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At Stripe they firmly believe great companies come from everywhere. Which is why they’ve built the Stripe Atlas platform, making it easier for great companies from around the world to expand into the US. Through developing this platform, and growing globally themselves, they’ve learnt a few things. Here are the top five lessons on going global with Sarah Heck, Stripe’s Head of Entrepreneurship. Don’t (necessarily) Go For The Obvious Choice. There are lots of different markets that look appealing as either large markets or similar ones to the markets you’re already operating in. However some of the most successful markets for Stripe have been the smaller or less obvious ones. Singapore is a good example of this; a market that seems small, but is actually quite the opposite. Many countries in the Southeast Asia region use Singapore as their hub of operations, therefore being in Singapore gives you access to the whole region. So sometimes making the non-obvious choice for your company makes a lot of sense. Invent Your Own Signals. When looking at markets you need to look beyond the obvious metrics everyone else is using, like GDP, population, or language. It’s important to pick the right metrics for your business and market. Stripe has a strong brand with developers and startups, so look towards things like the number of GitHub accounts in a certain market, or the number of startups on Crunchbase. They invented some of their own signals like which IP address locations were being logged, and the countries where people were frequently tweeting about pain points around payments or economic infrastructure. Or where people were notifying them when they launched their companies. These things got them much closer to the actual latent demand that exists for their product than the more mainstream signals would have. It Takes Longer Than You Expect Launching in a new market will always take longer than you expect, whether it’s because of regulation, time zone, language or something else. Everything gets slowed down, even for the fastest moving companies. Stripe overcame this by running really long beta periods, which has worked well. They launch in beta and test very rapidly, working closely with a small set of users to make sure the product is really tailored for the market. Then only when they’re super competitive do they go from beta to a public version. Despite requiring a long runway it gave them confidence that they’d be successful when launching publicly. The First Person Makes or Breaks a Market Every company needs to find their Batman. Finding the right person to start in a new market will really make a difference. Stripe have found generalists who aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and get stuck into everything make the best first hires in a new market. You have to think about everything from building a prototype of the company to thinking about how you do sales. You have to be a jack of all trades. Being out there alone making it all happen can be really difficult, so you really have to find the right personality for that. Build an Organizational Structure To Empower You From Day One Lastly, Stripe has worked really hard to build an organizational structure that empowers local markets from day one. How do you empower teams, especially early on, to make sure they can operate relatively autonomously? When you’re thinking about timezones and language, how can you make sure the people on the ground who really understand the local market are empowered to do their job? Allow them to dig into the details of what will be most successful in the market, and what is needed to achieve product market fit. Later on, as markets mature, you can bring them back into the fold of HQ in different ways. But make sure that they’re empowered in the beginning.
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If we have missed any, let us know! Guest Post written by Christian Hirsch founder of Mohio. Since I started a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Auckland in 2007, I always took an applied approach to my research. Being able to address real-world problems with new software tools has guided much of my work. Now seeing the results of this research form a startup is extremely exciting! Recently I had the opportunity to be based at Kiwi Landing Pad for a few weeks and explore opportunities in the US market for our early-stage startup Mohio. My research at the University of Auckland was focused on the intersection of Software Engineering, Knowledge Management, and Visualization Tools – and we could see commercial applications from early on. Since completing my PhD last year, I have been working on bringing the technology to the market with the help of UniServices. Mohio, still in its pre-launch stage, will be positioned in the “Social Business Intelligence” domain. During my time at the University, I was also involved with the Spark entrepreneurship challenge – a great platform for students to turn ideas into startups. Prior to my stay at Kiwi Landing Pad I had also spent some time at Stanford University, attending the Stanford Ignite programme, where I gained insights into the entrepreneurial environment of Silicon Valley. The Kiwi Landing Pad was the ideal next step to learn more about opportunities in the US market and refine our business model and product. It was a great base to connect with people, conduct market validation for our technology, and attend industry conferences in the area. Catherine at Kiwi Landing Pad has been very helpful for getting us in touch with the right people and for further developing our strategy. My visit to San Francisco was a great opportunity to evaluate the market and establish important contacts. It has added invaluable input to our startup from a global perspective. Once ready for launch, more information about Mohio will be available at: www.moh.io |
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Kiwi Landing Pad is a not for profit community, that focuses on supporting the best New Zealand Founders global growth aspirations. We've been around for ten years, with a twenty year vision to make a meaningful and sustainable contribution to the New Zealand entrepreneurial community and, in doing so, positively impacting economic growth, export income and the wellbeing of New Zealand.
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