2024 W15 - USA

Humberto

Every week I post about one thing that happened at Rows. We're building in public!

The USA is the largest part of our total Revenue (35% ARR), which makes sense. But we know we can grow it a lot. How do we know that?

We are still small.
We have the other geographies to compare.

On that second point, Germany and UK stand at about 30% combined, and Portugal is about 10%. But the US doesn’t spend in software about the same as Germany and UK, nor just 3x what Portugal does. It’s much more than that. The US GDP alone is 6x the size of Germany’s and 100x larger that Pt’s, and that doesn’t account for a higher software penetration.

So, the #1 corollary is that there’s many, many US companies that would buy our product today. The jobs we solve are pretty much universal. We’re just not as close to them yet as we are to others. This skew is a consequence of our networks.

From that corollary, we had a discussion (which i won’t bore you with), and that resulted in the following ideas about getting closer to the USA.

Before the ideas, we put boots on the ground. Here’s me this week on a break at the World of Data as a Service (DaaS) summit!

Go to the US at least 1x/ quarter to sell to users and create our brand there. Speak at events, do more demos, etc! In particular those focused on business data, AI, marketing data etc (where our users will be)!
Check latency and US experience of using Rows. Improve it!
Build Linkedin and Twitter audiences in the US. To incentivize that, mute local accounts and instead interact with relevant US people, or people who have significant business in the US. Currently SF & Bay area represent just under 10%.
Focus Use Cases, Blog posts, Templates on US users cases. This won’t produce a big change at first, but with time it will compound. We should also focus on agencies who make a living off these use cases, because they bring lots of validation, and more clients!
Prioritize servicing and selling to US users. Example: We have been a self-serve platform from the get go, but we do questions, requests for help etc. Can we move Customer Support to overlap better with US users?
Focus on retention and requests and improvements from US companies.
Instead of getting the ISO27001 certification, start with SOC2.
When we develop data partnerships, focus on the US angle and providers. Example: An Integration with Play is more important than one with a European player. And Integration with the Federal Reserve would be more relevant than one with the ECB. Etc.
Place a US flag at the Office as a reminder.
(More).

The ideas are not-prioritized, but you get the point. Move the mindset to attack the US. We already much better at the international game, so that’s where our effort needs to be. If you have more ideas, send.

And this is another pic of the World of DaaS summit. This was taken in the beautiful yet acoustically dead Kennedy Caucus Room in the Congress complex. https://www.worldofdaas.com/c/events

See you next week!

Humberto