Exactly 2 years now settled in the #USA 🎂 🇺🇸 ❤️ A big thank you 🙏🏽 to all my colleagues and partners for this intense learning experience! While I’ve been working in an international context for 16 years, living here brings a different perspective and allows me to “feel” things rather than just understand them. So, what’s the magic sauce of the #hightech industry here? ✅- 1 Time management: things go fast; the granularity of time is different. An action to do? done the same day. A follow-up meeting to have? The next days. A project to start? The next week. Building a team takes a few months, raising money takes a few quarters, etc. ✅- 2 Customer service: how you do things matters as much as what you deliver. Yes, features are important, but customers have high expectations of responsiveness, transparent communication, and support. ✅-3 Technology appreciation: engineers and scientists have upper management functions more often, a sign of a culture that still considers technical understanding as the key to succeeding. Also, so many tech-profiles have a solid business culture, whereas in Europe those worlds can be siloed. Generally, a technical background or a Ph.D. is a pre-requisite here in the high-tech industry even for business functions. ✅- 4 Scale: this is rather a continent than a country. While from Europe you can consider the USA as a new country to address, it’s bigger than that. You better subdivide it into chunks and approach it as if you would approach Europe as a whole. ✅- 5 People. Humans are humans. Surprise! The underlying needs are the same, and the buying journey is similar, even though the “how” has some deviations. Anyone who tells you “You know it’s different here” is probably trying to make an excuse to not challenge himself or his organization. ✅- 6 Division of labor. Roles are divided here into smaller scopes, which allow for setting crystal clear expectations for each team member. It requires having bigger teams and you can lose some efficiency as it requires more alignments, but it does bring performance and scale. ✅- 7 Being French is hype 😂: Most people have an appreciation for Europe and France particularly, especially in tech. People in the USA (generally) love what comes from abroad (food, tech, goods, traditions, etc), so you should leverage that rather than hiding where you come from. What else would you add to the list?
Timothée Jourde
9mo
I would add that in Europe we are more cautious: failures are often considered shameful, therefore we refrain from taking risks or trying new things. In the US (and maybe Canada), people, companies, and investors seem to be way more agressive: they may fail more, they may burn more ressources, but ultimately there's a net gain. I'm sure there's a cultural gap, but European analysts often say we desperately lack domestic risk-taking private investors: maybe that's the biggest difference? 🤔
Harald Horgen
9mo
Business is business, not personal. In Europe personal relationships are important for successful business relationships.
Hardy Chambliss
9mo
That's a great milestone! Looking forward to collaborating at some point!
I have pretty similar experiences and outtakes from my almost 5 years journey. I would add that compared to Europe folks do much more voting with their wallet and are willing to walk away more easily if they are not happy with the goods and services one provides. This is most likely because there are more options and people are more open to trying new things.
Sid N.
9mo
Hey Samir, congrats on 2 years in the US :) To add to your point 1, things indeed move fast. I think people have a fair amount of autonomy and are empowered or encouraged to make decisions, reducing some of the extra steps needed. Of course, speed of decision can also depend on the size of the company.
I would add French accent 😄 I'm sure people in USA have an appreciation for French accent 👌
Mickaël VESLOT
9mo
What an incredible journey for the enthusiastic and (very) energetic young man I met 7 years ago! Congrats Samir !! 💪 😎 (Not sure the US will be big enough though... 😜)
Paul Oldham
9mo
Looking Good Samir
Bring your devices to life with world-class software 🦾 Deputy General Manager at Witekio #embedded #IoT #Device2Cloud
9moCongratulations on your 2 years in the US. Regarding your point 6, I think this brings performance at scale, but only at scale. Perhaps this and quicker access to funding is a key factor in why US tech companies quickly scale beyond those in Europe?