In this interview, the speaker explains how their recruitment firm entered the U.S. market by establishing a base in Austin, Texas, a major tech hub. Rather than a traditional sales push, they adopted a community‑led approach focused on the fintech and insurtech sectors. Starting in August, they used Meetup.com to identify relevant local groups, contacted organizers, and offered to sponsor or co‑organize events. This led to speaking opportunities, panel participation, and the creation of a local podcast called “Austin Tech Leaders.” By consistently embedding themselves in the community, they built brand awareness, attracted partners and hires, and received positive reception from the local tech ecosystem.
Chapters
August last year, it was like, right, cool, let's do this properly. Give it a real crack. Let's give it a go. We'd set up an infrastructure now because obviously we tried to run before I could walk really with the American stuff originally. But then as the business grew and we started hiring people, we had people in positions, it made more sense to then be able to do it. So we started that in August this year, decided on Austin as the location.
Why did you decide on that?
It's just a tech hub for like, for the US. So many startups, a lot of good technology businesses. It just has become like one of the go-to places in America for technology.
What was the strategy? What was like, how are you going to crack into this market?
We went a different way about it. I was obviously a big fan of your podcast, um, and I just thought, you know what, let's do much more community-led approach.
So, so what was the first step with that?
I went on meetup.com.
Okay.
Found that we wanted to focus on a specific area, specific type of, uh, business, technology, specific type of business, so fintech and insurtech.
Okay.
Found all different meetup groups or event groups that was, uh, in the area, contacted the organizers, spoke to them about We've come to Austin, we'd love to sponsor, co-organize, help you run some events.
Was that the outreach? Was it, hey, this is what we do, would love to help or support in some way? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So look, we've come to Austin and we focus on this sector. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, really, really keen to be a part and embed ourselves within the community.
And how was that received?
Really well.
Really?
Really well, yeah. So then managed to start co-organizing and sponsoring a few events, which then led to speaking on like within the forum on meetup.com and people saying, I would like to have this person, this person do a talk, or helping organize around roundtables. I went out to Austin and done a panel, um, meet up there. Then that developed into, I would like to hear from this person, so I then contacted them and said, people in my group would like to hear from you. So we started the podcast, yeah, the Austin Tech Leaders. And then from there, start building up a name within the area, and then work people just sort of just gravitated towards us and were happy to work with us because they've seen what we're doing there.
