For a chat with Renaud Visage, the co-founder of Eventbrite
With our final event coming closer and closer, every day we are confirming successful entrepreneurs who will join us to share their experience with you. This week, we had the pleasure to talk with Renaud Visage, the founding technical architect and CTO of leading self-service ticketing platform for events around the world, Eventbrite, about what it takes to scale a company globally and what each startup should take into account before taking this step.
SSW: Good morning, Renaud, and thank you for finding the time to talk with us. You have been active in the entrepreneurial circles in the US for quite some time. On our tour, we heard some startups wondering whether being based in Silicon Valley would give them some credibility. Is that the case?
RV: It is quite an advantage if you are based there, but it is definitely not a requirement. There are many examples of companies starting in other places that just had a great idea at the right time, and they were able to grow from wherever they were based. Maybe we do not see many examples in the emerging markets yet, but it is happening.
SSW: Would you then recommend moving to Silicon Valley?
RV: It really depends on the product, on the target, on the maturity of your company. I think you can start and prove your concept anywhere, but sometimes it helps to have a co-founder or two in San Francisco, Silicon Valley or New York. I advised a few companies to do that in the past and I think it worked out pretty successfully. But you also need to remember that it is not as easy as it sounds, since there are many requirements to start a company there and it is also very competitive.
SSW: Eventbrite is currently a company that has reached to more than 180 countries. Did you have a global vision from the start?
RV: Yes, we had the global ambition from the beginning, but for the first few years we really focused on the US. In your early days, when you are just building the team, you have very limited bandwidth, so you need to make the most out of it. It makes sense to demonstrate that you can properly scale in one country before you go global.
“It makes sense to demonstrate that you can properly scale in one country before you go global.”
Also, going global is not as easy as people make it sound. If you are a purely consumer player, that can be downloaded and used anywhere, like Whatsapp, there are really no limitations to you expanding globally very quickly. However, for the more traditional e-commerce players, like Eventbrite, it takes a certain level of sophistication to function at a global scale. You need to consider things like taxation issues, payment methods and privacy laws, since every e-commerce is regulated differently. Few companies can call themselves truly global. Even Amazon is not present everywhere yet.
SSW: How did you experience the global growth of Eventbrite?
RV: I think it is a journey. We have been going at it for almost for 10 years now and we reached one billion dollars in sales just last year but it took quite a while. One of the main lessons we learnt is that there are different ways of doing business in each place. You need to get these local specificities right, otherwise they will hinder your development.
“You need to get these local specificities right, otherwise they will hinder your development.”
SSW: Do you have any concrete example?
RV: When we launched Eventbrite in Germany or in the Netherlands, we didn’t have their mainstream payment methods, since they don’t use credit cards the way US or UK does. Before we built those country-specific features into the product, we were basically ignored.
SSW: Do you have any experience working with fast growing markets?
RV: One of our development centers is based in Argentina. We found the quality of the engineers excellent and so in addition to a great business, we bought a great team. They are very aligned with our values, we like the way they work and we really like them personally. You need to have this chemistry between two entities, and this alignment of interest, so that you are all pushing in the same direction.
“You need to have this chemistry between two entities, and this alignment of interest, so that you are all pushing in the same direction.”
SSW: What would be the first thing for a company to look at, when aiming to enter a new market?
RV: Focusing on the competitive landscape in that country. Do they already have something like your product or are you going to have to disturb an incumbent? If your product is a real groundbreaker, then I would look at how your local market differs from the market you want to expand to. Do they have the same habits? Are they going to enjoy product you are creating?
Also, make sure it looks and feels like a local product. This is something that is quite important and also something that is not always executed as well as it should be. And then when you are ready and when it is not going to be a distraction on your core market, go full force ahead and grow as fast as you can. Consider it as an experiment to validate if you made the right decision to enter that country.
SSW: Is there something that startups should be careful about?
RV: What I wouldn’t do is just going somewhere because you met someone, thinking they will do all the business for you. This happens a lot. Go global when you’re ready and don’t rush just because your investors told you to go global.
“Go global when you’re ready and don’t rush just because your investors told you to go global.”
SSW: If you had just one advice to give to our startups, what would it be?
RV: Don’t be afraid. I feel a lot of sense of inferiority from startups, because they are not coming from Silicon Valley and I think that is plain nonsense. If you have a great idea and you have the vision, you can make it happen from anywhere. There are no barriers anymore.
