#24: Sven Deichfuss

Radical Departures

Episode 24 - Sven Deichfuss - Paving the Way for European Startup Success in the States

Key Points:

• Neuland Alliance was a result of a failed attempt to splash into the US market, like many other Europeans who thought it was easy

• Moving your European business to the US is not as simple as just showing up

• The US market is large and has great potential, but the risks also remain high

• Raising funds in the US is not that much different than in Europe, though valuations in the US are much higher

• It’s easy for a startup to become overwhelmed with the bureaucratic weight of launching in the US, it’s also a distraction from your business focus so you need experts

• Neuland offers services that address human resources, accounting, and legal issues

• The US model of HR, accounting and legal will be vastly different from Europe and finding EU-based resource experts has been problematic & very costly

• Neuland Alliance is focused on making the US market more accessible to make market entry easier

Many European startups try unsuccessfully to launch in the US and end up with very expensive headaches, due to the high cost of making mistakes with the process of entering the market. Often, many of these expensive problems are bureaucratic, an area that falls far outside of the startups’ normal scope. The bureaucratic weight of setting up your European startup in the US often turns out to be a lot more work than ever imagined, because it’s something completely new and outside of the core focus of your startup.

When you are listening to your European legal or accounting or HR experts, that may conflict with what US experts in those fields, which then only adds to the confusion. Just as many American legal experts often fail to understand the legal consequences in Europe, European experts can be wrong about the US because it’s not their speciality.

After seeing many failures and frustrated startup founders arrive in the US only to turn around and go home a few months later, the team at Neuland Alliance wanted to address the biggest problems they saw - HR, legal and accounting - so that startups could do what they do best and leave the infrastructure work to experts who know the field and have extensive experience.

For any startup founders planning an expansion to the US market, this is a very helpful discussion. The US is of course a great place to be, with over 300 million people and customers who love new technology. The potential is there but there’s a lot more than just New York and Silicon Valley, despite what many still believe.

Where you open an office will depend upon your market sector and prospect base, and the kind of company you create will also depend on many factors. Making the wrong decisions can be a costly problem, and can also be incredibly demoralizing to the team. To learn more about Neuland Alliance and their services, you can find Sven on Twitter here or via the Neuland Alliance website here.