Piers Ridyard: Build a validated local base before heading to US market

Piers Ridyard is the CEO of London-based Radix, a high-throughput platform to build and distribute decentralized applications.

Before taking the helm at Radix, Ridyard co-founded Surematics, a YCombinator S’17 company.

He has talked to Itel.am about his experience in Y Combinator and entry to global markets.

Y Combinator makes you grow

It was an amazing experience. They don’t open doors particularly for you, but the majority of what they do for you is forcing you to grow.

11:07 | 02.03.18 |

Craig Cannon: Do not be afraid of applying to Y Combinator

The focus is very much on taking your company to the next level. It really makes sense only if the company has the ability to start getting traction in market, have some costumers that verify that.

Y Combinator is continually kicking you up the ass until you to get out, talk to costumers, build products, and keep that really high intensity for 3 months period.

12:57 | 11.10.16 |

Y Combinator partner calls on Armenian startups to not be afraid

And it’s incredible to see what happens over that time.

Validate your company locally first

Your biggest market in world is maybe America, that’s fine. But you can learn a lot by validating yourself locally.

Before deciding to get to US, you need to make sure you have paying customers and a validated base locally.

12:57 | 16.03.18 |

Juha Ruohonen: Get out of your country and see who your competitors are

It’s important to build the customer base, even if it’s not a sustainable customer base, because your company needs to have a much bigger market to take hold. But it really depends on the company.

By the way, China is as much competitive market as America and in many ways it’s harder to break into.

Hire an American salesperson

If you have already started that costumer validation and got some initial traction, selling in America is really difficult. Americans are fantastic at selling, it’s one of the things they are excellent in.

11:55 | 05.04.18 |

Stephane Gantchev: The general problem of the region is “overengineering”

My biggest advice to any startup looking to break into America is to hire an American salesperson.

Narine Daneghyan talked to Piers Ridyard