Should startups look overseas for growth opportunities? Key insights from our panel with SeedLegals

Last week, we teamed up with SeedLegals to host a group of startup founders, technology executives and investors for an evening of insights and networking at our office in East London.

Wise Business has partnered with SeedLegals, the one-stop platform for the legals you need to get funded and grow, to offer exclusive benefits. Find out more here.

To kick off the event, we hosted a panel discussion with industry experts, including: Robert Jeffrey, CEO and Founder at Evari Tech, Dimitri Masin, CEO at Gradient Labs AI, Aaron Duke, Account Manager at SeedLegals and Amy Dicketts, Product Manager at Wise Business.

Each expert shared first-hand insights on the topic ‘Should startups look overseas for their next big growth opportunity?’

We’ve compiled their key insights so you can refer back to their advice on your growth journey.

The opportunity in uncertainty

The global economy is in flux and with ongoing uncertainty comes a rapidly changing growth and investment landscape. In turn, startup founders are facing a new set of challenges when they're looking for their next big growth opportunity, whether that's in the domestic market or overseas.

The session opened with a question on navigating the current landscape for founders, “does uncertainty equal opportunity or should founders be sitting and waiting to see how things pan out?” Aaron kicked the conversation off, noting, “It does depend on multiple different factors such as sector, where you're at in your lifecycle and as a company. But overall, I would say uncertainty uncovers a lot of opportunity, whether that's in the core market that you are operating in or also elsewhere.”

For Robert, expanding overseas meant flipping his startup from Australia to the United Kingdom(UK). He shared, “For practical reasons, it just made a lot of sense to be here [in the UK]. And then that's given us the ability to access Europe as well as the US. From here, it's a lot easier than being in Australia.” In terms of uncertainty, he said, “There's always gonna be something happening. It's a particularly fragile time geopolitically at the moment. But I think at the end of the day, if you have got the right products and you've got a customer market and you're in that stage where you're ready to look to expand, then I think you just have to look at handling things the best you can at that point in time.”

Laying the foundation for scale

For many startups, knowing when to make the leap overseas can be just as challenging as creating an international growth strategy. Dmitri noted that the right time to expand internationally varies from startup to startup but for many B2B businesses, focussing “on one region first to get the initial traction” typically works best. At Gradient Labs, Dimitri noted “we really built out our presence in the UK and had a couple of really good logos on your website — that's when the market traction happens.”

Amy added that successful international expansion requires planning from day-one, “there are some basic things like the copy in your product, if it's backend driven, it will handle translations much better than if you've hardcoded it on the front end. Then you have to think about your KYC flows, you could be building them for one region, but as soon as you move into another you're going to have more requirements. It’s important to build something that can elegantly scale.”

This flows over into your business's financial operations — especially if you’re planning to work in or manage multiple currencies. For many startups, their first foray into receiving and spending international money comes from raising investment. Amy notes, “When you’re raising money in the US, you need US local account details. So start thinking even from day one about which financial products you'll use that allow you to operate in multiple currencies. We see a lot of customers coming to us because their finance team has a Barclays login, a Deutsche Bank login, and a Wells Fargo login and they're managing their currencies across all three platforms. As a CEO, you might not notice that, but it’s going to cost your finance team a lot of time and pain.”

Harnessing investment as an expansion tactic

In addition to providing your startup with more capital, raising money from investors in overseas markets can unlock unparalleled domestic insight. Robert noted, “If you want to expand to the US, having investors who understand that market can really help you. I actually think that was a really important factor for us when we moved. Our UK investors were ready to help us expand in this market when we got here.”

The markets you target can depend largely on the type of startup you operate. Dimitri highlighted, “I think that the obvious choice is the UK if you're here, US, because it’s English speaking, but in the AI and Fintech space, Saudi Arabia seems to be on fire right now.” Choosing investors with strong industry knowledge can help guide you through the inevitable challenges of starting and scaling a business.

Regardless of which international market you’re looking for investment in, knowing how to protect your raise from FX risk is essential to maintaining a healthy funding runway. Aaron added, “Now that cross-border investments are starting to become more popular, US investors are quite attracted to UK startups. Just from a currency perspective, if you're talking about millions of dollars of investment, you could be paying thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars in transaction fees. Having tools like Wise Business to understand where you can save and where you can be as cost-effective as possible means you can extend that runway a little bit longer.”

Take your startup global with Wise Business

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