Scaling for Success – Unlock your UK potential

Goodwille hosted together with Nordic Startup Awards and Pleo the webinar “Scaling for Success” with the aims to inform high growth Nordic startups and founders on how to take their first step into one of the world’s biggest economies, the United Kingdom. The speakers wereKevin Rutter, CFO of Goodwille, Jacqui Brown, HR Manager, Goodwille, Kim Balle, CEO & Co-Founder of Nordic Startup Awards and Eoin O’Liathain, Sales Director at Pleo. 

Watch the video recording here or read the key points below:

https://youtu.be/l99Tp2ZBoRc

How long is the process of expanding to the UK?

Goodwille shared their insights as to what companies can expect when thinking of expanding to the UK. They covered questions on timeframes, costs and hiring talent during the expansion process. You can read more about everything you need to know when starting a business in the UK here, and how Goodwille can help you make the transition smoother here.

Brexit and expanding to the UK?

The UK formally left the EU on 31 January 2020, the Transition Period began immediately after and is due to end on 31 December 2020. There remains a lot of uncertainty on what will follow after Brexit but there are some things companies can start preparing for;

• GDPR and Data Privacy
• Movements of Goods
• Movements of People

Pleo expanding to the UK

Pleo chose to expand to the UK because of the great market opportunity the UK has to offer. There is no language barrier between the Brits and the Danes and it was easy to utilise their Nordic resources to do work in the UK. Pleo set up an expansion team and started flying back and forth between London and Copenhagen every week taking “every small opportunity, meeting or sale and treated it as a great success. “

Is a Nordic company attractive for the UK marketplace?

Pleo made sure they leveraged their Scandinavian brand & history. A lot of international markets idolise the Nordics as a futuristic market with excellent design, and good quality products and services, which can be highly attractive to businesses entering a new market.  

Strategic positioning when entering a new market

Further advice from Pleo is to leverage your strategic positioning as much as possible by distinguishing the whole company in a valuable way from competitions and deliver value to specific customer segments. By differentiating their solution from others helped Pleo a great deal to their value proposition. 

Hiring the right talent when scaling in the UK

After six months of continuous travel between the UK and Denmark, Pleo started to scale and rented an office in a co-working space. A lesson learned during the scaling process was hiring the right talent.

It is easy to find talented people in the UK, that perhaps also speaks a Nordic language. However, accordingly, to Eoin O’Liathain, it’s crucial to find a talent who knows the UK market and culture.

The UK is now the largest market by revenue for Pleo. They have their own office in Shoreditch, London with 28 employees and over 4000 customers. 

To find out more on how Goodwille can help you enter, grow and scale in the UK, please contact marketing@goodwille.com.