Harry Briggs
Founder Turned VC. On 1 show, 0 appearances, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
Harry Briggs is a founder turned venture capitalist. He has experience building his own business across more than 35 countries and helping portfolio companies execute international expansion plans.
1shows
0appearances
16statements
0resolved
0supported
0contradicted
Everything Harry Briggs said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Briggs: European regional leaders often get steamrolled by global winners
“And what we have seen in Europe quite a bit is companies that became, you know, regional winners, But then the global winner came in at some point and kind of steamrolled, not completely, but, you know, eroded their market and stopped them from growing.”
Briggs: European startups almost always botch their first US sales hire
“You know, probably the hardest role that I see in the companies I work with is, you know, a European team hiring their first US sales director, and they always seem to get it wrong. And they probably always give that person a bit too long before they realize t…”
Briggs: International expansion shouldn't be an escape from domestic growth problems
“So I think the question that you should be asking when you're thinking about going international is Are you expanding to escape your problems, or do you actually have something worth scaling?”
Briggs: Marketplace retention cohorts should improve as the platform scales
“Ideally, particularly in marketplace businesses, cohorts should be improving as you scale.”
Briggs: Paddle's US expansion only took off after hiring a dedicated US team
“It wasn't really until they hired a dedicated US team, so they were UK based and selling globally from the UK for a long time. It wasn't until they had a team completely dedicated to the US that the US really, really started to take off.”
Briggs: MacPaw's organic growth flattered Paddle's early startup growth metrics
“They had one huge whale customer. They're called Mac Paw. And Mac Paw kept growing themselves. So it was flattering their growth numbers.”
Briggs: Plum Guide shifted to vetting homes only upon first booking
“They were only approving 10% of homes. That's hard to scale. But the pandemic actually helped them because, you know, it forced them to be way more efficient. It forced them to conserve cash and they managed to automate a lot of those tests and they changed th…”
Briggs: Firefly would have fared better focusing on UK product-market fit first
“And I think if we had really, really focused on, okay, what is our playbook in the UK to, you know, reach true product market fit and really, really figure that out, I think it would have been better.”
Briggs: Gousto reached a $1B+ valuation by focusing solely on the UK
“Gusto, again I, I've been an investor while I was an investor in a previous fund, and Gusto is the sort of more premium HelloFresh in the UK, if you like and they've become the market leader in the UK and by relentlessly focusing on executing in the UK, you kn…”
Briggs: Expanding markets requires waiting for an A-player hire
“One B player in a team can lead to a lot of C players quite rapidly and making those calls early, and keeping the bar high, and only entering a market once you've found that A player, I think is probably key to their expansion.”
Briggs: The second international market is usually the hardest
“Clearly when you're expanding internationally, the second market is usually the hardest because you don't have a playbook yet. And you're going to be hit with a whole lot of surprises.”
Briggs: Organic inbound demand is the best starting point for international expansion
“When you start to see organic demand from a market, that's often a good way to start, because then you can go to those customers and say, you know, why are you buying this?”
Briggs: Uber once scaled by opening a new city every three days
“At one point they were opening a new city every three days.”
Briggs: GoCardless accelerated scale by shifting to B2B invoice payments
“They were particularly going after companies that sold a lot of consumer direct debits. But shortly after I stepped off the board there, they figured out that actually the biggest market they could go after was B to B invoice payments. And the moment that they…”
Briggs: The Hut Group was his only portfolio company to succeed in China
“The only company I've been involved with that has expanded to China successfully was the Hut Group out of which is an e-commerce player, and the reason that they expanded was that they started to get demand there.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Harry's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 SAASTRLEDGER | Founder Turned VC | 0 +1 | 16 | — | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |