Scaling Stateside Podcast - Episode 1: Matt Oxley's US Expansion Journey with Opal

0:11Hi, everyone.

0:12Matt Oxley:Welcome to the very first episode of the Scaling Stateside podcast. I'm David Rose. I'm the founder at U.S. Expansion Partners, and our firm helps European and U.K. tech founders successfully expand in the U.S. market. And one of the things that we spend a lot of time in is helping founders understand a lot of the knowledge gaps that exist for people who are entering the U.S. market for the first time. And one of our missions is education and helping fill those knowledge gaps. And we actually do a start of podcast to help founders better understand all the details and best practices and pitfalls of expanding to the U.S.

0:57Matt Oxley:market. and our first guest is actually my business partner and managing director at USXP in the UK, Matt Oxley. The podcast is actually Matt's idea, so if it fails miserably, it's all on him. But he has a really great founder story. So we really want to help founders learn lessons from founders who've already made the journey. And Matt has a great startup story about a company called Opal. We'll get into in a minute, but we thought he would be a great first guest. So Matt, with that, please introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about where you are today in the world and your background. Yeah, of course.

1:43Yeah, really excited to get going with this. I think, as you said, David, there's an education gap in UK founders, and that was a very kind of kernel for this idea. and I'm also sorry to you because I made you get up really early to do this. So sorry about that.

1:59Matt Oxley:It is 6.06 a.m. in the East Coast officially, just so you know. So yeah, I'm Matt. I currently live in the UK, just outside of London. And my story is I spent 10 years in the U.S. I got back about two years ago. and I went on an incredible I would say U.S. expansion journey myself and the real kind of I came back two years ago and I was really just overwhelmed by solving and understanding why you more UK founders didn't go on the journey that I went on why the U.S. market is not kind of like number one on their list. And that's kind of what I've been really unpacking and trying to understand for the last 18 months to two years.

2:52And it wasn't until that myself and David got connected where we felt like we were kind of kindred spirits in that regards where, you know, he with US XP had actually built a exceptional what I call executable framework for supporting. And I think with my kind of operational and experience in going through it, you know, together we're kind of, together we're better. So that's kind of like where we've been. But happy to kind of, yeah, answer any questions you've got, David.

3:25Matt Oxley:So I want to get to Opal, but before we do that, I want to hear more about your entrepreneurial journey up until that point. But let's start at the very beginning. What was your very first paid job? I've never had a job. I've never been employed by anyone. Okay. Who was the first company you tricked into paying you to do something? The first company I formally founded was out of university. And what I did is I patented, and this kind of gives you more, I think, insight into my lifestyle at the time, I patented a cigarette extinguisher. actually here in the u.s we say patented well i mean this is again part of why we're doing the podcast right lost in translation speaking english weirdly um we we we patented a a cigarette extinguisher and that is what i kind of then licensed to a lot of public houses and any kind of restaurants and chains and and that was my first foray and i must have been like 19 into the entrepreneurial world where it's like, oh, wow, right?

4:35Ideas that I conceive, I can actually make money from and do what I want. That was compelling. That was really compelling because also it was a translation of everything that I've learned at college, university, school, putting into practice. So that was kind of like the exciting time. And I think from that age to maybe 2011 was just a chapter of trying, exploring. And, you know, I started music magazines, music labels, healthcare companies. I tried to overthrow the mayoral election in 2008. I started a number of agencies. I was involved in an IPO when I was 26. it was just this kind of like chapter after chapter of you know trying and being an entrepreneur and I think you know I never look back and go oh wow I really screwed that up but I always look back and go oh wow that that taught me a lot because I do believe that right from one chapter to the next you're always taking lessons you're always taking you know I I think kind of you know the scars with you from one to the other so that was kind of like prior to to 2011 i would describe them as like the scrappy learning years uh but they were a lot of fun a lot of fun and let's

5:59Matt Oxley:let's kind of dig into opal what was the origin story of opal yeah the origin story of opal is myself i i had an agency out of london and we won a gig uh nike in portland and it was on that gig that I actually met the other co-founders of Opal. We were working on this digital project, building and rolling out technology. And I think we both had enough of the agency life where it was very much a, you're only as good as your last project. And you kind of having to start BD halfway through the project that you ran. And it was this exhausting rollercoaster and cycle. you never really had a break. And this just coincided that SaaS technology, so software as a service for the enterprise, was just becoming more and more relevant.

6:57So rather than buying like floppy disks and things like that, you're actually kind of buying it through cloud, which was fairly new in like 2009 when we were kind of first kind of conceiving Opal. so what we decided to do was you know join together and conceive and build a software company and we had many iterations in those first kind of couple years but the premise stayed strong which is you know technology is advantageous to enterprises but also collaboration is key so it's those two kind of i think you know founding premises that kind of got us started

7:42Matt Oxley:now since you were in the uk when this kind of came together what was the thought process or was there a thought process about hey i can do this from london and sell into the u.s market or hey i as the founder i need to be in the u.s market what was your what was the thought process around that topic yeah and it wasn't i mean the thought process was was you know we're going to try everything we can and see what sticks and we're going to do it from two markets because UK is where I was based and the US is where my business partners were based and that was the that was the kind of like the thinking and what we ultimately kind of stumbled upon was a technology solution that was helping marketers plan their content so this coincided with the World Cup and what we were able to do was obviously adjust and adapt our technology that we've built for that use case.

8:36And that was the moment that Opal changed. That was the point that Opal had, oh, crikey, right, we have a market, we're solving a need, and we're first to market with this. And then I think everything changes because I think we'd taken an element of seed money prior to that from both the UK and the US, And the way that I describe it is I was just pulled to the US. It was that kind of like, that's where the checks were made. That's where the stakeholders were. That's where the budgets were. That's where investment opportunities were. That's where the talent was. And it really was this pull for me being in the UK to now kind of make the move to the US.

9:19Matt Oxley:Well, that sounds like a really romantic startup story with full of puppy dogs and rainbows. yeah of course the whole way so tell me about the the real story of Matt uprooting his life in London and moving to the U.S. Yeah I mean there's there's kind of like stories prior to that where what we're trying to do is we're trying to keep Opal running while running agencies and the kind of the struggle with that and the sacrifices that you're you're having to make I I mean, I had to sell, you know, some of my favorite items and clothing. I had to sell a leather jacket to get on a plane. You know, there's so many stories with that where it's like I couldn't afford breakfast one morning.

10:03So I put my milk in my car to ensure that it was cold. I mean, every entrepreneur has got their kind of like sacrifice story. But that was kind of like prior to me getting on a plane. But getting on a plane, I sold everything I had. it was everything that I had in this little flat in Bermondsey I I sold and I put it into two suitcases and the key for this is like I managed to convince my girlfriend at the time who's now luckily my wife to come on the on the on the journey with me and that is what we did is like we uprooted absolutely everything sold every single thing that we that we had and And, you know, we bet on ourselves, quite honestly.

10:47That's the kind of, that was how big it was. And I didn't realize that at the time. It's only with kind of hindsight, you're like, oh, shit, that was risky. But at the time, you're like, yeah, this is cool, right? Okay, we've got, you know, we're making momentum in the US. We're selling and the seeds are starting. Let's go. You get captivated with the journey. And it's not until you kind of, I think, look back a little bit, like, oh, wow. Okay. That was a, that was a big ask. That was a big, a big jump, but it's all part of the, the, the process and the journey.

11:21Matt Oxley:What was the, the most, um, unexpected thing about living in the U S in the early days? I, I think it was, it's more of a personal thing. It was how difficult it was to find a network of, of, of friends. That was, that was, that was a real struggle and i'm taking it to the human side of it now that was a real real struggle because you know luckily in the uk both myself and my wife are very fortunate to have a close network you know people that we love hanging out with that we get a lot of kind of you know value from and that's removed that's removed the moment you get on a plane you know family are not close to you anymore And I found that isolation really tough.

12:10And I found that that loneliness was, was quite tough as well, because it's, it's just the two of you. Then, you know, you're putting also that on the pressure of you've got to make Opal a success as well was, was, was challenging. And you, you, you don't want to kind of show weakness. This is kind of like, you know, again, it's like stiff upper lip and like, I got this, nobody worry. But it's like, it was, it was, it was tough. It was really tough.

12:37Matt Oxley:Tell me about the first. You ran this through me the other day. Who were the first five customers at Opel? Because it's a pretty amazing list of U.S. brands. Yeah, the first five customers were Nike, Beats by Dre, so Apple, Nestle, Starbucks, and one that I'm forgetting. Well, Levi's. I've heard of them. So, you know, as a startup operator in the U.S., I've always just been shocked at U.S. brands' willingness to do business with startups with very few questions asked. I can remember our client list at my last venture-backed startup. It was similar, right? It was like Microsoft, Starbucks, you know, those kind of brands.

13:27Matt Oxley:and not once will we ever ask for any kind of due diligence, which is great because sometimes we didn't have any money in the bank. But never once and someone said, hey, do you have the proper money or financing to do this? It's like, oh, we really like your solution. Let's give it a shot. Was that your experience as well? Yeah, because I think people looked at the innovation more than they looked at the company, which is what it should be. Because also what was kind of evident was that these professionals were wanting to back innovation. This was also going along in parallel with their professional journey.

14:05It's like we need to find differential. We need to find value. We need to find the latest technologies to drive efficiency and differentiation in market. And I think that's kind of, without really knowing it, that's what we had.

14:25Matt Oxley:Yeah, it's just shocking that these brands in the U.S. are always looking to get ahead. They're willing to take risk and always looking for the next best thing. And either that helps their career professionally or personally or helps their company. And those are the really driving motivations to always try and find new things and do better. So it's really a great opportunity for startups. Is that, you think, a uniquely American view point of startups and technology? Yeah, because I think in the U, I mean, if we're going to compare it to the UK, right, where we run a very similar kind of sales motion in the UK as we did the US.

15:04And the US was like, oh, yeah, OK, innovation. Cool. Right. Can I be part of that? In the UK, you're going to kind of get computer says no. No, it's too risky. or, right, where's your proof points? And there's a very kind of, you've got to prove it out before I can commit kind of mentality. So it was very, very, very different. It was stark. It was stark with differences in the kind of, in the perception, but also the appetite to embrace technology and embrace innovation.

15:40Matt Oxley:And what were the early go-to-market motions for Opal? I mean quite honestly it was like throw everything that you can at the wall and see what sticks it wasn't kind of scientific or maybe kind of thought through it was you know you're in founder-led sales territory you know where you're going out there you're testing or evolving you're speaking to people you're networking you're you're you're seeing what's working you know you're not really building a machine at that point. It's a get out there, hustle, talk to people, feed it back, what is working, what is not, lean into what is working, ignore what is not.

16:18It's hustle.

16:22Matt Oxley:So you mentioned earlier that your initial funding came from the UK. I think you also said a little bit in the US, but then you pretty quickly, or maybe not quickly, you did pivot into deep dives with some of the best brands in the US venture capital community to get funded. Tell us a little bit about that journey. Yeah. So we initially got angel money out of the UK and the US. That was kind of like to get us to the point of, you know, us understanding, right, do we have something? Are we going to go for it? How big is it going to be? So that was a kind of really good kind of um i think phase for us but it wasn't until the we had the success with those organizations that we were able to kind of go and get you know what i call institutional money because you know if you're taking vc what you what you're wanting to do to be attractive is to um eliminate as much of the risk for them as you can and i was getting those big profile enterprise brands certainly certainly helped that yeah and so tell us more details who ended up funding opal at the different stages yeah so for our a round that was led by madrona that are out of um seattle one of the biggest uh vc firms out of out of seattle and then our b round was led by excel obviously out of uh the bay so what were the differences between you know because you're based in the northwest you're in portland you're raising in seattle that makes sense you know all of a sudden you're going to go to the fabled sandhill road and palo alto where all the top vc firms in the world have an outpost and you start pitching there walk walk us through that process how is it different from madrona versus what i call playing in the in the majors yeah i The difference to me is, you know, there's the way that you want to raise capital is you want to perform.

18:25You want to be able to show results and then you want to be kind of found out. You want the inbound rather than the other way around. And that's what we were, in essence, lucky to have because we found product market for early. we had those results and successes early so therefore what was happening is we were we were kind of quite notorious in what we were doing and how we were doing it because the big brands were kind of utilizing our our software so for me there wasn't a large degree of kind of pounding sandhill sandhill right of course we're having conversations of course we're being you know making people aware of what we were doing at what stage and what that appetite was but But we were growing at such a pace where what we were doing is we were attracting interest from those top tier, big name VCs.

19:22Matt Oxley:And which firm did you end up going with for your BRAM? Excel. Excel led it. And why Excel? If you had a bunch of options, I mean, there's a lot of 5 ,000 venture capital firms in the US. So why Excel? I think Excel, a number of reasons. One is they're a major, major, obviously brand, top tier VC. And I think for us, it was the infrastructure that was beneath that as well. So it was a support network as well. So the introductions, it was the guidance, it was the playbooks. It was like all of those operational items that they could support you with. It was truly valuable to us. And they've been an exceptional partner.

20:06Matt Oxley:What was the timing, Matt? So from walking me through from founding to the Excel round and from Madrona round to Excel round, what were the timeframes? There was from founding to B was probably four years. And then there was probably two, two and a half years between A and B. Yeah. I always think about entrepreneurial journeys. I think it takes 10 years to build a great brand. And I think so many people from the outside are always like, oh, it's an overnight success. But I think if you dig into those overnight successes, they've probably been around, you know, for years and years and years grinding it out.

20:41But let's dig into that, because I think that's a really interesting conversation, because, you know, Opal's been going, dare I say, what, 12, 13 years now? and you know we we it's not an overnight success but one of the things i fundamentally believe is it's the kind of missteps that make you great it's not the kind of because if you're in an overnight kind of success story what have you learned you've gone from zero to 100 million overnight in 18 months what have you what lessons have you learned along the way probably few if you've taken longer to get from zero to 100 mil you think about all of those decision points you think about the ones you got right you think about the ones that you haven't got right that's where the gold is that is where the gold is and i think that's that's something for i think entrepreneurs to kind of step back and just think about because what you do is like if you make a misstep you're like oh shit the world's ending like oh i'm a really bad entrepreneur It's like, reframe it.

21:50What have you learned from this? Are you going to make that mistake again? No. So what you're building is this 360 kind of like bulletproof shield of like, all right, go to market, know about it. Product market fit, know about it. You know, the way I think about the entrepreneurial journey is every single quarter, you're doing a module and you don't know what that module is until you're halfway through it. So this, this quarter could be like, oh, finance, got it. Next quarter could be like, go to market. But you won't know that. You won't know that until you're halfway through it. And those modules will never end because you're going to need topper courses on finance and topper courses on go-to-market, product market fit, ICP, whatever it may be.

22:32But that's the chapter and that's the journey that you're on, which is always be learning, always be evolving.

22:40Matt Oxley:Walk us through from the early days of founder-led sales into scaling a team? How is hiring in the U.S. different? How is managing in the U.S. different? How is U.S. business culture different from your previous experiences? Yeah, so I think, you know, the baton change from founder-led sales to building and scaling a team is vitally important. And it's about, quite honestly, getting the right person, the right individual to hand that baton to. I think the number one mistake that I've seen and I know that you've seen as well, founders make at this point, is they hire the Hollywood, what I call the Hollywood sales guy.

23:27The one that's like, been to Wharton, got my zip-ups, like, yeah, I know I'm connected. I know everyone in the industry. Everyone in the industry. It's like that, because you're enamored with that. You're like, oh, all right, Barry or Barbara, they've sold millions of dollars of deals like all right i back them i want them on my team off we go and my humble opinion that's a mistake because what they've done is they've succeeded by being on top of a machine rather than building a go-to-market machine and that's what you're you're going to need to do because that's what you're passing the baton over to is like somebody that can build a machine and then you layer layer layer layer layer people on top of that because That's how you get to the scale.

24:11So that's the number one mistake that I've certainly seen.

24:16Matt Oxley:Oh, that's a great point because I think a lot of people underestimate. They might be interviewing someone and look at their past sales history, which may or may not be true. It depends on what they tell you. But what you don't realize is the reason that this person sold millions of dollars in ARR for their last company is that there is a super sophisticated, super well-funded demand gen, lead gen, lead qualification machine that's on top of it. And if you don't have that infrastructure and you just hire this big dollar salesperson and your first question to them is, where's your millions of dollars?

24:47Matt Oxley:And their next question is, where's my leads? And there's a big disconnect often.

24:54Matt Oxley:So what else from a business culture? So you're in the US, you grew up in the UK. What are things that when you're trying to build business rapport that you found missing early on? Yeah, so the way I think about it is like, and I'm going to say a term and everybody's going to go, oh, idiot. But you've got to learn American. And this is something that I was a little bit lazy towards. And I think the reason why is there's a false familiarization between UK and US cultures. Like we speak the same language, we watch the same TV shows, movies, music, everything's become a lot more global. So there's this false familiarization with our cultures.

25:49And that really surprised me because I thought, I'll go over there. Yeah, I can hang and I know what I'm kind of doing. And what I was missing was the cultural cues. okay and it's as silly as ncaa basketball what what is that what is the final four who's doing really well are you in a bracket you know fantasy football who's doing really well you know who's in the playoffs this year and i'm using sport as an example but you've got to know the nuance of that because the way that we do that in the uk is we talk about the weather okay that is the common point of reference that gets everybody like you know cloudy and rainy again today it's better than hot and humid but um that's that's the common point of reference it's like we'll all be aligned about about the weather and then it'll be like football like ah do you see many and i had lost again etc etc but i was missing that i was missing those social cues in america so i had to go and do homework i had to go and learn american i had to learn right the first five minutes of any sales call is like, no, what are you going to talk about?

27:03That's really important. So I describe it as like learning American. And again, I think it took me nine months to be comfortable in that sales environment to share nuances of that, where it wasn't for it. Yeah.

27:20Matt Oxley:I know that Opal was headquartered in Portland for obvious reasons. I mean, your biggest customer brand was there. What was your, in hindsight, what are your thoughts about being based on the West Coast versus other parts of the US? What was that experience like? Does it matter? Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, I mean, Portland was great for us because as you as you say um you know my my my partners were there but also that's where there was you know huge brands like nike under armor adidas is a very it's a hub of creative people and we were in the marketing world so it was a great place for us to be hq as we're you know attracting talent but also getting to to brands i mean the things that i would say about you know choosing an american and city to be in and it have a look at where your customers are i think that's that's the number one kind of question and then number two is like where where does your talent reside i think those are probably the two kind of main criteria that i would i would kind of look at prior to choosing where we were and also it's like do you have uk operations that are going to continue to you know you maintain whilst you're also in the us because time zone can be crippling but also think about operational overlap as well so east coast you probably get four or five hours more if you're an early riser like david um but that reduces the further west you go So if you're West Coast and you've got a UK, you know, five o 'clock in the evening is nine o 'clock in the morning West Coast.