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Notes && Anecdotes
The neighbour looks close on a map. Photo by Gonzalo Gutierrez on Unsplash.The neighbour looks close on a map. Photo by Gonzalo Gutierrez on Unsplash.

Make the world your 2nd market

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Your neighboring country may look like the same thing, just twice the size. Instead: ship an global version, then follow traction instead of geography.

Sweden is twice the size of Norway, next door, close enough in language that it feels like a translation job. We thought that at Otovo.

We sold solar installs. We estimated cost and production from digital property records and map data: roof height, azimuth, bearing, scaffolding, how much sun the roof actually got. In Norway that data was available. Sweden turned out to be a 3rd world country in this regard. We asked the customer to provide it instead. Installs got worse. Satisfaction dropped. The cost risk sat on us, so margins went with it.

Plenty of other European countries would have been a better second bet, but we didn’t know it would’ve been Poland.

Each industry in each country has a way of working. You will not take a real position in most of them without sitting in that culture. But you can skim a percent or two from the outside in multiple markets. And you might get lucky and find somewhere that happens to work like home. You will not know which one until you measure.

Ship an English, international version before you pick country number two. Home habits hide in the product: local optimisations turn out to be booby traps when you go global.

English as language one or two

English gets you customers in a lot of markets, and a chunk of the ones you already have already want it. You can do support in it. You can do user interviews with it.

Follow traction, not the road

An English product lets you run ads in countries where you have nobody on the ground. Spend a little. See who converts. Walk into those. Leave the quiet ones for later. “Sweden is twice the size” is not a signal. A click that turns into a paying user is. Unless you already a real connection ot them, do not bet country two on the neighbour.

Trap 1: You knew how to store an address

You know what an address is, until you enter market two or three. Some have no zip. Some have no street number. Some have no street. Hand the whole thing to Google, and do not get strict about the data structure.

Trap 2: You knew what time was

Timezones look easy until they’re not. Outsource calendars. Skip recurring events if you can. Use browser settings. Set your own browser to another timezone every Tuesday and look at what assumptions you made “yesterday” – what ever that is.

Trap 3: You needed this feature

BankID in the only signup path is a Norway product with extra locales taped on. In retrospect, e-mail OTP would’ve cut it.

Ship the English version now. The next country will show you every product decision you thought weren’t local.

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