Yesware本周二结束了保密模式，开始为销售人员提供基于云计算的电子邮件工作解决方案。该公司还正式宣布，它已经获得了来自谷歌风投（Google Ventures）和Foundry集团的小额种子风投。为此，我通过电话和公司创始人兼首席执行官马修•贝勒斯聊了一会，探讨为什么销售人员需要更出色的工作软件。下文即我们谈话内容的编辑版。

    《财富》杂志：你们创办Yesware公司的目的是什么?

    贝勒斯：最初的创意来自我作为销售人员的工作经历。当时，我是一个销售团队的主管，我需要花费大量的时间要求我的销售人员及时更新他们的客户关系管理系统（CRM）。只有他们向我汇报情况，我才能把汇总情况向董事会汇报。不光我累得够呛，他们也好过不到哪儿去。最后却落得“无效输入，无效输出”（garbage in, garbage out）的局面，大家白忙一场。

    就算他们真的把精力放在数据处理上，我还是觉得糟糕透顶。他们都是勤奋的销售，应该把精力放在抓到客户，而不是输入数据上。我们当时用的客户关系管理软件是Salesforce，于是我们开始寻找其他CRM，希望能找到更好的解决方案。但是它们都是半斤八两。

    销售人员成天泡在电子邮件里。他们的数据都在电子邮件里。合同、作废的合同也都在电子邮件里。但这些电子邮件跟公司里其他员工无缘——因为企业无法利用保存在Gmail账户里的PDF格式文件。我觉得，销售人员使用的是普通的电子邮件工具，其他领域的专业人士却使用高级工具，这实在不可理喻。

    于是我就有了这个创意：为销售人员开发一套优化的工具，帮助他们处理工作，同时让企业可以从销售人员的资料中获取有价值的信息。

    贵公司最初的产品是专为Gmail开发的。你们未来会向Outlook Exchange拓展吗？

    Gmail中有约400万家企业，这已经是一个颇具规模的市场，但我们不会永远局限于Gmail。我们当然会向Outlook Exchange扩展，因为它占有余下的97%的市场，我们必须进入这个市场。我们之所以选择谷歌公司（Google）的软件和Gmail作为始发平台，是因为它提供了一个理想的试验环境。一旦我们完善了产品的各种功能，我们就会开始拓展。

    你们最新的投资者包括谷歌风投，他们的团队中恰好有Gmail最初的开发人员。到目前为止，他们这类专长对你们来说有何意义？

    谷歌风投能够加入我们的团队真是太好了。他们全都是各领域的专家，这一点使他们与其他风投公司完全不同。比如，布莱登•科维茨是用户界面设计专家，戴维•克莱恩是公关专家。此外，正如你所说，他们是谷歌软件产品的开发者，对这些产品的功能知根知底。他们把我们当成真正的投资组合公司，没有胡里花哨的东西，也不会替我们搞什么小动作，但是一直都在给予我们巨大的帮助。

    Yesware came out of stealth mode today, offering a cloud-based email productivity solution for salespeople. It also formally announced a small round of seed funding from Google Ventures and Foundry Group. So I spent some time on the phone with company founder and CEO Matthew Bellows, to understand why salespeople need better apps. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.

    Fortune: Why did you launch Yesware?

    Bellows: The basic idea was inspired by my experience as a sales guy and running a sales team. I spent so much of my time asking my guys to update their CRMs, so that they could report it to me and I could report it to the board. It became frustrating not only for me, but for them too – which led to a 'garbage in, garbage out' situation.

    Even when they got to it, I felt terrible. These were hardworking guys who should have been getting clients, not doing data entry. We were using Salesforce (CRM), but we started looking at other CRMs to see if they had a better solution. They didn't.

    Sales guys live in email. Their data is in email. Their contracts, and redlined contracts, are in email. But it's isolated from the rest of the organization – because the enterprise doesn't have access to the stuff in Gmail accounts of .PDF files. It was baffling to me that salespeople use generic email tools whereas other types of professionals have highly-toned tools.

    So that's the idea: Give salespeople tools optimized to do their jobs, and then extract out of that information for the enterprise.

    Your initial product is focused on Gmail. Will you expand to Outlook Exchange?

    There are about four million businesses on Gmail, which is a reasonable-sized market but we won't be Gmail only forever. We will definitely do Outlook Exchange, since that's the other 97% of the market and we need to be there. We chose Google Apps and Gmail as the launch platform because it's a great testing environment. Once we get the feature set really right, then we'll expand.

    One of your new investors is Google Ventures, whose team happens to feature the original creator of Gmail. How important has that type of expertise been so far?

    It was a fantastic thing to be able to get Google Ventures on our team. They really distinguish themselves among VCs by having a whole staff of people who are experts in their fields. People like Braden Kowitz in UI design or David Krane in PR. And, as you say, they have built the products and know intimately how they function. They treat us like a portfolio company – not doing anything weird or pulling any Google (GOOG) strings – but have been super-helpful.

    今年4月你们向监管机构提交的文件表明募资金额略少于100万美元。当时指的是现在这轮融资吗？

    没错。当时我们并没有声张，因为我们想等到销售人员真正开始使用我们的产品时再宣布这个消息。所以看到你们公布这个消息时，我吓了一跳，不过事情进展得很顺利——我们完成了这轮融资，总共募得了100万美元。

    你对进一步融资的近期计划是什么？

    今年晚些时候，我们会进行首轮融资（Series A，风投募资周期术语——译注）。新一轮融资计划于假期前结束，金额可能在400万左右。

    消费类应用软件或许只需要进入苹果应用软件商店（app store）销售就万事大吉了，但你们是企业级软件，你们真的不打算组建实打实的营销队伍吗？还有专职培训用户的人员呢？

    到目前为止我们还没有开展过任何营销，一直都是靠口碑效应实现扩张。个人用户可以免费使用这款产品，而且我们已经看到，它正在销售人员中以极快的速度大量普及。未来，我们会需要开展一些营销活动，以便能观察销售队伍，发现热点消费人群。接下来，我们就能理直气壮的对公司的销售副总说：“嗨，贵公司很多销售人员都在用这款软件，您难道不希望整个销售团队都用上这款产品吗？”到时候，我们就可以收钱了。

    万一他们都以个人身份注册免费使用呢？

    如果他们都来注册，我们再高兴不过。到了某个阶段，我们就可能向他们提供包含特别功能的专业版，但我们目前还没发展到那一步。

    我们盈利模式是，我们的软件能够生成销售报告，公司只需查看报告就能一目了然地掌握销售人员的工作进度，客户是否查阅了他们发送的电子邮件，是否点击了他们提供的链接。另外，公司还能使用我们的软件创建一个销售团队的模板库，在销售团队中实现共享，这样所有销售人员就能拥有共同语言了。如果有重大营销活动或新产品的发布，营销部门也不用再费事把相关信息放到wiki里了，因为根本没人会看（wiki，网络上开放、可供多人协同创作的系统——译注）。这就是我们基本的价值定位。

    译者：清远

    You had a regulatory filing in April showing a bit less than $1 million raised. Is that this round?

    Yes. We never announced back then because we wanted to wait until the product was actually being used by salespeople. I had a small heart attack when I saw you announced it, but things worked out okay – and we topped off the round with a total of $1 million.

    What is your near-term plan for additional funding?

    We'll be raising a Series A later this year that we plan to close by the holidays. Probably in the $4 million range.

    Consumer apps just go into the app store, but don't you need a real marketing team for an enterprise app? And maybe people to train users?

    To date we haven't done any marketing, it's just been word of mouth. The product is free to use for individuals, and we've seen a lot of viral spread among sales colleagues. We will need to have some marketing, so that we can look at a sales team, identify the hot spots – the people using it – and then say to the VP of sales, "Hey, a few of your guys are using it, don't you want your entire group using it? And we charge for that.

    What if they all sign up individually for free?

    We're totally happy if they all sign up. At some point we might offer a pro version with extra features, but we aren't there yet.

    The main way we earn revenue is by giving an enterprise the ability to see reports about how salespeople conversations are going, whose emails are getting opened or links getting clicked. Plus they can create a team library of templates they can share so that all salespeople are speaking on the same page. Or if there's a breaking event or product launch, the marketing department doesn't have to put information on a wiki no one really sees. That's our basic value proposition.