谢谢关注缓慢思考！缓慢思考，缓慢更新：-）。
本文来自James Mishra的Blog。 James总结了限制公司扩张的两个维度：产品生产和产品的分销难度，并依此列出了4种商业模式。虽然，也有例外，但是那些希望扩张1000倍的公司应该多思考第4种商业模式。
Lately, I have been trying to decode why some startups grow exponentially without significant capital investment, and why other businesses need enormous investment to scale.
最近，我一直在努力思考为什么一些初创公司在没有大量资本投资的情况下呈指数级增长，以及为什么其他公司需要巨大的投资来扩张。
To understand the scaling limits of businesses, I’ve started placing them all in the following four categories.
为了理解什么限制业务的扩张，我把不同的业务放在以下四个类别中。
The Four Categories of Businesses 4种类别的业务
The scalability of a business varies on two axes — product and distribution. Some businesses scale effortlessly on both sides, while others require enormous human effort to produce the product and then to distribute it.
业务的可扩张性在产品和分销两个维度变化。 有些公司在两个维度都能轻松的扩张，而另一些公司则需要巨大的人力来生产产品然后分销它。
Category #1: Fixed Product, Fixed Distribution 第1类：固定产品，固定分销
The most extreme examples of Category #1 businesses are restaurants, law firms, medical practices, etc. These companies can grow large, but their product and distribution strategies are not (yet) amenable to technological acceleration. Typically their growth is almost perfectly connected to hiring more employees to serve more customers.
第1类企业最极端的例子是餐厅，律师事务所，医疗服务等。这些公司可以增长到很大规模，但是他们的产品和分销策略并不受益于技术的进步。通常，他们的增长几乎完全依赖于雇用更多的员工来服务更多的客户。
Additionally, the distribution of their product or service also requires substantial human interaction — perhaps the client and service provider meet in person.
此外，他们的产品或服务的分销也需要大量的人的交互 - 甚至客户和服务人员需要亲自见面。
There are less extreme examples of Category #1 businesses. Many of them use a mix of human interaction and technology to grow quickly. However, their scaling costs are still much higher than businesses in any of the other categories.
极端的类别1的例子不多。他们中的很多都会同时使用人的服务和技术一起快速成长。然而，它们的扩张成本仍然远远高于其他任何类别的业务。
Category #2: Scalable Product, Fixed Distribution 第2类：可扩张产品，固定分销
These businesses often have high-tech products and efficient ways to build them, but the sales cycle is fixed and not too different from the past.
这些企业通常都有高科技产品， 并且能有效生产这些产品，但销售周期是固定的，和过去并没有太大的不同。
Imagine a defense contractor that built a futuristic fighter jet — it travels at Mach 100, and it is constructed by a robot factory that requires no human labor. It would be easy to build thousands of absolutely incredible aircraft, but the contractor would still have to go through the traditional defense acquisitions process to sell even a single one.
想象一下国防承包商建造一架未来式战斗机 — 以100马赫行驶，飞机由机器人工厂建造，不需要人工。建造成千上万的性能令人难以置信的飞机很容易，但承包商仍然需要经历传统的国防采购过程才能销售一台飞机。
Big ticket enterprise software is another example. Oracle can effortlessly scale the number of copies of its software, but the number of copies in use is bottlenecked by the effectiveness of its human sales force.
昂贵的企业软件是另一个例子。 Oracle可以毫不费力地扩大其软件的数量，但是使用的软件数量受制于其人力销售人员的有效性。
Businesses can innovate in some areas — such as pricing — and still have “fixed” distribution. For example, big-ticket enterprise software companies are moving from a licensing & support model to a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service model. Old-school giants like Microsoft and Oracle are trying to use new cloud-based products to extract recurring revenue from large customers. But while the billing may have changed, the process of landing those accounts and scaling the business has not.
企业可以在某些领域进行创新，比如定价，但仍然有固定分销的问题。例如，大型企业软件公司正在从软件授权和支持模式转向基于云的软件即服务模式。像Microsoft和Oracle这样的传统巨人正试图使用新的基于云的产品来循环不断获取大客户的收入。但是，虽然计费模式可能已经改变，但获取这些客户和扩张业务的方式却没有变化。
Category #3: Fixed Product, Scalable Distribution 第3类：固定产品，可扩张分销
The third type has innovative delivery for an old-school product. For example, journalists write much like they did 100 years ago, but their distribution potential has skyrocketed. For example, as of mid-2016, BuzzFeed has over 200 million monthly unique visitors and over 7 billion monthly content views. Remarkably, fewer than 2000 employees support those 7 billion monthly views.
第三种类而言，产品是传统的，但是分销方法是创新的交付方式。例如，记者的写作与100年前一样，但是他们的分销潜力已经飞涨。例如，截至2016年年中，BuzzFeed每月拥有超过2亿人次访问量，每月内容浏览量超过70亿次。值得注意的是，支持70亿月度浏览的只有不到2000多名员工。
In (a slightly-flawed) comparison, total daily newspaper circulation in the United States peaked at slightly above 60 million households around 1990. Around that time, the newspaper industry employed nearly a half million Americans. Subscriptions for American households aren’t nearly the same metric as global monthly unique visitors, but BuzzFeed’s <2000 employees have a 2016 audience in the same ballpark as the entire American newspaper industry circa 1990.
做一个稍微有毛病的比较，1990年左右美国的每日报纸流通量在6000万户多一点。在那个时期，报业雇佣了近五十万的美国人。
美国家庭的订阅数与全球每月独立访问者不是一样的度量指标，但BuzzFeed不到2000名的员工在2016年拥有的读者的数量与1990年左右整个美国报纸行业的读者数量应该是大致不差的。
Category #4: Scalable Product, Scalable Distribution 第4类：可扩张产品，可扩张分销
The fourth type of business is one where there is innovation in both the product and in the distribution. Social networks are great examples: the distribution of their content scales infinitely over the Internet, much like Category #3 businesses such as BuzzFeed. However, social networks’ content scales with their distribution. When all readers are writers, there is always more to read.
第四种业务是在产品和分销两个方面都有创新。社交网络是一个很好的例子：他们的内容分销在互联网上无限扩张，这一点很像BuzzFeed这样的第3类企业。然而，社交网络的内容随着其分销扩张而扩张。当所有读者变成作家时，更多的内容就产生了。
While not a for-profit business, Wikipedia is a similar example. As more people turn to Wikipedia for information, more people become Wikipedia editors and expand the amount of knowledge that the encyclopedia contains.
维基百科虽然不是营利性公司，但也是一个类似的例子。随着更多人转向维基百科获取信息，更多的人成为维基百科编辑，并扩大了百科全书所包含的知识数量。
In 2014, David Sacks tweeted his interpretation of Uber’s flywheel for growth. Bill Gurley’s famous analysis of Uber describes this phenomenon in greater detail.
2014年，David Sacks 在Twitter上发表了他对Uber飞轮般增长的解读。Bill Gurley 对Uber的分析更详细地描述了这一现象。
Online marketplaces like eBay, Google Adwords, Amazon Marketplace, Airbnb, and Uber have the same dynamics. The more attention these companies capture from the demand side (e.g. shoppers, guests, riders), the more lucrative it becomes to sign up on the supply side (e.g. merchant, host, drivers).
像eBay，Google Adwords，Amazon Marketplace，Airbnb和Uber这样的在线市场也具有相同的特点。这些公司从需求方（例如买家，住客，乘客）获得的关注越多，在供应方（例如商家，房东，司机）注册的吸引力就越高。
