Taking the leap and scaling up

What we’re learning taking our startup from NZ to the USA

All branded up for those sales prospects we might meet on the plane

It’s time to leave the nest. Our product is tested, we’ve got some pre-launch traction in overseas markets and we’ve almost exhausted the client-base (and money) NZ has to offer us.

So we’re off — ready to put down roots in the America and betting that we can turn this Kiwi underdog into a global success story.

NZ is a tiny place. That’s an awesome thing when it comes to casting people as extras in Lord Of The Rings movies, or if you’re looking for a testing ground for a startup idea, but it makes things difficult when you’re trying to scale your business.

We’re pretty proud to be Kiwis. And starting Weirdly here has been brilliant for us — allowing our team to explore, build and test in a sophisticated proving-market.

It’s a step every startup takes at some point. Even those of us who trumpet the “Global from Day One” mantra (that’s us) have a day when you have to start focusing more resource and energy into a specific, loads-bigger market.

For us, that means coming to america.

Leading into this move we’ve had some stand-out challenges. The three main one have been:

1. Picking the right Country (And state. And city): We’ve naturally had growth in a few different spots around the globe. If people are keen to hear about how we made the decision to hit the states first, I can run through that in a later post. In advance, the tl;dr version is that it was a really hard, complicated decision and at the end of the day, involved a bit of eeny-meeny-miny-mo.
2. How to cope with splitting the team: Our team is pretty tight and this is an intense time for the business. We’ve done various remote working arrangements quite a bit over the past couple of years of working together and, for our team, it hasn’t worked particularly well. I feel like maybe we’re alone in the startup world with that one, but either way, having a key member off the shop floor for extended periods of time was kind of intimidating.
3. Money: Travelling is expensive. Especially from NZ. We’re betting our runway on this working.

In this publication, we’re going to step you through our journey — day by day, as we’re living it.

That means you may end up witnessing Weirdly’s stratospheric ascent, or you might get a front row seat to a brilliantly dramatic flame-out. Eitherway, if you’re running a startup and want to scrape some real-life learning off someone in early scaling stage, we’ll be giving it out for free. Right here.