Earlier this month marked the one-year anniversary of VerbalizeIt officially becoming incorporated and closing our initial round of financing.
本月初是VerbalizeIt正式成立并完成首轮融资的一周年纪念。
For most of us, this period also represented our one-year anniversary with the Company – and what a year it has been! Noteworthy accomplishments include: (I) transitioning into a business-to-business full service translation platform, (II) adding 15, 000 new translators (III) interacting with thousands of business and individual customers and (IV) growing our stellar team. It has truly been a wonderful ride.
对我们大部分人来说，这也是我们和公司共同走过一年风雨的见证——这是怎样的一年啊！重大成就包括：（1）转型成为一家企业对企业的全方位翻译服务平台；（2）新聘15,000名翻译；（3）和数千企业和个人用户进行互动；（4）拓展了核心团队。这真是一段美好的旅程。
If I simply talked about startup achievements, then I would be overlooking the most important part of starting a business: learning from failure. In fact, we have learned orders of magnitude more from our mistakes than we have from our accomplishments. Below are our top three mistakes, resulting implications and corresponding lessons learned from this past year:
如果我只是谈论初创企业的成就，那我就是忽略略过了创办一家企业过程中最为重要的一部分：从失败中学习。事实上，我们从错误中所学习到的东西，要多于从成功中所学到的。以下便是我们在过去一年中所曾犯下的三大错误、引起的相关后果以及从中所吸取的教训：
1. Driving Customer Engagement
1. 推动客户参与度
A year ago we rolled out the first version of our live-interpretation app, which connected customers in need of instant access to an interpreter to a trained member of our interpreter community. We were filling — and continue to fill — a huge void between the traditional call-center market and machine translation technology. This initial product was extremely well-received and our company experienced some great media attention and significant app downloads, save for one key fact: our customers were surprised to actually connect with a live-person and hence were reluctant to become power-users.
一年前，我们推出了第一版实时口译应用程序，它能将需要立刻找到口译员的客户和我们口译员社区中训练有素的成员联系起来。我们是在填补——也将继续填补——传统呼叫中心市场和机器翻译技术之间的巨大空白。这款初级版本的产品极受欢迎，我们公司也受到了不少媒体关注，应用程序下载量相当不错，但有一点：我们的客户对真正和一位活生生的口译员对接上有些吃惊，于是便不太愿意成为经常性的用户。
In a world in which human-to-human interaction has been oftentimes been replaced with technology applications—think seamless web, online banking or kayak.com—we had to work hard to improve our messaging to inform our customers that their calls were being received by actual interpreters, not a machine translation technology. It wasn’t until we started surveying our customers on why calls were not being completed or even initiated that we realized our solutions lay in clearer upfront messaging and better customer engagement with our interpreters. Unfortunately, poor messaging and training early on, which could have been avoided through early customer focus sessions, cost us valuable time, resources and active users.
在一个人与人之间的互动常常为技术应用所取代的世界中——想想无缝连接的网络、线上银行或者是kayak.com——我们不得不努力去改善我们向客户发出的信息：应答他们呼叫的是真正的口译员，而不是机器翻译技术。直到我们开始向客户调查为何中途就挂断电话或甚至都不开始交谈的原因之后，我们才意识到，解决方案就在更为清晰的前期信息传递，以及鼓励口译员培育更好的客户参与度之中。不幸的是，糟糕的信息传递和早期培训——其实完全可以通过早期客户专注项目进行避免——让我们错失了宝贵的时间、资源和活跃用户。
Now we’re iterating quicker to create the most enjoyable products and user experiences with our customer feedback at the core of all that we do.
现在，我们正在更快地进行产品迭代，以创造最为愉悦的产品和用户体验，而客户反馈是我们所做的一切的核心所在。
2. Solving Supply and Demand
2. 解决供需平衡
This is a basic economics 101 principal, but in a crowdsourcing model it’s much closer to rocket science. We started year one with 50 translators in the Philadelphia area. We ended year one with more than 15, 000 translators and interpreters globally. Pacing this supply with the demands of our customer base has been challenging at times, particularly at the beginning of the year. Because our company is based on a robust and healthy translator community, we’ve had to dedicate ample time and resources to keeping these people, engaged, informed, and active. Six months in, we decided to flip supply and demand on its head.
这是经济学的基本原则，但在众包模式中，这一点和火箭学差不多。一年前，公司刚成立时，只在费城地区拥有50名笔译员。一年后，我们已经在全球拥有15000多名笔译员和口译员。为了迎合客户基础的这种需求，将译员供应量提升上去，有时候是很具有挑战性的，特别是在今年年初的时候。因为我们公司是以活跃、健康的译员社区为基础，我们就必须花费足够的时间和资源来留住这些人员，让他们积极参与、及时获得消息并保持活跃。六个月后，我们决定将供应和需求的重要性重新排序。
We took a hard look at what our supply of translators could do to engage and grow our client base. We gave each translator a personal profile, launched a translator referral program, and connected our clients directly to their selected translator or interpreter. By tearing down the walls between supply and demand, we’re fostering a healthy but delicate balance to manage supply and demand growth.
对于我们译员的供应情况，我们仔细挖掘了其如何能够促进并扩大客户基础的方式。我们给每位译员建立了个人档案，推出了议员推荐项目，并将客户和他们选中的笔译员或口译员直接联系起来。在推倒横亘在供应和需求之间的大墙之后，我们培育了一种健康而又微妙的平衡关系，并以此来管理供应和需求增长。
3. Timing is Everything
3. 时机就是一切
Travelport, and Skype. What we didn’t know a year ago, was that each of these would have to be handled differently and would take a different amount of time to secure.
我们很幸运地和一些一流企业建立了十分牢固的合作关系，其中包括Desk.com、美国航空、美国运通旗下的Inspirato、Rosetta Stone、Travelport和Skype。一年前我们并不知道，和上面每家公司打交道的方式都是不同的，建立起合作关系也要花费不同的时间。
Getting our API plugged into Desk.com’s customer service portal was seamless but took a year of thoughtful research to better understand their users through surveys and feedback. A year in the startup world is a long time but it gave us the opportunity to focus on securing other meaningful partnerships in the interim.
将我们的API接入到Desk.com的客户服务门户的过程可谓无缝连接，但却花了我们一年时间的审慎研究，来通过各种调查和反馈去了解他们的客户。对初创企业来说，一年是一个很长的时间，但却给了我们在这个过程中专注于与其他客户建立有意义的合作关系的机会。
Pulling together an entire #FoundinTranslation campaign with Rosetta Stone and Children International
和Rosetta Stone及国际儿童组织（Children International）共同发起#FoundinTranslation活动，来庆祝我们结盟Shark Tank，从多个方面考验了我们的市场营销能力。我们的Twitter、Facebook和其他社交网络渠道已经就绪，但却没有办法为Shark Tank、Resetta Stone和国际儿童组织的参与者所要求的那种双向对话进行准备。
Children International to celebrate our appearance on Shark Tank, tested our marketing capabilities in more ways than we expected. We had Twitter, Facebook, and other social media channels in place, but there was no way to prepare for the amount of two-way conversation required to keep up with a Shark Tank, Rosetta Stone, and Children International’s following.
随着时间的推移，我们发现，建立新的合作伙伴关系，特别是和组织架构更为严密的大型机构，几乎总是要比我们之前预料的时间更长，资源要求也更多。你必须要时刻准好进行加速或者踩刹车，并不断继续就合作伙伴的意愿保持战略性思维，同时又要注意把握你自己的时间和商业需求。
Over time we learned that rolling out new partnerships, especially those with larger and more structured organizations, almost always takes longer than expected and requires more resources than we initially thought. You have to be ready to accelerate or put on the brakes and continue to think strategically about what your partner wants while also being mindful of your own time and business needs.
一年前真正激励我的、而现在仍在激励着我的，是最好的还没有到来。还有很多工作需要向市场展示，而我们的团队正在努力确保自己能从面前的这个巨大机会中获利。
What truly invigorated me a year ago and continues to drive me today is that the best is yet to come. Much of the handwork has yet to be demonstrated to the marketplace and our team is working hard to ensure that we can capitalize on the great opportunities ahead of us.
本文作者莱恩•弗兰克尔（Ryan Frankel）系VerbalizeIt首席执行官兼联合创始人。该公司通过一个全球性的译员社区提供翻译服务。
Frankel is a 2012 TechStars alumnus, former private equity investor for Goldman Sachs and an endurance athletics enthusiast. You can reach him via e-mail at ryan.frankel@verbalizeit.com.
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