> If the start-up core product isn't something that bypasses laws, why would it be bad?
This seams like a pretty naive rhetorical question.
Regulatory burden is different in each country. Look at github problems with Russia in the past. Or Google and EU's "right to be forgotten," worse yet, local politicians that make your business model illegal.
Also, culture / sales process is different in every country. VP of sales for North America is not going is going to have a hard time making a dent in Asia. The sales culture in Japan is very different from the one in China.
Some places have a culture of bribery to get anything done. And you know what the SEC/FTC can go after you in the US because the money goes through a bank in the US.
Now if you happen to have employees in that market place (and in some cases you're require to sell locally) you have to follow local labor which vary tremendously from country to country. Then you have local taxation laws, then you have your home countries taxation laws that deal with foreign sales.
If you multiply these headaches by say 10 or 20 markets. That's something very difficult for most startups (or even mid-size companies) to tackle.
> Was dropbox not a startup when it went to become available outside the US? Their expansion plans didn't require offices in each country
Dropbox being a self service product over the web is not a great example. Sure that can be a replicated by some segment of SaaS companies... but there's a lot more segments out there then SasS.
This seams like a pretty naive rhetorical question.
Regulatory burden is different in each country. Look at github problems with Russia in the past. Or Google and EU's "right to be forgotten," worse yet, local politicians that make your business model illegal.
Also, culture / sales process is different in every country. VP of sales for North America is not going is going to have a hard time making a dent in Asia. The sales culture in Japan is very different from the one in China.
Some places have a culture of bribery to get anything done. And you know what the SEC/FTC can go after you in the US because the money goes through a bank in the US.
Now if you happen to have employees in that market place (and in some cases you're require to sell locally) you have to follow local labor which vary tremendously from country to country. Then you have local taxation laws, then you have your home countries taxation laws that deal with foreign sales.
If you multiply these headaches by say 10 or 20 markets. That's something very difficult for most startups (or even mid-size companies) to tackle.
> Was dropbox not a startup when it went to become available outside the US? Their expansion plans didn't require offices in each country
Dropbox being a self service product over the web is not a great example. Sure that can be a replicated by some segment of SaaS companies... but there's a lot more segments out there then SasS.