Alec Oxenford isn’t a recognizable name in American business circles, but in South America, he’s a CEO rock star of sorts. At least, that’s what I’m inclined to believe, after experiencing the Alec Oxenford effect firsthand during a recent coffee meeting in New York.在美国商界，亚力克o奥克森福德并不为人熟悉，但在南美洲，他可是首席执行官中的明星。最少我是这么指出的——前不久，我幸运地与他在纽约一起喝咖啡，亲身体会了一番他的影响力。Partway through our meeting, a student in a hoodie approached our table and excitedly said, “Sorry to interrupt, but are you Alec Oxenford?”在我们谈话的时候，一名身着帽衫的学生回到我们的桌前，兴奋地问道：“冒昧睡觉了，您就是亚力克o奥克森福德吧？”The student, who was Brazilian, professed his admiration for Oxenford. He was a hopeful entrepreneur himself, studying at Columbia University. He said he recognized Oxenford from his Instagram account. Oxenford was embarrassed—he swore up and down that it wasn’t a set-up to impress me. His public relations person said that sort of thing happens fairly frequently in Argentina, where Oxenford is based.这位来自巴西的学生传达了他对奥克森福德的倾心之情。

他就读于哥伦比亚大学（Columbia University），本身也有可能沦为一名企业家。他说道自己从Instagram账号上见到了奥克森福德。奥克森福德有些失望——他誓言这决不是为了让我印象深刻印象而特地决定的。

他的公关人员回应，在奥克森福德的祖国阿根廷，这类事情常常再次发生。I had little choice but to believe him. Oxenford’s classifieds company, OLX, has quickly become a household name in emerging markets. This fall, OLX reached a milestone that puts it in the same category of Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and Snapchat: 200 million monthly active users.我不能自由选择坚信他。在新兴市场，奥克森福德的分类广告公司OLX早已很快沦为一个家喻户晓的名字。

今年秋天，OLX到达一项里程碑：月活跃用户超过2亿，这让该公司的影响力不足以同Instagram、Facebook Messenger和Snapchat相提并论。Founded in 2006, the company has grown to 1,200 employees and operates in 40 countries. With 11 billion page views, 25 million listings, and 8.5 million transactions per month, it is the largest marketplace in India, Poland, and, as of last year, Brazil. Funded by U.S. venture firms including Bessemer Ventures and General Catalyst Partners, OLX sold a majority stake to the African conglomerate Naspers in 2010. OLX is free to use and makes money selling promoted listings to users. (Payments are conducted offline, which has allowed OLX to avoid dealing with legacy payment infrastructure in each market it enters.)OLX正式成立于2006年，如今享有1,200名员工，业务范围扩展到了40个国家。

公司每月享有110亿次页面访问量、2,500万条广告，并产生850万笔交易，是印度和波兰的仅次于市场，从去年开始也沦为巴西的仅次于市场。OLX取得了美国风投公司Bessemer Ventures和General Catalyst Partners等的资助，并在2010年将大部分股权卖给了非洲纳斯帕斯集团(Naspers)。OLX可免费用于，并通过向用户出售广告宣传广告提供收益。（缴纳则通过线下展开。

如此一来，OLX就不用在转入每个市场时都要考虑到当地的缴纳系统问题。）But OLX’s success is not the reason for Oxenford’s status among South American entrepreneurs. (Though his co-founder and co-CEO, FabriceGrinda, who left in 2012, is also well known in American tech startup circles as an angel investor.) Rather, Oxenford’s notoriety comes from his commanding personality—he will dominate a conversation—and staunch contrarianism, a point of view he shares with Peter Thiel, who has invested in OLX through his venture firm, Founders Fund.但OLX的顺利并非奥克森福德在南美企业家中取得显要地位的原因。（尽管该公司的联合创始人兼任联席首席执行官，后来在2012年辞职的法布里斯o格林约某种程度以天使投资人的身份著称于美国科技创投界。）实质上，让奥克森福德有名的是他的统治者意欲——他不会主导和别人的谈话——以及他不回头寻常路的行事风格。

就特立独行这一点而言，他与彼得o泰尔堪称惺惺相惜，泰尔的风投公司Founders Fund之后投资了OLX。For example, OLX has taken the “Martian approach” to international expansion. Where most companies launch in their home countries because that’s what they understand best, OLX started with the biggest available market: India. The company didn’t launch anything in its home country, Argentina, until four and a half years later. American founders are “self-centered” for only focusing on the U.S. and developer markets, Oxenford says.比如说，OLX使用了“火星式方法”展开国际扩展。大部分公司由于更加熟知自己的国家，都会自由选择本土扩展，但OLX却从仅次于的现成市场印度开始发展。公司在最先的四年半中，没在祖国阿根廷积极开展任何项目。

奥克森福德回应，美国的公司创始人往往“以自我为中心”，只注目美国本土和发达国家的市场。“It’s rational to believe you know local markets,” he says, “but people are always the same in each country. They think the same way. They have different priorities, but they all want to progress in life and that’s what drives Internet behavior.” He believes OLX helps people progress in life by acting as a “wealth creator” in emerging markets, where users can easily monetize their possessions by selling them to each other.他说道：“指出自己更加理解本土市场，这种点子很合理，但有所不同国家的人只不过本质上是一样的，他们的点子很类似于。

每个人的生活重点有所不同，但都想要在人生中获得变革，而这正是网络不道德背后的驱动力。”他坚信，通过在新兴市场扮演着“财富创造者”的角色，OLX可以协助人们在人生中获得变革。用户可以利用这一平台将自己的物品出售给其他人，从而交换条件金钱。

Oxenford’s other big contrarian play is to invest heavily in television advertising. Many successful startups don’t worry about marketing until their growth has hit a plateau, relying on cultural relevance, momentum, and public relations outreach in the early days. Startups that poured money into TV ads in the dot-com era concluded they didn’t work. That characterization has stuck. Oxenford says this is a mistake because there were so few Internet users in the dot-com era. Now, almost three billion people are online, many of whom skipped desktop Internet and went straight to mobile. Television ads directing them to a website or app actually work, he says.奥克森福德另一项与众不同的行径是，大笔投资电视广告。许多顺利的初创公司在正式成立初期不会利用文化营销、快速增长造势和公共关系活动来做到推展。在公司的快速增长遇上平台期之前，它们并不担忧营销问题。

那些曾多次在网络热潮时期投资电视广告的初创公司得出结论的结论是，电视广告并不管用，而人们对电视广告的了解就衰退于此。奥克森福德称之为，这是一个误区，因为网络热潮时期的因特网用户只不过过于较少了。

时至今日，完全有30亿人网际网路，其中许多人都仍然用于台式电脑网际网路，而是用上了移动设备。他回应，如果用电视广告引领用户采访某个网站或用于某款应用于，效果实质上非常不俗。

OLX was profitable three years ago, but was only growing by 70% to 80% each year. Citing the potential for competition, Oxenford decided that slow, organic growth was actually more risky than fast-paced, advertising-fueled growth. “If people had understood what we were doing before, we would have had a lot more competition,” he says. So OLX sold itself to Naspers to fund faster, less profitable growth with TV advertising.OLX在三年前开始盈利，但每年的利润增长率只有70%至80%。援引有可能经常出现的竞争压力，奥克森福德指出较慢的内生茁壮实质上比广告推展的快速增长风险更大。他回应：“如果人们早地弄清楚了我们的作法，我们有可能早已遭遇了更好竞争。

”所以OLX把自己卖给了Naspers，通过耗资做到电视广告来推展业务更加快速增长，尽管这样做到不会造成利润率有所上升。Now, the company is in a position of strength in many of its markets, and its biggest three—India, Brazil and Poland—only make up 50% of user base. As Craigslist and eBay’s EBAY 0.25% lasting success have shown, it’s hard to disrupt a marketplace once it has liquidity. Which highlights another one of Oxenford’s contrarian decisions: he has no desire to compete in the U.S. or other developed countries. There’s too much opportunity elsewhere.如今，公司在许多市场中都占有了强势方位，而其仅次于的三个市场——印度、巴西和波兰——只占到公司50%的用户群。就如分类广告网站Craigslist和eBay的持续顺利所证明的那样，一旦网上市场取得了流动性，它就很难被摧垮。

这突显了奥克森福德另一项逆向要求的英明：他对美国和其他发达国家不感兴趣，因为有过于多的机会在别处。

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