S6E12 – How to Scale your SaaS Internationally: A Founder’s Guide to Going Global with Nicola Calabrese

are you a SaaS founder wondering how to scale your SaaS internationally? In this episode, Joran welcomes ⁠Nicola Calabrese⁠, the founder of ⁠Undertow⁠, a localization agency focused on aiding SaaS businesses in their ⁠international growth⁠. Nicola brings a wealth of experience, having managed translation and localization projects for startups and enterprises in over 20 languages. He also hosts the Multilingual Content Podcast, discussing international expansion and localization technologies. The episode explores the ⁠importance of scaling SaaS⁠ internationally through internet expansion and localization strategies.

Why Going International Matters

Nicola explains that for European SaaS companies, local markets can become too small very quickly. Expanding internationally opens the door to new customers and helps you stay ahead—especially if your competitors are already in other countries. But success depends on understanding each market’s language and culture.

When Is the Right Time to Expand?

Think global early—but don’t rush. Nicola says to wait until you have product-market fit. If you start seeing users from other countries or they’re asking for your app in their language, that’s a sign it might be time to expand.

Common Misunderstandings About Global Growth

One big myth? That one strategy works everywhere. It doesn’t. Each country has different customer habits and expectations. Nicola also warns against relying only on AI for translations—it can hurt your brand. Real localization takes research and care.

Mistakes to Avoid

A big mistake companies make is treating localization as just “translation.” It’s much more. You need to adapt your marketing, support, and overall strategy for each market. Skimping on this can cost you.

Steps for Successful Expansion

Nicola recommends a smart, step-by-step plan:

• Start with market research (pain points, buyer personas, use cases)
  
• Launch a minimal version
  
• Collect feedback and iterate
  
• Start small, then scale gradually
  Also, have the right tools, team, and tech stack in place.
  

How to Enter the European Market

For U.S. companies looking at Europe, Nicola suggests starting with Germany, France, Spain, or Italy. They’re big markets with lots of potential. The UK is easier language-wise, but other countries may have less competition depending on your niche.

Tools & Frameworks That Help

Use a Minimum Viable Experience framework to test how your product feels in different countries. Translation management systems and brand style guides keep your voice consistent. Document your processes so you can improve and grow.

Why Localization Really Matters

Localization isn’t just about language—it’s about the entire user experience. It shows you care about your new customers. Testing your app in different languages helps make sure it works just as well everywhere.

How to Overcome Expansion Challenges

Balancing consistency and customization is tricky. Don’t make totally different products for each country—it gets messy fast. Instead, keep your core values but adapt your messaging and content for each market.

The Future of Global SaaS

AI will make it easier to go global, Nicola believes—but you still need to understand each market deeply. Companies that truly localize and connect with users will be the ones that win.

Nicola’s Advice for SaaS Founders

Make sure your product fits your home market before going global. Start small. Choose just a few markets at first. Do your homework. Stay consistent with your brand while adapting your message for each region.

Final Thoughts

Nicola suggests giving someone ownership over each market. Use the right tools, document your processes, and always look for ways to improve. When done right, international expansion shows your commitment—and opens the door to global success.

Key Timecodes

• (0:00) – Importance of Localization
• (0:47) – Episode Introduction and Guest Intro
• (1:28) – Why International Expansion is Crucial for B2B SaaS
• (2:33) – When to Consider Going International
• (3:14) – Indicators for Localization Needs
• (3:36) – Common Misconceptions in Global Expansion
• (5:21) – Common Mistakes in Global Expansion Strategy
• (7:19) – Step-by-Step Approach to Going Global
• (9:20) – Strategy for US Companies Entering Europe
• (11:06) – Resources and Frameworks for Expansion
• (12:15) – Case Study: A Company’s Approach to Localization
• (13:01) – Steps to Prepare for International Expansion
• (14:11) – Metrics to Track for Successful Localization
• (16:18) – Best Practices for Going Global
• (18:42) – Importance of Style Guides in Localization
• (20:25) – Significance of Proper Localization
• (22:12) – AI in Localization: Current Limitations
• (24:10) – Challenges: Cultural Differences and Brand Consistency
• (25:42) – Future of Internationalization and AI
• (27:36) – Choosing Markets: Europe vs. US Strategy
• (30:03) – Risks and Opportunities in 2025
• (31:04) – Advice for B2B SaaS Founders on Internationalization
• (31:39) – Advice for Early-Stage SaaS Companies
• (32:16) – Preparations for Scaling to 10M ARR
• (33:59) – Final Summary and Key Takeaways
• (34:33) – Closing Notes and Contact Information

Transcription

[00:00:00.000] – Nicola Calabrese

You can compare the visits before and after the localization and see if there’s a peak. If there’s no peak, it might be for different reasons, but that would be a starting point to analyze. If there’s a peak, how do people reach the website? If your English website is reached through SEO, have you done SEO research for that specific market or have just translated the website and hoping it’s going to rank? It’s really important to do it before launching into a market to understand the product is needed, but maybe you need to change your approach. Maybe the product that you’re offering is not known as in that category in that market, so you might need to do more educational content. You don’t have one single approach that works every time because if your strategy actually is starting sales is crucial, you need to have sales, you definitely can go in another country and hope that it’s going to work completely different. You still have to start with that.

[00:00:47.070] – Joran

In this episode, we’re going to talk about how to scale your SaaS internationally by Internet expansion and localization strategies. My guest today is Nicola Calabrese , founder of Undertow , a localization agency specializing in helping SaaS businesses grow internationally. Nicola brings over a decade of experience in localization, having managed translation and localization project for startups and enterprises in more than 20 languages. He’s also the host of the Multilingual Content Podcast, where he delves into international expansion, multilingual content strategies, and localization technologies. Welcome to the show, Nicola.

[00:01:26.120] – Nicola Calabrese

Hi, Joran. Nice to be here.

[00:01:28.470] – Joran

We’re going to dive right in. I always start with the question, why? Why is going international important for B2B SaaS founders today?

[00:01:36.860] – Nicola Calabrese

In general, especially if I’m thinking about European SaaS, the company usually find that their own home market gets too small too quickly. So thinking international from the get-go, it’s very important to have a better reach across different users in the rest of the world. The other thing is competition. Most likely your competition is already in different markets depending on the vertical that you’re addressing. If want to catch up with them, you cannot show up in English in a country where English is not a language that is commonly used, for example. Let’s say, for example, in Germany, you cannot compete with companies that offer German user interface and content if you’re just showing up in English.

[00:02:14.570] – Joran

You mentioned right from the beginning, but you often see a startup first focus on their home country. In our case, being European, you see indeed in France, going to France, Germany, going to Germany, Dutch less because we’re smaller. But I guess when should somebody start thinking about going international?

[00:02:33.970] – Nicola Calabrese

If you’re a European company, it’s best to keep that in mind from the beginning, but that doesn’t mean that you have to start going international from the very beginning. You have to first absolutely to nail down the product market fit Because if you try to expand before you have that, you’re just going to spread yourself too thin and it’s going to be really difficult to be successful. The other thing that you can keep an eye on is active users from other countries. If your product is, let’s say, only available in English, where you start seeing a lot of users in some countries despite of not having their language available, that’s really a signal for you to think about, Okay, so maybe it might make sense to make at least the app available in that language and see if their market can grow and we take it from there.

[00:03:14.170] – Joran

Start in English. If you are going to go international, then I guess if people start complaining that the app is not available in Spanish or any other language, then you can start thinking about it.

[00:03:25.360] – Nicola Calabrese

Yeah, that’s a big signal. If you have a user literally asking you for begging you to make the available in their language. That’s definitely a market worth looking into, especially if it’s a big market like Spain, Germany, or France.

[00:03:36.380] – Joran

When we talk about going global, what are some common misconceptions SaaS founders have about that?

[00:03:43.550] – Nicola Calabrese

There’s a couple I see often. The first and the main one is thinking the same strategy will work exactly the same across all the countries. That’s not possible because the user behaviors are different, market are different. Sometimes also cultural norms around some things are different, or some pain At some point that are very important in your home market, they fall flat in another country. Again, if you go into Germany, they’re probably going to care much more about the réglementation around data privacy than maybe if you’re coming from the US, for example. That’s not a big issue. You need to adjust your communication style and your strategy. The other one is that AI can do it all. You can just rely on AI for translation and hoping for the best. That can actually lead to some, let’s say, funny results, but obviously, like disasters your brand because you’re going to damage your reputation even before you start. Because your entry in market people don’t know you. The first thing they see is some sentences that sound weird and funny. That’s not a great way to present yourself to users and customers.

[00:04:44.450] – Joran

Yeah, in the end, it could be a need a lazy way to say, We’re just going to translate everything using AI into X number of languages, but then you end up with some funny situations, probably.

[00:04:56.090] – Nicola Calabrese

You’re not giving a fair chance to some markets. You might see we’re not getting traction in in this market, but it might be because you haven’t put a proper effort in that. That’s another thing that is really important, let’s say, make your effort organized when you’re going into a market, not going into too many markets at the same time without the proper resources, because the risk is that you don’t have enough resources to follow up properly on each market and support them enough to see them grow.

[00:05:21.640] – Joran

You answered the next question already, but when we talk about common mistakes, when you see companies going international, you mentioned, I guess, not every country is different. So a copy your playbook, you have cultural differences, don’t go in too many markets at the same time. What other common mistakes SaaS founders make?

[00:05:37.830] – Nicola Calabrese

Not investing too much in proper market research and localization. In a sense, they’re not just language, not just the translation, but understand you might have to change your whole go-to-market strategy, investing in support. For example, if you’re entering a market and there’s a component in your go-to-market strategy where you need support from, let’s say, humans, you need somebody in the market that is able to actually give support to users and customers in that market. That’s something that sometimes I see that. Then you see there’s not much traction because people sign up for your app, then they run into a problem, their help center, maybe. It might even be localized, but they want to get in touch with somebody and there’s nobody who speaks the language in the company. That’s a big blocker, obviously, for them.

[00:06:18.830] – Joran

I think you have an interesting point. It’s not just translating the app, it’s also doing the support, the help set articles, maybe even blog content. If you are going to do it, you probably have to do it properly and not just one piece It’s a bit different.

[00:06:30.980] – Nicola Calabrese

Yeah, and also the marketing as well. Most of the times with B2B SaaS, you have to differentiate the product part and the product languages and marketing languages. You might need the product in 40 languages because your customers have users all over the world. But then the people actually making the decision to buy your software are just in a couple of countries. You can just focus the marketing efforts on there. That means that you can allocate resources for localization in a smarter way. You maybe have a couple of languages that you go with marketing. You have all the the documentations and the sales collateral that you might need to provide to sales teams to be effective in the market just for decision makers. Then you got on the other hand, the app may be available in more languages with help center to support the users so they don’t raise too many tickets, and that doesn’t put a strain on your support team.

[00:07:19.800] – Joran

We’re going to talk about common misconceptions. Let’s turn it around where we’re going to talk about, I guess, if somebody is listening now and we want to go global, we want to go into new markets. What would be the best way to do so we can start from the beginning? What would be a step-by-step approach for them?

[00:07:35.630] – Nicola Calabrese

There’s not, let’s say, one single way that you can do exactly the same formula over and over because obviously every company in the market is different. But in general, the first point will be to analyze the market, understand what are the pain points in that market. If, let’s say, the buyer persona, are they going to be the same? The user persona, are they going to be the same? The use cases for the app in that market, are they going to be the same? Then see if you need to adjust. Look at the customer journey, how it is, and identify, for example, the very minimum, all the little pieces that you have to have in place as an initial experience at least. They get a consistent experience throughout the funnel, so they can get attracted, converted, and then actually supported throughout, so they renew as well. Then put together the tech stack that you need to have in place for all these things to work and not break as soon as you want to scale, see who is going to do what, launch an initial experience, gather data, and iterate. It’s similar to developing a new product, launching in a new market, and then you iterate on that.

[00:08:32.420] – Nicola Calabrese

Maybe the initial experience is very minimal, so you don’t have a huge website. You just start with a micro website that you grow in it. Maybe you don’t do all the features or you have different apps and you just start with one because there’s one user that you’re actually targeting, and then you build on that over time. So don’t expect to do all at once because that will be impossible. Not even a huge company with a lot of resources do that. Just go with everything at once, but just start with the minimum that you need to be successful and build on it.

[00:08:59.990] – Joran

Figure out if your buyer persona is the same as the product user, identify the minimum localization strategy, create the tech stack around it so you can actually translate everything, create the team around it, and then launch in a new market with as minimum as possible to figure out if it’s enough. You mentioned don’t launch into multiple markets at the same time.

[00:09:20.700] – Nicola Calabrese

In this case-You can, but don’t launch it. It’s not usually best to launch a 50 market at once, especially if you’re a small team. It will be very difficult to manage.

[00:09:28.360] – Joran

Probably mostly interesting for EU companies or non-US countries. Have you seen US companies trying to get into Europe? What would be the best approach for them? Because they’re used of everybody speaking English, and now you come into a region where we have a different language for every country. What would you recommend them doing?

[00:09:50.560] – Nicola Calabrese

The first thing is to keep in mind that Europe is very fragmented in the sense that even if countries are not as big as the US, the individual countries are very different with different user behavior and also the way people are dressed. People, for example, you’re coming from the US. In some countries, there are different level of formalities that are crucial to nail if you want to be relevant and not dismissed. In that case, from the US, obviously, you can stuff on the main markets, usually, which tends to be Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. Those are the big four. I will recommend doing your market research because depending on the vertical that you’re addressing, there might be other markets that are more relevant or maybe where there’s less competition. Sometimes companies to go into the UK first because it’s in English, but competition is tough for some verticals. At the end of the day, it would actually be better to go in other markets in Europe where you might have to invest in localization a little bit, but the return is much better because you have much less competition than in the UK, where basically with English, the barrier of entry is lower.

[00:10:46.990] – Joran

Yeah, I think a lot of companies will go for UK first rather than a different region. When we talk about implementing the expansion strategy, are there any resources, processes, frameworks, anything I guess you would recommend people with checkout to implement this even more successfully?

[00:11:06.460] – Nicola Calabrese

What we usually apply is something similar to what I explained before, the minimum viable experience framework. That’s the analysis of the customer journey, looking at each customer touch point and see what is the minimum that you have to have in place so customers can get through the whole funnel, supported in their own language. Let’s say, for example, they don’t jump suddenly on an English page or something that might look sketchy in some countries. When you have everything in your language and suddenly you end up on an English page in English that might look a bit sketchy or not. To make you doubt, are they going to be supporting me when I actually use this across the company? Especially when we’re talking about B2B, these are decision to roll out the software then to a company. They want to make sure that it’s the right software and they’re going to get support afterwards. It’s not just the initial contract signing.

[00:11:52.430] – Joran

I used to work at a company where we grew internationally quickly. We first started with sales in the local language. I was, for example, the first person who spoke Dutch. Then when we got a lot of clients, in the end, I ended up doing the customer success as well because I was the only person speaking Dutch. Then from there, I guess the more clients we got, the more people we hired with a certain language skill. Is that a good approach to do it or would you recommend differently?

[00:12:15.710] – Nicola Calabrese

In your case, it’s probably fine because it depends if you are, let’s say, sales lead or maybe in some case you’re product lead. You’re starting from the product from a different segment of customers. Then when you want to, let’s say, capture the enterprise customer in that market, That’s when you bring sales in maybe and have more, let’s say, structure. Maybe you even set up a company depending on how you’re working. That’s what I meant by you don’t have one single approach that works every time because if your strategy actually is starting… Sales is crucial, you need to have sales, you definitely can go in another country and hope that it’s going to work completely different. You still have to start from there.

[00:12:50.720] – Joran

If a SaaS founder is listening in and they think, Hey, I want to start with this soon, is there anything they could do today to prepare themselves to go more international, to go into different regions?

[00:13:01.500] – Nicola Calabrese

Well, the first thing I recommend is to analyze the current user base to see if they already have some users in some countries, and then they know the vertical they’re addressing, so they know which are the, let’s say, most important markets. If you start seeing that you already have some users in a market that is potentially interesting for you, that’s something to think about. After that, we’ll be analyzing deeper that market and figure out what’s the minimum that you have to place. If you need salespeople, how are you going to do it? Are you going to have salespeople from your home office, headquarter working remotely, or are you going to hire remote people? Because sometimes you need for legal reason to have a legal entity in the country. So that’s something as well to consider before launching.

[00:13:40.110] – Joran

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[00:14:11.190] – Nicola Calabrese

If they have already launched an initial experience, they’re starting to see at least traction in the sense that you see, for example, if you localize your website, you start seeing that you can compare the visits before and after the localization and see if there’s a peak. If there’s no peak, it might be for different reasons, but there will be a starting point to analyze. If there’s a peak, how do people reach the website? If your English website is reached through SEO, have you done SEO research for that specific market or it just translated the website and hoping it’s going to rank? If it’s through PPC campaigns, that allows you to see other PPC campaigns that are actually not working. People click on that, but they’re not relevant ones. When they get to the website, they drop off. Then see churn. If they have activation and churn as usual for the app to see if there’s a difference before and after localization.

[00:14:58.500] – Joran

In the end, it’s looking at the same metric, comparing country over country, websites of traffic, conversion rates.

[00:15:04.220] – Nicola Calabrese

It wouldn’t be fair to compare them with your home market because that’s already very well developed. But yeah, compare with the same country. If you’re going in several markets at the same time, maybe two or three, which is usually what I recommend. You can compare the market among each other. If you see, Okay, so we’re doing really well in this market, but in this one, no. From a market research, we should go well in both. Try to understand because your market research will help you understand as well if it’s just the implementation that is not working, or if you made the market that is not ready for you. Because if you’re done the market research, you’re sure your product is going to work there. That’s why it’s really important to do it before launching into our market to understand the product is needed. But maybe you need to change your approach. Maybe the product that you’re offering is not known as a category in that market, so you might need to do more educational content. They learn your solution exist, and then why your solution is the best. Because sometimes in your home market, maybe you have other competitors doing exactly the same thing.

[00:15:57.590] – Nicola Calabrese

When you move to a new market, your competitor might be an Excel spreadsheet and people don’t know that something like your solution exists. That’s a different challenge.

[00:16:05.230] – Joran

You have the home advantage that people know your brand. You’ve been there longer, people know you. So going to different markets at the same time. You can compare those against each other rather than comparing them against your home market.

[00:16:18.010] – Nicola Calabrese

Yeah, again, I want to stress again. That’s also why I said it’s easy if you’re doing three, five markets, compared if you’re doing 100 markets, that will be really stressful to measure and compare, especially if you’re not a big team. If you have a big team, go for it. But if usually you don’t have too many people, try to keep it small and then scale.

[00:16:36.010] – Joran

I think that’s already somewhat of a best practice, going global, going to different markets at the same time. Any other best practices on how to really go international?

[00:16:46.300] – Nicola Calabrese

First of all, assign an owner, somebody that owns their market in your company that’s sometimes underestimated or overlooked. You have to have one person in charge of that market in the sense that they will be responsible for looking over the international expansion in that market. Then use our translation management system, a platform that allows you to have a single source of truth across the company. All the content, all the strings that are going to be translated, you’re going to be on the same platform. They can keep databases of organizations that we use them. You can have glossaries. Everybody across products, support, and marketing are going to use the same terminology in the market, so it’s not confusing for the users. Also, I have a style guide. For each market, put down a document that says how the brand speaks in in that market. You have things like form of address, for example, like a level of formality, different channels, different way of communicating. Maybe on social media, you use a certain tone of voice, but maybe it changes slightly when you go into white papers. But it needs to be written down because when you start having teams working on content and product, you have different people.

[00:17:49.570] – Nicola Calabrese

Everybody’s going to do things slightly different. That’s a way as well for you to keep the brand consistent in that market, which is a similar to the English brand. You have to do it for different markets as well. That’s why it’s, again, I recommend going slowly and then build up. The last thing is document processes. So establish some process and document them because if you document them, that’s also the best way then to improve them. When you put them down, you see that overly complicated and you want to simplify them. If it’s just in somebody’s head, first of all, not everybody maybe is on the same page. They don’t know what’s going to happen. If you are onboarding new people to work on a new market, you can take the process that you use for a previous market If not all of them, most of them, you can apply them to the new market, especially internal processes. How are you going to send that translation request, how you keep updated the glossaries, what are the approval steps for different kinds of content?

[00:18:42.630] – Joran

I like it because you’re going to run into so many things that you probably haven’t figured out when you’re going to go into new markets. If you’re going to document it, at least you know the next time, Oh, yeah, we need to think about XYZ. You mentioned create your formalities. Is there a name for a document like that? Normally, you would think about SaaS positioning, but this goes further. How do you actually communicate and how do you want to? What is the name of a document like this?

[00:19:06.760] – Nicola Calabrese

A document like this is called usually a style guide and includes also things like, are you going to write numbers? For example, are you going to put 1,000? Is it going to be with a full stop in between one and zero? Is it going to be a comma? Is it going to be a space? Those little details, they make it relevant for the actual people in the market when they see it, they see things written in the way they’re used to. Because in some countries, you don’t have maybe a standard, so there’s different way to do that. You don’t want to have a document where maybe 1,000 is written with a space in between one and zero, and in the other document, you have one point. That’s attention to detail. It gives direction to who is writing and translating content, so they know exactly how they’re going to treat those things. Dates as well. Are you going to maybe abbreviate all these little details that you have? That’s why it’s called a style guide, similar to editorial teams.

[00:19:52.980] – Joran

I guess you can build it along with going international. You’re going to run into things where you think, how we’re actually going to do that. It’s almost an ongoing process where you keep iterating all the time.

[00:20:03.860] – Nicola Calabrese

Yeah. A trick is you can take as a starting point Microsoft style guides. Microsoft makes available the Style Guides in all the languages that they do, and they do a lot of languages. You’re probably going to find one for the languages you want to go into. You can take this as a starting point. They’ve done most of the, let’s say, groundwork of all the details. Then you can customize it, but they make it available online.

[00:20:25.300] – Joran

We talked about it quite a bit already, but localization is really translating everything into the local language? How important is it really to localize everything?

[00:20:35.630] – Nicola Calabrese

You don’t need to localize everything in the sense that there might be some features, some content that is not relevant for your target market. But you do need to look what you decide that it’s important and you decide to localize, it needs to be done properly because that shows that you care to the users in the country. If you see that it’s just a very badly translated document, in the mind of the customer, the brand is going to be damaged because they’re going to think you don’t really care about that market. Otherwise, you would have invested in having proper text written. Or the app, sometimes testing the app for users in different markets makes it different because maybe the translation is correct, but it’s just not easy to use as much as it is in English. Sometimes there’s a lot of time and effort spent on the English app to make it work. Like great user experience, then you go into a new market and nobody has tested it. The translations are correct, but the user experience is not great because some things, once you have them in context or you’re trying to do the actual flow of a scenario, it’s not working as you expect.

[00:21:34.020] – Nicola Calabrese

The user may get more confused and frustrated. There’s a lot of effort on the English, but sometimes not on the target market. This is what is something that show that you care. That you took the time to have a look at the app testing in the language and see it works. You have a smooth user experience there as well.

[00:21:50.150] – Joran

Yeah, it’s what you mentioned before. It’s the first impression sometimes people get, and it looks a bit off or I guess funny or scrappy, then it might do the opposite than what you’re trying to have it done. What is your popular belief out there right now, maybe even on LinkedIn in general, where you completely disagree with right now?

[00:22:12.450] – Nicola Calabrese

I would say not everybody, but some people think AI is a great tool. It’s improving so fast and it’s getting to a very great level. But I see that some people think that, yeah, maybe not right now, but shortly, we’re going to be able to do everything with AI that relates to localization. I don’t agree with that in the sense that there’s still a component component of strategy in general. Understanding your customers, that’s really something that is not so easy for an AI, at least not with the current capability and what looks like it’s going to be in the future. You still have to have people in the market that have the cultural sensibility as well and the market knowledge. The more niche your product is, the more important that is because obviously AI, even if you train them, sometimes they don’t have enough data to understand the nuances of your specific target audience. That’s important. User behaviors as well change because I I still see even with the great level the AI gets, I still see funny translations. For example, I’ve seen one website where they were saying, literally, give pleasure to your customer.

[00:23:11.010] – Nicola Calabrese

In Italian, it sounded like sexual pleasure to your customer. It was like an ERP platform. So it had nothing to do with that. Imagine you’re an Italian company owner, you’re looking at the website or probably you’re considering, you see that and you think, they’re not serious in my market. How are they going to support me if they don’t even take the time to The main web page, I’m not saying an obscure help center as you, then the main web page is saying something like this. That means they don’t really care about the market. So maybe I’d rather go with some competitor that actually has proper content on the website.

[00:23:45.060] – Joran

Yeah, makes sense. You’re being put off right from the beginning and come to the site.

[00:23:49.610] – Nicola Calabrese

You don’t want to be laughed at.

[00:23:51.900] – Joran

Any free marketing is marketing, but it’s not always good. This is one of the challenges people might face going international International. Cultural differences could be a big challenge. Any insights there and any other challenges companies would face going international?

[00:24:10.130] – Nicola Calabrese

What a big challenge is balancing, adapting to the target market and staying in the true to their brand. You want to adapt to the market, but you cannot, let’s say you’re going to 10 markets, you cannot have 10 different products that will be unmanageable. Ten completely different products, 10 completely different positioning that will be really difficult to manage. It is to find the balance. You can We have what can be adapted, but not completely redo the product. Maybe if you feel that there’s a feature that they really need in a target market, maybe it’s worth exploring. Is it a feature that maybe it’s useful in other markets as well? Before you invest in that feature, you look into other markets. The same for tone of voice and the way you communicate. To have a brand ethos. It’s always keep the brand values consistent, not change them for each country. Just change the form of address and the way you speak. Maybe you don’t make too many It’s no jokes in Germany because for your target market, it doesn’t work. You are a bit more formal maybe in France, because your target audience, they expect a more formal address, but you don’t change completely your values for every country you go in.

[00:25:12.870] – Nicola Calabrese

That’s a recommendation I will give.

[00:25:15.320] – Joran

At one point, you have no idea who you are anymore and what countries is doing what basically.

[00:25:21.240] – Nicola Calabrese

It becomes really difficult to manage as well. From a brand point of view, you’re basically fragmented, and on the other end, it’s really difficult to manage.

[00:25:29.770] – Joran

When we look into the future, how do you see the future of internalization? You mentioned, of course, AI not being the great choice right now to do your translation. Do you see it being different in the future or any other trends?

[00:25:42.570] – Nicola Calabrese

It’s definitely going to be more and more. It’s constantly improving, and that’s going to lower the barrier for going global in the sense that it would allow a lot of companies, if they want to, to start and launch their website or their app in many languages easily. What’s going to make all the There’s a difference then. If everybody can go global with a click of a button, the difference is going to be the companies that do it properly. They actually look into what we discussed before, looking what the customers are looking for, how they want to be addressed, what are they actually paying for and their needs, and then adapting to those, not just automatically translate everything. That’s going to show. That’s the challenge that it’s going to be because everybody can be global, but on the other end, it’s an opportunity because if you do it properly, you can show UK to international customers and users. That will make a lot of difference. It will show. It does For sure.

[00:26:31.260] – Joran

Yeah. That makes sense. I think Indeed is not just translating the text just by putting it into AI and have it spit out different languages. You can see if people really care. In my case, I guess, non-native of English. I can definitely see if somebody created something by themselves in Dutch or they have it done by an AI.

[00:26:53.370] – Nicola Calabrese

There’s a difference when you go with English, especially in B2B. A lot of times English is a very used language, so people can understand it maybe in market. But when you go with their own language, especially when it comes to marketing, it’s a little bit easier to get in just, let’s say, the emotional side of things rather than just the functional side of things if you’re speaking their language and in a way that resonates with them.

[00:27:15.440] – Joran

Maybe, I guess, a different question here because, for example, we can choose as a European company, I guess, to go to different regions in Europe. How do you see it with companies you help? Do they often just say, Let’s skip all the localization, let’s just English only and go to the US and the UK where the markets are big enough to begin with? How do you see that?

[00:27:36.770] – Nicola Calabrese

It depends on the vertical they are addressing. Because one of the things that when you go to the UK and the US, in most categories, it’s going to be really competitive. That’s one of the main reasons why some company decide to start with European countries because you go to other European countries, there’s not much competition there. You might have to face local companies that are not maybe as big as yours or have a different product. So your product is actually better, so you’re getting there. In other cases, they might just face competition from others that don’t have localized content and presence. Maybe they don’t have sales people or support teams that speak the language. That’s going to be an easier competition. Then going to the US, which is still Sometimes it is the case that they decide to go first to the US and then afterwards, let’s say, come back to Europe. When they expand them further with the revenue they get from the US, they invest in going back to Europe. It really depends case by case. I wouldn’t say there’s one single way companies do it. Again, it depends on the company. I wouldn’t recommend one way or the other.

[00:28:34.610] – Nicola Calabrese

You just analyze and figure out that could be a way to go to US first and then come back, or maybe in your specific case, it will be more important, more useful to go to Europe first and then maybe consider tackling the US, which I know it’s not an easy market.

[00:28:49.470] – Joran

When I look at our company, we wanted to go global from day one, but we did everything organically as well. We didn’t even focus with our marketing or paid ads on certain region because we just did everything on organic. I can say it’s not the easiest thing to do because you’re not really focusing on a specific market, even though we did everything in English, so we targeted US mainly. Now it’s working out, but at the beginning, it was quite challenging.

[00:29:16.050] – Nicola Calabrese

Yeah, and again, it depends. Let’s say, for example, product companies might have it easier in a way because they might start from users signing up, especially if it’s not only B2B. Maybe there’s a B2C component. I spoke with people at Canva. They started with 100 languages off the bat, but obviously there was single users starting using it, and that obviously grew the user base in different countries. It allowed them to expand further. It really depends on the case. Usually for B2B, SaaS is a little bit more tricky to go in too many markets at the same time because you need a different level of support. There may be B2C apps.

[00:29:50.380] – Joran

Yeah, because in the end, our apps are going to be more complicated than B2C indeed. What is the biggest risk or maybe even biggest What are the opportunities SaaS founders should prepare for in 2025?

[00:30:03.730] – Nicola Calabrese

The biggest risk is the fact that in a way everybody can be global. You can have competitors that are accessible in your language, in your country. You might have, especially for categories that are competitive. You might have different competitors already in a market. Ai, obviously, it makes it easier. But the opportunity will be that, again, most companies, I still see they don’t invest properly in expansion. With AI making it easier, you might give It’s a false perception that you don’t need to invest in entering a new market that much. That means if you do it properly, you have a competitive advantage because, again, they might have the app and the website translated badly or rightly, but then maybe they don’t have support in other sales. They don’t have an actual maybe a message that is the adapter for that specific market addressing specific pain points.

[00:30:51.320] – Joran

I guess my next question is might even have you summarize it in two sentences. If, let’s say, you have to summarize your best advice on utilization in one or two sentences for B2B SaaS founders, what would it be?

[00:31:04.960] – Nicola Calabrese

It would be start small and then scale.

[00:31:08.860] – Joran

When you say start small, you mean with a couple of markets at the same time, right?

[00:31:13.120] – Nicola Calabrese

A couple of markets at the same time with a minimum viable experience. You don’t start with everything localized. Just the minimum you need to get started, but to start it properly. Yeah.

[00:31:23.890] – Joran

Nice. We’re going to dive into the final two questions, and this can be more general. When we talk about growing a B2B SaaS company, what advice would you give the SaaS founder who’s just starting out and trying to grow the 10K monthly recurring revenue?

[00:31:39.390] – Nicola Calabrese

When we’re talking about international expansion. Make sure you have product market fit before you even think about international expansion. You have so many things on your plate that will just be an additional headache. So make sure you have a product market fit, then you can start thinking about international expansion.

[00:31:55.190] – Joran

Yeah, so don’t even think about it before 10K MRR.

[00:31:58.830] – Nicola Calabrese

Often product If you don’t have a product market fit, yeah, no. You have other things to focus on, I think.

[00:32:03.980] – Joran

When we then, I guess, surpass 10K MR, and we’re now growing towards 10 million ARR, so a huge step. This is also where you’re going to have product market fits. What would be the advice to SaaS founders here.

[00:32:16.950] – Nicola Calabrese

If you haven’t already started preparing for international expansion. As we discussed, there’s so many different things to keep in mind and prepare. Start from there. Again, start small and then scale. First of all, do market research on markets that you want to enter. Analyze your current use base to see where you already have a user active in different countries, then analyze your customer journey, prepare the tech stack, prepare the teams, and then launch the initial experience, gather data, and iterate on your findings. But the market research is really important because it will guide you in your market expansion.

[00:32:52.760] – Joran

Nice. Let me see if I try to summarize. If you’re going to think about going international, nail your product market fit before even going international. Reminder, every country is different. Don’t copy playbooks. It will have cultural differences, formalities. Be prepared for that. Where you are going to localize things, do it properly so that you actually show you care. This is going to be the first impression people get from you. Analyze current user base, so discover potential areas you can actually go into 2-3 markets, or you mention even three to five markets at the same time because it allows you to compare against them, against each other rather than comparing it against your whole market. Assign an owner to become responsible for the market. When you are going to go into different markets, do country market research first. Check if the buyer persona is the same as the product user because you might need to localize things differently there. Identify minimum viable experience. Create a tech stack, set up your local team, launch a new experience, and create a style guide. We’re going to add the example from Microsoft. Document your processes because it’s easier then to improve them so you can reuse them going into new markets.

[00:33:59.780] – Joran

What challenges you’re going to run into. Keep the brand value consistent in any market. Everything can be global with AI now, but you can stand out by showing you care by investing into localization. When we talk about revenue stages, 10K MR, don’t think about international expansion. For 10 million AR, follow the steps and start preparing for internalization.

[00:34:21.670] – Nicola Calabrese

That was a really good summary.

[00:34:23.650] – Joran

All your words. Again, no AI being used here.

[00:34:26.890] – Nicola Calabrese

It’s impressive. It’s impressive.

[00:34:29.250] – Joran

Any Any final notes before we jump off?

[00:34:33.850] – Nicola Calabrese

If, obviously, if anybody have any question about this, obviously, feel free to reach out and check out the Multilingual Content Podcast.

[00:34:41.650] – Joran

If people want to get in contact with you, how can they do? What is the best way?

[00:34:45.250] – Nicola Calabrese

We get in touch on LinkedIn, and then, as I said, again, you can check out the Multilingual Content podcast.

[00:34:51.440] – Joran

Yeah, we’ll do. We’re going to add links to your LinkedIn to the podcast. People can find you. We’re going to add link to the example from Microsoft, so people can get started right away. For people listening on Spotify, leave us a review. It’s going to help us to boost the algorithms, and we’re going to add a poll towards the podcast. So always happy to hear what you thought of this. Thanks again for coming on, Nicola.

[00:35:11.720] – Nicola Calabrese

Thank you for inviting me.

[00:35:13.770] – Joran

Thank you for watching this show of the Grow Your B2B SaaS podcast. You made it till the end, so I think we can assume you like this content. If you did, give us a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel. If you like this content, feel free to reach out if you want to sponsor the show, if you have a specific guest in mind, if you have a specific topic you want us to cover, reach out to me on LinkedIn. More than happy to take a look at it. If you want to know more about Reditus, feel free to reach out as well. But for now, have a great day and good luck growing your B2B SaaS.