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I think its partially due to the size of the market. Most British startups start out building products for the British market. So they have a 10-20 million tar
by vaksel 17y ago
I think its partially due to the size of the market.
Most British startups start out building products for the British market. So they have a 10-20 million target. Once they achieve major success, they figure they'll go overseas.
U.S. startups start out building products for the American market, so they have a 300 million target. And since our version of English is much more prevalent online that target is even higher.
Since growth rates are more or less the same, you have British companies at a disadvantage. While a US company might have 10 million users after 5 years, the same exact company in Britain would only have 100K users.
The market share may be the same, but due to the sheer size of the market, the U.S. company has a lot more customers. And once those customers start paying, the U.S. company has a ton more $$$ to play with to grow even further.
There are obviously a number of exceptions, British companies doing well in the American market. But those are the culturally aware companies, that realize that the British culture is different from the American one.
- gtzi 17y agoI echo the scale factor, it is both the chicken and the egg. And the problem is the same, actually much worse, in the whole Europe.
- kmcgivney 17y agoWhile you are correct that the population of the USA is around 300 million, the population of the UK is roughly 60 million. Of course both numbers are presumably more than the "target" you are talking about, but I think it's safe to say that Great Britain is about 20% of the size of the USA. Also, I don't understand the growth-rate math. Why would the UK company have 1/100th the number of users? How much would the variety of English you use on a website alter your traffic? I'm asking because I really don't know. Does anyone have research on this?
- thirdusername 17y agoI can't point you at research but I've recently found that it does seems like my American friends have a much tougher time understanding British-English than I do as a non-native English speaker and from my experience non-native speakers don't care what version is used as long as it's consistent (for those that care a little at all). Personally I don't really notice if I'm reading American or British English, I only notice when it's pronounced. I too would love to see research.
- IsaacL 17y agoYou're right that it's to do with the size of the market - 300 million potential customers is a huge amount of growing room. However, the UK has 60 million people, not 20 million (I thought you were talking about the adult population, but you referred to the total population of the US). Also, the difference between US and British English is so slight as to be irrelevant. I think the lack of a large domestic market is one cause, however I'm going to say the main reason is that we don't have a Valley in the UK.
- fauigerzigerk 17y agoThat's an important factor. Interestingly enough Israel seems to benefit from its non-existing domestic market. Even small companies there have to target international markets right from the start.
- kristiandupont 17y agoBut this should not be a factor to web companies like the ones mentioned in the title. We are running our company from Denmark, but on a .com domain and in English. There are some differences like accounting, legal counselling, etc. - the infrastructure for that here is definitely not Silicon Valley level. But the market is not one of them, in my view. So it's really just up to our ability to execute (yikes!)