Despite Vietnam’s startup ecosystem, we managed to go global

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For Vietnamese startups, scaling out of the country is an uphill battle. Earlier this year, WisePass co-founder Lam Tran discussed how Vietnamese startups struggle with internationalization in the local ecosystem. In Vietnam, entrepreneurs work in a difficult regulatory environment, with few international mentors to support them.

Despite the challenges, it’s totally possible to build a successful global startup out of Vietnam.

I believe my startup, DesignBold, is an example. It is an online graphic design platform that helps people create designs in five minutes, even without graphic design skills. I’m here to share with you how our venture has gone global successfully.

Just a year after launching, one in five people who used our site are from the United States. After Vietnam, we field the most customer support requests from those in the United States and Western Europe. These two regions have quickly become our cornerstone international markets.

Like many Vietnamese startups, my company didn’t have an international mentor. We figured out what worked for us on a global scale through a lot of trial and error. Here’s what we’ve learned along the way:

1. Always do market research

Leave your assumptions at the door. Our all-Vietnamese team had a pretty good idea of what the Vietnamese wanted from our product and how to sell it to them. When we started adding international users, we immediately had to drop these assumptions.

We found, for example, that international users were less likely to reach out over social media or live support to bargain before purchasing a subscription than local users. While locals wanted a person to convince them, international users wanted the product itself to convince them.

To engage international users with our product, we added a blog, polished our landing pages, and began to emphasize email marketing. This cocktail of inbound and outbound marketing helped us reach out to potential customers in non-bargaining cultures.

User feedback was absolutely critical to the development of our marketing strategy. Our small support team, business development team, and product development team readily shared user feedback with each other. This kept our marketing strategy agile and responsive to individual user’s needs.

After receiving inquiries from dozens of international users, for example, we decided to launch an affiliate program to reward those who refer many new users to our tool. We announced the program on social media and, less than three days later, had more than 100 affiliates signed up from all over the world.

2. Build trust to break stereotypes

3. Partner with deal sites to jumpstart international growth

4. Stay product-centered