創業公司增長奇蹟 如何在8個月內估值達到10億美元

If any company embodies the Age of the Unicorn (the subject of Fortune’s latest cover story), it’s Slack.

如果說哪家企業最能代表這個“獨角獸時代”（請見《財富》二月刊的封面故事），那一定是Slack公司。

The business software maker can easily serve as an example of why we’re in a tech bubble. Its namesake product is only eight months old and the company is worth $1 billion. How is that even possible? Is money even real in Silicon Valley?

另一方面，這家公司也很容易被視爲當今“科技泡沫”的例證。Slack公司的同名產品上線僅僅八個月，它的估值就已超過10億美元。這怎麼可能呢？硅谷的錢是大風颳來的嗎？

But Slack just as easily serves as an example of how big an opportunity there is. Slack has grown as much as 7% each week since it launched—a pace large companies aspire to hit each year—adding thousands of new users who pay for the service. The company has 100 employees and it’s only burning $100,000 per month. Sure, it’s not even a year old. But it’s clearly going to be huge.

但同時，Slack也說明市場上存在着一個多大的商機。自從推出以來，Slack的營業額平均每星期增長7%——這基本上是很多大公司希望達到的年化增長速度。每週它都會新增好幾千名付費用戶。該公司目前擁有100名員工，每月的運營成本只有10萬美元。當然，這家公司現在還不滿一週歲，但按這個勢頭，它無疑將增長爲一家大公司。

This is how you get to $1 billion so quickly.

這就是爲什麼它會這麼快地估值達到10億美元。

After ignoring daily inquiries from venture capitalists all summer, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield decided in September to take a week’s worth of investor meetings, “to see where things were at.” Slack had launched in February, a year after the company shut down a gaming product that never took off. The new product, a collaboration tool for desk workers, was an immediate hit. By April, Slack’s early traction was enough for it to raise $42.8 million, valuing the company at $250 million.

整個夏天，Slack公司的CEO斯圖爾特o巴特菲爾德都沒有理會風投們發來的詢價。到了9月，巴特菲爾德決定花一週時間召開投資人會議，“看看情況怎麼樣。”Slack於去年2月正式上線，該公司大約一年前剛剛關掉了一款沒有引起市場反響的遊戲產品。作爲一款針對辦公室員工的協作工具，Slack一經推出就立即獲得了成功。到了4月，Slack的初期成功已經幫助公司成功拉來了4280萬美元的融資，使公司的估值達到2.5億美元。

The news stoked the hype around Slack. Venture capitalists witnessed its rapid adoption at their portfolio companies. The emails from investors had swelled to 10 new funding offers per week. Sometimes it from was investors Butterfield knew. (He had previously co-founded the photo-sharing site Flickr, which sold to Yahoo in 2005.) Often they were from complete strangers hoping he’d take their money.

這一消息使Slack迅速在投資圈火了起來。風投家們發現，他們投資的許多公司都迅速採用了Slack的產品。每週發給Slack公司，要求向其投資的電子郵件已經增長到了10封之多。有些電子郵件來自巴特菲爾德認識的投資人（巴特菲爾德此前還與人共同創辦過一度大熱的照片分享網站Flickr，該網站於2005年被雅虎收購），但大多數還是來自完全陌生的投資人。但他們都抱着一個相同的目的：希望巴特菲爾德接受他們的投資。

Slack didn’t need the money, but Butterfield decided to test the waters because he believed this era of easy venture capital high valuations would not last forever. “I’m one of those people who think the other shoe has yet to drop from 2008,” he says. “I lost a shitload of money in 2008, and I saw the fundraising environment tighten up. I’m aware of the cycle. It’s difficult to call a top, but it’s pretty obvious we’re far from the bottom.”

Slack公司並不需要新投資，但巴特菲爾德決定“試試水”，因爲他認爲這個來錢快、估值高的時代可能不會永遠持續下去。“我也認爲2008年（金融危機）只掉下來了一隻靴子，還有另一隻靴子沒有掉下來。我在2008年損失了一大筆錢，而且我發現當時的融資環境收緊了。現在我意識到了這種循環。你很難說（估值泡沫）已經到了頂峯，但我們顯然離谷底非常遠。”

There’s another, slightly less rational reason Butterfield decided to raise more money: He wanted a $1 billion valuation. If Slack couldn’t get that, he wouldn’t raise anything. The cachet of the figure is meaningful in an intangible way, he says. It means “we’re a part of that conversation about companies worth $1 billion.”

巴特菲爾德決定繼續融資，還有另一個貌似不十分理性的原因：他想獲得10億美元的估值。如果Slack得不到10億美元估值，他寧可一分錢也不融。他表示，作爲一個符號，10億美元具有一種無形的意義，它意味着“當人們一談起這個，就會提到我們。”

He elaborates: “It’s definitely a psychological threshold and it helps for certain kinds of customers. When [we’re] negotiating with a Fortune 500 company on legal terms of service for some detail about what sort of deal they will get in the third year, then having the comfort of knowing we’re highly valued and financially secure, that really helps.”

他解釋說：“這當然只是一個心理上的門檻，但它對有些客戶的確是有幫助的。當我們與一家財富500強企業就服務合同進行談判，比如談到三年以後的合同條款，如果他們知道我們是一家估值很高，財力雄厚的公司，那將會大有助益。”

A billion dollars goes a long way with big hires, too. “There is a class of employees who are more risk-averse and work at some company like Google or Facebook and they have a mortgage and kids,” he says. “It helps a lot of those kinds of people as well.”

10億美元估值對於招攬人才也很有用。“有些員工不願冒太大風險，比如有些在谷歌和Facebook等大公司工作的人，他們有孩子，要還房貸。如果他們知道我們是一家估值10億的大公司，對來這裏工作會更有信心。”

But is the $1 billion valuation actually based on any real metrics? Were any numbers crunched, any spreadsheets analyzed, or any public comps selected? Not really. “There are fairly precise methods for putting a value on future cash flow given steady business,” Butterfield says. “We’re not in that position, obviously.” Put another way: Slack is growing too quickly for projections. At its last public announcement, 45,000 teams with 365,000 daily active users were paying to use Slack. “Every single day except holidays is a record for that day,” he says. “Every Tuesday is the best Tuesday we’ve had.”

不過，這10億美元估值是否基於某種真實的度量指標？投資者是否統計過數據、分析過表格或公開文件？答案是沒有。巴特菲爾德表示：“有些方法可以相當精確地根據穩定的業務計算出未來現金流的價值。但很顯然，那種辦法並不適合我們。”換句話說，Slack增長得太快了，沒法用那種預測算法計算估值。最近的公開聲明顯示，已經有4.5萬個團隊、36.5萬名付費用戶每天在使用Slack的服務。巴特菲爾德稱：“除了節假日，每一天都在創造紀錄，每個星期二都是有史以來最好的星期二。”

So why not pick the big, round number that helps with customers and recruiting? Butterfield acknowledges there’s quite a bit of growth baked into Slack’s valuation. “You have to choose some numbers,” he says. “One billion is better than $800 million because it’s the psychological threshold for potential customers, employees, and the press.”

所以說，Slack還有什麼理由不選擇能吸引客戶、招攬人才的10億美元估值呢？巴特菲爾德承認，Slack有相當一部分的增長要歸功於它的估值。他說：“你必須要選擇一個數字，而10億肯定要比8億好，因爲它對潛在客戶、員工和媒體來說都是一個心理上的門檻。”

Slack had no problem getting investors to agree to the $1 billion valuation, by the way. Butterfield only wanted to raise $100 million; he ended up with $200 million in commitments and closed the round at $120 million. In the three months since raising the money, Slack has just about doubled everything—customers, revenue, users—and Butterfield expects it will repeat the feat in the next four months.

Slack公司很輕易地就說服投資者同意了10億美元的估值。巴特菲爾德只想融資1億美元，但各方承諾給他的投資達到2億美元，最終這輪融資以1.2億美元告終。在獲得這筆資金三個月後，Slack公司的客戶、營收和用戶都翻了一番。巴特菲爾德認爲，在接下來的四個月裏，這些指標還將再翻一番。

So far Slack has only spent around 1% of the money it raised, Butterfield says. He’s confident that even if the economy turns south, Slack will be fine. “We’re able to weather pretty much any storm,” he says. “You’d have to be in a meteors-hitting-the-earth scenario before Slack as a business would get into trouble.”

巴特菲爾德表示，目前Slack公司只花掉了大約1%的融資額。他相信，即便經濟再次惡化，Slack公司也會安然無恙。他表示：“我們基本能夠抵禦任何風暴。如果Slack公司真的陷入了麻煩，除非是行星撞地球了。”（財富中文網）