the City)和《情迷拉斯维加斯》(What Happens in Vegas)等电影的发行活动中签约使用Celtra的服务。
In 2009, RSG Capital, a Slovenia-based venture capital fund, invested $1.2m in Celtra. Two years later, as Celtra expanded its client roster to include other companies such as Viacom, Pandora, and Shazam, it raised $5m from GrandBanks Capital and Fairhaven Capital, both Boston-based VC firms.
2009年，总部位于斯洛维尼亚的风投基金RSG Capital向Celtra投资了120万美元。两年后，随着Celtra将其客户名单扩大至维亚康姆(Viacom)、潘多拉(Pandora)和音乐雷达(Shazam)等其他公司， 它从GrandBanks Capital和Fairhaven Capital这两家波士顿风投公司那里筹集了500万美元。
It was “really tough to get the first believers”, says Ms Drolec, but their Babson roots helped pave the way for investment. “Business school gives you a passport to US business,” she says. “We’re immigrants, so venture capitalists and institutional investors can’t just call up three of their friends to check on us. [Babson] gave them a reference point. It made us legit.”
德罗克表示，“说服最初这批人真的非常难”，但他们的巴布森学院出身为获得投资铺平了道路。她说：“商学院为你进入美国商界提供了敲门砖。我们是移民，因此风险资本家和机构投资者不能只是叫上几个朋友来调查我们。（巴布森学院）给了他们一个参考标准。它让我们变得有资格。”
The investment meant the business became much more real. “Everything needed to be done by the book: we needed structure and employment contracts,” says Ms Drolec, who found the financial skills she learnt at Babson useful. “Up until three years ago, I put together our consolidated financials. I needed to understand every line.”
获得投资意味着公司更加接近现实。德罗克表示：“所有事情都得照章办事：我们需要架构和雇佣合同。”德罗克发现在巴布森学到的财务技能非常有用。“直至3年前我才完成了我们的合并会计报表。我需要理解每一行的意思”。
In 2013, Celtra received another $4m in venture funding led by SoftBank Capital, and today Celtra has 140 employees and more than 400 clients.
2013年，Celtra收到了软银资本(SoftBank Capital)领投的400万美元风投资金，现在Celtra有140名员工，以及逾400个客户。
For now, the company is focused on “maximising shareholder value” and “constantly delivering” on its plans, says Mr Mikek.
米凯克表示，就目前而言，Celtra致力于“股东价值最大化”和“不断实现”计划。
