The Internationalization of Cloud Companies
One of the biggest problems that European startups face is when to open their first international office and how to go about preparing and then executing this move. Over the last several years, I have been researching numerous questions around when, how and where startups internationalize.
This first reports draws on experience from the Crane Partners’ involvement in helping more than a dozen European startups launch into new international markets as well as from dozens of interviews with startup founders and a proprietary database on how the world’s best software companies scaled into new markets.
The research analysis of 68 publicly listed cloud companies’ stats around internationalization brings meaningful insights to founders and executives who are in the midst of launching into their first international market with tips on how to succeed and pitfalls to avoid.
Some of the key findings:
- Companies are accelerating the pace of going international. The median time to taking a company into a new country is four years.
2. Companies founded outside of the US open their first international office in their 2nd year on average.
3. 83% of US software companies choose London as their first international office.
4. Non-US software companies choose the East Coast of the US as their initial launch base then move the headquarters to San Francisco.
5. 18 companies have reached $50m of international revenue in 10 years or less — Salesforce was the fastest (6 years) followed by Linkedin, MobileIron, Veeva Systems and Zendesk (7 years).
Crane is excited to invite founders and executives of European B2B software companies to the launch of The Internationalization of High Growth Cloud Companies report, an evening hosted by Salesforce Ventures at Salesforce Tower in London. Included will be a panel discussion with some of the startup world’s most experienced executives when it comes to scaling software startups into new international markets.
Register here (please note: no service providers, corporates, consumer companies or investors are invited to the event — it is solely for B2B startups planning on taking their company international over the coming two years).
