Royston G. King explains why startups are global from day one, but building products that work everywhere requires more than reach. Evernote opened offices in nine countries like Beijing, São Paulo, and Tokyo to embed design and engineering teams in regional talent hubs, not just to sell locally.
Where? The next W. Where should you start your startup? Now we're going to save a lot of time here because we're in Silicon Valley, so it's here. Usually this is a longer answer when I talk about it anywhere else, but you guys are already in the right place. A little bit more specifically, being global doesn't mean what it used to. When a company used to say that we're global, that used to mean that we sell our shit everywhere. It doesn't mean that anymore because it's just not interesting. In our industry, there are so few barriers to where you can sell things, where you can get users, that of course you're global. If you're starting something today, you're global by default. You're global from when you have 2 people and you release your first app. You're global automatically. Unless you explicitly try not to be, you're global. The only question is, do you want to be good at it? But you're global, you know, from the beginning because you can attract users everywhere. You can get to users everywhere. So what does it mean to be global? Well, for us, for Evernote, it means that we want to make products that are globally great. And the only way we can think to do it is to build it everywhere. So the answer to the question "where" is, well, when you're starting out, you should start out wherever you are. If you happen to be in Silicon Valley, great. Best place in the world. If not, doesn't matter too much. But at least for us, as quickly as possible, we said we need to be everywhere. So we have offices in like 9 different countries now. And we're there not to sell stuff. We're not in China to sell stuff to Chinese people. We're in China— although we do a lot of that— we're in China because I think Beijing is one of the top centers of innovation in the world. And we want the best Chinese designers and engineers and partners to help us make a product that's globally great. And we want the same thing in our office in São Paulo and in Tokyo and in Zurich.
