Vishal Marria: It's Always About The People
Today we travel to a WeWork workspace to meet with Vishal Marria, the CEO and Founder of Quantexa.
Quantexa uses powerful AI technology to help businesses analyse and interpret their data and has offices in both Europe and America.
Originally an English company, they expanded their offices to America in 2016. In these years Vishal has learned a lot about what it takes to be successful, and the different challenges that come up when operating in such a different culture.
He shares with us everything he’s learnt along the way, from how he has to run his American teams differently to his European ones, to the importance of funding when first making the move across the pond.
Many thanks to Vishal for taking the time to talk to us, and sharing his knowledge of moving his business to the United States.
“It’s always about the people.”
Time Stamps:
01:42 - Who Quantexa are and how their data analysis works.
03:52 - Quantexa’s expansion into America and why they decided to move there.
04:55 - How American clients came to hear of Quantexa.
08:38 - What the issues and challenges of financial crime are.
10:28 - How the reception of new tech differs between countries.
12:55 - How culture affects a business and how this differs across countries.
15:14 - How to build trust with clients in the UK and America.
16:45 - The difference in operating a business in America, and the importance Americans place on being in a team.
19:31 - How perceptions of risk are different in America.
21:05 - When you need to get a visa, how long it takes, and how much it costs.
26:20 - The way America has influenced Vishal and his background in business.
29:20 - The risks involved with being an entrepreneur.
32:02 - How colleagues reacted to hearing that Vishal was starting his own business.
35:02 - The early stages of setting up outside the UK and the importance of funding.
37:45 - Advice Vishal would give to his past self before making the move.
40:58 - The necessity for a company to have a main base.
43:01 - Quick tips for someone thinking of expanding their business to America.
Resources:
www.mtbonnell.com
www.quantexa.com
www.wework.com
Prelinger Archives
Connect with Vishal Marria: LinkedIn
Email us at - Info@mtbonnell.com
Twitter - @mtbonnell
Connect with Sebastian Sauerborn: LinkedIn
Connect with Nastaran Tavakoli-Far: LinkedIn
Episode Transcript
Episode 20: Vishal Marria – It’s Always About The People
Vishal: When I was negotiating the contracts here, they said you’re going to have all day DJ and I’ve said what do you mean I’m going to have all day DJ? You’re going to have all day DJ. And I was like okay, what you mean I’m gonna have all day DJ? And then, the lady looked me frustrated and went, You’re going to have an all day DJ. And it’s only when we moved we went oh the all day DJ [smiling]
Nas: That’s Vishal Maria of data analytics firm Quantexa. You’re listening to Move Your Business to the United States, from Mount Bonnell Advisors the consultants who guide you on expanding state side. I’m Nastaran Tavakoli-Far or Nas for short, and this is the second season of the podcast, this season we’re going to be hearing from businesses who actually made the move to the US.
We want to hear about their journey, their experience and any Dos or Don’ts. We’ll be having episodes every two weeks, also send us your questions. Mount Bonnell CEO, Sebastian Sauerborn will be answering queries that you have about expanding to the States, send them over to info@mtbonnell.com we’ve also put that in the show notes.
We are at a WeWork, it’s ten in the morning, it’s pretty loud for ten in the morning, just walked in there’s DJ there’s some nice loungy chairs, there’s a massive sound system and we’re going to speak to Vishal Maria of Quantexa.
That’s us going into WeWork to chat with this week guest. We battled our way past the morning DJ and the kombucha on top, up to the offices of Quantexa, where we spoke to Vishal Maria. Now Quantexa offer a data analysis for variety of sectors. They help their clients build up an accurate image of someone and their network, so that the client has a fuller view of what’s going on.
Vishal told the website click that “you don’t buy a house by looking through the letter box you walk in, see each room, assess whether it’s right for you. You build up the context of the house at Quantexa we help our clients to do the same thing with their customers”. They’ve been opening offices in the US and in Canada. We sat down with Vishal to hear more about this journey.
Vishal: Vishal Maria CEO founder of Quantexa, founded Quantexa in March, 2016, so we’ve been running now for 3 years and 7 months.
Nas: What you guys do?
Vishal: So we enable our clients to make better decisions by providing them context, using internal and external data.
Nas: And how do you do that though?
Vishal: So the process of what we do, we have a platform, which I have a number of products, two of those products being entity resolution and network generation. So entity resolution is a process of taking internal or external data, using statistics to understand who your customer is, who your pseudo customer is and then the network generation component is finding the relationships between those entities to provide context.
Sebastian: So that is like Artificial Intelligence, I read somewhere I think, I’ve read an article by Financial Times I think they’ve put it quite simple right? This was about your client HSBC
Vishal: Yes.
Sebastian: And they said HSBC takes on board artificial intelligence to prevent money laundering -?
Vishal: Correct, so that’s one of our applications or one of our solutions is financial crime and under financial laundering anti money laundering and you’re absolutely right, yes, HSBC uses our platform to solve and disrupt financial crime globally. We use the context, that I’ve just early described with machine learning to better protect and prevent and disrupt AML.
Nas: So you guys have expanded to the US?
Vishal: We have indeed.
Nas: Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Vishal: So right now as a company we celebrated our 200th employee so we’ve had some great growth, out of 200 around 60 are in the Americas. So that would be Toronto, Boston and New York, those are our offices today, we would be expanding further into places like Charlotte and other areas, and then the rest of our people is spread between the UK, Brussels, Singapore, Melbourne and Sydney.
Nas: So I’m wondering would you getting demand from American clients or were there other reasons you’re wanting to head out there?
Vishal: America is a big market, you have to be in the states. You know the scale is massive so you have to be there. But it was also demand led as well so there was a direction we were going to the states, anyway. But there was also demand from a number of financial services clients for us to come and service them and around this entity resolution and network problem within financial crime.
Nas: And how are they heard of your services?
Vishal: They’ve heard of the platform through a number of case studies. So the HSBC press that you mentioned earlier Sebastian, in Financial Times, obviously reached out and also came on the Wall Street Journal so obviously that had a good exposure to a lot of the clients there. But also a lot of institutions were looking at innovative ways to tackle financial crime. Financial crime is not a new problem, anti money laundering is not a new problem. The approach that we’re taking to tackle it, is a new and an innovative way, and a lot of banks, I’m going to focus on the bank side just for now, had a fatigue of the traditional way of detecting and disrupting a financial crime which is very rules based so it was a combination of both.
There was this capability that was coming out of the UK from us, we’ve had some great references, HSBC being one of those, but there was also a demand component as well, where our clients wanted to look at more innovative ways to tackle such problems.
Nas: So this is a really interesting point because was there a difference in terms of how willing they were to take a risk on a new method, cause you guys are doing something completely new, right, so one hand that’s exciting but that’s also risky for them, right?
Vishal: For me, and for our clients. It’s always about the people. People buy from people, people trust people. You know, I was fortunate that my career in tackling financial crime is longer than Quantexa. So I’ve started off at a company called Dedica and then was executive director at EY between that as been VS at Saas.
So I have built quite a big network of clients that I have sold to and work with, over the last the ten, fifteen years. So did my founders, my other founders in the company, and a lot of them have worked with a number of institutions globally, where we have delivered some critical applications, which have really impacted, positively impacted our clients. So, that really did helped, at least getting the meeting.
Then it’s about the technology, right, so, I can use the management team’s brand, my personal brand to get places but then the technology needs to speak. And as I say, building context to a now enable people to make better decisions is almost common sense. When you go and buy a house, you never buy a house by looking through the letter box, you book a viewing, you go in the property, you look at the kitchen, you look at the bathroom, you look at the bedrooms, what you’re doing as a human, is building context. When you come outside the house, you then look at crime rates, how far the bars and bistros, the commons, you’re building external context.
Nas: Who are the neighbors-
Vishal: Who are the neighbors, which is my third point, the relationships, who are the neighbors, what did other property sell for in the neighborhood. You’re building relationship context, I took the same theory and applied it into business decision making. So you are more effective and efficient so the concept at the beginning was pretty spot on, okay, I can be more effective if I have a bigger picture. And then it’s about proving it. And then typically our clients, yes that’s a great vision, now here’s some data prove it to me.
Sebastian: And did you find that in the US, sort of clients that were open to this idea about the same as in the UK or in Europe, or what is the reception and the perception of the solution and the issues that they are facing?
Vishal: So I think the issues and challenges are similar, across the globe, around this particular area within financial crime, so high volumes of false positives, some banks quote 99% of false positives. So that means 99 out of 100 alerts coming out of our systems are false positives, which to be fair has a number of challenges. First challenge, are you really capturing financial crime, right, or are you just picking off the small bits at the bottom? The second thing it has a major human element. Can you imagine those people who have to come in every day, to review alerts and 99 out of a 100 times, it’s a false positive? Getting that person to come back to work the next day is actually a really hard challenge.
Sebastian: And do the work diligently, right, they just say okay it’s a false positive anyway, who cares, right? [smiling]
Vishal: Precisely. So, that is a challenging in its own right, and remember from a financial point, from an LAM point of view, every alert needs to be investigated. So, you know, when it comes out the system, a human has to look at it. So that’s a challenge in its own right, the motivation of it, and are you really disrupting financial crime.
The second challenge is efficiency. So it can take anything between 3 to 7 hours to close an alert down, which include investigation of the alert, data gathering, understanding the context of the alert and the then pressing false positive at the end. So these challenges within AML within financial crime is consistent globally.
Now coming to your earlier parts of that same question, the reception of new tech, so when you got a problem like this, a lot of people and a lot of organizations are looking at more innovative ways of doing this. Now, one of the challenges when you look at machine learning and true AI is transparency, model transparency, data lineage, things around ethical biases of the model, but these are all challenges inherently when you’re looking at true AI.
Now, the approach that we’ve taken is very much a transparent view of the analytics, using both unsupervised and supervised analytics, using the context. And that was- the reception to that from our clients was very positive, especially in the US, cause they have a quite a vigorous process when it comes down to model risk management, getting it through model validation, etc. etc. they have quite a large process and a very thorough process, and our technology was able to go through many of our clients, which is a big win for the US clients.
Man has described himself in many ways, but if we concentrate on man in relation to his control over his environment, no description is more accurate than the description of man as a tool making animal, and in the short history of mankind, the majority of the tools which man has made can be thought of as an extension of his muscle power, that is the ability to perform work faster and in greater quantity. However in the mid 1940s in the 20th century a different kind of tool was invented. The tool for extending certain of the powers of man’s mind, this tool is the electronic computer.
Nas: How is the day to day of your business different in the US to here, how you do things, how you do what you guys do?
Vishal: Culture is very important, the culture of Quantexa is in the people. So ensuring that culture exports and adapts is really important to me and the adapt is very important to that part, exporting the culture from what we’ve created here in London is fantastic and we export that as well. But we need to also adapt to local culture as well.
Nas: What was the culture so we’ve have been of context about, how would you describe her?
Vishal: So for me, you know there’s a few sentiments I’ve said already so it’s always about the people that’s inherent in our culture, so those people could be our data scientist it could be the management team, it could be the engineering team, it could be the operations team, it’s always about the people, our investors, our clients, they are all part of this culture building, trust is also integral to my culture.
What, you know, we are here today 3 years 7 months where we are processing over 200 billion records for our clients, servicing clients over 80 countries, the reason why we’re there is because there’s trust. There’s trust in the company, there’s trust in the platform, the next piece which is also really important, delivery to our promise, now again, why HSBC came on the Financial Times talking about the great work they’re doing around, in financial crime is because we delivered our promise to our clients we’ve set something, the client set something and together we delivered and that’s also really important. So, culture is not one word for me, it lives and breathes in us as people but couple of key facets to it would be trust, and would be delivery to our promise. Those would be two elements.
Nas: So these trust issues are interesting cause I’m wondering, are there different ways in building trust in the US, here, what’s been your experience on that?
Vishal: So I don’t think there’s been different ways, so the key things for me for US have been, you know, we’ve brought people together in the US. So we’ve exported some people from London, have moved them out, so people who worked with me pretty much from starting Quatexa who joined me here in London, I was very keen for them to move out to New York, and they did so, and that exports culture.
We’ve also recruited in New York so our first office was in New York, we’ve had a one desk at the WeWork in midtown [smiling] in New York, that’s how we started in New York and we’ve had one desk, and then we suddenly have five desks and it grew, so that was the- but the trust element has been similar, when we spoke to our clients or when we’ve delivered our projects, things around the delivery to our promise to what we’ve committed to, was as same as how we are here in London to how we are in Singapore to how we are in New York.
Nas: But I guess what I’m getting at is when you talk about culture it’s really interesting because in every country there are different ways of signaling the same values. So I’m wondering, did you have to change your messaging, did you have to approach clients differently, were you getting sort of certain questions or certain interactions from your clients that were different from here? Just wondering how you’ve had to adjust to a different country really?
Vishal: Yes, so I think, work patterns are different, I think things like events and social events for the teams are different, the social events we do here are very different of what we would do in the States and also different in Singapore and so on-
Nas: And could you describe how it’s different and how it fits into how you guys operate in the US versus here?
Vishal: With the US there’s a lot of team events I would say, so there’s more things they would do as a group, and I think that also comes because of the size, for me it’s smaller, this, you know 60 people there and then over a 100 or so here in London or maybe more now. So it’s harder to take the whole 100 to 120 people in London and do an event here, so you have more sub-teams here that would do certain things so it could be- you know, I remember an event we did, a couple years ago here in London, which was one of the great events we did, which was axe throwing, we went up to somewhere near my land, and it’s a great team event, actually, and it’s a great for all ages in the company [smiling] it was a great event, in the US they did more things around quizzes, and again, more team events like that. So those are some of the changes, but I think some of that nuance is also the size difference between the two sides of the teams from the US to the UK.
Nas: So this is interesting because you talked about more team events in the US where did that come from, was it the local employees expecting that, what was about the culture that led you to have to make that change?
Vishal: Yes, I think it was some of the local people that we recruited and obviously they came from different organizations, you know some of them came straight out of university, so, there was a big driven from the local side but I think also the it was quite fortunate, the export that we did from London was very open minded around that to embrace the new culture as well, to adapt.
Sebastian: So as we have seen in the last financial crisis you know, 2008 and everything, we have seen that the US, the willingness to take risks there in financial institutions was much bigger than it was in Europe, which then led to the fall down of best terms and we’ve had the supreme mortgage crisis and everything, mortgages they would have never written, for example in this country. Is that sort of different attitude or willingness to take risk, especially in financial services? Does that impact how you sell your services there?
Vishal: Some of our key applications are within risk, so the risk undermines- so under risk you’ve got compliance risk being the tier risks, but you’ve got credit, operational etc. etc. so, one of the key solutions and the key products we have is within risk. So, actually working in the US because they’ve gone through that, there’s more controls in place, in the sense of it, there’s more rigor there with regards to because they’ve gone through some of those challenges, so actually that link back to our platform was actually a quite a strong link, because they have those controls and therefore put some of those controls in which you have some of those challenges of false positives etc. etc. and they’re looking at more innovative ways, because, the cost of compliance is an increasing cost and every organization is looking to reduce that cost but still stay compliant, so actually where people having invested quite substantially in those controls, they’re looking at more innovative ways to bring that cost down, so it’s actually worked that quite well being in the US in that regard.
Nas: Hi you’re listening to the Move Your Business to the United States with Mount Bonnell Advisors. I’m Nas, I’m here with the CEO of Mount Bonnell, Sebastian Sauerborn, we are taking questions this season, so send them to us, it’s info@mtbonnell.com so we’ve had a question from Rebecca who is in London. She wants to know the following, she says, can you set up a business, move to the US and then get a visa?
Sebastian: Unfortunately it’s not that simple so what’s definitely not possible, for example, if you’re graphic designer just set up a company that’s doing a graphic design, move then get a visa as a graphic designer, that doesn’t work, getting a visa in the United States is a very lengthy, complicated and expensive process, so you need at least, invest at least a 100 thousand in the US, a hundred thousand pounds or dollars I would say, to be eligible for an investor’s visa or the other opportunity is, if you have a well-established business in the UK, say with at least 10 employees, hundreds of thousands of turnover, then you can get another type of visa which is to open a subsidiary in the US but just opening a company there to get a visa is just not possible.
Nas: Is this a question you get quite a lot?
Sebastian: Yeah, very often, I mean some people think you know, having a company in the US automatically makes them eligible for visa, that is not the case, it needs to be very substantial the business, otherwise it’s not possible.
Nas: Thanks Sebastian, and thanks Rebecca for that question, keep sending them to us it’s info@mtbonnell.com now let’s go back to this week’s episode.
It is the fast, reliable and tireless performance of a variety of arithmetic and logical operation that gives to the computer its great utility and power. But merely looking at the computer won’t tell us very much about what it actually is doing now they would tell us anything about the revolutionary material and intellectual effects of such machines. We can easily see the material and intellectual effects of say, machines for transportation. We know that the modern jet aircraft represents a great increase and speed over the earliest aircraft. We also know that modern airplanes have made the world smaller and changed our way of thinking about ourselves and our world and future means of transportation would bring even more rapid and radical changes. But even the difference between the speed of an air craft and the fastest rocket is small when compared with the difference in speed between calculation by hand and calculation by computer.
Sebastian: Your solutions help to be able to offer, I don’t want to say more riskier solutions, but to manage risk better, in a sense offer products that wouldn’t be possible to offer them conventionally because maybe one wasn’t able to assess the risk properly, which then led to a crisis like that in 2008, but with your solution alarms can be detected early warnings, so you might be able to say, they might be able to offer a product without creating that similar problems that they used to have before.
Vishal: Absolutely from a client service point of view protecting the client for our clients by using our platform you are more effective and efficient in managing your risk.
Sebastian: Yeah.
Vishal: And we’ve proven that, and if the bank or the organization that we’re working can’t innovate with, you know, either in increasing lending to certain clients because we can see the bigger risk, which could be lower and therefore you should provide more lending to this group or these associates and that’s good for the client, and also good for the end individual.
And again, that comes down to context. If you look at the network of 15 people, or companies connecting together, actually when you look at that network in its holistic view, the risk is quite low, either through supply chain analysis or looking at the average debt, or looking at funds in account.
Then, that could be a very different treatment compared to another network where everyone is in default or they are all trading in their overdrafts [smiling] so that’s a very different treatment network, compared to another network where you know it’s very cash positive, great investors behind it, lots of funding behind it, and that’s a different type of network. So seeing those two networks in its holistic view upfront, allows you to make better decisions, and in this case it would be more of a credit decision.
Sebastian: Makes sense. What is your personal story in the US, Vish, I mean, have you ever lived there, have you studied there, what’s your- you know, when did you first- I mean how old are you, if I may asking?
Vishal: How old am I [smiling] I’m 36.
Sebastian: You’re 36, sure when you grew up you watched all these American programs and television, so I always think the American culture has greatly influenced us, even if we’ve never been there, I mean, Hollywood movies, television, so what was your story there, what was your- when did you first kind of, when did America come up on your horizon?
Vishal: That’s a great question, Sebastian, so you are absolutely right, I do watch a lot of American TV programs and I’m- I do watch a lot of Billions and I do watch a lot of Suits-
Sebastian: [smiling]
Vishal: And actually in both of those two dramas, have influenced the way I think and the way I would say drive my businesses in different ways [smiling] so, you know, that’s been a big influence, I would say, with a lot of other things. So, a bit of background, my dad came to England in 1961, from India, he came with one shilling, one shilling in his pocket, and you know, he did incredibly well for himself and retired in the late ‘90s. He married my mom in ’65 and they both worked together pretty much 12 to 14 hours every day for over 30 years and then they retired in the late ‘90s. So business has been with me from a very young age. You know, I’ve done very well academically, but business wise, most kids when they were about six years old, after school went home, after school I used to go to my dad’s cash and carry, and I worked there from about 4 to 6:30 [smiling] before going home.
Nas: It’s a good apprenticeship -?
Vishal: It was for 20 years [smiling] and it’s a- so business has always been with me, from a very young age and in the family business has always been discussed which my mom always tried to push away, saying when we get home no more business home but that-
Nas: Never happened -?
Vishal: It’s very hard for that to happen when you are in that business mindset. But just sort of switching back to the States, I’ve been working in and out of the States since 2005, when I was back in my previous career I’ve spent some time, I’ve never physically moved out but I’ve spent a lot of my time in the States, especially in our offices in New York, Boston and obviously in Toronto, spent a lot of time in Charlotte with some of our clients there so I do spend a lot of my time. But things like Billions and Suits, coming back to that, there’s a lot of parallels you could drive to that in a way you do your own business and there’s a lot of things around, again culture, positives and negatives you’re seeing in some of those programs you may want to drive into your business.
Nas: Well, cause also business is such a big part of the American culture as well, in a way that I think maybe only recently in the UK it’s been called like take risks and be an entrepreneur or something, like I feel like culturally we’ve been a little bit suspicious of why you do these sorts of things so I’m wondering how that, how these different cultural inputs have affected, how you do business here, how do you expand?
Vishal: Yeah, every business person or entrepreneur has to be able to take risk otherwise you wouldn’t be an entrepreneur. You know, I was doing incredibly well at EY, and it was actually at a conference it was A camps, which is the big AML conference and I was actually in Vegas for the big A camps conference in Vegas where I decided to resign from the firm and start my own business.
Sebastian: And you went at the roulette table or what [smiling]
Vishal: [smiling] Very much so, no, it wasn’t that it was actually, it was growing in my mind for some time that this problem around context and this problem that institution face about making a better decisions, had been growing on me for many months. And it was actually at the A camps conference where I actually met some other startup vendors where I’ve met a lot of people from the States who had started out their businesses who were pitching, you know the technology and machine learning or whatever, you know, trying to sell this, and I was like, I can do that. And it’s a risk, of course it is, but I back myself, I’ve backed a team of people that trusted me, and I trust them that I can bring them on this journey with me and it’s quite ironic, that decision actually did happen in the States.
Nas: Well it makes sense, and you’re in Vegas as well, like capital of risk taking [smiling] of different contexts.
Vishal: [smiling] It’s quite ironic actually when I look back at it, I was quite lucky because I’ve been talking to my wife at the time during that process, I may look to do this, I may look to do this, and you know, again, coming back to support, starting out your own business, it’s not just about you, it’s about your family as well, and I’m quite lucky that my wife has been with me through this journey, you know we’ve been together since we were 16, so you know, she was my high school sweetheart as you would say in the States, but she’s been with me throughout my whole journey and this was a combined decision because it directly impacts your family, directly impacts, starting your own business is not just about you. It’s about- if you have a family, is directly impacted as well.
Nas: So the people you’ve met in this conference in Vegas who had taken risk and started their own companies, I’m wondering what are the reactions of your colleagues back in London, when you said I’m going to quit, I’m going to do my own thing.
Vishal: Hmm, so some thought it was only a matter of time, that I would do something on my own.
Sebastian: Because also you’re like you know, it’s kind of heritage of your dad, that entrepreneurial passion and spirit that you’ve inherited.
Vishal: To be clear, in my family, no one ever worked for anyone-
Sebastian: Oh incredible-
Vishal: They’ve always done their own thing, I was the first person, I think pretty much my entire family generations that actually went first and got a job and didn’t do their own business. And my dad said I’ll give you three months, Vish, working for one and then you’re gonna go and do it yourself [smiling] and you know almost 14, 15 years later, I then did it I did my own business [smiling] so some people who were close to me knew that it was only a matter of time and that timing was perfect for me, so the increase and the adoption of open source, open architecture, data lakes, big data, big analytics, has only been something that’s been happening over the last five, six, seven years. If I tried to do Quantexa ten years ago, it wouldn’t be as successful as today, cause some of the underlying architecture that we’ve built Quantexa on has only been around over the last 5 to 7 years and the most important thing with technology as we all know is the adoption of technology.
And if I try to go to a large organization many years ago with some open architecture or open source in my platform, they would be like, no, no, no, we don’t do that, we can’t buy that blah-blah, but there is a big pool of looking at new innovative ways of tackling problems, using the best of open architecture that’s available.
So the timing thing has also been quite important, but just Nas, coming back to your question what do people say the people that are close to me, it was only about time, some people were quite surprised that okay you’re doing incredibly well in the firm, and I was having a great time, it was a great firm I was working for, so some of them were quite surprised but people that were very close to me, was almost you know, it’s it was always a matter of time before you’re going to do your own thing.
Sebastian: Sounds good, I used to work for Ernest & Young as well you know, but also for PWC I prefer PWC but that’s a different quest [smiling]
Vishal: Too many firms [smiling]
The problem solving power of mathematics and logic combined with the speed and accuracy of a machine, or carrying out these operations is the basis of the computer revolution. But does this mean that a computer can produce a new idea or make an original contribution to knowledge?
Nas: I wanted to ask you a little bit about the nuts and bolts of moving, cause a lot of the people who are listening the people who are also in this process so what were the actual steps you took when you were setting up in the US also anything you didn’t expect any Dos or Don’ts looking back at that early process right now?
Vishal: Oh wow, it’s a bit of a blur but that’s because it was a lot of late nights [smiling]
Sebastian: [smiling] It says a lot right.
Vishal: Yes.
Sebastian: Everybody says that by the way [smiling]
Vishal: All I would say is exporting or setting up outside of the UK in any country is hard and the States is no different. Yes there’s easier processes I look at certain other country language barriers can also obviously in the States that’s helpful but I would say make sure you’re well-funded because the setup is not cheap but also the sales process is not cheap. So, you know, when you’re selling to clients internationally and if you’re not there then you are flying backwards and forwards, let’s say London to New York or to Boston or wherever you’re selling to, that’s coming quite expensive, because it’s just not the cost of the airline, it’s the hotels it’s the time there, it’s the commuting around of one individual to multiple individuals and so on and so forth.
Then you know when you’re starting to recruit getting the right contracting in place for the employment laws is set very different and then we took external legal advice pretty much every part of the process just because the way we were set up. Because of the growth we were having and the clientele we had at that time expected those processes within my company. So therefore we had legal support throughout the entire journey, and that was very, very supportive but also came with a cost.
So that I would also say to any entrepreneur who is coming out of the UK going into the US make sure you’re well-funded and time is key here so do not expect things going to happen very quickly, if you think something is going to take three months, take six months. You know, just factor all of this in, you know I come from quite a rigid project planning background [smiling] from my consulting days, so make sure you have a plan. Make sure you have a plan that you can be agile in because there will be certain forks on the road that you would need to take. Make sure you have quite an accurate plan but costs, funding, setup, sales cycles within the clients are all very expensive components.
Nas: So just on this point Vish, if you had to look back at Vish who was setting up in the US what advice would you give at your old self?
Vishal: Time.
Nas: Okay, time in terms of longer than you think -? And do you think because, within US, you know, it’s the same language, there are some cultural similarities, do you think that that maybe makes people think that’s going to be easier than it actually is -?
Vishal: I totally agree and that was the sort of false assumptions I’ve had when I originally started going into the states. Okay, I saw this before, you know in my previous careers it’s going to be a lot easier than say setting up somewhere else. But it took time and opening bank accounts. You know, just being able to open up a bank account was challenging.
You know, not just for the States but other countries as well, you know, being on the preferred supplier’s list organization so that you can even contract with the client takes a long time, so PSLs, preferred supply lists, you know, no matter where you are that’s not just the States thing but those things take time can be a real barrier to entry for a client to get into a client and that’s no different to the States as well.
Nas: And a minute ago you were mentioning face to face meets with clients, and how that can be really costly, I’m wondering how that is in the US compared to here?
Vishal: Compounded, because if you look in London, and I’m looking at sort of my clientele which you know, banks, insurance etc. there’s two locations really, Canary Wharf or the City, you have your odd ones which are a bit out, but it’s usually Canary Wharf or the City.
Nas: Which aren’t even that far away really.
Vishal: Absolutely, right, I use public transport, you know, either I take the Waterloo in city line or I take the Jubilee line I mean Canary Wharf in the city right?
Sebastian: Half an hour in between-
Vishal: Pretty much 30 minutes-
Nas: I was going to say 20 minutes-
Sebastian: 20 minutes okay [smiling]
Nas: But I’m optimistic with my timing [smiling]
Vishal: It’s 20 to 30 minutes, but when you’re saying I’m going for the States, where do you go, you know, a lot of- if you say New York, okay, so the business side might be in New York but if you’re selling to IT they’re not necessarily in New York. Could be in New Jersey, in Charlotte or in other areas, so again, if you’re trying to do face time, or face to face meetings you might land in New York, but actually you’re then spending a lot of time in New Jersey or in Boston or in Charlotte to see the clients because they’re based there, so that’s challenging, you know, to just trying to move around in the States, compared to say doing it in London or in Paris, it’s scale, it’s the scale problem.
Nas: But this is an interesting point, because, and I feel like in no one London is listening they’re gonna- I hate that I’m going to say this but so much is going on in London, it’s the center of so many industries, whereas in the US is a bit different you know not everything is in New York or in San Francisco or wherever. So I’m kind of wondering how that place was like when you first opened your offices in New York were you expecting a lot more time in New York or did you think that, no, you know, this is going to be, you know, our clients would be more spread out than this -?
Vishal: It’s a- with the experience from the past, I very much knew that yes we’re going to have offices in New York, we have office in New York, but that won’t be my only office, we very knowingly I knew that, so when we’ve started out because when I sold in the past some of our decision makers were in Charlotte, some of them were out in San Fran etc. etc. but, for any company that’s going in the US you need to have a base somewhere and we chose New York, because actually coming back to the supply point, the two clients we’re engaged with, were based in New York, just near Wall Street, so that made a lot of sense to be in New York, but I knew very much we would land here and we would have offices very quickly all over the States and we quickly went into Boston, Boston was great because we’re making that to more of our data science area, we work very closely with local universities to attract the talent into our company, we do some very much some very exciting stuff with our clients from our Boston office as well as expanding to Toronto as well. So Toronto we did in 2018, beginning of 2018 we expanded and we’ve continued to expanding in Toronto and gain some great people we’re recruiting there and a real new innovative working, the machine learning side that we’re doing there.
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Nas: So you’ve kind of already talked about this, but I’m going to say as some information, so Vish if you have to give a couple of quick tips of someone who’s right now in the process of expanding to the US what would you say to them?
Vishal: Factor, time, be well funded and most importantly, get the culture right. The culture piece I would say is critical and make sure you adapt to local culture, as well as bring, bring the great stuff that you’re doing in UK or wherever across as well, but time, funding, export and adapt of culture.
Nas: You’ve been listening to Move Your Business to the United States from Mount Bonnell Advisors, I’m Nastaran Tavakoli-Far and today’s guest was Vishal Marria of Quantexa, we’ve put the details in the show notes do check them out. Emmett Glynn is our sound engineer and Nevena Paunovic is our podcast manager. You have also heard some samples of the Prelinger Archives who have some great historical material from the US. We’ll be back in two weeks, send us your questions about expanding to the US, the address is info@mtbonnell.com okay we’ll speak to you soon.
