Another of the great speakers at Morgo was Bill Reichert from Garage Ventures who presented his new rules for Entrepneurs.
Andy Lark has covered these very well on his blog.
I especially like rule number 6 “Be global day one.” While this doesn’t mean you need to sell globally and open offices around the world from day one, it does mean you need a global mindset in which to build your business on.
New Zealand is a great place to do business but on the world scale we are an extremely small economy and, if you have a very specific market (eg Architects), it can be extremely limited.
Constantly thinking about how you can build your business globally opens up new markets and large opportunities and also enforces an ‘efficiency mentality’ where you need to consider in a wider context, and in a context where you may never meet your customers face-to-face.
In this day and age the internet has made doing business globally a natural extension to many businesses especially software. Being able to communicate easily and undertake business electronically has broken down all the historic barriers to exporting. This is extremely beneficial to business like ours that are based on the opposite side of the world to our major markets.
In my opinion going global actually enhances a business from a New Zealand point of view – Not only for the founders but more importantly for our local customers. Our New Zealand customers benefit hugely from our international businesses as they get the ongoing benefits of innovation that directly help their work without the cost that would be incurred if we were only selling to New Zealand.