Is Going International a Life or Death Necessity for Going Forward as a Startup?

DUO ESSAY

Anne-Laure De Clercq - 48128

YUEHUI LI - 62876

Is going international a life or death necessity for going forward as a startup ? 

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« We have to go international. If we don’t go international, we’re going to die. I shouldn’t say die, but we’re not going to grow » Felix Sabates, Cuban entrepreneur living in the US. It is generally assumed that any company or any startup becomes successful when it’s becoming international. Going forward makes us think that a startup should enter as many markets as possible in order to make as much profit as possible. However, going forward for a startup doesn’t necessarily mean going abroad, or at least not as quickly as people think it’d be best. As far as startups are concerned, any project should be prepared and put in place as fast as possible, because when you’re in a startup, going fast is key. In spite of this truth, going fast and quickly in one market can sometimes be the best path to success and be an even bigger source of profit. Going international for a startup shouldn’t always be a must do. Actually, depending on the company’s industry, its project and business plan, sometimes going international is an obvious and quick source of profit like for Blablacar, sometimes the investment of going abroad isn’t worth it right away like for Chauffeurprivé.

        First, going abroad means new market, thus different countries’ cultures, new teams, installing internal culture for all markets, marking sure those new markets are viable financially… Opening a new market takes time and money.  According to Bablacar’s marketing director for UK we interviewed, Daniel Benamran, an entire new team should be hired when deciding to open a new market - Get the right people in the right places - tech people, a GM, a regional CMO and a Business Developer first -, then to make sure this opening is valuable, it’s needed to go for market data, marketing data, costs and even organise fake campaigns to try how the concept could work with a percentage of clicks to this fake campaign to get a conversion rate and know an average acquisition cost. After analysing all the potential markets, it’s important to think about all the resources opening a market needs and if those resources wouldn’t be more profitable used in the market of origin. Internally, a company needs to be ready for internationalisation. Communication is key. Managers should take time to create a company culture and teams spirits all over the different markets.

         Any startup company trying to expand internationally, the first thing that needs to be considered is the local culture. For example, what is the shopping habits for this country, how easy people accept a foreign company and foreign products etc. In the meanwhile, startups should think about the market capacity of the country as well, because unlike big multinational  corporates, startups usually don’t have that much cash flow to face the consequence of failed expansion. So every decision and every movement is worth to be thinked twice for the startups.