How a UK Founder Got A16Z to Fly to London (And Invest) | Riya Grover | Sequence

20:33David Rose:You know, you can you can sponsor everything. You can get a booth everywhere. It's not necessarily going to give you the kind of efficient growth that you're driving for. And so we've had to be very selective about where we invest, who we partner with, what we sponsor, what events we do versus don't do to build that presence in an efficient way. And it's still a journey, right? Like we're still fighting for that market share. We need to keep the momentum up to make sure that we retain our position there. and I think ultimately for any company trying to build a sort of presence in the US, I think that like constant being there, being in the room, getting on a plane, making sure that you're the speaker at like headline events for that industry, it's just a really important piece of like being kind of thought of as a leading player in that category.

21:30David Rose:And so that's, I think today, I would say 60 to 70 % of our customers are in the US for what it's worth we actually still have a very strong presence in the UK and Europe with very strong natural networks here it is a less competitive market and so it's a smaller market it moves more slowly but it's a less competitive market and we've actually been able to win some incredible lighthouse logos in the UK and Europe companies like Incident.io, Lagora and leverage that to retain momentum in Europe as well. But yeah, the UK and Europe is a natural default for us. I think being in the US and winning in the US had to be a very, very intentional decision.

22:16Matt Oxley:Ria, do you find that product market fit is a little bit different or quite a bit different between the UK and Europe and the US? Talk about that just a little bit.

22:25David Rose:Yeah, I mean, I think you have to probably be more militant about your ICP in the US, because there is more competition. And so, you know, you want to make sure that every deal that you're bringing into your pipeline and investing time in, you're much better placed to win than your competitors. because just by virtue of operating that market, yes, you're probably going to get a lot more inbound. You're going to have more conversations, but equally, you really need to carve out what your place is in that market and where your best place to win. Be pretty disciplined about that to make sure that your pipeline efforts are actually resulting in successful conversion at the end.

23:13David Rose:I think Europe may be a little bit different insofar as it is a less competitive market and therefore potentially can be a little bit broader in the sort of ICP that you go after. So that's kind of maybe one key difference that we've seen. I would say we are now at product market fit in our core ICP segment in both geographies, but obviously product market fit is a constantly evolving thing and as you go into new segments You're trying to make sure that you can build a repeatable playbook and really find that product market fit in new segments. And so I think operating across a broader geographic footprint means that you have to, again, be just much more disciplined and intentional about what are those segments and where that you're going to go after next.

24:03Matt Oxley:You had mentioned some things I thought were interesting. I'd like to circle back on it and kind of go to market demand gen in the U.S. And the reason I want to talk about that a little bit more is I think the traditional methods, right? We're going to do a bunch of content marketing. We're going to hire some sales development people to make a bunch of cold calls. We're going to do a whole bunch of emails. I think for the most part, those kind of go-to-market motions are dead. I mean, just kind of given a whole accumulation of things. Can you kind of, at a macro level, because it sounds like you're really getting good traction in the U.S., can you at a macro level tell us how you think about go-to-market demand engine?

24:40Matt Oxley:And how are you, you mentioned events. Talk us at a high level, how you're doing that? Because to me, it's like, it's a little bit scary. I'm like, oh my gosh, all the traditional things are dead. So now what?

24:48David Rose:Yeah. I mean, like with the advent of AISDRs, like, and a lot more workflow automation and sort of sales tech, you can just imagine like how cold outbounding converts, right? Inboxes are just flooded with these sort of generic email outreach campaigns. And they have incredibly low conversion rates today kind of across the board. So I think to really win in whatever category you're operating in, you have to become a thought leader and you have to kind of cut through the noise with something compelling to say. And how do you be a thought leader? You're constantly talking about your approach to the market, the product, the industry on LinkedIn.

25:35David Rose:You know, I think we put out probably two or three posts at least a week on my LinkedIn and on our company LinkedIn. And that can be, you know, examples of how our customers are using that product, how we think about AI and human in the loop and revenue operations, how we bridge the gap between sales and finance teams. You know, why, how we compare to traditional incumbent solutions. Just like consistently trying to build that thought leadership and that narrative. across social channels. So that's very different to the sort of, let's just put some generic content out there or let's just make sure that we're putting a blog post out every week, which has the right SEO keywords.

26:16David Rose:This is much more about like, what are the few pillars that we want to make sure that everybody in the market knows that we excel on and making sure that we're pretty thoughtful and intentional about that content that we put out and making sure the cadence of that is regular. So I think that's been one really key piece for us. on the outbounding side i think yeah cold outbounding is extremely saturated and sort of dead as a channel um it depends on the industry i know some industries actually do use that use that still to success but um at least in b2b software it's like pretty hard to cut through the noise um however like i think with warm outbounding and targeted you know nurturing of accounts you can be very successful.

27:00David Rose:So you meet a customer at an event, but they're actually using something else and their renewal is until the following year. Can you map that in your CRM effectively so that you're actually reaching out at the right time with something that delivers value to that customer? You mentioned you were doing things this way. We noticed this thing has happened in your industry. So you might be doing X. Is this thing that we're doing relevant for you? and you can actually build in a bunch of automation to support that process and you know there's so many great tools out there to do that but ultimately it also takes the right type of SDR BDR approach to not just sort of send out something really generic but to put together a bunch of touch points that might be relevant for a customer to give them value at their very first church point so that you're actually relevant to them in how they're thinking about building their business.

27:55Matt Oxley:Yeah, definitely change the B2B sales motions. Super interesting. Yeah.

28:02David Rose:I mean, think about your own inbox, right? Like you open your email and there's like 20 kind of outreach messages in there and they're pretty generic. So I think also like part of the the doing events being at conferences it's sort of a continuation of that thought leadership piece and when we're at events or we're hosting dinners like it's not just about having a booth somewhere or just kind of hosting something for the sake of it it's really trying to build connections and build community amongst your target audience because they're talking to other people and then once they have that touch point and potentially they have another touch point somewhere else, those things start to come together.

28:43Riya Grover:And it highlights your earlier point, which is in the US, targeting the ICP becomes so much more, I think, relevant and apparent, because one of the things that we see time and time again is what I call, you know, people not having go-to-market fit, because they're not tight on their ICP, their ACV is kind of like squarely all over the place. And that to me just really dictates that, right, there's not a go-to-market fit and process involved in that so it all comes back to I think the the tightening of the ICP which therefore informs the motion because B2B is very much events very much kind of you know person-to-person relationship sales yeah and just on on that point what I'd love to do is just kind of bring it back to the US and just maybe talk about the the cultural side of things um a little bit because certainly just from from my personal experience I spent 10 years in in the US and one of the first things that I really felt I had to do was learn to speak what I call American which sounds the most stupid thing to actually say out of my mouth but um I had to learn American and that was about respecting the culture understanding the business you know I think processes what was important what was not how what were your kind of you know I think initial learnings about kind of stepping into that cultural kind of side of it from a selling perspective, professional perspective?

30:11David Rose:Yeah, I mean, actually, that piece has been pretty natural for us. And actually, I think we have quite a strong consistency in culture across our two offices. You know, now we're sort of duly HQ across London and New York. Maybe that's partly my own DNA. Like I've spent a lot of time in the US. I have a huge amount of respect for some of the ways Americans do business and things are, yeah, people are really ambitious. Things move fast. This dynamism about the market that I think is something that I've always kind of looked at very positively. And sometimes you don't necessarily have that in the UK and Europe.

30:51David Rose:Things are maybe a bit more conservative or things move more slowly. There's a sort of more of a or less of a risk tolerance maybe um that you see as a sort of standard cultural trait uh in the in the uk versus the us um so when i think when we built our team in the uk initially and we sort of established our culture i generally think we have filtered for you know very high ownership mindset velocity sort of people who are ambitious in nature and want to overcome hurdles and get things done fast and and that obviously that culture is what we've sort of taken to to set up our kind of u.s presence um and i think it's actually like fit very well with the um the type of people that we've hired in the u.s and um the the type of culture that we're obviously building there as well because i think uniformity and culture is really really important if you're going to be dually hq'd you don't want um you know a london team operating in a very distinct manner to to your us team um our uk team have played a really big role in hiring our us team as part of the interview process as well so like for example if we're hiring engineers in the us obviously there are people interviewing them who are in our london office that's also helped to drive consistency in cultural attributes and fit across the two offices.

32:20David Rose:So how do you learn to speak American? I think obviously most of the people we've hired in the U.S. have been, are from the U.S. and have kind of worked there. So they're sort of naturally well-placed to speak American. But I actually think culturally, like we've somewhat been between the two anyway from the outset. My co-founders too have scaled businesses in the U.S. and have kind of had those experiences. So actually that piece felt pretty natural for us.

32:51Matt Oxley:Rhea, you said something earlier when we were talking about the founding of Sequence I want to double click on. You just kind of casually mentioned that, oh, we have Andreessen Horowitz on our cap table. That's one of the top brands of venture capital on the planet. Let's go back and revisit that. Tell us how an early stage UK tech startup got A16Z on their cap table.

33:13David Rose:When we started raising our seed in the UK, we were talking to a bunch of, actually, I'd say mostly UK-based venture funds. We had some venture funds who obviously have presence in both the US and the UK, but yeah, it was a default for us that we were talking to sort of top tier UK venture funds. and we had some really great people interested. And so the default was that's what we were going to do. A16 came into the conversation pretty late. My co-founder and I were both repeat founders. We both exited businesses. So I think we had a kind of level of credibility going into the conversation. We also had some other top tier funds interested in leading our round in the UK.

34:00David Rose:um but as i said they came in late in the game and um we took the call given their a16z but didn't necessarily expect them to invest in us um but there was just really strong fit between us and the partners who reached out ended up i actually remember like ended up having it was meant to be a one-hour call ended up being three and we did like a five or six hour call on a Saturday just going deeper and then they actually flew to London on Sunday so it ended up being this very natural fit between us and yeah that's how it happened.

34:38Matt Oxley:You have some sequence and some some really great U.S. brand VC brands on your cap table at this stage right 645 Ventures and A16Z in first minute. Since you had pitched earlier in London to the top kind of VCs there and you've obviously have been very successful fundraising from US VCs. Just contrast that. Like, what is the experience difference? What are the asks? What is the process? How are those different raising from VCs in London versus some of the top VC brands in the US?

35:08David Rose:Yeah, I mean, it's hard to generalize because I think there's a ton of variability even across US VCs in terms of their sort of thesis and outlook. But I would say if we had to catch all it, there is generally a sort of bigger ambition, bigger mindset when it comes to USVCs. They are actually less concerned with the traction or the proof points that you have in the very early days. They matter much more so about the market, the opportunity to build a category leader. Are you the team to do that? there's I think a recognition that especially at seed stage like the thing that you're doing today may well almost not be what you're doing in six months time because there's just so much to figure out so we're backing a team to build something really big who have the the mindset and the capability to do so and and again like even when raising our series a I think it's much less on maybe the exact revenue number or the revenue efficiency, but much more so about the, I think, the category, the market, have you built the best product in the space?

36:23David Rose:Can you dial up distribution and win it? And really sort of looking for people who have that very large outcome vision and want to sort of entirely redefine a category that they're operating in versus the UK and Europe, where maybe there is a little bit more emphasis on the numbers, the efficiency of the growth and the sort of more sensible multiples applied to potential outcomes. And if you boil that all, if you distill that all down, I just think USBCs are less valuation sensitive generally and much more willing to pay higher valuations for the hope that if you can be the category leader in something, whether you're paying 50 or 70 or 100 million as a valuation doesn't actually matter because the outcome is going to be orders of magnitude greater.

37:18David Rose:Whereas I think at the margin, the UK and European VCs apply more sensibility and discipline to the valuation that they're going to pay. What's interesting as well is that, you know, for SaaS founders that go down the US VC route early, you probably get into a place, maybe by Series B, Series C, where you've almost priced out most UK and European VCs because the US VCs have sort of bid up valuations to a greater extent.

37:53Matt Oxley:That's great. And on the fundraising side, so you obviously had an advantage because you're exited founder. And I guess, of course, once you get A16Z on your cap table, it becomes much easier to raise overall. But what advice would you give a founder who has some early traction in the UK and they're wanting to raise and come to the US and make a real run at creating a generational category defining business? What advice would you give them about fundraising? Like just like, hey, here's a great founder. You really like them. You think they're high potential and they're coming to you and say, hey, we really want to raise.

38:23Matt Oxley:What should we do? What advice would you give them?

38:26David Rose:Yeah. I mean, I would say spend a week in San Francisco and try and set up meetings with the best investors. I think the hard thing is cold outreach is tough because they have so many decks on the table. But if you have customers or design partners using your product and they love it, get them to make an intro to whoever's on their cap table. Leverage whatever first, second degree connections you have on LinkedIn to get an endorsement to get into the room with somebody. And frankly, like taking a week of meetings in person there should give you enough signal as to, you know, do you find the right fit with an investor?

39:07David Rose:Is your vision big enough? Are investors excited about the market that you're operating in? And I think it's worth doing if you want to build that type of business. Having U.S. investors also, as you know, comes with its chains attached, which is you need to give everything you have to growing a really large business with a lot of momentum in the U.S. And ultimately, that does come back to getting on a flight often, doing the work to build a U.S. presence, building a U.S. team. And I think, by the way, there are also your U.S. investors who want to build, who want to invest in European category leaders as well.

39:47David Rose:So, you know, it might be that you're pitching, building the leading product in across Europe, which is also fine. But again, proving that the size of the ambition and the opportunity is large enough and you're really committed to doing that, I think is an important piece. And that's not for everybody.

40:06Riya Grover:Oh, hardly agree. Well, Ria, I just wanted to say thank you so much for your time, for your insights. I think anybody that's listening that kind of, you know, what's gone the U.S. expansion during this so many insights that you've kind of, you've helped laid in. Just congratulations on the success today. And if anybody's like me and they go look at Sequence, they're going to be sending it to their CRO immediately. I see the magic behind it. So, yeah, I just want to say thank you so much.

40:34David Rose:Yeah, thank you. Thank you both, too. It was a great being on today. Yeah.

40:38Matt Oxley:Thanks. Thanks again, Rhea. Really appreciate it. And best of luck in 2026.

40:41David Rose:Thank you. Bye. Take care. Bye.