Much has changed in Marcos Galperín’s life since 1999, when he and a colleague set up what would become the eBay of Latin America. But the 43-year-old Argentine dotcom entrepreneur has lost none of the youthful vigour that drove him to set up MercadoLibre, the region’s most visited ecommerce website.
自1999年马科斯•加尔佩林(Marcos Galperín)及其同事创办了日后成为拉美版eBay的网站以来，他的人生发生了很大改变。但是这位43岁的阿根廷互联网企业家一点也没失去当年驱动他创办“自由市场”(MercadoLibre)的青春活力。“自由市场”是拉美地区访问量最大的电子商务网站。
“I feel exactly the same way as I did 15 years ago. I feel a desperation that there is so much to do, that this is just starting,” says MercadoLibre’s chief executive, explaining that although his online shopping site has become the undisputed leader of ecommerce in Latin America, the sector is still in its infancy.
“我感觉就跟16年前一模一样。我有种急迫的感觉，感觉有好多事情要做，这还只是开始，”这位“自由市场”的首席执行官称。他解释道，尽管他的在线购物网站已成为拉美无可争议的电子商务领头羊，但这个行业仍然处于发展初期。

He looks much the same too. In a hooded top, slouching on a sofa, with his feet up and a laptop on his knees as he awaits the FT, Mr Galperín could be just another employee at MercadoLibre’s buzzing designer offices in Buenos Aires. They fill three floors at the top of a glistening tower that peers down over the muddy waters of the river Plate.
他看起来也跟16年前差不多。在等待英国《金融时报》采访时，穿着帽衫的加尔佩林慵懒地躺在沙发上，翘着双脚，把笔记本电脑放在膝盖上，看起来就像“自由市场”在布宜诺斯艾利斯繁忙的设计师办公室里的一名普通员工。办公室在拉普拉塔河(River Plate)边一栋耀眼大楼占了最高3层。
It is a long way from the garage of his family’s leather business, where the operations of MercadoLibre — “free market” — began.
相比他家的皮革公司的车库（“自由市场”最初开始经营的地方），公司已走过了漫长的道路。
It was just before the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, which could have spelt doom for the fledgling enterprise. However, Mr Galperín knew a thing or two about raising money, having work¬ed at JPMorgan and in the finance dep¬art¬ment of Argentina’s largest oil company, YPF; MercadoLibre’s strong financial support helped it survive the crash.
那是在2000年网络股泡沫破裂前夕，泡沫破裂本来可能给很多羽翼未丰的企业带来厄运。然而，曾在摩根大通(JPMorgan)以及阿根廷最大的石油公司YPF的财务部任职的加尔佩林，对融资操作略知一二；“自由市场”强大的金融支持帮助它挺过股市崩盘。
He remembers well the mo¬ment he persuaded the first investor to back his project, when he was finishing his MBA at Stanford Graduate School of Business in California. He was driving financier John Muse, who had given a lecture, to the airport and seized the chance to pitch his idea. The co-founder of the Hicks Muse Tate private equity fund was persuaded by the time he boarded his private jet.
加尔佩林仍清晰记得说服第一个投资者支持他创业的那一刻，当时他即将完成在加州斯坦福大学商学院(Stanford Graduate School of Business)的MBA课程。他开车送做完讲座的金融家约翰•缪斯(John Muse)去机场，途中抓住机会向他力荐自己的想法。缪斯是Hicks Muse Tate私募基金的共同创始人，在登上私人飞机前，他已经被加尔佩林说服了。
“I went back home and told my girlfriend: ‘You remember that trip we were going to do to Europe after graduation? Well it’s not going to happen,’” Mr Galperín says. He had already ditched dreams of sports stardom despite being selected to play for Argentina’s junior national rugby team.
“我回到家，告诉我的女朋友说：‘你还记得我们准备毕业后去欧洲旅行吗？唉，我们去不了了，’”加尔佩林称。此前他已经放弃了成为体育明星的梦想，尽管他被选入了阿根廷橄榄球青年队。
Of as many as 40 rivals in Latin America at the time, only a handful could raise meaningful financing, says Mr Galperín, who also secured funds from JPMorgan,Goldman Sachs, GE Capital, Flatiron and Banco Santander. “We were the only ones that didn’t throw the money away doing mass media advertising. Instead, we focused on getting a team together and a good product. That’s what set us apart,” he says. His co-founder was Hernán Kazah, who was also at Stanford at the time and who left the company after 10 years.
加尔佩林称，当时拉美有不下40个竞争对手，其中只有一小部分能筹得有意义的融资。他自己还从摩根大通、高盛(Goldman Sachs)、通用电气金融(GE Capital)、Flatiron以及桑坦德银行(Banco Santander)获得融资。“只有我们不把钱挥霍在大众媒体广告上。相反，我们专注于组建团队和推出好产品。这使我们成为行业佼佼者，”他称。埃尔南•卡札(Hernán Kazah)是加尔佩林的共同创始人，他当时也在斯坦福读书，10年后离开了公司。
By 2001 — when Argentina was plunging into a deep economic crisis — Mer¬cadoLibre had already caught the eye of eBay, which acquired a 19.5 per cent stake in exchange for its Brazilian subsidiary. MercadoLibre maintains an unusual relationship with eBay — which as both a shareholder and a competitor, Mr Galperín says, is a “frenemy” — but crucially the US group pledged not to return to the region for at least five years. This cleared the way for MercadoLibre’s rapid expansion, just in time to raise more funds when it laun¬ched on New York’s Nasdaq exchange in August 2007, the same day that economic historians now say marked the start of the global financial crisis.
2001年阿根廷陷入严重的经济危机，那时“自由市场”已经引起了eBay的注意，后者以巴西子公司作为交换，收购了“自由市场”19.5%的股权。“自由市场”与既是股东也是竞争者的eBay保持着不同寻常的关系，加尔佩林称之为“友敌”——但最关键的是这家美国集团承诺至少5年内不会重返拉美。这为“自由市场”的快速扩张扫清了道路，让其在2007年8月（如今经济史学家称其为全球金融危机的开始）赶上在纽约纳斯达克(Nasdaq)挂牌上市，筹得更多资金。
Despite the economic problems, MercadoLibre has become a household name across Latin America. Now with a market capitalisation of some $6bn, last year it matched nearly 30m different buyers and sellers, about 5 per cent of the region’s population, of everything from computers to cars. Its gross annual merchandise value — the total cost of goods sold — was almost $8bn. Revenue is generated from transaction fees, online ads and MercadoPago, its own payment system.
尽管遭遇经济问题，但“自由市场”已成为拉美家喻户晓的品牌。如今市值约60亿美元的“自由市场”，去年撮合的买家和卖家达到近3000万，约占拉美地区总人口的5%，交易商品从电脑到汽车无所不有。其年度商品交易总额（即销售总额）近80亿美元。营收来自交易费用、在线广告及其支付系统MercadoPago。
Mr Galperín reckons the figures are “minuscule” compared to the growth he expects over the next 20 years, with just 5 per cent of Latin Americans engaged in ecommerce, compared to 15 per cent in the US. In the next five years alone, as more Latin Americans use the internet, analysts expect MercadoLibre’s gross merchandise value to double, despite gloomy prospects for the economies of some of its biggest markets, such as Brazil and Venezuela.
加尔佩林认为，与他预计未来20年期间的增长相比，这些数字“微不足道”，原因是参与电子商务的拉美人仅有5%，而美国的比例为15%。随着越来越多的拉美人使用互联网，分析师们预计仅在未来5年“自由市场”的商品交易总额将会翻倍，尽管某些最大的市场（如巴西和委内瑞拉）的经济前景暗淡。
“The speed at which people are accessing the internet and doing ecommerce for the first time is on a different scale relative to consumption patterns. It’s not just faster, it’s in a different league,” says Mr Galperín, adding that broadband connections are about 2,000 times faster than in 1999.
“相对于消费模式，首次上网并从事电子商务的人群正以不同的规模增长。不仅更快，而且是完全不同的数量级，”加尔佩林称。他补充说，如今的宽带连接比1999年的上网速度快了约2000倍。
In fact, MercadoLibre has done a roaring trade in some of the region’s worst-performing economies, such as Venezuela. Traditional retailers there are stifled by regulation, leading to empty shelves and the cash-strapped population is selling more of its possessions, while many are simply afraid to go shopping because of rampant crime.
事实上，“自由市场”在拉美表现最差的几个经济体（如委内瑞拉）生意兴隆。那里的传统零售商受到监管桎梏，货架空空，而现金拮据的国民正在卖出更多财物，同时很多人因为治安不佳而不敢去购物。
“The more inefficient retail is, the more value we can provide to a society,” says Mr Galperín. But access to the internet, he says, means that consumers in isolated communities can buy the same goods at the same prices as those in big cities, while small businesses no longer have to sell through big retailers. “Just as Google democratised the ability of people to access information, and Facebook democratised the ability of people to organise themselves and voice their opinions, so we have democratised commerce,” he says.
“零售业的效率越是低下，我们对一个社会的价值就更大，”加尔佩林称。但他表示，上网意味着，偏僻社区的消费者能够以大城市的价格购买同样的商品，而小企业不再需要通过大零售商出售商品。“就像谷歌(Google)使所有人都能获取信息，就像Facebook让所有人都能梳理自己的生活并发表观点，我们使商业活动民主化了，”他称。
Small businesses caught on to MercadoLibre some time ago, and Mr Galperín expects big retailers to join in: those that do not will be left behind, he warns. “The traditional gatekeepers of commerce have realised they need to be where the consumers are,” says Mr Galperín.
小企业早就赶上了“自由市场”的潮流，加尔佩林预计大零售商也会加入进来：他警告称，不加入进来的零售商将会被落下。“传统的商业掌门人已经意识到，他们需要追随消费者的脚步，”加尔佩林称。
“We are trying to help them successfully navigate the transition to digital commerce. We don’t see traditional retailers as our competitors — actually most of them are our clients,” he adds, noting that 500 or so retailers including Walmart and Fravega have online stores on MercadoLibre.
“我们试着帮助他们成功把握向数字化商业转型的过程。我们并不把传统零售商视为竞争者——事实上他们大多数是我们的客户，”他补充称。他指出，包括沃尔玛(Walmart)和Fravega在内的500家左右零售商在“自由市场”都有在线商店。
Nevertheless, Mr Galperín is acutely aware that there are too many examples of companies “whose picture was great, but the movie ended terribly”. He points to the experience of eBay in China, which was muscled aside by Alibaba, and of many companies such as MySpace or BlackBerry. All were market leaders that stopped innovating and were overtaken. “That’s what makes my job so fascinating, and it’s why I come to the office every day,” he says perkily. “Winning is fun.”
尽管如此，加尔佩林敏锐地意识到有太多“画面美好，但结局糟糕”的公司案例。他指出了eBay在中国——该公司完全被阿里巴巴(Alibaba)排挤在外——以及MySpace和黑莓(BlackBerry)等很多公司的经历。这些公司都曾经是市场领头羊，但它们停止了创新，结果被取代。“这使我的工作如此吸引人，这也是我每天上班的原因，”他得意地说，“赢得胜利很好玩。”