The U.S. Playbook

Who to Hire and Relocate for your U.S. team

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The following section is all about the biggest strategic investment you’ll be making in your expansion – talent.

Getting this right, especially with your first ten hires who will greatly impact all subsequent hires you make, will unlock all other parts of your expansion roadmap, while getting it wrong could result in failure in the new market and an eventual withdrawal of your team.

Here are the elements we think will set you up for success when constructing your team and recruiting international talent.

Relocating team members and transferring culture

Before you get started on bringing in new team members, you need to figure out how you’re going to leverage your existing staff in your new geography.

Transferring European team members allows you to easily carry your company culture and product knowledge across borders so you can hit the ground running. You have a few options here. Think through them carefully, and execute on them deliberately:

1. Relocate the Founder / CEO

This is the ideal situation – the founder/CEO is the biggest champion of the business and has the highest internal status, so can ensure the new team is well set up and make them feel valued.

It also sends an important message to the market that the CEO has made the move. This is especially powerful if you’re looking to fundraise from US investors or the US is set to become your core market.

Things to consider:

Make sure that the move is properly communicated in your home office so that everyone understands the rationale
Build in regular trips back for the CEO so that the home office doesn’t feel left behind or not part of the future strategy of the company

We understand that’s not possible for everyone (for various personal reasons), and there are examples where founders haven’t moved over (Pointy and Signal AI), but it’s all about increasing your chances of success.

If the CEO is not moving over, then you will need to:

2. Relocate another co-founder or similarly senior individual

They must be comfortable with having commercial, fundraising and HR discussions, as well as being a company spokesperson.

Or:

3. Establish a landing team

This should consist of different levels of experience and functional expertise. Make sure your HQ can run effectively without these people.

Along with carrying across company culture, these options will provide the new office with:

Passion for the company and mission
Understanding of the company history and internal politics
Understanding of company processes
Knowledge of the product
Trust from head office

In both cases, the founder/ CEO still needs to be committing between 30-50% of their time to being in the US in the first 18 months of expansion.

Anyone you bring into your US office, whether an external hire or internal transfer, needs to:

Give you the best chance of success with growing your US revenues
Be culturally additive to the company

Your very first boots on the ground

Your first boots on the ground will be integral to establishing values and culture. Whether your CEO plans to move over or not, they may not be the first person on the ground in the US.

This person, or group of people, must be fluent in English, preferably with prior experience of living in the US or working with Americans.

The most senior person in the new office needs to have an intimate view of the business, so it is very rare that this person is a recent, external hire. If they are, then they should spend a significant time with the CEO and in HQ, and should be partnered with relocated individuals from HQ who can help fill in any knowledge gaps.

Being the first employee in a new location can be an isolating experience, and personally very draining. This may be a factor in choosing to move a small team rather than just one person. If you are just sending one individual, make sure they are well aware of the conditions they’ll be operating under.

Who your First ten Hires Should be in the U.S.

As mentioned previously, your first ten hires are some of the most important as they’ll help set the company culture in the office and have a huge impact on your growth trajectory in the new market.

Whichever functions and seniority level you’re hiring for, your first hires should have startups in their DNA. Candidates will ideally have worked for another international business, travelled a lot and maybe even lived abroad. This is the type of person who will be used to a less structured environment and excited about building something from the ground up.

When planning out your first 10 US hires, consider the following:

Which functions to hire for

This will be based on the GTM motion of the company – are you pursuing sales-led or product-led growth?

Sales-led-growth companies will eventually want to hire local sales development representatives (SDRs), account execs (AEs), marketing and customer success teams under a local sales leader. While the vast majority of companies will keep engineering on the ground in Europe (as it’s cheaper), you might need to hire product experts who can support the sales team, especially if you are selling complex products with high-value account sizes.

Product-led-growth companies will need to hire product marketing, partnerships leads, customer success and community managers.

Which order to hire in

The order in which you hire different positions will depend on a variety of factors, including whether any employees in your home location can effectively carry out some US-focused activities for the time being. But the most important factor is whether you already have US customers or not.

If you have US customers by the time you expand, this suggests that you used your European sales team to prospect and close those accounts. Keep using them for this whilst possible, as the talent is much cheaper in Europe. For your first US hires, you will need to front-load your customer success and account management teams, to make sure those referenceable customers are really well nurtured, retained, and grow in value.

If you do not have US customers yet, then you will want to hire for the roles that generate revenue as quickly as possible. For sales-led-growth that means local sales and growth marketing, for PLG that will mean product marketing and partnerships roles.

As you grow the US hub, you’ll need to duplicate some of your Operational functions so that the US office can perform to its full potential, without relying on teams in different jurisdictions and time zones. For the sake of maximising runway, most startups don’t hire for these roles until the lack of those roles is holding back sales. That point might come significantly earlier for West Coast-based companies than East Coast-based, due to minimal cross over hours with HQ.

“We started light touch with one senior sales person who moved over to the US for personal reasons. This was fortuitous and proved to be a great starting point for thinking more seriously about how to address the US market.

After deciding to base our office in NYC, instead of where that first person was based, we relocated a long-standing commercial employee to open things up. They knew the product and culture of Signal inside out and became the perfect ambassador.

The first person we hired on the ground was a Customer Support person who had experience from both the UK and the US, and the second was a US GM with extensive industry and international experience. The combination of two transplants and two new employees well-versed in our UK business culture was very beneficial. As a CEO I also spent a good amount of time in New York and, until we hit 20 people, all new employees came over to the UK for part of their onboarding.”

David Benigson

Founder & CEO
Signal AI

How senior to hire

The seniority of your first few hires depends on two key factors: who you are transferring over from the home office and the complexity of your product and sales cycle.

If you have a complex product and or sales cycle, that requires deep technical and industry knowledge in order to close a deal, then you will need to hire a senior salesperson early on.

This could even be an advisor or independent board member in the first instance – someone who has deep networks with your ideal customer profile (ICP). Enterprise-focused companies should be considering a senior sales hire very early on, but it will likely be the founder who is closing the deals in the beginning.

Companies selling products that require less technical knowledge and industry expertise, and have short or self-serve sales cycles will be the slowest to hire a senior leader.

“A founder-led sales process can be particularly compelling for American buyers – they like to hear the founder dream and feel like they’re receiving special attention. It’s been especially effective with larger prospects, especially whilst we only had European case studies, as those didn’t really resonate with US buyers. Once we got to around ten great logos from the States, I was able to take a step back from the sales process.”

Rajeeb Dey

Founder & CEO
Learnerbly

When you do make your first senior hire in the US, make sure:

You allocate enough budget to hire someone with necessary experience
You understand that they are unlikely to come to you – you should engage a recruiter and be prepared to court the right candidate.
They are already embedded in the US ecosystem and have a black book that could open a wide variety of doors.
They have experience in a young startup and know what it’s like to sell a product with little-to-no brand recognition
They are an effective leader with a commercial mind, and also someone who is willing and able to make sales themselves.
They spend significant time at HQ in their first few months of onboarding

This is especially important if that person is in charge of building out a team, as they may establish a culture that does not match that of the European team, or curate a team that is loyal to them before the company – if the leader needs to go, you may end up losing the people under them, too.

“Workvivo’s first hire in the US was a Head of Sales, who then built out a team of mid-level account execs. That senior hire is very difficult to get right and, in retrospect, we probably could have hired the account execs first, managed them from Ireland, and waited longer before hiring any senior staff in the US.”

John Goulding

Founder & CEO
Workvivo

A data-led approach to your first ten hires

But what does that actually look like on an individual company basis? We’ve analysed the first ten US hires of ten of Europe’s top B2B companies that have expanded in the last decade.

Seniority level for first ten U.S. hires

Each of these companies hired junior, mid and senior level staff within their first ten US hires, but only half hired an executive such as a CFO or President of Americas.

Time to first ten U.S. hires

Just four of the companies scaled to ten employees within 12 months of their first hire, with the slowest (Collibra) taking eight years to reach ten people on the ground. Pigment, on the other hand, was scaled to ten employees within three months.

Roles of first ten U.S. hires

Seven companies hired at least five sales roles in total.

Algolia, Collibra and Quantexa opted for more product-driven approaches by over-indexing on Marketing or product and engineering, showing the importance of product localisation as well as a strong sales motion.

Order of first ten U.S. Hires

Eight of these ten companies made a sales hire straight out of the gate, with the remaining two (Algolia and Collibra) filling their first sales role with their second hire.

Click through the company names below to see the details of their first ten hires in the US in order.

Algolia