For a full recording of this podcast, visit: [Link]
Welcome to the soft land central podcast, your home for market entry knowledge and resources softland Central is brought to you by software and partners, an online marketplace to help you find best fit resources for your market entry, find them at softlandpartners.com
Bill : Hi and welcome to soft land central I’m Bill Kenny and this is the hub for market entry. Today it’s my pleasure to welcome Nina Walters from expandise dyes, welcome nina.
Nina :Thanks for having me.
Bill : Oh, it’s wonderful to have you here and you’re in Berlin where it’s steamy hot. And so, please drink water, keep hydrated all that here on the East Coast of the US today it is temperate so, you know, kind of a mild day with bright sunshine so we’re in good shape. So in any event, you’ve got some wonderful background in terms of helping companies internationalize and expand globally. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, what, what, what got you into this and all that kind of fun stuff.
Nina : Sure, so I’ve been helping companies to expand for eight years now, I think overall, I’ve been in the international business scene generally for quite a while and then I went for a job as a UK Country Manager for a startup here in Berlin. And during the interview process, I was sitting down with the CEO for the last interview, he liked me and then he said, you know, Nina, you’ve got for the UK and yet, I get that I’m British, I never believe that I’m British. And he said, but I think you can do more. Why don’t you, why don’t you do a whole international strategy. I said yes. That sounds like a great challenge, really great. And then it’s three months after that I’d help them launch into three countries, and we’re sort of them pushing further on the, on the internationalization bandwagon. And I never looked back. So, I’ve then been helping companies around the globe to do that expansion, either in house or freelance, and then I set up expand dies, management consultancy helping other companies to go international, because I really missed a having my own team. So now we’re slowly growing our team internally and mixing that with bringing my longer expansion and learning about other cultures to. Well,
Bill : That’s fantastic. So talk a little bit about the companies that you work with what stage are they are there certain industries, anything like that.
Nina : Sure, so we mainly work with startups and mid set mid sized companies up to around 150 – 200 People usually start up sort of in a venture capitalist, venture capital, VC cases that have been got money in order to expand. Generally on more on the b2c side. So we work a lot with E-commerce companies, delivery companies, marketplaces, this sort of thing. Not necessarily, but they are the majority of our clients looking either European looking to expand within Europe, or somebody wanting to either leave Europe, or enter Europe. So while we’re pretty. We try to be vertical and geography agnostic, realistically, that’s the majority of the people that we work with.
Bill : Right now, that makes total sense. And so let’s maybe get into our topic here a little bit to talk about company internationalizing and entering markets. When you look at the companies that you’ve been working with and see in the marketplace, what are, what are the biggest challenges they have, what are the biggest sort of hurdles and roadblocks that you see a company struggle with.
Nina : So I think because we do a lot of b2c One of the biggest problems we see is, with the product adaptation for local markets, if you’re doing like b2b SaaS, for example, it’s much easier to sort of replicate the same product, because the vertical tends to be much stronger than the consumer behavior. Whereas when you’re looking at b2c and you’re looking at products that people will use in their home or in their everyday lives, how they interact with the product and how they usually use alternatives to the product, become a much bigger fraction. So one of the biggest challenges is for companies to really understand what each market wants from their service and from their offering.
Bill : I would imagine to is even validating that there’s the, that what problem or challenges exists in one company or country exists in the target country, as well, or is it a totally different service or need that needs to be fulfilled. Do you find that, a lot
Nina : yes sometimes but it’s, there’s a lot of also basic things that what whichever kind of vertical industry you’re in really applied to different markets. So things like looking at payment methods. If you want to start an E-commerce company in the Netherlands, you need to use ideal as a payment method, because I think something like 80%, maybe less than half of ecommerce transactions use that payment method. If you’re looking at sort of credibility in an industry, if you’re looking at Germany or Austria. There are a little trust logos that you see on the side of every website, which means they’re accredited by a third party tools is a common one in Germany. Whereas if you’re looking at, For example, Italy or Spain, they have less belief in these third party logos, and they’re much more likely to want to see Facebook recommendations from people that they know from real people. And so this idea of credibility is very different in different markets, And that can sometimes be difficult for companies to understand, exploit,
Bill : right, and end up data shifts, whatever the systems they have are over to accommodate that. Yeah, that totally makes sense. Are there other challenges that you see companies have so one is sort of making sure that their product is sort of market ready and aligned with the demands and needs of that, that marketplace and I guess to from what you just talked about is also having the various accreditations available and and or systems available on their website that allow transactions to happen in that new market. Are there any other challenges that you see really companies struggle with.
Nina : I mean, there’s always a million challenges right. I’d say one of the most common that’s underestimated, let’s say people get it but it’s underestimated is the internal challenge of going to the markets. So you’re, if you’re only in one country and you’ve got a local team. It’s very different to then suddenly have experts from another country and another culture come in with potentially a different way of working a different way of doing things. It could also be for example that your processes are very specifically set up for what people would then expect and to work in that particular way, but that just doesn’t work for the new team, or it could be that you’ve got a process that is a little bit manual because it’s it’s difficult to code or to automate, so you’re doing that manually. And a lot of companies don’t realize that once you’ve entered a new country, that process or that manual thing hasn’t been added on, it’s been multiplied. So once you’re in four or five countries, You don’t have sort of five times the issue you’ve, you’ve got this big exponent of manual work that you need to do. So, thinking about how to structure the internal, the team as well, internal structure is a whole other topic, but internal structure and the processes around that it’s something that is often under, and sometimes isn’t really is until it’s a bit too late. Hmm.
Bill : Got it. How do you work through that let’s take that as an example to work through with this Yeah, yeah. Is there an assessment you do when you begin the processes sort of look at, you know, taking the first topic to look at the, you know the product or services market readiness for the new for the new marketplace, maybe looking at the website, how, how aligned with it is, Is it to how people transact business in, in whatever new country that is and. And then, and then the team or the operations that you know how sort of congruent and efficient are they going to be in this in this new market is there an as an initial assessment you do or how does, how do you on earth these items.
Nina : Yeah, so we kind of have three main streams of work that we do and they all kind of converge in different ways depending on where the company is when they, when they join us. So we start sort of start with the market preparation aspect, So we’ll go in and do a readiness check see where they’re at in terms of. Do they have enough funding, do they have their team in place, have they thought about X, Y, Zed. And part of that X Y, Zed is looking at these local adaptations. Have they done their research, do they understand it, to work out where they are in terms of being ready to really enter a market. If they’re not ready. We help them with that. So with the research with our own knowledge that we’ve got. We know we’ve gathered quite a bit from about various companies in different, different countries and verticals, over the years to advise on these topics to the local adaptation. This is a bit different from the, the, the sort of the processes and structure side, which is kind of another stream. So the majority of people that we work with are not companies that are internationalizing for the first time, so they’re not people that are now starting to think about adaptation or localization and entering new places, or what countries to launch into next. So these kind of aspects, but there are companies who have gone into four or five countries, and they’ve gone somewhere, either because the process is broken, they’re growing too quickly and the processes haven’t been able to scale accordingly. Maybe one country is not performing as well as the others and they’re wanting to work out why. And that’s where we come in to help. So we’re able to then look at it if it’s a cultural adaptation thing, we can generally do that very quickly, look at it half an hour and we’re like yeah, these, these things will be important. If they’re on the sort of the process and scalability structure side. And we sit down, work out what’s going on, what’s not working, the majority of the time the biggest issue comes from individual country teams then working in a silo and not really being truly cross functional or integrated necessarily into the the main bucket of the organization which may only work primarily on the home market. So, we then work on processes to integrate that so that there’s one process for all markets, and that makes it a lot easier and much more streamlined and a lot more efficient.
Bill : Interesting. And I know you, you work with companies that are going throughout Europe and also into Africa and some into the MENA region is are there other places that your clients are going, or is that those that sort of right now, kind of encompass the majority.
Nina : Yeah I’d say that the majority, we don’t really do much in Africa right now and so it’s very much a small part, it’s not really our expertise. We mainly do a lot in Europe, because that is where the expertise of myself and also the rest of my team come in, because a lot of what we do is also interim management so we join people. We join their teams because all 12 – 18 months as an interim Country Manager on it or an interim head of international. And so because we’re in there with their teams, they’re often a little bit more close than that. I did spend two years with a client out in Southeast Asia, launching into five countries out there which was very exciting, learn a lot about that, but mostly these days it’s a bit closer sort of manner region and Europe.
Bill : And the reason I think that’s so so interesting is, you know, they think about, I guess, an outsider’s perception of the EU, and you go, gosh, you know, it’s it’s now one big trading group other than the UK which is kind of splitting off your questions build
Nina : dangerous questions.
Bill : But but but generally one big trading group and so the assumption is gosh, if these things must be much simpler now, but clearly from what you’re saying they’re still very unique cultures, they’re still very unique, in some cases financial infrastructure customer expectations, all of those things by essentially country or jurisdiction. And I guess I throw that out just as maybe as a discussion topic. Are there I see your head nodding, But, but what are your thoughts around that.
Nina : Absolutely, but we can. I agree. We can also take this to a US point of view, right. So, I was working with a meal kits company who is active in European Europe and in the States. They have pockets of clients for example in New York and in California and in Texas. And when you look. They’re completely different markets, they tend to eat completely different kinds of food, they have expectations, they have their own cultures. The only thing is that you have, you know, the same language, in most cases, in some cases it’s even more, for example Spanish speaking, or the spray culture. And those cultures are also very independent, as well as being American. And the same thing happens kind of in Europe. The only difference is you’re dealing with. I did look it up once. I think there’s 23 official languages of European Union has 23 countries that want more than that. But if you’re looking at also unofficial languages you’re looking at over 50 – 70 languages being used in different parts. Turkey’s not EU but it’s Europe and they have doesn’t have like a dozen languages ed, and all these different cultures within it, and they do need to be treated a little bit separately. Some things you can do are very similar, how they react to different visual stimuli layout of websites for example may be much more similar than in other markets, or compared to non European markets. Individually they are really quite different and unique. They’re often grouped so you’ll find that a lot of companies will have regions, so they’ll have Western Europe or DAT, or Eastern Europe Nordics, for example, and in those instances, they share a lot of characteristics, and they’re able to find a suitable place a long list of scalability, adaptation and spectrum. I sort of described this localization aspect of walking the tightrope between scalability, and localization. And when markets are slightly more similar, you’re able to go further down that capability route that makes more sense. But finding where to go is not the easiest.
Bill : I’m sorry I didn’t mean to interrupt, does it, does it change a bit by company in other words, with an Android imagine it’s also by a little bit by their, their company size or their, their scale currently, but does the strategy in terms of, for example, how many different versions of the website to have how many languages the website should be in, you know, you’re talking about the short that regional app adaptation versus the country level, this this strategy changed a little bit, depending on whether it’s the, the company’s current sort of status or state and or the product or service may lend itself to be more regionalized versus country specific communication, I, yeah, it’s got to be, there’s a lot. Seems like there’s a lot of gray. In that process, yeah, yeah. So how do you make that decision.
Nina : I think one of the most important things is to make a decision. Right. So I think that’s actually one of the biggest steps that companies don’t take. They don’t say actually, we want to be very scalable, we are we prepared to do different languages, and we’re prepared to do different payment methods. Otherwise, it’s the same thing, and that’s fine if you’re making that decision, But a lot of companies don’t have that thought process and that decision making, first, and that’s going to affect what countries are the most relevant for you to launch into, because if you’re saying okay we want to do the scalability thing, make it as similar as possible or as replicable as possible. Then you want to pick the markets that are the most similar to your own, because they’re more likely to have similar response. If for example you have a very super scalable, and you want it to be super scalable and then go somewhere, like China or Japan, that’s not going to work right. So, whereas if you’re taking the approach that says, yeah okay now we’re prepared to localize for regions as long as they are unknown a certain size together or X Y, Zed, then you can make these judgment calls for for sure it changes by vertical SAS for example, much more scalable b2c tends to be more more localized food and drink, obviously very localized. So it. Yes, it does certainly vary by vertical.
Bill : Yeah, no, that makes sense. So let’s talk about some clients or one or two that you think really got it right and we will dissect them a little bit but is there one and you don’t, certainly don’t forget the company’s name but, but, you know, maybe their industry and a little bit about their product. And then, and then let’s just talk about the things that you think that they got right and they will talk through some of that those attributes.
Nina : Sure, I mean, not necessarily a client but my favorite example for getting this balance right me is McDonald’s. And today are absolutely my favorite example for this. If you look at McDonald’s, so they make a real, real separation between the process and the product, and this is a good way to think about it when you’re looking at adaptation, so their processes are identical, you know that your fries in New York City are going to be the same as your fries in Jakarta as your fries in Stockholm. They have a very fixed process they go in the fryer for, I don’t know, two minutes, 43 seconds. I don’t know what it is, but their processes are the same and you’re getting the same thing or very close to the same thing every time. Incredibly scalable, which means they can benefit from the economies of scale and all the other good things from having things one fixed approach. On the other hand, if you look at the product, the product is localized. So you might in some places you’ve got a look, beef rib thing rib sandwich. You don’t get fries in some parts of Asia, you have rice instead. In actually have a really interesting slide I should send it for you to send it and put on screen, with all the different options that they have around the world. They have sort of type options in Mexico, in India, for example, They don’t have beef burgers that will check it burgers, because it’s, it’s not appropriate to eat beef in that market. So they changed their product offering to make it suitable for the market. But then if you go to India, they are they have chicken rather than beef, but again the processes at any McDonald’s in India is going to be the same, though they’re still following this very strict procedure these very strict processes. So these this balance I think they’ve done. They’ve had a lot of time to refine it, but they’ve done it wonderfully
well in the Northeast US Where am. They actually have lobster rolls, so you can, yeah and you know, obviously a different price point than most of the rest of their menu. Yes, that’s true. And we don’t have lobster rolls in Europe, fish, in some places, but no lobster rolls. Yeah I think everywhere has the flavour, but so is there a. Is there a client that has sort of taken some of the lessons learned from McDonald’s and apply them well.
Nina : Oh, that’s a really good question. It’s a little bit difficult to use that as an example because they’re so large, it’s a franchise model and the franchise model does change does change the game a little bit, but I did have an ecommerce client for example that where we did this, not this but we looked at the issues of scalability and localization quite a lot. So at one point they were one of the clients who had a very different country silo structure and really need to put things into place. To streamline and become more efficient. And part of that sort of streamlining and efficiency process was adding in scalability. So instead of having, they were in 11 countries at the time. I think at one point we were in 13 countries, I believe, and instead of having 13 different banners on the homepage, we you know cut that right down to having a choice between one or two, whichever one was the most appropriate for what you were seeing. For example, the same with the product. So there were three different warehouses that covered these 13 markets, and the content of these warehouses was 95% Same. But then we still had sort of 5% of the products that were suitable for that region, that were in. Looking more closely at things that were suitable for that market but maybe not as
Bill : fantastic is you I guess you’d look at the companies that have done it well. Are there some actual, you know, tangible attributes of the company, you know what, what I guess I’m asking is are you know are there. You know how important is his leadership in this process and what role do the leaders have, in, in sort of man, managing the navigation of expanding to new markets.
Nina : Leadership is absolutely key. There’s actually a ton of academic research that shown that founders and sea levels that have with international experience, are much more likely to succeed in international expansion in the future. So that’s a really interesting set of academic research. I’m doing a PhD on the side looking at the scalability localization thing so I’m being careful not to talk about it all day, which I can and i do in a lot of time. So, yeah, leadership is super important because one of the key things for success is integrating the in the international teams shouldn’t exist or personal opinion, at least, longer term shouldn’t exist, they should be part of the overall process of the overall company, rather than being in these individual silos. And so these thoughts about leadership and how leaders and how they want to integrate international business into the overall strategy and international and organizational structures is really important. And also understanding that international expansion is more than just a bottom line number. So there’s a, there’s a number of founders or sea levels are like great we’re doing great in this market. Let’s grow. When’s the biggest market, oh great, throw it in a dartboard that’s the biggest market. let’s go there without necessarily putting much thought behind it. So, Any leader who asks themselves questions, preferably sensible questions but any questions to why they’re making these decisions and what they’re thinking about is already 10 steps ahead of the general market.
Bill : So that actually leads me to kind of maybe a little bit of a curious question that is, you know, what role does ego play, you know, thinking about leaders and. And I guess my notion here is that if you don’t have a reasonable ego, I mean, or enough ego, you wouldn’t, you’d never actually begin the process of international expansion. On the other hand if you have too much ego. There may be dangers there and I guess I’d love your thought about ego and its role in success for international expansion.
Nina : That’s a really interesting question. I think there has to be ambition. I don’t know if that’s part of ego. I guess if the point is I have to be the best I’m going to succeed, I’m always going to be number one be the world’s best, then yes, that has to have some part of it. But I think overall, you have to be able to put that aside to be successful internationally, because you’re going to mess up whatever you’ve learned from your home country, probably not going to be true 80% Of all international expansions fail, and there’s a reason for that. And that’s often due to a lack of product market fit in the new country, or lack of cultural awareness lack of adaptation so that some things we’ve been talking about. And if people’s egos are too large, that they’re not able to accept that it’s different, and accept the advice of locals essentially or local experts, then that’s where you’re going to have a bit of a problem. If it’s, sorry, I guess it depends what form this ego takes. If they’re able to say, I want to be the best and I’m going to I’m going to stoke my ego by creating the number one company, and getting the right advice from everybody around. Okay great, Right, if it’s I know better. I’m doing it this way. It’s worked. That’s where it’s gonna go wrong.
Bill : It’s, yeah, again, you got a sort of a fuel, but it’s also can, we can also point it the wrong direction I suppose is the challenge of any of any catalyst. Yeah, it’s always interesting cuz I you know as I observe international expansion, you know, we, I think there are general things we sort of always talked about we talked about, you know, there’s, you know, sort of things that we know are, you know, our best practice or challenge or whatnot. And rarely do I hear about ego but quite often ego can be a catastrophic limiter, it seems, and it’s and it’s not even to do with as much to do with international expansion, although the stakes are just bigger and the risks are, Are, are higher. And it seems like if, if, anywhere. We’re going to learn how to listen and learn how to to. And I don’t even mean listeners, and I think listening to people have done it before and experts is really important, but but I first mean listen to the customer and and don’t make this, you know, customer assumptions, you know, transferable from, you know this market to that market but, but go in with whatever and understand whatever our strategy going with is a hypothesis, and that you know that there’s a nimbleness to it, I guess that’s, that’s, it’s just it’s a curious observation that it, you know, we see it all the time. It’s, but I think it’s a, it’s a, it’s a really good coachable moment as to you know, hey, you can sort of forecast Hey, understand these, these blind spots are going to come up and they’re going to be these variety of things that, that, you know you’re going to want to, you’re going to want to sort of project, what you know which please do because those are great hypotheses, but understand that the better strategy is actually going to be to develop systems to test those hypotheses and and
Nina : test them every time. Yeah. I was gonna say it doesn’t just depend on the ego of the founders or the leaders. It also needs to be a lot of them are often pushed by VCs and investors. So they, I mean they’re financially driven of course because they want a return on the on the money they’ve given up, and that can often put a lot of pressure on leaders and founders to make these leaps that may not actually be the best choice for their business or encourage them to make potentially hasty decisions about the direction of their growth, which then obviously impacts their success rate. We see that we see that a few times to
Bill : good stuff. Well let’s let’s talk about, you know, how do companies, you know, begin the process if I were you know a company, you know, based somewhere in Europe, let’s say Spain and I want to I want to expand through Europe from from Spain, what are the what are the things where should I begin the process in terms of my discovery and kind of learning how to how to get my company expand in some of the key markets and in Europe.
Nina : I would say that if you really have no idea how to go about that, get help from somebody that does know. Either somebody like me or somebody or governmental agencies which can be also a great use of resources that you can, you can go to. But you need to understand what your goal is for doing this, why do you want to expand. Is it for strategic reasons to prevent competitors getting a market, is it for extra revenue, what really why is it you’re looking to expand, because that’s going to dictate the answers to some of your your questions, but also what, what is your business. Right. So if you’re in Spain, and you are a fishing company, let’s say, going to Austria or Liechtenstein, might not be or Hungary, might not be the best choice for you. Right. So, looking at the market and the industry realistically, most people are going to have a shortlist in their head. Anyway, of places that are relevant to them and that are going to be interesting because of X, Y, Zed whatever criteria you probably know it it’s your business in your industry. And for my side it’s perfectly fine to make that shortlist is quite arbitrary, actually, and I, in some ways recommended, but then you need to again think about how much localization Do you want to do, how much are you prepared to change your company. If you’re a staff company, not really concern, then you can I mean, this is a, an overarching statement but if you’re in that line there is to be made on most occasions where do you fit in that and do you need to do this adaptation, where do you want to say, no we are only in. We’re in Spain, this is our expertise. We can’t maybe you’re in a tiny little village somewhere. It’s a family business, you can’t easily find non Spanish speakers. Actually maybe you should look at South America, because you don’t want to look the other languages. So, work out what your boundaries are. And once you’ve worked out what your sort of frame is, you know where you’re then working within it. And you can then start looking at markets that make sense, working on criteria that is important for you. And then I’m what I recommend people to do and what I do with my clients is to then work on this criteria, and build a balanced scorecard. By comparing different markets that fulfill this basic criteria that we can that you can then move into.
Bill : Very cool. Wow, that’s great, and I, Yeah. It’s something that I don’t think I said enough. But you just said it right off the top is. Know what your goal is, and make sure that everything you do is aligned with that, that outcome if it totally makes sense. That’s great.
Nina : That means not only knowing what your goal is, but knowing what success and failure is like. So, most companies, and this is something I’ve also learned over the years I certainly did not know this to start is really work out what failure means to you, as an international expansion. So do you want to be number one in every market, because that way, that means if you’re a solid number two. You should leave that market, because you have not reached your goal, right, or is it just that you want to be profitable in every market so it can self-sustain also fine. But really understand what failure means for you. Because if you’ve got a really profitable market but it’s number two, and that’s not where you want to go. You need to decide if you’re going to keep it, why you’re going to keep it, do you need to change your overall strategy to say actually no, we care more about profit than winning the market, or actually know when the markets, the most important thing. I’ve known companies to leave markets that they were relatively profitable in, is they were third or fourth in the market, and for them. They wanted to be seen as the market leader, and if they weren’t the market leader then they didn’t want to be there, and I know other companies that would cry if leaving a profitable market, no matter whether right so really understanding what success and failure means to you and being prepared to act on that no matter where it comes, doesn’t mean that seems easy, if you get that, but it’s important to think about it in advance.
Bill : Well yeah, The idea that you’ve scripted it and yeah and you’ve set some parameters around expectations and all that makes total sense. Well this has been great so I want to talk for a couple minutes if we can about you joined us at Softland partners now as a chapter leader was a couple months ago and we just launched the Berlin chapter which is, it had its first meeting, a few weeks back and it was fantastic, but I really wanted to chat with you about that and kind of see, you know, when we spoke originally I just remember how excited you were was sort of the promise of, of, you know, sort of what this network and and group could do and I really just wanted to explore that for a couple minutes, you know, maybe you could reflect a little bit on kind of what what your hope is in terms of, you know, How this can, you know, whether it’s change, you know, sort of, the success of individual companies or, you know what effect it can handle what, what was your hope, as you got sort of that original promise if you will.
Nina : Yes, we did have a fifth meeting. I’m very, I’m still very excited by this because I think there’s a lot that we can do. The Berlin ecosystem is huge in, in terms of startups and expansion, there’s a lot of regional companies that are based here, particularly in terms of ecommerce mobility, biotech, there’s a lot of these regional hubs here, which means there’s a lot of potential for soft land partners and people working in the market entry space to, to really make a difference. But a lot of these companies or freelancers, I mean I freelance for years and myself, is much more common than a couple of larger players. So, one thing that I really thought was cool is that we put everybody in one place, so we’d have different members like 10 Different people would run a lot of events or things for potential clients, or for the companies. There was no institution that brought all of us as service providers as mentors as experts together in this field. So, that’s kind of my hope to do that to bring this network of people together so that we can ultimately work together and share best practices and learn from each other. That was one thing that I’m really enjoying most actually about the meetups that I’m attending is learning how people in other places are solving these issues, and the things that they’re doing. Because when you’re in a very small niche, like internationalization, it’s not like we are Facebook marketers, for example, the, the, the community is smaller and more precise. You lack that community and that people behind you to help you, you know that someone to start with. And I hope that people are able to come together and find that person or those people in that group to spar with and learn more about and bring it forward.
Bill : That’s cool. Yeah, no, the what you said about the Berlin ecosystem is so interesting is it, I mean it, no everywhere I travel. Berlin is, you know, Certainly one of the key marketplaces that people talk about in terms of both the startup community, and just the internationalization activity that’s going on there. It’s really remarkable to see, is there. You know if somebody were listening who is interested in getting involved in the Berlin Softland partners chapter, is there a message you want to make sure they stay here.
Nina : Do it. That’s the end of the day you’ve got nothing to lose. You can come to a meet up, try it out, see if you like it, see if you like us. We try and be nice but, you know, we don’t bite unless you ask nicely. You’ve got nothing to lose by coming to see and to try it out and to meet some nice new people. For me the most interesting thing actually, while the Berlin group is quite new, it’s quite nascent, some of the chapters in the States for example have been meeting for a lot longer, and learning from them and talking with them, and having one on ones with some of the other people in the wider community has been super valuable to learn a lot more from from others. And that for me actually is the, what I’ve got out with most, is people that I wouldn’t otherwise have a chance to meet, because there’s a chance I’ll run into some of the Berlin chapter people at an event or the drinks or whatever, I’m probably not going to meet the chapter leaders in New York or San Paolo, or Mumbai, right so that’s big enough to have that international meeting. So, that, that for me is really what I get out of it a lot.
Bill : That’s awesome. Now, and that’s that’s so much the intent is not only to help get the dense local ecosystems very strong, but to really help build the bridges between ecosystems globally. And that Yeah, obviously, that’s a huge part of internationalization. And we want to really align with that as well. But this has been it’s been delightful. Nina, I really appreciate you taking the time with us today. there any sort of final words you want to share before we sign off for today.
Nina : Thank you so much for having me. final words, I would just say if you want to go international, prepare, but do it. I mean, it’s one of the most fun things that you can do as a business. It’s hard and it’s difficult, but it’s really rewarding and challenging. Just prepare properly and go for it.
Bill : That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking your time with us today. I really appreciate it. I’m going to stop the recording but thank you so much.