Interview of Fabrice Henrion, General Manager US @ Odoo (XAnge Family).
10/20/2020 interview of Fabrice Henrion,US General Manager @ Odoo (XAnge Family).
Odoo has 420 employees in the US, and has been there since 2010.
Quick Access :
- Recommandations
- Choose your US General Manager
- Outsource administrative tasks
- Creating a subsidiary
- Accounting
- Payroll and benefits
- Focus PEO
- Choose a good bank
- Issuance and management of bank cards for teams
- Choosing the right location and offices
- Use case studies to recruit
- Expand recruitment to neighbouring countries (Canada, Mexico, South America)
- Pitfalls or bad service to avoid
- Settle before having a proof of traction
- Have too much dependency between the US office and the HQ
- Outsource recruitment
- Outsource marketing
- Use a lawyer for your employment contract
- Believe that Facebook or Google salaries are the norm
- Develop an R&D team in the US
Recommandations
Choose your US General Manager
In my opinion, the US General Manager should:
- Spend time in the company's home country, even if it's only for 6 months, to integrate and understand the culture.
- Prioritize sales, as it is the lifeblood of the company, and then deal with the rest.
- Avoid cultural shock since homesickness is considered "very Belgian / French". It's worth noting that most Europeans end up leaving the US after only a few years.
Outsource administrative tasks
Creating a subsidiary
As soon as the majority of the company is owned by a foreign company, it is necessary to go through a business lawyer / incorporation lawyer.
Accounting
Don't waste time and go through a CPA (ie. CPA in the US who takes care of the tax returns 1 / year) and find an accountant to manage the accounting (ie. Bookkeeper, who keeps the books monthly)
Payroll and benefits
This is often managed through employers. It comes at a high cost and is a real differentiator in recruitment.
That's why it's important to understand what you're offering to your employees, to pay for what makes sense in the marketplace and is valuable to your employees.
"I would have saved weeks if someone taught me how pensions, insurance (hospital/outpatient/repatriation ...), etc work. It takes time to learn what you don't know."
You can manage it in 3 ways: In-house, with payroll-only software or with a PEO (recommended until you hire an in-house payroll expert).
Focus PEO
A Professional Employer Organization (PEO) is an all-in-one HR solution that ensures your compliance and can handle administrative tasks such as:
- Contract with your employees' mandatory insurance (e.g. workers comp).
- Provide access to health insurance, retirement savings plans and other employee benefits.
- Manage payroll.
- File your federal, state and local payroll taxes.
At Odoo, we worked with ADP and Trinet and looked at Paychex and Justworks. Justworks is the cheapest but is only suitable for small businesses, probably a good starting solution. Whatever you choose, you MUST strongly negotiate to avoid paying exorbitant admin fees. This industry is a locked oligopoly.
🎙️Hiring in the US - How to do it rightChoose a good bank
In the US, the banking market is not as mature as in Europe. It is essential to have a good banking advisor.
I went through 3 banks before finding a good one for our business: HSBC, Bank of the West and I ended up at First Republic (West Coast).
What should you look at before choosing a bank? Use this checklist 👉
Issuance and management of bank cards for teams
In addition to my bank, I use brex.com to issue and manage bank cards for my managers.
Brex allows you to generate Visa / Mastercard credit cards in 3 clicks without incurring personal liability, capped at 10% of the company's corporate account cash.
Choosing the right location and offices
Here are the questions you should ask yourself before choosing your location:
Regarding physical offices, you should favour economical solutions (for example: WeWork is quite expensive). If more than 6 people, I recommend using Loopnet and Craigslist without a broker.
Use case studies to recruit
Americans are very good at selling themselves, therefore you should not hire a candidate base on your gut feeling. You have to evaluate a candidate on what he/she can do. At Odoo, all positions are recruited based on practical situations, from accountant to salesman.
Below are two examples of cases we use :
For a sales position: Context: Here is an example of a lead that expressed interest via our website
Case study: Call for lead qualification and qualification (objective: evaluate the relevance of the questions, behavior, ...). One person from the team plays the role of the lead in the next room.
Pour un consultant : Contexte : Here are the needs of a client X (to be developed). Cas pratique : In anticipation of an exchange with this client, prepare the questions to ask, what assumptions will you make? What is the first level of response? Draw a mockup of the software you would design.
Expand recruitment to neighbouring countries (Canada, Mexico, South America)
This can be seen as an advantage considering that it is a real way to retain employees. The turnover is lower because it is more difficult for them to change jobs.
To manage VISA requests, you:
Use an Immigration Lawyer if it is a one-time request. We use the firm http://www.reinhornlaw.com/ in California.
Use a platform such as EnvoyGlobal if the company needs to do visas on a recurring basis. I recommend the platform which is convenient and inexpensive.
Pitfalls or bad service to avoid
Settle before having a proof of traction
In my opinion, you should not open the US until you have 2 things:
- An offer that works in the local country;
- A proof of significant traction in the US (existing customers obtained remotely).
Have too much dependency between the US office and the HQ
We need to remove it as much as possible and push for autonomy.
It is difficult to work away from the HQ teams. As US General Manager, I have always tried to be a screen so that the US teams do not feel it. In a practical way, I have always tried to have the answers to questions that US employees might have and thus avoid creating dependency to the HQ.
As the CEO of a European company that expanding in the US, I would make sure that the US General Manager understand that he can make his own decisions, that he is the only one who has a complete understanding of the local context. In my opinion, a human judgment will always be better than a process.
Outsource recruitment
Recruiting in the US is specific. If you want to grow in the US, you have to understand it and become excellent at it. Outsourcing is risky, expensive, not very scalable and no one else can know as much as the company the profile it needs.
The people we did not keep were either those recruited by firms or those who had not followed a thorough recruitment process (with case studies).
Outsource marketing
This will probably be expensive. I would internalize the marketing tests in "cheap" mode, in order to make my own convictions, and then outsource the actions that we know work.
“There is a lot of "noise" in the US. It costs about 5x more to be heard than in Europe.” - Fabrice Henrion, General Manager US @ Odoo (XAnge Family)
As for branding, it is a waste of time / budget at the beginning, at the very least until you have reached an obvious product market fit in the US.
Use a lawyer for your employment contract
It is not worth it. If the state you're in allows it, do an "at will" contract. Unless you are in a particular industry.
In U.S. labor law, at-will employment is an employer's ability to dismiss an employee for any reason and without warning, as long as the reason is not illegal.
Use Odoo Employment Contract template :
Believe that Facebook or Google salaries are the norm
Recognize the real stereotypes from the fake ones: Facebook and Google are exceptions in terms of salaries in the US. Many people read TechCrunch and this creates bias among European entrepreneurs who move to the US or among US employees.
In order to be in line with the market and to propose coherent salaries, I review my salary grids once a year on the basis of sources that are not incentivized to magnify the line in either direction (e.g. PEO / Payroll or Department of Labor or statistical department of USA).
You can also use paid services such as PayScale (existing freemium version) whose business and main source of revenue is salary analysis without self reporting (so not Glassdoor):
Develop an R&D team in the US
I think it makes no economic sense to be a European company and develop an R&D team in the US. Out of 240 employees in the US, we only have a few developers who are sold to customers as consultants.