Are non-US startups living on US time zones?

Picture of Gregory Blondeau

Added on by 2 min read

A new day starts at 3pm

When David Miles from Discovercloud, a company in Israel, scheduled our call he suggested 5pm, which is 6pm in Tel Aviv. I did not know he was in Israel, and he did not know I was in Belgium. During the call we realized that for some reason we both thought the other was US-based!

Most of his conference calls are with US companies, so are many of ours. This made me wonder whether all European startups are running on US time?

One of the reasons we attract English speaking visitors to our website has much to do with our switch to an English-only website. If you write in English, Google obviously brings you leads from people that search in English…

 

Huge impact on our small organisation

Less than 12 months after the switch the result is that 30 to 40% of our leads now come from the US, up from 5 to 10%.  This has changed our business outlook, and well, I have to say it improved the company as a whole. This is because following up leads and customers we have in the US seems to have pushed us forward and help make us grow.

As an example a few months ago our beloved customer Steve sent us the email below:

Email

Steve is not even in the IT department, he is Director of Project Management. In the last few months we have got to know many people like Steve. I am sure people like him exist in Europe. We have just never met them.

US companies are software literate... They want innovation… This helps us enormously to improve our product.

People often say the US economy is strong because of the large size of its domestic market. Of course it is! But it’s not just the size of the market.

 

It is about attitude to innovation

In our experience when confronted with innovation, a typical US business would see an opportunity. A European business would more likely be concerned about how the change might affect its current way of working. This might sound like a ‘cliché’ but I can tell you that when people are positive and enthusiastic about what you do it has a fundamental impact on your startup!

Take Julie from instance, she moved from the US to the UK. She e-mailed me this a few days ago:

 

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This lack of enthusiasm means that it is a huge challenge for European startups to become leaders in their field. To become a leader you need a market which both accepts and stimulates you.

The good news is that  technology startups located anywhere can now easily gain access to the US market. Take Workable for instance, a Greek-based start-up offering a great SaaS solution we use to manage our hiring process. Their website is English-only and customers listed on their website are US companies. It’s only after I sent the below 'suspicious' request to their support team that I realized they are based in Europe:

Conversation

 

It comes with a price

BUT.... it puts huge pressure on our relatively small organization.

We have to field support calls in the evening… we’re glued to our smartphones at night to reply quickly…We solved that growing pressure by hiring a remote team member based in the US.

 

We are not alone, are we?

This probably isn’t the same for all European SaaS startups. It depends which type of SaaS B2B software you are selling.

Nonetheless, I would be ready to bet that next to Discovercloud, Proxyclick or Workable there are many other startups out there which have found their operations time shifted to US time zones.

If you have direct experience or know of an example, I’d be glad to hear your thoughts. Do you manage all requests from Europe? Do you have a remote team in the US? When did you open your US office? Would you say that your product improved thanks to US customers?


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