Ventech & Hervé Brunet’s Guide to ‘Launching in the US’: To Do(nt)s - Part 1

Dreaming about launching in the US market, but worried about getting lost in the crowd? Hitting a wall in your startup’s ‘Americanization’ efforts , and not sure why? Ventech alumni Hervé Brunet has some pointers.

Hervé is a French tech entrepreneur based in NYC who co-founded and served as CEO of stickyADS.tv, an advertising software company that helps premium video publishers design and run their own digital video advertising marketplaces.

In May 2016, Hervé and his business partner Gilles Chetelat sold stickyADS.tv to giant cable operator Comcast. At that time, stickyADS.tv had 9 offices globally across three continents — USA, Europe and Asia — and had been enjoying triple-digit growth for more than 3 years.

To this day, the stickyADS.tv exit is the largest acquisition of a French adtech company by a US corporate leader.

We sat down with Hervé and some of our Ventech entrepreneurs for a discussion on what (not) to do, and how to best navigate the challenge of scaling your business in the US without getting lost in the masses.

HB Tip #1: Don’t underestimate the impact of different organizational structures on your business.

Generally speaking, French businesses are built on a framework of a smaller team of generalists in comparison to the US business structure of a large team of specialists. The financial implications of this difference are evidently enormous when considering the path to scaling a business:

• A leaner business, which is, at the outset, less capital intensive, becomes challenging with respect to production limits. It’s arguably more challenging here to be sustainable and create highly repeatable businesses.
• The highly-compartmentalized, highly-delegated business, which, at the start, is extremely capital intensive, supports rapid growth and scale.

The hard reality — even if you don’t fundamentally agree with the US organizational structure, you will struggle to build your US team with a European / French organizational. In this case, don’t fight it — Adaption (or perhaps more accurately, adoption) of the American way is your best move.

(Curious about why? It’s mostly about recruitment here. The highly-specialized American business model is supported by talent that is wired to self-select into highly-specialized roles — perhaps by way of a highly-specialized education structure, training, background, experience — at both the junior and more senior levels, though more strikingly at the junior level.)

HB Tip #2: The art of reallocating responsibilities

Your most important asset is your team — and organizational change is challenging for any business, and particularly a young startup.

A key to avoid unnecessary rocking of the boat:

Clearly define roles among the founding team well in advance of organizational change — and then stick to the responsibility allocations you decide on. Drawing lines is not always a pleasant exercise, but especially when a team is split between continents / time zones / languages, it is essential.

As Hervé explains, this is especially true when one of the founders moves to the USA to support the geo expansion. In this case, the line of responsibilities must be drawn very well and known to the teams — not just to the cofounders themselves.

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Stay tuned for more US expansion tips from our conversation with Hervé, and as always, let us know if you have topics you’d like to hear from us on !

-Your Ventech Team.

Twitter: @ventech_vc

Email: contact@ventechvc.com