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Comment by johngrefe | Hacker News Reader

Starting an international SaaS company is a beast of an undertaking, kudos.

What other options are there?

I am not being snarky. In my head any and all SaaS plays are inherently international. Perhaps that's because I am Slovenian and any endeavour that is not international by default is doomed from the get go.

I could not imagine a SaaS story that is viable in mid to long term without inherent internationalization. Except perhaps US based companies, however there WILL be trouble as soon as you try to enter European market if you assume that US is the world.

I think it depends on the market and country you're in. If you're in the right vertical or solve a very difficult problem you might earn enough to not go international.

you might get vulnerable to the big american player coming after a few years. In many markets, after a few years you have to enter the size battle.

Many friends of mine have local companies, targeting only the Spanish market. It works well for them, but we have different goals. They want to be local leaders (easier acquisition, lower marketing costs), we want to build a leader in our category (higher investment in development and marketing)

But this is the difference.

I would rather be a small fish in a big pond than a big fish in a small pond.

Especially if the first is many times bigger than the second one could ever be.

Our team visited Pablo back in 2010 when he was just working with some remote developers and was based in Barcelona himself. He was already talking about thinking bigger and had some good strategies in mind. It's awesome to see it played out well.

I think he is a great example of an Entrepreneur not just talking about it, but doing it.

Kudos to Teambox for getting bigger and growing. Smart move is to hire a US CEO for raising funds & building a sales team out there.

With all due respect to Teambox, Getting to the US Market alone will not be considered international. Every market has its own set of rules and changing dynamics and present a different set of challenges.

This perception has to change, somehow.

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