How to grow a global startup in the USA Dos and Don’t презентация

Don’t

Markus Wagner, 15th of Sept. 2015 CEO - i5growth Inc. (Palo Alto), Chairmen of Adv. Board - i5invest capital (Austria/Vienna)

CEE
First money in investments in CEE companies with US potential
Fundraising
Corporate Development
Wanna join – Looking for M&A trainees!

USA (San Francisco/Palo Alto):
US MARKET ENTRY / BUILDING STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS
European START-UPs
European Later stage tech companies
Growth hacking, marketing US
HR US
Looking for an US cofounder?

bubble

1

2

5

3

4

Source: i5invest analysis, PwC, DJ VentureSource, Jay R. Ritter / Business Insider and Glassdoor / BI.

international
It never was that easy for GLOBAL COMPETION to steal your customers locally

→ If you want to build an sustainable company, you need to go international.

If you want to go international (other than copy cat businesses and markets) – you need to go the US.

If you aren’t there, you are irrelevant = not successful
(ps.: definitely not the whole company needs to be there)

NO OTHER OPTION TO GO THERE

known team-members, angels, accelerators, …
Huge market size
Right cap table
HQ Office location: US / Silicon Valley / SF, Visa issues: none
User traction, great growth
Revenues - proof of revenue potential

Your competitor’s founder team most likely looks like:


…and raised US$ 5mln+ from Andressen Horowitz

Hundreds of accelerators, incubators
Tens of thousands of startups
Thousands of founder teams of ex-googlers, facebook,
NASA, Tesla, Microsoft, EA, …

to be a company that is doing business in the US

market fit / building knowledge / fact finding / inspiration
Go-Silicon Valley Program (WKO) 1-3 Month
Individual trip (i.e. conference as trigger) going there for 2-3 weeks

Step 2: Business Dev. Presence
Setup structure (subsidiary or HQ/flip, visa, tax, budget)
Building Business dev presence (exec, or someone you really trust, otherwise you get screwed)
Make money, look for partnerships, do business, gather world class expertise, learn new tricks, adopt strategic positioning
Tier 1 - Acclerator?
Step 3: Serious presence
Business dev, sales, key account, marketing, product management, growth hacking

you can do it

Agencies, adTech, Media Companies LA: Agencies, Media Companies → LA Seattle: Microsoft Texas: HW, Datacenters, Network (Houston, Austin) SF/Valley: finTech, adTech, deepTech, Space, bigData, travel, education, biotech, payment, wearable, analytics, pharma, medTech, HW, Datacenters, Apps, gaming, … → global companies from all over the world

Young, single, party, b2c, apps (VC, accelerators)

Family, house/garden, Stanford, hardware,
deep tech, b2b, b2c (VC, accelerators)

Older, family, house/garden, network, storage,
semiconductor, hw, deep tech, b2b

Angel.co presence
Create a great crunchbase presence
Choose a time of interesting industry events
Look for the right place to work (bay vs. SF, …)
Look out for interesting accelerator programs
Look out for experts, evangelists in your space, they might become angels later
Meet competitors, connect with peers
Meet former employees of competitors and potential future team members
Act as you always have been there
Bring a unlocked phone, multiple credit cards (or check)
Bring English business cards, pitch deck, train the pitch

Combinator Sam Altman in Stanford: http://startupclass.samaltman.com/
Reading Advice: http://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296
Start to read techcrunch frequently
Watch great company pitches on youtube, i.e. TechCrunch Disrupt
Learn about growth hacking: #500Distro https://www.youtube.com/user/500startups
Look for the right meetups (www.meetup.com)
Go Silicon Valley - Austrian Pavilion Group
DROP ME A LINE - THANK YOU!

US/global waters? Look for US co-founders? Want join a global M&A and business dev team? Planning a trip to the valley?