Do consumer technology usage patterns and business models transfer across geographic and cultural markets?

Antoine Le Nel · Oct 18, 2024

Localization is completely overrated — the same creative and same growth strategy works globally, and the extra performance from localizing is not worth the effort

At King the same creative worked everywhere except Japan, and at Revolut the identical strategy made them number one in both Romania and Norway despite very different cultures; consumer interest and what people click on is the same

Scope: Japan is a genuine exception; China set aside as a fundamentally different market

27:29 20Growth: Revolut's Chief Growth Officer on The Growth Playbook Revolut Used to Scale to $2.2BN in Revenue | How Revolut Launch and Grow Products | Why the Best PMs Don't Need A/B Tests & Why CAC is a BS Metric with Antoine Le Nel

Cem Sertoglu · Nov 20, 2024

People behave similarly everywhere in their interaction with consumer technology, so consumer internet models that worked in the West would also work in other markets

He could syndicate the first couple of million but then had to travel to Silicon Valley, New York or London and convince investors who didn't understand the region; without local follow-on some companies would fail

Scope: about Turkey and Eastern Europe at the time he was angel investing

4:18 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu

Antoine Le Nel · Oct 18, 2024

Acquisition models transfer across countries because country boundaries beyond language are an arbitrary unit of analysis — there's no reason London and Birmingham are more similar than London and Paris

Country definitions beyond language are completely arbitrary

Scope: language excepted

26:18 20Growth: Revolut's Chief Growth Officer on The Growth Playbook Revolut Used to Scale to $2.2BN in Revenue | How Revolut Launch and Grow Products | Why the Best PMs Don't Need A/B Tests & Why CAC is a BS Metric with Antoine Le Nel

Antoine Le Nel · Oct 18, 2024

Acquisition and pricing models are transferable across countries as long as you segment at the product level, because a debit card is a debit card and FX is FX wherever you sell it

You adapt the model to the product being sold rather than to the country; the underlying product economics are the same across markets

Scope: requires cutting the model down at the product level; products sold differ by market

26:39 20Growth: Revolut's Chief Growth Officer on The Growth Playbook Revolut Used to Scale to $2.2BN in Revenue | How Revolut Launch and Grow Products | Why the Best PMs Don't Need A/B Tests & Why CAC is a BS Metric with Antoine Le Nel

Adam Mosseri · Jul 24, 2023

Facebook's retention tipping point varied drastically by country because of cultural and internet-usage differences.

Cultural differences and differing internet usage meant the friend-count threshold ranged from about six in Japan to around a hundred in Indonesia.

47:51 Network effect retention thresholds vary drastically by country due to cultural differences

Pat Grady · Jul 8, 2024

The thesis that the world is getting smaller has been invalidated; technology ecosystems are more geographically isolated than expected and there is no single global technology market.

Despite a lot of interconnectivity, the regional ecosystems have turned out to be isolated technology markets — the conclusion Sequoia's own regional partners reached

41:04 Technology ecosystems remain geographically isolated despite interconnectivity