Another USA trip down, a few more tips and tricks AND I love Portland

I didn’t want to leave you guys hanging after my last update from the first Weirdly trip to the US, so here ‘s some information from the second one. The cool thing about this time around is that two of us from Weirdly got to go over which meant we could make double the impact in the US.

A quick update before we kick on. We were lucky enough to be one of 4 Kiwi early stage startups (Populate, PageProof and Cloud Cannon) to get some assistance from a “shoulder tap” programme run by The Kiwi Landing pad and BNZ. This was in the form of conference tickets to a couple of cool conferences in San Fancisco and Silicon Valley where we were able to co-exhibit with our kiwi mates. Plus we got a bit of cash to pay for flights so we were pretty darn lucky.

Our second trip was all about re-visiting potential channel partners and clients. And I’m proud to say that we have successfully cemented a couple of awesome relationships that will see us integrating in April and June this year. It was also focused on visiting another city outside of San Francisco and this time around it was Portland, Oregon.

Portland was actually pretty wonderful. It has a strong and growing start-up eco-system as it offers a great environment for those businesses that can’t afford to be based in the ridiculously expensive San Francisco market. Rent and salaries are radically less.

Portland is made up of a lot of interesting start-ups and not just from the technology sector. They have an artisan approach to everything that they do and so you see brands really stand out. Take a look at these guys Voodoo Doughnuts and Salt and Straw Ice cream. It is also the home of some great active apparel brands like our very own Icebreaker as well as Nike and Adidas.

The lifestyle is focused on balance and the recruitment environment is very much focused on culture fit. Boom! So Portland is looking like a great city to leverage Weirdly.

A few learnings from the second trip.

• The more you do something, the better you get at it. It’s amazing how confident we were travelling this time. Familiarity with the travel, the costs and having some connections from the last trip made a huge difference. So we spent less money this time around.
• Exhibiting at conferences means that you get to practice your pitch a gazillion times. We were overrun on day one at Startup Grind. Not everyone was an ideal potential customer but the practice we had was very useful. We also had two of us to handle the load so that made it more sustainable AND fun.
• Keep asking for introductions and help when you’re over there. Despite better confidence on this trip we still know we will never know it all. Going to new cities every time can be daunting so a few intros to some friendly faces makes all the difference. Thanks Sian Simpson!
• Wifi can be very unreliable while you’re walking or driving. It only seems to work well inside at Airbnb’s, cafes and office buildings. This proved to be a problem for things like getting an Uber and for communication with the team back home. Make sure you get a solution sorted for this on arrival. This might mean that you have scheduled times to connect with the team and/or you have a better service provider.
• The smaller cities are friendlier. Although generally speaking all American’s are friendly folk, when you get outside of the really big cities they are even friendlier and more helpful. Hence my mini write-up on Portland. We have been given advice to that says you should choose a place that you’d like to live in the US first and then leverage to the rest of the country. So Portland is on that list!

Now that we’re back in NZ we’re taking all the recon and moving forward with our battle plan to realise the epic opportunity in the US.

It would be very easy to keep going back to the US to visit other places as it is a massive place. But we’re focusing on making the most of what we’ve learned so far. Watch this space.