21. Entering global markets: Who lands first, GTM or Product?

Note: This is a huge topic that I’ll cover over a number of posts.

As recently as twenty years ago, the idea of taking a tech start-up into new global markets would have been unfathomable.

Then the web changed everything.

Actually, normalising that last sentence for hyperbole — the web didn’t quite change absolutely everything. While the advent of digital distribution and platform ecosystems has made it infinitely easier to take an early-stage product into new markets in a commercial sense, removing one significant barrier to entry doesn’t mean other factors and considerations vanished along with it. And above all, the quest for product-market fit still reigns supreme in every market you enter, no matter how easy it may be to spin up early-stage GTM functions in a new territory.

In my experience, while you can easily run a sizeable portion of your go-to-market operations digitally and, therefore, remotely from the market, it’s critically important that you place a least a product owner inside the geography. Ideally, this should be a permanent in-country post, but if that’s not feasible, then at a minimum, this person or persons should spend quality time in the new market on a frequent and ongoing basis.

I’ve seen more than a few new market entrants get this entirely the wrong way around and lead with a predominantly GTM focus in country and leave the entire product team back home. I’ve written previously — 18. Everyone needs to know the product about the dangers of relying too much on GTM teams as the primary source of insight and feedback about product-market fit, which can have the effect of slowing growth, blowing out your acquisition efficiency and overall burn multiple accordingly. And the risk of this happening increases massively when the market is not where your product team is located.

Video meetings are not a lossless medium

You might think that in this post-pandemic age of effortless video meetings, regular video calls between the product team and stakeholders ought to cut it, but don’t be fooled.

I’m a massive fan of video meetings and remote collaboration, but after 13 years of mostly meeting with my international peers and colleagues by video call while steering Xero to reach and then sustain product-market fit for the UK — and, therefore, being a self-appointed authority on the subject — in terms of building empathy and deep understanding about anything, leaning too hard on video meetings is analogous to the qualitative difference between Long Wave radio and multi-channel Dolby Atmos digital surround sound.

You might just about be able to make out what’s being said with the former, but you’re not getting the full, high-fidelity Panavision picture.

Entering a new market? Make sure someone in the product team packs a toothbrush.

Bonus Link: “Everything is about to change”

Completely unrelated to this week’s topic, but a reader kindly pointed me to this excellent piece by Tom Scott a couple of weeks ago, where he talks about what increasingly feels like a significant threshold that’s been crossed recently with AI. Having seen a few major platform shifts in my career, it certainly feels like another is in the mail. In particular, I love Scott’s parallel with the arrival of Napster and the later complete collapse of the music industry’s existing business model less than a decade later.

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