We put out a press release today announcing that Tod Skarecky is joining us to head up our US business.
Please see Tod Skarecky to head US Business.
To add some background around this.
For a while now it has become clear to us that the US is our most important market.
As we are based in London, this has meant numerous webex presentations, conference calls and trans-atlantic travel. While that works, it works up to a point. It is difficult to follow-up and maintain the conversation with a 5 hour time difference.
So the choice we had was to continue with the above, find a third-party partner or hire someone.
Given our focus on the US, the first was clearly not the best option.
So we considered looking for a firm to work with. The difficulty here is finding a partner where our mutual interests are aligned and complimentary. Then there is culture and relationships, the closer these fit, the more likely the partnership is to last. After all both parties need to make an investment in and trust the relationship. Many are the partnerships where it starts well, but soon the desired win-win turns into a win-lose, where one party feels they are investing more and getting less out of the relationship.
Hiring someone to join and be the first person in a huge market such as the US has similar challenges. Again relationship and culture is important. You need someone that knows what it takes to be successful in the financial technology vendor space, has the experience and track record of achieving that.
The real difference between a third-party partnership and hiring someone is that with the latter goals can be aligned and more trust established.
However hiring someone to head your most important market is as difficult, if not more so than finding a partner.
Luckily for us, we managed to find someone to hire in Tod.
The timing, the experience, the relationship, the belief in shared values, all aligned for both parties.
So there you have the background to the press release.
We believe it also signals our serious intent to focus on the US.
After-all we can all believe in, “Think Global, Act Local” but until we have a global and local presence in our chosen markets, that remains just another quote from a management book. One that has some vague resonance but does not impact our day to day operation. We mean to change that.
Think Global, Act Local.