Hi, I'm Mahara and I'm here with Alexia Ohannessian,
international expansion leader for Trello, is that right?
Yes, I've been working for Trello for the last two years and a half.
I came in to take care of Brazil's launch
and now I take care of Trello's international expansion.
Nice. How are you feeling here in RD Summit?
Have you ever been to Florianópolis?
It's my second time in Florianópolis
and the second time at RD Summit.
So, I'm very impressed this year. It's huge!
Last year it was already big,
but this year it is even bigger.
It's quite interesting because people really
want to see content, so they go to the lectures,
they show interest, they go to the booths and ask questions.
I think the audience is really interested.
Yes. That's nice.
Talking a bit more about international expansion,
which was your talk's topic today, right?
How was it to manage a team remotely,
which is something that can face many blocks along the way.
How was that experience?
Our experience working remotely actually
happened before our internationalization.
When we became a company, back in 2014,
because before that we were just a product,
one of the people in the company,
one of the first to work with the product,
had to move to Hawaii. Our headquarter is in NY.
Nobody wanted to let him go.
So, they started working remotely with him.
At the beginning they failed, they couldn't communicate well and etc.
Little by little, we created the rules
and started communicating well.
Today we have 65% of our employees
working remotely, including international people.
So, in that sense
to the international team, it's quite pleasant
since we are not different.
We're just other remote employees.
We have many rules about communicating a lot.
We try to communicate even more then needed,
so that we are sure to show context.
A simple example:
if I'm answering someone from my cell phone,
I explain I'm using my cell.
Because the way we writ on the cell is different
than the way we write on a laptop.
So, I give them the context
so that people understand why my answer was so fast.
It's not because I'm upset,
it's just because I'm in another context.
So, we have many tips about how to work remotely.
Actually, many people think the most difficult is
to begin working,
but the most difficult is to stop working
and making sure there's a limit between personal and professional life.
I can imagine. And is it
that you deal with remote jobs and the cultural differences
you end up having to face in such a large team?
What are the main challenges you faced
and what have you learned during the process?
I think I was the first or second foreigner in the company.
It's an American company and I'm European, I'm French.
So, the way an European sees the world
is quite different from the way and American does.
So, we needed lots of education and explanation
You really need to create an empathy vibe
that makes people willing to understand each other
and to try to be on someone else's shoes.
I brought a lot of content on cultural differences.
We had an workshop.
I brought cultural differences specialists
so that he could explain that a French person is going to say "hi"
differently than a Brazilian one and that is just cultural.
Explaining that, people started having a common vocabulary
and were able to say "oh, you do that because you're from that culture"
Then a game is created, a common vocabulary
that helps people to better communicate .
Then, any time I face cultural challenges in the company,
or talking to an user, I make sure to report that
to everybody, so that we all understand it.
For example, in France,
when we make a report,
we divide it in three parts and a conclusion.
The most important is the conclusion, that comes at the end,
because you explained all the context before.
In the US, that is not the case.
You start with highlights.
Then you give context if needed.
In the beginning, to me, this was very complicated.
Why do they write the conclusion in the beginning?
I didn't understand how it worked. I started explaining it.
Today, I adapt because it's an American Company.
But on the other hand, they know that maybe
I'm going to give a bit more context than them because of my culture.
So, I think to communicate and educate a lot is very important.
It's really to be aware of the differences
because sometimes when a person says "no"
and the weight of that is different to someone else.
The engagement, the "yes" may also be different.
So, we try to work a lot and communicate a lot.
Besides these cultural difficulties and having teams working remotely,
what are the main challenges and tips you could give to companies
that are trying to start their international expansion,
or thinking about that?
I think first, more related to working remotely,
the great advantage of it
is being able to work with people
based on their talents
and not on the place where they live.
This brings lots of diversity. For example:
one of my co-workers lives in Idaho, in the middle of the US.
He has four kids and home schools them.
He is my co-worker. If we were in the same office,
we would have never met.
So, this diversity allowed our product to evolve.
For example, someone travelled to Brazil to visit
and, seeing how people interacted, had an idea.
He brought that to us and now it's part of our product..
This already follows that important understanding.
Then, regarding tips, first is, if you really want to invest...
in internationalization, it must be a long term thing.
You can't think
"I'm going to stay for three months and if it doesn't work I give up".
This certainly won't work.
But if you think about conquering a new market
you must go step by step,
you must build a new brand and that is important.
It's also important to be humble, because even if your brand
is very strong in your country,
it may not even exist in some other country.
So, you must create that, build that brand.
This demands time, partnerships and investment.
Another important thing is to go to that country
before you make a decision.
For example, the data says
we must go to France because it is a nice country,
but maybe France already has
a Trello equivalent that everyone is using
and it might be super difficult to enter that market.
So, maybe it is better to go to Spain.
We need to understand that.
Go there and try to understand the market helps a lot.
Not only to know if you can invest or not,
but that helps you to know how to invest.
Because communication channels are different.
Content is different in each country.
So, if you go there, you can feel,
you can see what works.
A basic example:
we work a lot with co-marketing partnerships.
In Brazil, you send an e-mail and the other person responds.
You schedule a meeting and all is fine.
In Nordic countries, we sent e-mails and no one ever answered
because to contact in this direct way
was strange to them.
But now, we make events there and we have met people
and we have dozens of them
wanting to be our partners.
But they had to know us before. So, to try and understand
the cultural codes helps a lot.
Got it. Also talking about international tips,
but coming back to Brazil.
How was Trello's arrival to Brazil and how do you see
the Brazilian market for companies today?
The decision to come to Brazil was made simply looking
at the numbers of users we had outside the US.
Brazil was the largest country with 300 thousand users in 2015,
and that was a lot.
Actually we tested Brazil, Spain and Germany.
In Spain, we translated, but did nothing else.
In Germany, we invested a little
in talking to the user and in promotion.
"We are available in your language".
In Brazil we did PR.
We advertised on TV.
They hired me for Brazil's launch. We launched a blog.
We launched on social medias, it was a big action
compared to the other.
And the greatest learning is that in Spain nothing happened.
So, to simply translate is not enough.
Promotion, marketing, was very important.
In Brazil we saw that the sign up curve
impacted Latin America, because in those countries
the sign ups were the same as Brazil's.
Because all the marketing done in Brazil
impacted the countries surround it.
So, it was having someone
who already knew the market involved.
And then we left Brazil alone for a few months
to see what happened after the launch.
And we saw that the growth curve was not that good.
So we started to invest more and therefore,
we have someone dedicated to Brazil, that is Amanda.
Many people receive Amanda's e-mails from Trello.
She does exist.
I also receive them. She is here as well, right?
She is here at the event.
That's it, to bring knowledge
and content related to the Brazilian market.
I don' know the numbers of the co-marketing we did,
but it's about one per month for about a year and a half.
We've worked on themes here,
we make events.
And we'll have more events now.
So, we are exploring local channels
with local partnerships.
Got it. To end this topic
about international expansion, what would you say was
Trello's biggest challenge during its expansion?
You translated the tool to 21 languages.
You participated in this process.
What would you say were the major difficulties
you had to face during this process?
We didn't expect that, but to translate to 21 languages
was not such a big challenge
because we had a crowdsourcing process,
we used our own platform to do that
and it worked well.
In four months we were able to launch.
I believe the most difficult to anyone in the international
is the alignment with business people.
Because when a company is focused on one country,
it is difficult to explain that they must invest all over again,
to start from scratch in another country.
And having this long term vision with the investment issue.
No so much the investment in terms of money,
but to accept to hire someone to be dedicated
and that you may not see results in the first six months.
And that is normal. I believe this is the challenge
we face, but anyone with whom I talk
and who works with international, faces the same issue.
-Got it. Thanks for the tips. -You're welcome!
It was quite enlightening.
We're very happy for having you here with us for the second time.
Maybe we will repeat it for the third time as well next year.
Thanks for everything you shared with us, Alexia.
Thank you and congrats for the event.
It is really on fire.
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