Thinking about expanding internationally?
Here’s the single most important thing you need to get right.
Dino Di Palma is my favorite Italian-French-Canadian-American entrepreneur. I guess it should come as no surprise he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to taking a new business international.
Mike’s podcast this week features a great conversation with Dino, a G20 member who was named the Chief Revenue Officer of Broadsoft (NASDAQ:BSFT) just this week. He most recently served as the Chief Executive Officer of Benu Networks. Prior to that he was the Chief Operating Officer at Acme Packet, a company he helped take public and eventually sell to Oracle in a transaction valued well over $2 Billion. Dino also served as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Business Development at Acme Packet, and as VP of Sales and Business Development prior to that.
Before Acme Packet Dino was the Vice President of International Business Development of Priority Call Management, where he spent six years in systems engineering, sales, and business development. His journey from Montreal was influenced by some personal relationships he made during and right after college, a pattern we’re seeing again and again as Mike sits down with members of the extended G20 family.
Dino’s twice been the first guy on the ground to open up a new international territory, and the second segment features his thoughts on the single most important thing it takes to do that effectively. I’ll avoid the spoiler but say it turns out — here again — that right relationship is everything.
Dino and Mike go on to explore how to pick the right time and place to begin, and served up another 20 minutes or so of hands-on, practical thinking on the right way to take your business from the country it happens to be born in to those that might end up being critical to its growth, shaping both your product vision and the scale of your success.
I really enjoyed it, and hope you do too. Please be sure and subscribe to How Hard Can It Be? on Soundcloud, iTunes, Stitcher, or Pocket Casts:
