🎙️Best practices & failures when opening the U.S. market
🎙️Best practices & failures when opening the U.S. market

🎙️Best practices & failures when opening the U.S. market

Description

Interview of Fabrice Henrion, General Manager US @ Odoo (XAnge Family).

Type
🎙️ Interviews
Category
Country Management
Meeting Date
October 20, 2020

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.
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However, be careful not to hire a pure salesman who is not interested in anything else. A good operator must be able to learn to do everything.
  • 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.

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In the US, it is possible to create a company in 3 clicks only if you are American and you create a 100% American company.

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.
XANGE PARTNERSHIP BOOK Interested in a PEO? We have negotiated an offer with. .
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Want to know more? We also talked about this topic with Karin, HR Director at AB Tasty 🎙️Hiring in the US - How to do it right🎙️Hiring in the US - How to do it right

Choose 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.

XANGE PARTNERSHIP BOOK Interested in a CB manager? We have negotiated an offer with (available in the US).

Choosing the right location and offices

Here are the questions you should ask yourself before choosing your location:

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Implantation US

Factors to considerWhy

More and more selling can be done remote. There is less need to be located in an "expensive" city. As a startup, you should not open in a city for prestige reasons especially as your prospects are spread out.

(although this should not be a driver) + payroll taxes (state + city) (State individual income tax rate: California: 9.3%+ / Texas: 0%; Corporate income tax rate: California: 8.84% / Texas: 0%)

(Do not) believe that US culture is the same everywhere: north/south, east/west. The culture of the East Coast is closer to that of Europe than that of the West Coast, even though it is the same country. If we compare the coasts, there is more traditional business on the East coast than the West coast.

Don't think that a 6 hours or 9 hours time difference is the same thing. This can make the relationship with the HQ very difficult. East Coast (Boston, New York, Miami) gives you 3 additional hours of working-day overlap versus the West Coast.

Ideally, you should not impose a precise city for the General Manager. People are always more important than location and they need to embody the development project. Moreover, it is this person who will live there on a daily basis (take into account family constraints too). If a CEO imposes a location, he risks losing his General Manager very quickly.

For example, the Boston airport is a few minutes drive from downtown, allowing you to reach Paris in 6.5 hours and is the closest to France. Miami, on the same coast, adds 2 hours of transportation.

What is the availability of GTM hires you need – inside sales, enterprise sales, partnerships, growth? Where will you find executives with proven scaling experience for your business model and sector? NY is known for its digital talents. Boston is home to universities like Harvard and MIT attracting many digital talents.

You must be able to be in contact with them and even meet with them.

Salary and rents are extremely high in New York, and even higher in the Bay Area. Using cost as a proxy for talent retention makes this even more critical. For example, NY is more expensive than Boston (+30% to 40%).

Tech is focused in the Bay Area, whilst Finance and Media are big in New York; Boston is known for Biotech startups.

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.

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XANGE ROLE RESOURCES Find examples of case studies sourced through XAnge companies here: 👥XAnge Role Resources

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

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 :

US Employment Contract "at will" @ Odoo

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.