Expanding Your SAAS Business Internationally (transcribed)

May 6, 2019

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Alright, this is gonna be the most obvious video we've ever done.

I think the topic is scaling SAAS internationally? is that was it is?

Expanding SAAS? ok

So I can only talk about our experience, right?

So I think today DevHub operates in about 12 countries, I think 7, or 8 different languages.

And the way we did it basically

I mean obviously, we got an inquiry from somebody being like, hey!

I want to roll this out in you know the UK

And then, we ended up as we rolled out that one let's just say the project

or whatever it would or basically one deployment of our software.

It was like do you know anyone else? or what other projects do you guys have?

And they ended up being our go-to for basing anything let's say in that region.

So we kind of do that all over the world and basically, we did it with partners.

We've just found it for us in our experience and at this size right

We're talking about under 20 million dollars in sales.

Like for us to do it through partners was way better than us trying to set up shop

I mean in theory we've actually had people in those areas that were actually DevHub

Essentially contractors but basically under agreements and everything and budgets

and we've basically been like hey, we expanded in the region

but it just honestly did nothing for us.

And so the only time we ever did anything is when a customer would basically come to us

and be like hey, we want to do something and then turning that customer into

basically a partner in the region so any inquiry we have from

you know the UK we send it to our partner. any inquiry we get for Latin - South America

we send it to our partner, I mean we glance at it so we sorta know so we can follow up

and be like hey, did anything happen with that thing and again we trust them

and we meet them in person typically in Seattle.

At least once or twice a year

every once in a while we will actually go there too.

I mean again like I said in the beginning in the video this would be a super short one

but the general gist is if you want to expand internationally

in the beginning and for our experience under 20 million in sales you're gonna want to have

partners in the region.

And trust them, I mean we basically arm them with any kinds of decks they need

any kind of materials, copying sites, whatever they need to be successful in selling.

And just constantly empowering them as we roll out new products letting them be the first

to know before it rolls out and then when it rolls out

essentially if they are actually promoting and since it is a white label and they are branding

it as their own you know they have basically you know a jump on anyone else potentially

in the region that's also trying to sell that same product.

Again if you only wanted to watch only the first 30 seconds of this video

it said you know expand your SAAS business internationally through partners and to me

the best partners always started off as customers because they understood the product.

Someone who is like I want to sell your product you know with the backing of what? as a person? you know if they have backing by

a company maybe that makes sense but again the best is that they rolled out with you

and now they’re like oh my God, I see the power in this we can empower a lot more companies

or however, they want to blow it out and you're trusting them.

Only twice through I will say quick note, only twice have we signed

an exclusive for that region

and that was because they actually grew something.

Some of them did one or two deals and stopped others have done you know 15, 20 deals

and they're still growing and so it's like for those ones it's like when they came back

and was like listen we don't want anyone else selling you know DevHub products in

our region or whatever we're like fine.

And we did those deals so again expanding saas internationally my recommendation based on

11 years of experience do it with partners because you are not going to be operating there

anytime soon, again under 20 million.

So we'll see what the next phase of our business looks like.

Thank you for joining in and that's expanding your saas business internationally.


 

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