Starting a new journey of re-boosting global activities
Time to re-boost
I’m Go Nakakomi, head of HENNGE Taiwan. It’s been a while since I last wrote a company blog article.
During the pandemic, we were forced to stay at home to work. We struggled to find the most efficient way to work from home. After the pandemic, many people went back to the office to work. However, the work-from-home culture stayed as part of our new working style.
As a person continuously seeking business opportunities around the world, I started to wonder how this new working style affected businesses worldwide. Indeed, I could only read articles and imagine. But as they say, “seeing is believing,” and obviously, my imagination was limited.
In fact, the best way to know the economic situation in Taiwan is to see the people coming to the night market. The economic indicators released by the government are certainly helpful to understand the situation. But, I think being on site is important to reassure the situation.
Recently, the Japanese yen has been getting cheaper than other foreign currencies. It is a fact that anybody can check on the internet. But seeing so many foreign tourists walking around our Shibuya office made me realize that the Japanese yen has become really cheap.
Data may show the current situation, but it is difficult to feel the momentum from just data alone. That is why I felt that visiting and seeing the current IT situation to feel the momentum is necessary to reset and re-boost our global expansion.
Asking directors to go abroad with me
Then, I encountered a question: What would be the most effective way to re-boost our global expansion? After some moments of thinking, I came to the conclusion that we also need momentum to move the business forward. To recreate this momentum that was lost during the pandemic, I felt that the top management members needed to be on the same page regarding global expansion. This is how I asked our directors to go abroad.
Of course, nobody could travel overseas during the pandemic. However, even after the pandemic, our directors didn’t have a chance to go abroad. Hence, it was easy to convince our directors to go abroad to see the current situation of the SaaS and IT industry.
Since HENNGE Taiwan is already an overseas branch office for the HQ, the obvious first step is to visit Taiwan. Fortunately, the visit coincided with the largest annual security event in April, 2024, and HENNGE Taiwan was also exhibiting at the event. Thus, the directors decided to visit Taiwan to attend this event. In fact, solutions exhibited at the event were completely different from solutions exhibited before the pandemic. Now, more SaaS security companies are seeking business opportunities in Taiwan.
Attending SaaStr Europa and Infosecurity Europe
The Asian SaaS and cybersecurity markets are the markets in which many products are brought in from abroad, such as the US and Europe. Visiting Asian countries is good for knowing how much those markets are growing. However, usually, products brought into the Asian market are usually products that have already succeeded in the US and European markets. It is better to attend events in the US or Europe to learn about new products that have never been introduced to any market. This is why our directors visited the event not only in Taiwan but also in London, UK. Although our directors are always busy, it was possible to arrange a visit to London to attend SaaStr Europa and Infosecurity Europe.
SaaStr Europa
SaaStr Europa 2024 was a conference that many people from SaaS startups attended. Regarding the current startup environment, the situation is not good. Today, many startups are struggling to get funded. This situation was also mentioned in the session at the SaaStr. However, the number of attendees at the conference seemed almost the same as at the previous event. However, I felt there were more experienced entrepreneurs attending. This made me feel that the startup market has become more competitive in terms of survival, but still, many entrepreneurs are running startups successfully. By the way, AI was a big topic at the conference in terms of how we should adopt AI technology to our business operations. In the future, we may see startups succeed by providing AI products.
Infosecurity Europe
Infosecurity Europe 2024 was a typical exhibition where many vendors exhibited their cybersecurity solutions. There were more than 300 exhibitors. Phishing and ransomware attacks were two of the major attacks for which many vendors provided solutions. However, there are many ways to approach this issue. Protecting identity is the basic solution that has existed for a long time. Recently, there have been more solutions to detect those attacks and train employees to avoid being involved. Things we didn’t expect was that there were still many email security solutions to protect confidential information from being leaked. This fact encouraged us that there are still markets in Europe where we can help companies with our solution.
As a result
The result of asking directors to go abroad to see the current SaaS and cybersecurity market situation worked well. In fact, not only our directors but also I could see the big opportunities to expand our business beyond Japan and the Asian market.
Although this is only my subjective view as an organizer, after the trip, I feel there are more members in our office feeling positive about going global. It has become easier for our members to talk about topics such as expanding our business overseas. One reason this change took place is because our directors went to London. I think rather than just words, real action makes people more believable. Another reason is that after our directors came back from London, they talked about their experiences to members and I think they mentioned great opportunities in our business, even in Europe. And indeed, some members were encouraged by what they said.
From this experience, I learned that company leaders have a big influence on creating momentum. Therefore, if the company needs to do something, it is important to ask leaders to act.
Now that the momentum has been created, it’s my job to consider how to proceed. I hope we can share some progress in the future.
Go Nakakomi is an Executive Officer at HENNGE and the head of the HENNGE, Taiwan Branch.
