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Mark Neely asks Is ‘Born Global’ the new normal for software start-ups?

Anyone who has played the board game Risk knows the smartest strategy is capture Australasia before setting out to conquer the world. Risk may have been a powerful metaphor in the past but it doesn’t apply to business in the digital age.

When the product you’re exporting weighs nothing and can travel to its destination at the speed of light, geographic barriers are meaningless.

New Zealand tech companies learnt this early. They latched on the Born Global idea earlier than their Australian counterparts. That’s partly because they are further out on the fringe of the global economy. But they were treading down a tried and tested path.

Global only  option for New Zealand start-ups

Unlike Australian firms, New Zealand companies had little choice. The local market is tiny and poor by OECD standards.

Almost every successful NZ business of the last 20 years has exported from day one. The list includes children’s clothes, fashion, biotechnology and booze as well as software and online services.

Most of the economic factors Mark mentions in his post (market size, ex-pat community etc) apply in spades to New Zealand. Here, exports are about 30 percent of GDP. In Australia exports are roughly 20 percent of GDP.

Incidentally, both figures are depressingly low by OECD standards where the average is almost 50 percent of GDP.

Tiny economy, aware of global issues

New Zealand is a tiny economy, but everyone working in it is painfully aware of its relative international insignificance. I’d argue Australian businesses are misled by their seemingly large and buoyant economy and are more complacent about exporting. That Risk strategy looks smarter in Sydney than Timaru.

One significant difference is NZ start-ups don’t tap into overseas investment as much as Australian firms – if this impression is wrong please let me know. Instead our entrepreneurs opt to cash out of their businesses at an earlier stage – in many cases when their business and products are still immature.

I’m not a finance expert, but this tells me New Zealand companies suffer from poor access to venture capital – or if they have access to VC funds, they don’t have access to the right kind of venture capital.

 

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It is not the best first impression when afternoon mail starts with the words: “good morning”.

On the upside “good morning” means the sender has, at least, thought about manners. They just haven’t thought enough.

On that level Good morning is better than “Oi you!” or worse.

And yes, it’s a more original start than the standard “Hi Bill”. Or “Dear Mr Bennett”. Some variation is welcome.

But not too often.

The problem is “good morning” mails often don’t arrive in the morning. Not even when the writer clicks their send button mail in the morning.

Australians forget time zones

A lot of mail in New Zealand comes from Australia which is usually two or more hours behind New Zealand. When the Bruces and Shelias in Sydney are still boiling billy cans for the day’s first brew, we are ready for lunch.

Public relations people send a lot of the offending messages.

When an Aussie PR sends a “good morning” that arrives late afternoon, it says they only care about journalists in their own country.

The chances are that the “good morning” message is just a bulk press release sent out to dozens of people in Australia and New Zealand.

The subtle, unvoiced subtext of such a message is “we’re happy to take money off of our clients to service New Zealand media, but can’t make an effort to do the best job.”

The key point is that senders have no control over when readers see their mail. This make it presumptuous to start a message that way even when you’re in the same time zone as the reader.

You’ll still be polite or friendly if you start the mail with hi or hello followed by the person’s name.