Can a startup be multinational from its inception? It can, and it is becoming more and more common that this is the case. In the June issue of Entrepreneurs They can be read several recommendations of experts and founders of Spanish companies that started operating in several countries right from the start:
Focus your services. Luis Agüeria, from Thinkfish, advises “studying what others are not giving to take advantage of that gap. For example, our competitors sold their products without taking care of the packaging.”
Know your limitations. The interviewees agree that we need to focus on the countries we can support. “We will need marketing resources, someone who knows the language and who knows the sector in that country,” warns Miquel Ros, director of Gourmet Origins.
Make your website in two or three languages. If we want to go outside, it's essential to have a website in English, but we shouldn't obsess over too many languages. Experts warn that it is not only necessary to present this website, but also to provide all derivative services (newsletter, posts, etc.).
Scalable model. Juan Roure, professor of Entrepreneurial Initiative at IESE, believes that a company that wants to expand must have a business model that is “not too complex to reproduce”.
Good partners and distributors. “Each country has different and special characteristics of registries and legislation,” says Oscar Landeta, director of Certest Biotec.
From the easy to the complex. Landeta advises to “start with the most affordable markets”, not to lose your mind too soon with very striking markets.
According to these businessmen and experts, betting on international expansion has two fundamental advantages. On the one hand, you can Seasonally adjust, that is, to compensate for low sales in a certain geographical area with high sales in another, depending on the time of year. On the other hand, the access to external funding increases considerably.
The expert in business growth Verne Harnish Talk in this recent mini-interview about Barcelona Activa of the advantages of entrepreneurship in Spain and it coincides in “radically” segmenting your company's services and expanding progressively (“one or two countries per year, at most”). In addition, Harnish advises following your potential customers “wherever they go”:
In Intelectium we pay special attention to do not overestimate the attractiveness of markets. We measure them accurately through the technique Country Portfolio Analysis. This method helps us identify potential sales in a new market, as well as the costs and risks, which are determined by distance, both geographically and culturally.
El Country Portfolio Analysis has led us, more than once, to conclude that the expansion to Latin America it has many more risks than common sense would tend to make us think and, at times, it may not be as profitable as one might think a priori. Without going any further, we have the experience of Groupalia, which very recently made the decision to discard these markets given the difficulties it encountered in them.
In addition, in Intelectium we draw up these plans to obtain concrete results at specific times. We carry out rapid diagnostics, both for the definition of target markets and for other areas (products and services, sales objectives, prices, roles and responsibilities, image & branding, media, etc.), since all of them must be coordinated.
