Breaking America? It's all about the people, says Egress CEO

Passionate leadership from the founder team combined with local knowledge on the ground was key to Egress' overseas success.

Cracking America is the long-term goal for many UK companies. And why wouldn't it be? It's a huge market with a shared language, and a natural port of call for firms - especially in IT - who are starting to scale internationally.

But those positive points mask stumbling blocks that can and have tripped up many an aspiring founder. Tony Pepper, CEO of Egress Software - which expanded to the USA in 2020 -told Computing's Stuart Sumner that if he had to do it again, there's a lot he would change.

"The challenge is that many founders of growth businesses feel that, because it's such an obvious market, they'll be able to take what they've done in the UK and just do it in the United States. But in reality it is much, much more difficult than that."

The size and location of the US market are some of the first and most obvious challenges. "Cutting through the noise" is much more difficult than it is in the UK, which makes it hard to gain traction. You also need to decide where you want to be based - East coast, West coast, or somewhere else.

"Figure out where you would logically land," said Pepper. Egress wanted to keep the time difference as short as possible and so chose to aim for the East coast, and then also had to consider access to local talent and the accessibility for its home team, who of course had to be able to visit the new office frequently. "Very basic logistical stuff," in other words.

Businesses where founders can relocate have an advantage, because "there's no-one better placed to understand the market than the one who had that dream in the first place." But Egress' founders couldn't do this; instead they hired locally and made frequent visits, "every two or three weeks," to work with the new team very intensely. In reality, Pepper found "that doesn't work." When seeking to grow outside your home borders, he said, you need a member of your founding team, your best and most trusted individual(s), or at least someone you've worked with before and have a relationship with. Egress didn't do that and "probably lost somewhere between six and 12 months [of growth]."

That is not to say you should just relocate your entire UK team; local knowledge is absolutely key. Having one or more company founders around to give advice and leadership is important, but it is equally critical to bring in people on the ground who have knowledge of the market, and - this is the important bit - listen to their feedback. So many businesses grow at a seemingly unstoppable pace domestically, only to fall over when they reach a new market.

For an example, look to Egress. It has three offices in North America: Toronto, Boston and New York. "On paper, that just wouldn't have been a thing we would have done, we would have wanted it all in one place - but in reality, that was the thing that allowed us to really gain traction."

Why did Egress do it that way? Because there were local experts in each place with their own skills, and building traction means "building around people and leaders."

Tony has much more to say on the topic - watch the video for the rest of his insights.