From the last post above this one, then I realised that we could put our collective heads together to monitor the efficiency of our companies’ expansion into the international arena.
As said previously then I was surprised that my lawyer in the Czech Republic started to use Docusign early this year and this is valuable information which although anecdotal is important.
So whereas most of the posters on this board are probably living in the USA and tech trends usually start there, then it would be very interesting to find out where the posters here live at the moment. For some reason I think Saul lives in France, but I might be wrong.
And not only interesting, but useful, as stated above.
I don’t want to encourage any replies along the lines of “my country is better than yours” which are of no use, but I think that it would be really helpful to know where people live if they are outside the USA and if they notice that any of our companies are making an impact in their locale.
It could be discussions you have with your friends, any sort of advertising you see, any contacts that you have in the industry, any mention that a contact makes about their company (big or small) changing from company X’s solution to company Y’s solution.
Prague has a whole bunch of software engineers apart from those who work for AVG and Avast and they are a good source of information for me, one identifying MongoDB before its IPO as a great solution, so if we put our collective heads together then I can put together a Google spreadsheet which I will share to identify who lives where, so if you want to know how Crowdstrike is doing in Brazil (for instance) then this member might be able to tell you.
I have no interest in your physical address or email address so just reply to this post, because knowing which country you live in would be really useful. You know more about what our companies are doing in your country than any analyst does.
Cheers, PB.
p.s. Saul: If this is deemed to be off topic then just ask for it to be removed.
p.p.s. Happy new year to everyone (slightly premature but I’ll be busy for the next day or two).
I’m in the US but spend 3 months a year usually in France. To me France seems considerably behind the US in internet usage. I had to introduce most of my friends to personal computers back 15 or 20 years ago (“What would I need a computer for?”). Now people use smart phones but don’t live on them the way people in the US do. Also, while almost everyone in the farmers markets here takes credit cards on Square, no merchants in markets in France (where I’ve been anyway) take credit cards, period. I get things from Amazon France and Amazon UK while I’m in France, but no one else that I know does. It’s partly a feeling that they are being loyal to local merchants, and partly they are afraid (in some sense) of amazon, of giving their credit card number to them, etc. Also the French government protects local merchants by limiting Amazon to 5% discounts under the local price. Even stores are only allowed to have sales in January (end-of-season winter stuff) and July (end-of-season summer stuff), for fear the big department stores would undercut the little local merchants. I’m not kidding. You can’t have a sale except those two months! This of course ends up being good for the local merchants, but very bad for consumers who have to pay full price.
Best I can do for now, but it doesn’t really tell you anything about any of our companies, so I’m not sure any of this is relevant for our board unless it actually involves one of our companies.
From what I know, which is far from comprehensive, there are actually a lot of non US posters on TMF, including on this board. We regularly get posts from Asia, notably Australia, Singapore and China and I think some other places, as well as UK and Europe. And, of course, Canada, Mexico, and Central and South America. The location may not be apparent on a post by post basis, but does show up over time. Indeed, compared to the professional on-line communities in which I participate, I would say the notable difference is a relative absence of representation from Eastern Europe and Russia.
Particularly when you say “Also, while almost everyone in the farmers markets here takes credit cards on Square, no merchants in markets in France (where I’ve been anyway) take credit cards, period.” then that’s of interest to people who want to see international progress being made.
There are several farmers markets and small businesses here in Prague and I’ve never seen any of them using Square terminals. Small businesses here are required by law to electronically report every sale they make to the government via the internet (Just google EET Czech republic and you can find out more), but no Square terminals anywhere. For some obscure reason the EET law doesn’t apply to farmers markets here.
This info isn’t important to people who aren’t interested in Square, and that includes me, but given that they used to be a high growth stock then it was an early indicator that they would struggle with international expansion, don’t you agree?
So that’s the kind of information that I’m looking for and think is valuable to us.
I’m friends with twelve software engineers here, working for different companies at different levels and two have told me that their senior guys are looking to replace New Relic as their APM and switching to Datadog.
this thread is fascinating. As long as it stays good-natured (respectful) and relatively on-topic, we should keep it going. So much to learn about other places in the world. Also could have impacts on our businesses.
Some anecdotal feedback from an Australian on “Saul stocks”
Square Inc.
In Australian the local “big four” banks anticipated the Square threat, and have good small business EFTPOS support. Commonwealth bank seems to dominate this market, and I see their EFTPOS terminals everywhere. It is quite rare to see a Square terminals in Australian shops / retail businesses. I think it will be hard for Square to penetrate the Australian / NZ market.
Crowdstrike
I inquired about, and trialed Crowdstrike for my own business, and I was impressed with the sales follow up / support here in Australia. I was hesitant about the lack of support for Linux / QNAP, but expect this will change.
I can’t comment on enterprise software business take up down under… perhaps others can.