The $8 Billion Playbook: How European Startups Can Win in the U.S. - Christina Rebuffet-Broadus - Transatlantia

Expanding to the U.S. is every ambitious European founder’s dream—but most burn cash, stall deals, and underestimate the market.

In this episode of Reactor, I sit down with Christina Rebuffet-Broadus, U.S. growth expert and CEO of Transatlantia, to break down the exact strategies European startups need to scale, sell, and thrive in America.

💡 What you’ll learn in this episode:
✅ Why copy-pasting your European strategy to the U.S. is a recipe for failure
✅ The biggest mindset shift European founders must make to land 7-figure deals
✅ How to sell deeptech & climate tech in a market that moves faster than Europe
✅ The CEO agenda test: Are you really prioritizing growth?
✅ Why most U.S. expansions fail—and how to fix yours before it’s too late

🚀 If you’re a tech founder going global, this episode is your cheat code.

🔗 Listen & Subscribe:
📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Reactor-podcast
📩 Read the full breakdown in the newsletter: https://reactortech.substack.com/

💬 Thinking about U.S. expansion? What’s your biggest challenge? Drop it in the comments!

#ReactorPodcast #USExpansion #Deeptech #Startups #Growth #ClimateTech #Sales

Transcript

Jerome (00:00)
Hello everybody and welcome to this new episode of Reactor Podcast. My name is Jerome and today this is a particularly interesting conversation we're going to have because I my friend and also entrepreneur Christina and we're going to talk about tech startups globalization going into the US. Welcome Christina.

Christina (00:19)
Yeah, thanks, Jerome. Yeah. And I just want to say a big welcome also to all of the listeners from Transatlantia, where we're turning European entrepreneurs into U.S. market leaders. Very exciting episode to be here with my friend, former client, entrepreneur, guy that I just appreciate all around, Jerome. And we're going to talk a lot about how to turn European tech CEOs into global leaders, whether that's on the U.S. market or the American market.

you know, what's your playbook for getting them to that position? Yeah. Very excited to be here.

Jerome (00:51)
This is particularly interesting because a lot of my listeners, a lot of my guests, also European startups, and even outside Europe, they dream of making it into the US and usually they fail and crash because they are not ready or they are going in the right way. So Christina has helped hundreds, thousands of entrepreneurs land billion-dollar contracts in the US. So I guess it's going to be a really interesting conversation today. I hope you get a lot of insights.

about going to the US very big.

Christina (01:22)
Right. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, like I said, yeah, very excited because one of the things that you really talk about in all of your messaging and everything that you do is if you're a tech CEO, your first job is to sell. You have to be a salesman. And I'm a total believer of that. And so I think that the things that we're going to get into today are going to be really interesting for all of these very smart, very high level tech CEOs, but who just need a little bit of help becoming

salespeople and that's what you're all about. And so, yeah, I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Let's go. So, yeah, so I would say maybe if we just talk about, don't know, what's the biggest mistake that you see European tech CEOs make when they try to go global?

Jerome (02:06)
This usually think that technology will sell itself, that customer will go through the door whenever their product is ready. And they will know that it's ready. They will dearly ask for an invoice and buy it. And usually a lot of people say, when I talk to them and say they waiting, they waiting, they waiting. I really need to, for this...

big corporates to know when they are doing no advertising whatsoever. They're just selling technology and they're not focusing on value proposition. And even the ones that are going out and talking to customers, usually they try and push their product and technology and they don't listen. And they don't get any feedback from the customers.

Christina (02:53)
Yeah,

exactly.

Jerome (02:54)
Because you can be selling the right product, even with the right value proposition. But the problem is that you don't really get into the shoes of your customer. Exactly. I used to work in the company a few months back and I helped them and they were trying to sell a very, very tiny thing in robotics and automotive, very specific. And they had customers, had already customer attractions in Europe.

Christina (02:59)
See ya.

Jerome (03:22)
And they told me, yeah, but no one is coming yet. And they were doing some kind of marketing. The thing is like, when we started working together, I said, let's talk about this company. And there was not a tiny company. They were helping the French Space Agency. Yeah, right. So which was really legitimate. Yeah, exactly. And that was very strong for marketing. And they say, we're going to push that for three months. Like, just try to say, we help.

Christina (03:42)
Pretty big client.

Jerome (03:50)
The French Space Agency does do that. And it saves them money. It saves them time, whatever. And you should have seen all the big corporate names in the aerospace industry coming up like, we want to know what you did with the space agency because we want the same. We want doing the same. And they sign and that was like inbound marketing. That was not hard for them because they just talk about what they do.

Christina (04:10)
the same thing.

Jerome (04:19)
Yeah. And that's usually simple. You you talk about what you do every day. Yeah. And that's, yeah, that should be your main focus. That would be the first mistake that they all do. Right.

Christina (04:28)
Okay, yeah, exactly. it's yeah, it's just like how do you talking about what you do, how you help your clients, what you're going to be able to get for these other clients that you're trying like, make it simple.

Jerome (04:38)
Yeah, make it simple, man. And talk about people. People love talking about themselves. you know, if it's the same for you, they are being sold something or pushed into buying something, they don't want to. They want to feel like they need the stuff. And so if you are not putting that into perspective, into entering global market, even if you for a French company going to the Italian market, you know, what's happening in Italy right now? What's the big trend? What's the issue with most of the company?

Christina (05:05)
Exactly. You've got to like pull, I'd say pull them into your product rather than pushing your product onto them.

Jerome (05:11)
Exactly.

It has to come from them. Exactly. That's it. And on the FIP side, so when are European founders target the US? What's their first mistake? What do they do?

Christina (05:23)
I'd say there's maybe two big mistakes that I've seen a lot. And the very first one that I feel like almost everybody makes is just underestimating the differences between the European market and their European clients versus the American market and their American clients. And we're not talking about like the regulations and all of that because very often they're like, all right, we know that we don't know this. That's the difference I would say. They know that they don't know the parts about

the regulations, the legal aspects, et cetera. So they're really gonna invest in making sure they get that right. So that's good. But then they underestimate the differences just in terms of how the market works in buyer mindset, buyer psychology, the cultural differences. mean, there's two things I had, I was talking to a guy that's most likely gonna become a client and they do tailored software. They tailor their software.

to their clients' needs. And we were talking about it and I said, well, you know, when you're going into the US market, what are you going to have to do differently? What do think you're going to have to do differently? And he said, well, yeah, I don't know. We might have to tweak some things, but I mean, 90 % it's probably going to be the same. I'm like, all right, no, we're going to talk about this. So that's the first thing is just assuming it's going to be like 90 % it's the same. We're going to put it in English. We might change a little bit, but otherwise it's going to work.

Another example is a friend of mine from Grenoble who's just recently gone and started living in the US. And I was talking to him on LinkedIn and I said, you know, what are the differences that you've seen? And he's like, it's really, really different. And I'm like, yeah, it's like, yeah, it is. he said, I didn't think it was going to be this extreme. So I still need to find out what exactly are the differences that he's seen. I really want to get into that and maybe bring him onto the podcast or something.

But just, and I would say that he's somebody who prepared for this. I mean, he's been preparing for this move to the U.S. So he didn't just kind of go, you know, thinking, I'll see what's going to happen. So just don't underestimate those differences. That's going to be the key thing. The other mistake that I see a lot of entrepreneurs making is they're really like hardcore focusing on just lead generation and getting appointments.

So for example, this could be like spending and losing a lot of money on like lead generation agencies, or I'm not knocking lead generation agencies. But if you are not doing the work to adapt your messaging, to adapt, you know, how you're going about selling your product, talking to your clients, et cetera, and you're getting people who are going out and getting appointments for you, you're basically

paying people to get appointments with you and you're gonna go into that appointment and you're gonna mess it up because you haven't done all of that work to adapt to the American market. And I've seen, I've talked to so many people who are like, yeah, we're paying lead agencies like 3000 a month, 5000 a month. And they've sent out 3000 emails and we've got three appointments and none of them were qualified. And he's, like, yeah, but. So I would say that one, but also just like focusing on

trying to get those appointments as your main goal. And I had a guy contact me through LinkedIn and he said, you know, hey, we're looking to go into the American market. Do you have any contacts in, I think it's like an insurance industry? And I said, yeah, you know, I've got a pretty good network. I'm a member of a lot of different associations and networks and, you know, I could probably find you some. But before, you know, let me just have a look at what you're doing. And he's like,

I'm just interested in getting appointments. I'm just interested in getting introductions. I went and looked, you know, at LinkedIn and their website. Their LinkedIn was not in English. Their website was in English, but it was full of jargon and just not very salesy, let's say, in a positive way.

And I was like, you're not ready for these introductions. And he's like, that's all I'm interested in. I'm not interested in anything else. I don't want a training program. I don't want an accelerator. just want intro. I'm like, I'm not introducing you. So if you're focusing too much on that, the introductions and the appointments without doing the groundwork, you're going, you're setting yourself up for failure. And if you're

Exactly. That's it. And I think that's what it is. It's like you're focusing on, it's almost like focusing on like the dopamine hits, like getting the appointments. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm moving forward. But if you're not doing the groundwork before, you're just like, it's like going into a battle unarmed. And why would you do that to yourself?

Jerome (09:50)
Yeah, and also you mentioned that you cannot mess, you are, let's say, you can mess those appointments and actually fail to enter the market where the leads would have been qualified if you did the job. after the call, the guy was looking at your website and it with the right wording, with the video in English.

But otherwise you're messing up a good opportunity. It could be a qualified lead as well. It could be. And you are not even tapping into the also the differences between states, between like, you know, US East Coast or California. It's different. That's also a big challenge because you're not tapping into a small market that's going fast.

Christina (10:27)
different ways of doing business.

Jerome (10:36)
it's going to be different and you're going to be challenged. also, what I think from your experience is that people want trust and if they see that you want to trust, you have already a gap when you're a foreigner. You are a foreigner, so then there's a gap at first and then after that, there's like, okay, can he deliver? Can you deliver on your results? Even if you promise, know, some kind of a...

big opportunities for the customer. Like, you deliver? I to jump into the question because this is the title of the episode on my channel and a lot of people are asking about this S billion deal that you help your customer sign. So can you tell us the story about this huge contract, even if you cannot sign, quote names?

Christina (11:26)
We'll not quote the names.

but... How that happened. Yeah. So this was interesting. And I would say that this is something that we actually see very often, the entry point, let's say. Meaning, so it's a company, it's a catering company and they work with, you know, airlines, airplanes, mean, airports, things like this. And...

Jerome (11:29)
Let's go through the...

Christina (11:51)
The guy came to us and he said, you know, I'm going to be moving to the US. My company is moving me to the US rather. And so I need to work on my English. And so I said, OK, great, we can do that. And then we start working with him and, you know, we get in and we always do like a diagnostic of objectives and things like that. And we say, well, what is it that you need to work on?

And he said, well, you know, I need to, I need to work on my English because I'm going to be in the U S I want to work on the culture because I know that there are some differences, but I don't know what those differences are. I'm going to need to be able to negotiate contracts to manage an American team. Like just all of this, I would say not easy stuff to do already.

when you're in your own culture and your own language, but here you're going into a foreign culture in a foreign language in Texas of all places, which I would say actually Texas has a bad reputation, but it's actually a lot better than we imagine it to be. And so we said, all right, we're going to start working on everything. So we started off with just kind of like some overviews on what are the main things that you need to know about the different ways of doing business. And so this is things like,

you know, the approach to time already, like that's a big thing. Punctuality, meetings, structure, all of this stuff. So we start with some basics of American business culture. And then we really started from, want to say like the beginning, meaning how do you introduce yourself? How do you talk about who you are and what you do when you're going into these meetings and you're going to introduce yourself to your American colleagues?

And you would think that's not something that you need to be working on when you're at this level. But like I said, you've got to go in with this kind of beginner's mindset and thinking, I've got to really level everything and then build back up. So we started working with all of the basics. We worked a lot on the aspect of socializing, small talk, building up rapport. Because a lot of times we think that Americans, it's direct, it's to the point, it's all about business, and that's the only thing that matters.

And while the business does go fast, building up that relationship is important. It's just that the way that it's done is very different from what we do here in Europe. In we're going to meet several times. We're going to maybe have like a meal together. And it's going to take a lot of time to build up that relationship before you can start talking business, let's say. In the U.S., you're going to still build up that relationship, but it's going to be faster. It's going to be shorter.

but it's still building the relationship. If you try to go straight into the deal too early, it's just not going to work out. So we worked on that aspect as well, because very often it's something that is neglected in business practices, let's say. And then we really got into the heart of, right, you're going to be going into these meetings. How are you going to present what you guys have to offer? How are you going to do your pitch? We looked at

the documents, we looked at the slide deck, we rearranged everything just because the way that you persuade in Europe is going to be very different from how you persuade in the US. In the US, we're going to start talking about, you know, what's in it for me? What's the value? What's the problem? What's the solution? Do a little bit of storytelling in there as well. Not so much focusing on like the specs or the techno, even though catering is not technical, but let's say the technical aspects of your product.

And so we totally flipped that. We did a little bit of work, you know, with the book, Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss, really some like hardcore negotiation role play techniques, things like that. So that when he was going into these meetings with him and his team, they were prepared for this. And so it was really like working to get them ready for US business culture in general.

building up the relationships, building up that rapport, the negotiation skills, working on all of the materials you're taking in there. And now he's like negotiating big contracts with American airline companies. He's like, that's just part of my job now. And so, yeah, mean, it's like I said, you've got to go in with kind of that beginner's mindset and be ready to redo and rethink everything that you know about business, even if you've got 20 years of experience.

It's, it's, you've got to start from scratch almost.

Jerome (16:15)
Cool. That's a masterclass of understanding of buyer things in the US and you're adapting to your markets. So I see the patterns in deep tech as well and climate tech. If you don't position yourself for the new market, you're going to fail. you need to be thinking about urgent critical problems to cooperate. Buyers won't move otherwise.

Christina (16:38)
Yeah. Exactly. It's not going to work. And I think that that's one of the key points. And this is one thing that I really like about your messaging and what you do is really like pushing founders here in Europe to think bigger. mean, in the USA, we have expressions, go big or go home, things like this. Why do you think that it's so hard for European entrepreneurs to maybe have these

huge ambitions, these big dreams.

Jerome (17:07)
One word, fear. Yeah, there's the fear of that ambition. And it's a journal mindset that we don't want to disturb, don't to annoy people. And usually it's what you see in marketing. A lot of people are telling me when I do marketing slash outbound, so getting to...

calling customers or mailing customers. A lot of people I say are going to answer me and even friends, know, sometimes like, know, friends I think I can help. A lot of people are going to say, you annoy me. And you know, that's fine. That's not personal. There was not the right time, the right moment. And you need to get a lot of rejections before you get actually to get some customers. And also, you know,

If you're a startup, you're obviously tiny. But everyone started somewhere. And even big corporates, they do have a problem. They are slow. They need some kind of innovation to stay in the game. Apple is 48 years old now, today, and they're still innovating. And they were born and they were talking to the revolutionary people mindset.

Christina (18:20)
Different, yeah.

Jerome (18:21)
Yeah, and also, if you're a startup and you talk to big corporations and you are helping them reduce the amount of waste that they have, they are reducing the bills, they're going to look at your solution, even if you're tiny, even if you're 10 people. So don't focus on the size, because at the end of the day, even if you're a big corporation in front of me, you're still a guy with a problem in the workplace.

and you have projects, you want to solve them, you want to achieve them. Even if you're building a rocket, you have like a lot of problems. And so if I can help you with a project planning management tool, if I can help you with this structural thing that you've been stuck on for years, and you just decided to go with this, and because you don't have any other options. I actually talked to a guy a few days back.

He has a really great tool for privacy in software. it's like a tool where, know, when you enter, I'm Christina and I'm a CEO of a Translator, it removes the Christina. It's like, hey, I'm first name and I'm role at company name. And it's very interesting. And the guy is like, the tool is open source. So this is also, you know, he's a Swiss guy and he said,

You know, I got this email yesterday from the head of technology partnerships at Apple. Yeah. I was like, wow, congrats. Right. You know, and you say, yeah, we're just two of us. Yeah. Just the two of us. It's like, yeah, congrats. And the guy say, yeah, but they're paying 10,000 a month for the tool. And you say, yeah, but it's getting a lot more expensive for us because they want this company wants this and this other company wants this.

You say, yeah, but your tool is necessary. Like, can they do otherwise? Is there another option for them? And you say, no, there's no option out there. And even the fact that it's open source, 90 % of the code, they can just take it and internalize it. But then they ask for us to jump in and say, yeah, OK, you charge. You go, you take the 10,000. But then you say, OK, for customization, it's 10 times more. But they don't have another option. Even they are just the two of them.

And he said, yeah, but if I don't, if I'm not able to add that load to my team, my two person team, two people team, that's a rich guy problem. You can always hire people. There's no fear to have, you know, it's like, don't be afraid of massive ambition. Like you're already talking to Apple, which is like maybe the second most

Christina (20:47)
You can always find people.

This is people's dream, I would say.

Jerome (21:00)
Exactly,

you want Apple or Nvidia to contact you and say, I want it. And so this is what I don't see with US companies. Even European founders going into the US, they usually like 10 times or 100 times their ambitions when they go there. And that's good. one thing that we can talk about is really also the personal side.

When I started working with an entrepreneur, we go personal very fast. I don't mean like I don't mind with the business, but I ask about the environment. Because this is really important. It's like, are your family supportive of what you do? Are your friends supportive of what you do? And I also try to think like him and try to...

say, OK, are you trying to live the same exact life as before when you were an engineer or researcher, a project manager and trying to keep everything the same way, but being an entrepreneur? Yes. And that's not work. It's not going to work because you're doing the same thing, expecting different results. Right. So that's where there is a problem because you cannot stay the same. Your life will change. Right. Yeah. I have this entrepreneur, you know, we've been talking for three years. Yeah.

Christina (21:56)
It's not gonna work

Jerome (22:11)
He knows he has to go to the US. that's the... He's in Bordeaux, it's fine. And so he's going out with the boys at night. But he's like a CEO of a deep tech company. So, you know, I keep on repeating and we have regular call every six months. And I was like, when do you go to the US? Because he's telling me, you know, I need to go, I need to go, I need to go. like when...

Christina (22:16)
thinking about it, right?

All right, let's go.

Jerome (22:39)
Let's go because and he said, yo, 75 % of my marketing is US based. And you was like, what's the problem with not going? Yeah. Yeah. Family, friends and everything. It's like we're waiting for the right moment.

Christina (22:53)
And the right moment never comes. I feel like I've seen this as well. It takes from the time that you start thinking about going into the US to the time when you're actually ready to make that move. does take, I mean, it's like two to three years. It can take a while, a lot of time of preparation. it's like, if you're saying, yeah, we're really gonna go hard in on the US market in like,

I don't know, end of 2025. And then you're going to wait until October to really start working. Like that's not going to work. Like you should have been starting in like 2023 to really work on, you know, building up your assets of, you know, your digital presence, getting out there in the media, in English, talking about what you're doing, talking about your vision, going to fairs events in the U S getting those contacts. I mean, there's a lot of groundwork and foundations that need to be laid.

I mean, it's like building a house. don't say like, want to move into my new house next month. All right, let me start now looking at how to build that house. You're going to be, you're going to be living in a tent. Exactly. And it's like, if you've, if you've got this kind of big project, you know that you need to be really starting a lot in advance. Like, like I said, two to three years in advance.

Jerome (23:54)
There's gonna be a tent.

Christina (24:10)
because otherwise what's going to happen is you're going to be scrambling and you're going to be trying to do things at the last minute. And it's, you know, and it just doesn't work out to that way. I would say it's, it's, it's a lot of preparation, a lot of work that sometimes, and I think this is the hard part. It's not the kind of work that gives you like an immediate result. And I think that's going back to why the people were like, I just need leads. I just need appointments. No, you've got to do the groundwork first.

but yeah, that's, yeah, it just takes time.

Jerome (24:42)
And also going back on this, it's a lot of frustration. one thing that I do and it's really good test, you can do it for yourself. It's like it's called what I call the CEO agenda test. It's like every time I see a CEO and he's saying, next step is US, selling to Germany, selling to UK. I was like, OK.

like the focus is getting customer outside of your country, France, let's say. And usually it's like, what do you do every day? What do you do? And usually this is really revealing of the priority of the CEO is like, what do you do on the daily basis to tackle the problem? This is your main problem. You want to sell to the other land. Okay.

Fine. Right. It's like, what do do every day? You know, you are, as you say, chief revenue officer. Right. Chief sales officer before, know, before you can hire the head of sales. Exactly. And so usually it's like, OK, pull up your agenda. Yeah. And usually people don't want to. And if you don't want to pull your agenda at that moment, yeah, that's something wrong. You're like, you're lying to me.

Christina (25:48)
And then you're lying to yourself. Yeah, exactly.

Jerome (25:51)
But you know, I was doing the same before, sure. mean, like, you're got your trachea going, licked in, and you know, you're delaying the hard work.

Christina (25:58)
They're like active procrastination. Exactly.

Jerome (26:01)
And you are getting busy not doing the thing you need to do most. And no one is going to do it for you because even the CEO of the day that you responsible for your agenda. So put that first in your agenda. And it doesn't have to be like, you know, we see a lot of...

deep work and everything and, know, and productivity tools. For me right now, my motto is doing less, like doing less of the other stuff and putting more in the deep work. Like even if you are a CEO, you can have your four hours in the morning, four hours in the afternoon free. it doesn't have to be like coding work. You don't do algorithm. You go and you have four hours to call customer.

Christina (26:32)
Yeah.

Talk to people.

Jerome (26:44)
Yeah. And you've been to this fair and this fair. Where's the lead? Yeah. You need to call that guy. You have the number. It's on the business cards. So the CEO agenda test is a really good example because you cannot lie. It's like, even if the... And so, and even if you jump on those like publicity and advertisements, like, okay, you jump on this call and you got an article on this website, on Forbes. Yeah. Okay.

Christina (26:47)
Exactly, following up.

Call him up.

It's there on your Google calendar, you know.

Jerome (27:14)
How did it help the business? How many leads did you get out of this? You you spent 30k dollars or euros or whatever for this cover, but did it help?

Christina (27:25)
Did it help? Did it move the needle?

Jerome (27:27)
Exactly. And sometimes it's frustrating for them because they just don't know what to say. And also, know, this mindset shift, it's like, need to be accountable for your agenda. And if this is one number one priority. I was supposed to have somebody on a podcast here and he was telling me, that's not a priority. he had like seven priorities at the same time.

Christina (27:52)
Priority is one. You have one priority.

Jerome (27:55)
Let's do it again. just listed everything. I just repeated everything he says. My priorities are like customers, raising money, recruiting, ads, marketing, whatever. There was like seven and I just stopped. was like, do you see the problem? And then you refused to go on a podcast. That's okay. That's fine. But it's like, okay, what do do for our own good, for your own business?

Christina (28:11)
recipe for disaster right here.

Exactly, yeah.

Jerome (28:22)
He couldn't answer to me and you know, I've been waiting for him.

Christina (28:25)
Yeah, as I say, it goes back, you've got to be prepared to level down everything that you've been doing and everything that you think you know and have that open mind. Because like you said, if you're doing the same things, but you're expecting different results, I don't know if this is the true quote, but they say that Albert Einstein says that that's the definition of insanity. But yeah, I mean, it's not going to work.

Jerome (28:45)
And talking about translating this sphere, because I think you see this sphere every day in your work. It's like, how do you practically translate European pitch when going to the US? Do you have any tips to share?

Christina (29:00)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I think what you said about the fear, I mean, when you're pitching, often we think pitching is getting up on like a stage, you've got your slide deck, you're at like a pitch contest or you're pitching investors or whatever. For me, when I talk about pitch, it's every moment that you have to talk about what you're doing, what's your mission, what do you have to offer the people. So this could be, you know, a

pitch presentation, can be a conversation, it can be the way that you show up on social media, on LinkedIn. Every opportunity can turn into an opportunity to pitch. And I don't mean pitch as in like forcing a sales speech down someone's throat. I mean, just getting people on board. And if we look at it that way, I would say one of the biggest mistakes I see when pitching is forgetting that

For example, if you're in an investor pitch, the investor is looking for two things probably, a return on investment. I mean, that's why they're investing is because they're right. I'm going to give you money. I'm, placing a bet on you and I want to see more money come back to me. So they're looking for the investment and they're also looking at you as the founder. So, you know, the idea is

I'm looking at you, I want to see that you've got a vision, that you have this dream, that you are in this for some sort of personal reason other than just, I want to go out there and I want to make money. That's important. But taking it to a deeper, more personal level is also, I mean, we, like you said, when you're selling, maybe it is business to business, but it's also human to human. And we want to see people who have these big visions, who have these big dreams and who are like going all in.

on what they want to accomplish. And one of the things I almost always see when I look at a pitch deck is what's the first, what's first, the product, the tech, the specs, how innovative I'm like, if you're pitching something, it's probably by definition innovative. And even if it doesn't have to be innovative, it can just be something really simple, but solves a problem and has a huge market. And there was a story that I can't remember the brand name, but it was talking about, it was something like,

eyelash extensions or eyebrow shaping or something like, and, you know, the people, think, and I think it was the investors, they didn't see the opportunity there, but the lady, she's like, no, this is a huge market. It's not sexy, it's not techie. But then when she finally got it out to the market, like that thing exploded just because there was the market and then there was the investment. And she wasn't talking, you know, about the tech or anything like that. And so,

If you're going in, if you have like a tech solution and you're going in and you're talking about the technical specifications, if you're using a lot of fancy long jargon words, that's not selling a dream to anybody. In fact, it's probably confusing people because investors are not necessarily tech people. They're investors. They're like financial. So you want to make sure that you are

going in there as a founder who has a vision, who has a dream, what's the story behind what you do and putting yourself as a person and your story back into that pitch and then also showing what's the market potential and what's the return on the investment gonna be. I would say, you you wanna talk about problem, solution, the why, so this is your personal why behind it.

What's the opportunity for the investment, for the investors, very clearly stating what are the next steps? And then for pitches where it's like a formal pitch, instead of just ending on something like, if you have any questions, come and talk to me afterwards. If they have questions, they will come talk to you. Ending on like an essence statement. And this is kind of like, you want to end it with a bit of emotion.

You know, leave them with that little dream, leave them thinking like, wow, I've got to get into this. And, you know, we make decisions, buying decisions with emotions, and then we justify them with logic. And with pitching, it's the same thing. If you're taking the emotions out, if you're taking the human out, you're taking the story out, you're just focusing on the logic, that's not how people make decisions. They justify it with the logic, but you get them in on the sale with the emotion and the essence.

Jerome (33:16)
So if you think about two very famous examples, actually you tapped into two things that I wanted to go off track a little bit with this is Uber and Airbnb. So let's go with Uber. Uber, if you remember like 15 years ago when you wanted to go to grab a taxi, you had this frustration as a user because you were somewhere and maybe the taxi was just around the corner. You couldn't see it.

and you were not able to see each other, so no business was made. And this solved that problem with the app where you connect and you see where your cab is. And that's the emotion. You remove the frustration for the host, the customer, and for as well the cab driver. Because the cab driver, there were a lot of complaints from existing taxi drivers. But then even when

Christina (34:03)
Yeah.

Jerome (34:10)
when you were able to phone and call somebody for a Capsi driver, even in like, it's like, I'm close by. And they were saying, you you can call five times and say, I'm close by. And now you see on the app that the guy is like five minutes away or 15 minutes away, but he's stuck in traffic. But still, you know, you're reinsured. And it's all about emotions. And on the storytelling side, that's very interesting. The Airbnb, you know, it's been existing for

I think it's 2005, not 20. For a long time. they still repeat the same story about them going from East Coast, don't know, Boston, maybe, to LA and just having to rent a room, a part of a flatmate house. don't know the story exactly, but they say, you know, we...

Christina (34:39)
For a long time.

Right.

Jerome (35:04)
actually had to sublet from somebody and it was super hard because there was a trust issue. as well, after we wanted to rent out and let people go in our rooms. But then how can you be sure that this somebody is trustworthy? And they remove... here comes the emotion. The emotion is, can I trust somebody out? You know, the money transaction between the two parts.

the one with the room, the one with the house, the full house, and the one renting it. And this is where they use the story over and over again about the San Francisco room to spare. that's story still today, 20 years after. And they still use the emotion of, it's safe for hosts, it's safe for guests.

Christina (35:46)
the emotion.

Jerome (35:47)
Usually when you think about it, the tech is amazing and it's smooth and the backend is, the front end is very nice. The design is very nice. There are three co-founders. I think two of them are designers. So that's why it's neat and fine. But then after they really focus on making it a payment platform, you know, basically, because when you read something on Airbnb, you just pay.

you get the money for the host, get the money after you're gone. for after you started the stay. And the tech was good, but that's not the need on.

Christina (36:23)
Exactly.

Yeah. I feel like if Uber, if their message had been something like, use the most advanced GPS geolocalization so that you can see your cab driver in real time. don't care how you do it. I just want to know that I don't have to stand there on a street corner when it's raining wondering if my driver is going to get here in five minutes or 15 minutes. know? So yeah, it's, I almost want to say that like whatever your tech is,

is just the means of making something happen. And what we want to hear about is what happens and how does that impact me and how is that going to help me and make my life better or easier or richer or whatever. But yeah, no.

Jerome (37:02)
Yeah, there's actually like three things that you can improve. If you come back to the roots of reasons people buy, it's health, it's fame or it's money. Right. Exactly. And that's either helping one of the three things. There are sub labels, health, financial health, there's like body health, relationship, love, everything. there's money and there's the fame part.

Christina (37:25)
and share something.

Jerome (37:30)
It all comes down to the thing, even if you're helping somebody in a corporate environment, they want to be... They want a raise because they found you as a startup and they're going to be... Like the boss is going to be like, okay, that's exciting, you solve that problem we've been having for decades. Or they want a bonus, they just want a bonus. Or they just want to be healthier and have less stress.

with this problem that's been trying to one. So that's, if you come back to it, that you buy with emotion and try to justify with logic.

Christina (38:02)
Exactly, that's it. Now, switching over a little bit, let's imagine that I'm a deep tech startup, I'm getting some traction in Europe, but quickly I see that I want to go bigger, I want to go globally. What would be the first step to actually scaling globally and getting to that bigger level?

Jerome (38:21)
Okay, the first step is not raising more money.

Christina (38:24)
Which I think a lot of people probably would have said I need to get more money

Jerome (38:27)
I need to get more money, but you need to get more money from customer. So I would say start selling now. So before raising more money, before onboarding more people into the company, is really trying to get face time with customer and let them talk. So even if you're based in the UK or Germany, try to go, if you're thinking about going to US, travel to fairs, like go to three fairs this year in the US.

And get for customer FaceTime and try to get out of your laboratory. If you can try to get some presence there, you can also hire a freelancer, a local freelancer. That's a good way to step into a country. You hire a German freelancer who knows the German market and you work alongside with him. It's going to help you save like a month, a year.

Christina (39:17)
even years.

Jerome (39:19)
of knowing the market because you're going to be able to say in your or in English or in your language that you're doing wrong with this. Germany is already for this. You know, if you're talking about climate tech, for example, Germany is a of coal right now. And, know, they are not going at all on the nuclear side. So no talk about nuclear in Germany. And so that's, you know, and that's mainstream. So if you want to go mainstream, you

But even if you don't want to go mainstream, because I like this example of Tesla. I don't want to just say you don't have a Tesla either. But I know about Tesla. Ninety nine percent, ninety nine point nine percent of the population don't have a Tesla. Right. But the zero that those people are talking to the zero point one percent buying a Tesla. Right. Yeah. This is not a right time to talk about Tesla.

Christina (40:12)
Forgetting about politics and all of that. Let's go back to pre-election day.

Jerome (40:16)
Yeah, exactly. yeah, but yeah, the electric car and those company and those cars are amazing. You know, engineering. They are the best electric cars, you know, in 2025 by far. And so if you remove the politic side of things, a lot of people know about Tesla and they are a fancy, even if they are becoming affordable, still a lot of people are not able to buy it. And you want

Christina (40:24)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, totally.

Jerome (40:42)
a lot of people knowing about your brand. And also, know, Ferrari and Rolex, they also do advertisements and they never, they will never stop. And so you want to get to the point where you are able to buy a Rolex, where you want to buy a Ferrari. And so they cannot stop doing marketing because otherwise...

Christina (40:46)
before they're ready to buy.

Jerome (41:08)
you will not feel this surge inside you where, want a Ferrari, I to succeed and get a Ferrari because Ferrari is a sign of success. So you want to go and start publishing. And know, tips, we're going to share you a few tips because a lot of people also are frustrating, especially tech founders about doing marketing, doing...

Publishing even on LinkedIn, just, you know, open up your LinkedIn and start publishing. It's like you have to de-circulize publishing. Exactly. Yeah. It's probably, you know, first off, it's probably going to be bad. The first few posts. But then people want to know that you are a real human behind the screen. Usually I see people blocking like four hours on Monday.

Christina (41:47)
Yeah.

Jerome (41:53)
just to say LinkedIn public content, published content for the entire week. And then they are sitting in front of the screen and nothing comes up. It's like, okay, inspiration comes and go. So don't try to push it and push it hard. Just schedule that moment where you publish, use a scheduler. But then inspiration comes when you're running, when you are with your kids, when you are at a conference. And then just pull out your phone or your notepad and just write the idea.

Christina (42:21)
quick note.

Jerome (42:22)
Exactly. And then when you are ready to edit, but you already have like 10 bullet points. Exactly. And one thing also I say to founders is really to talk about what you do all the time and how you help your customers. That's what we say about emotions. When you want to sell a toothpaste, which is a tech thing, which was a thing, say the pack...

Christina (42:41)
Yeah.

some technology to develop. right.

Jerome (42:54)
It's like you're not selling it like you are the whitest ones or the less bacteria. You wouldn't buy this, but I'm going to make you feel beautiful and seen and attractive. Then you're going to say, OK, that's a nice toothpaste. That's like makeup.

Christina (43:11)
Yeah, whereas like if you go to a toothpaste, there's like 50 different toothpastes and you're just like, I don't know which one. How do you stand out? It's by that emotion. Yeah.

Jerome (43:20)
Exactly. yeah, it's like try to show the value, the outcome that people have with using your product, you know, and that's going to be long, but you people want what other people have. Exactly. And so if you are saying, OK, I'm helping this company, Stripe, and a lot of people say, answer to me when I say this, I'm going to spend time talking about my customer. Yeah.

where I should be talking about my company is like, okay, yes, but you want to spend marketing money slash time because time is money. Talking about how you help customers. then your customer is going to be happy. It's going to say, okay, I'm working with Christina and we landed a building contract in the US. And so if you want to go to the US, go with...

you know, with Christina, that's, know, if you want to go with these two spaces, go with these two spaces because it's helping me being more attractive. I my wife and now I got married and I'm happy. yeah, no, that's all good. then the... And that's why, you know, those companies like Trustpilot are so valuable because you have other people buying from this provider. And we all look up... Yeah, and we all look up for...

Christina (44:30)
social proof,

Jerome (44:33)
on Google Maps for companies and restaurants. it's like, it's the same for you. Your reputation is in the room before you are in the room.

Christina (44:38)
Exactly.

Exactly. mean, it's kind of like, you know, like there's an expert, like you are who Google says you are, basically, you know, don't choke on your water there. you know, and I think that that's why it's really important. You you talked about getting out there and getting on LinkedIn and yeah, it's going to be crap when you get started. I mean, I have a YouTube channel with almost 500,000 subscribers on it. Been producing pretty much a video every week.

for the past 10 years, you go back and you watch the first videos, which are still on there. They are crap. I mean, I'm in my office, I'm filming with the computer, I have no sound, my light is like two Ikea lamps. I mean, they're just awful. But you gotta get out there and you gotta get started because that's how you get the momentum going. And the best way to improve is to get out there and do it and then look at what happens and look at the results.

I mean, if you're doing videos, for example, to promote, you know, your product or your company, yeah, it's hard to look at yourself and to watch yourself and to hear yourself speaking, perhaps with an accent and all of that. But that's the work that you have to do because that's the fastest way to improve, in fact. And I would say that also it's like,

If you're going out into the American market, again, you're going into a market where the culture is different, the buyer psychology is different, the pains are different, the concerns are different. And going out there and talking to people and pitching your thing and falling on your face a bunch of times is going to be the best, fastest way to make those improvements because you're testing it on the market and not in your mind. And I know that it's really comfortable

to sit there and to theorize and to be like, no, I just have to get my LinkedIn strategy in place before I start, or I just have to get my thought leadership. You got to get out there and that's going to come by doing in fact. So yeah, feel like that's, you just got to get out there, put yourself out there, put your ego aside.

Otherwise, you're just going to stay in your safe little bubble and you're never going to be confronted by the no or the I don't understand or we don't need that. And if you're never confronted with that, then you're never going to get to the place where you're able to offer something and to pitch it in a way that makes people say, I need that now. Wow. How does that not already exist?

Jerome (47:01)
And you mentioned this like first failure is like it's the same as with training. So when you're training for anything like working out or running or whatever, because we both run. So I use this example. But it's like the first 100 runs are going to be...

very painful. You're probably going to go out first 10 times and the first few days after the run are going to be horrible. But then, when you get started with this, after hundreds, come back to me and try to tell me what happened. So the hundreds of sales calls that you're going to make, the first fairs, are going to be terrible. But then you cannot

Christina (47:34)
Exactly, yeah.

Jerome (47:41)
them, skip them and go quick quick step to success. It's not possible. So you got to, you know, squeeze and do those first reps. And even if you are just getting started, a lot of... I listened to this great advice from Pierre Gobil. It's like we are in Europe, we have a tendency to stick to our bad ideas, to our bad businesses.

YC, White Communator, which is an accelerator in the US. It's a three-month program and usually you are entering with an idea and living with a much different idea and much different business because you are actually doing the work of testing out your ideas.

a number of times in a day. It's like usually from one week to another. It's a completely different business. I listened to this podcast. I don't know if it's podcast. It was a LinkedIn post. There is a guy in NYC right now. So the winter cohort is doing an AI tool for lawyers. And he says a really good example of

tips I now will provide to my customers is like, he's doing the job of his customer. So that's what they teach at YC. It's like you even go further than just talking to a customer. They went to law firms and spent a day with an associate at a law firm in the US and say, okay, we got that wrong because we thought...

This was the typical day of a lawyer. This is not. And they spend like three hours on this. Can we jump into this problem and help them find, I don't know, I'm going to say bad thing, regulations. this is maybe a little bit off from your first idea, but then you got to pivot because this is where the pain is. And that's a really good test that you can do.

Go to the factory floor if you're a deep tech company. Go to, if you're helping with waste, go to an existing waste treatment plant, go try to help them in their daily basis, daily actions. Because otherwise, it's just...

Christina (49:54)
You're imagining. You're theorizing, you know.

Jerome (49:57)
But then pivot, then know.

Christina (49:59)
You've got to be willing to pivot, yeah.

Jerome (50:01)
And bury the idea. Don't follow with the idea all the time and say, this is the golden idea. No, this is not a golden ticket idea. Yeah, and probably like 10,000 people in the world already thought about this. Why nobody's already implemented it? That's a good question to ask. Why is there not...

Christina (50:11)
First idea will not be your golden idea.

Jerome (50:26)
somebody in Asia or in the US already or in Brazil already doing the same thing as me. Maybe it doesn't work.

Christina (50:33)
Exactly. go out there. Yeah. And I definitely feel like, like that's what I really like that. Go and spend a day with your clients, like just side by side observing and seeing what are their real problems. mean, yeah, that's, that's something I should probably do actually. Yeah.

Jerome (50:49)
Yeah.

What's for you step one when, you know, now I'm stepping in that deep tech startup entrepreneur. Let's say let's go for a German one. And I want to go into US. What's step one for you?

Christina (51:06)
You know, I'm going to say step one is you've got to focus on getting clarity. You've got to like nail your niche, would say. Meaning who is your clients? What are their problems? What are you going to focus on? And just getting that right, because that is going to be the foundation of everything else that you're going to do. And if you, you know, and I don't want to, again, I don't want to say you've got to get it perfect before you get out there.

You want to just get some clarity. And I shared a LinkedIn post on this the other day on here's like a series of like 12 prompts to get clarity on who is your target and how can you, you what are their problems, et cetera. To say, not to say that's it, it's one and done, but to say, get some of that clarity and then go out and talk to these people. And you might find that, yes, you got it right, but you might find that you're a little off and you need to course correct.

And I feel like without doing that work, you can be working on your pitch. You can be working on your personal branding. You can be working on how you go out and who you're looking to network with. But if you've got that foundation off, everything else is going to be off. So I'm just going to say that that's yes, you have a product, you've got your clients in your, you know who they are. You've got to start over.

to do that in the US market. Because you might find that maybe they're the same, maybe they're really different, but you've got to find that out by getting out there in the market and getting your hands dirty with people, yeah.

Jerome (52:39)
On a totally different note, when I was a student at Georgia Tech, I toured a Chick-fil-A factory. That was a recruiting day. Did you eat? Yeah, because of course it was a Chick-fil-A recruiting day. So we got on a tour, it was near Atlanta. And that was funny because they explained how they were doing the international expansions. So they are not still yet in France. They were doing the English speaking country first.

Christina (52:46)
Chick-fil-A after that.

Yeah,

in English.

Jerome (53:06)
And when they do that, they actually do a fake restaurant with no branding and no, let's say, no emphasis on anything. Like there is no highlight on this product or this product. They just want to try what people are actually eating. so the main product in the US was the Sunday.

It's like the ice cream and the burger. And they did the same menu in the UK. And the UK was the tea as well, know, and the tea and the nuggets. And, I don't even know. I used to go on Chick-fil-A in the US. And so I don't even know where is the nuggets info on the card. I it's in the back. I never look at the back because in the US, the front page of the menu is burgers.

Christina (53:56)
Yeah.

Jerome (53:57)
burgers and ice cream and that's it. And on the back there's probably salads on the back as well, but nobody looks at it. So they open in the UK and they finally opened and they put like the nuggets on top, the salty, it's not sweet, it's not as sweet, it's sour. And bubble tea as well. And that's the same company, same company.

Christina (54:00)
secondary

Yeah,

Jerome (54:22)
same product, like just adapting the amount of focus, of value on this side. Because also what's interesting for deep tech companies is that usually the product is helping with different aspects. And so maybe your focus tool in Germany is going to be focus one in the USA because that's the main problem.

Exactly. And you can see this when you are tackling industrial and factory tools, factory software. For example, if you go with the factory for food companies, for a food company, maybe in Europe, the problem is keeping everything under zero, know, very cold temperature. But then in the US, maybe just, you know, they are just getting started with, you know, digital factories. So you need to go one step

below in terms of development. Okay, you don't even have internet in the factory, so let's go and do

Christina (55:21)
Find out what's their real problems.

Jerome (55:23)
Exactly. So you're going to say, let's go and look at the chain of gold, but they're not even there. You need to go first in the first problem that they have right now. And so let's go into one of the topics I love most. It's personal branding, corporate branding and product naming. So you are an expert in that. So when European customers and European entrepreneurs go into the US, how crucial is personal branding for their

Christina (55:32)
Right. Yeah.

Jerome (55:52)
you know,

Christina (55:52)
Yeah,

you know, personal branding, that's the thing that's gonna make you stand out. And that's also the thing that is going to get people on board with you, make them know, like, and trust you. Personal branding, you know, I would say we do it a little differently. From what I see here in your personal branding, it's not like sharing your personal stories about like how your dad's ill, like,

I see a lot of LinkedIn posts about this where people are just talking about their personal problems. Could be their problems as like a parent or their problems of like how they had a bad relationship with their mom or something like that. And they're thinking like that's personal branding. And there's a difference between sharing your personal life, which there is a place for that, but we'll get into this. Sharing the details of your personal life, which has nothing related to your brand. That's not personal branding.

versus sharing the details of your personal life because it connects back to the values of your brand and your company and the identity of your brand and your company. And so the personal branding is really, I mean, it's like you have to like incarnate what your company and what your brand is about. And so this is, you know, aligning, sharing how you and your values and the things that you do, how you spend your time.

does actually reflect what your company and what your brand is all about. mean, one of the things, for example, if I just take my own company, you know, in part of what we talk about, it's always this idea of you've got to stop overthinking. You've got to stop doing the act of procrastination. You have got to get out there and put yourself out there before you feel ready, because that's something that I've struggled with as an entrepreneur. I've been doing this for 10 years and I would say I

you know, I think I'm really bad at like, no, I just need to overthink and I need to plan, et cetera. So this is kind of at the same time, a message to myself, but also a message to the people that are looking to go into the American market. Because like you said, very often I have to think about it. I have to try this. I have to do some more research, et cetera. And so that's one way that like my brand and the message that we're putting out there is also a part of me and my experience.

And that's for me, it's, you know, that's one part of the personal branding. And it also makes you more relatable. I mean, like you said, it's when you're doing sales, even if you're doing B2B, you're still doing human to human. And we want to see people that we can relate to, that we can identify with, that have a message and a mission that we want to get on board with. And so it's how do you in your daily life really incarnate

the message and the mission of your company. And mean, this can be things like, I mean, it's very strategic, I would say. And I think people don't realize how strategic you want to be about this. And I mean, I'm talking like coming up with like a lexical guide for your business, meaning what are the words, what are the key phrases that I'm gonna keep throwing out there so that it gets into people's mind and it sticks. It can be about, you your look.

two guys, can't remember their names, but I remember their branding. This one guy, he is always in red, like head to toe, red. And I think his Instagram is like the red guy. So you identify him. Another guy he's always in, and I personally, mean, I don't like his personal branding, but that's okay. He's not there to please me. He's always in like a tank top, a black tank top, and he's very muscly. And Alex Hormozi is kind of the same way, but that's not the guy I'm thinking of.

But you can see the little Alex Hormuz, he's got the thing on his nose. He's got a cap on, he's got a tank top on. That is part of your personal branding as well. And that works for him because of his personal story, his business experience, the topics that he talks about. And so all of this comes together as your personal brand. And like I said, it does take a lot of work. fact, people may, you look at people on LinkedIn, you're like, it looks easy.

I can only imagine the amount of work and strategizing and testing out things that had to go into getting that right. And I think very often that is something that is neglected, especially by like tech founders, because they're like, I don't need to do all that salesy marketing BS stuff. And I'm like, it's not, that's the thing that makes you remember these people. So yeah, it's not just telling stories about how you, you know,

struggle with whatever and it has nothing to do with your brand and your business. That's just personal life. You want to find out how do I bring in my personality into my brand and make it all aligned and that's going to be your personal branding.

Jerome (1:00:31)
Yeah, you tapped onto something that I've been doing for the past two years because I did your course two years ago and you've seen it change. My branding has evolved way more times in the last two years than before because I refined it. I look at what works, what don't. And you tapped into something very valuable about, you know, we are

when you go with tech founders or deep tech or climate tech, they usually got the innovation part right. But then there's the trustworthiness. you are, let's say you are a step already behind compared to American suppliers, American startups, because you are not an American. So you need to nail that part where you say, okay, I'm going to go with the French company or I'm going to go with that Italian company or Indian company, whatever.

because they need to relate to you. And if you've been talking like a French with a baguette and a beret for a year, maybe they don't relate to that. Or unless they are attracted to the French ecosystem. But that's betting big. So you don't want to bet like this. You want to be seen in the US. You want to be seen online as well. Because we don't even...

Christina (1:01:36)
But yeah, right.

Jerome (1:01:50)
when somebody appears on my feed somewhere, on LinkedIn, Instagram. Usually I don't buy it directly. If it's interesting, I follow. But then again, sometimes I need more. I need to see him a lot of times. And this has been a study from Daniel Prisley that you need to nail the four 7-11.

Christina (1:02:13)
7-Eleven-4, which is the, need to spend seven hours with you. Now, not physically, but they need to spend seven hours consuming your content or interacting with you virtually, watching your YouTube videos, reading your posts, whatever. 11 times. yeah, they need 11 touch points and over four different places. And the idea is a little bit, you know, it might be,

Jerome (1:02:30)
seven times.

Christina (1:02:38)
Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube in your blog, for example, or an event. It doesn't all have to be virtual. But he explains that they explain it's a little like if you've got a co-worker that you only see at work in a professional context versus the co-worker, you're working with them in the meetings, you have a coffee break with them, you go and you have a beer with them on Friday evening.

Maybe you run into them because your kids both play on the same soccer team or whatever, you see them at the soccer field. You're going to have a much closer relationship and you're going to kind of know and trust and like that person better than the guy that you just kind of cross in the office in the morning and you have meetings with and you don't really know anything else about him. Yeah.

Jerome (1:03:18)
You want to feel like a stranger. And that's why the local freelancer can be a first good step for you because when somebody approaches you and I say, OK, I'm Jerome and I'm going to sell to you, to a French company. We already have a point in common. are French. We are both French. That's why there's a group of expatriates.

Christina (1:03:20)
Exactly, that's it, yeah.

Jerome (1:03:41)
in some countries because you already have a point in common, and common interests, common background. That's something that you build trust upon. this is a particular day because I think yesterday was the end of the application for Y Combinator, which is this famous and a lot of my LinkedIn posts were about this. And this is funny because...

People don't realize, entrepreneurs don't realize they don't have to go to YC because everything from YC is available online. And when you think about it, it's really counterproductive. A lot of people are telling me I cannot talk about what they do because I've been revealing my secrets. that's wrong. otherwise YC, without this, YC wouldn't recognized as the

Christina (1:04:20)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jerome (1:04:26)
best accelerator in the world, because for example, I can give you 10 videos of YC where you can go from exploring your ideas to finding the right cofunders to should I bootstrap, should I raise money? And you don't need to go to San Francisco. But mainly it's building them a reputation online because you are watching the ideas.

But then you are looking for implementation. So that's why you keep on applying for YC. And it's very hard. It's harder than Harvard, harder than MIT. And actually, fun fact, if you are in the street in the US, you have more chance of getting shot by a shotgun than getting into YC, which is very fun.

Christina (1:05:18)
the guns out in the US.

Jerome (1:05:20)
But

that's a funny statistic. And usually I try to say, okay, even if you apply for YC in three months or six months, I can skip all the things they're going to say and you're going say, okay, they're going to build something that people want. So what? Customer product, customer product. And you can skip all the parts. You can go to the US because now the YC parts...

the YC batch give you some kind of trustworthyness. know, you are a... Exactly. But then if you are saying even to YC, okay, with or without you, we're going to build this thing. That's also a proof that, you know, they will want you more than you will want them. Because they don't want to have in their cohort people that needs to be pushed.

Christina (1:05:54)
stamp of approval type things

Yeah.

Jerome (1:06:14)
They already have a lot of applicants from all over the world with great CVs and great experience, but they want to see, they want the pushers. They just want to highlight the pushers, like the real...

Christina (1:06:27)
people that are going to get out there and do it no matter what.

Jerome (1:06:29)
Yeah, if you want to build the next NVIDIA or NBRB, you're good to go. But then you don't need them. You don't really need them. And you need to understand that as YC, you can always publish everything you do. And even if somebody takes everything you do and start the same company, it's going to be different from you. And that's a good thing that everybody's copying you because you can see a lot of accelerator right now being shut down.

because they don't have the same quality as YC. So even if you just copy paste everything that YC does, everything is you copy your startup A, startup X, and you do exactly the same, that's going to be different. You're going to be executing differently. So don't care about people copying you and doing things because the important is like you need to be innovative, yes, but trustworthy. And that's the fact of being

online, starting building a presence in the US online and in fairs, being at a local office whenever you go and accepting meetings. that's the point. And going back to little bit to product naming, is there cultural nuances that Europeans should know when they are naming their products?

Christina (1:07:45)
Yeah, I would say kind of hard to give like one sort of blanket tip, like blanket statement of things to know. But I would say that things that you want to avoid are going to, you know, first of all, when you're starting off your company, you want to start, you know, if you think you might go global, just start thinking about that from the start and saying, all right, if I'm doing a company and I mean, you can change it, but then there's some work involved, but

If you're planning on going global, you want to avoid things that are going to be hard to pronounce in English. Things that maybe it's a play on words or a reference in your native language that is not going to carry over. A really good example of this, and I've shared this on LinkedIn, a little carousel about how the company Pumput, know, the applesauce in the pouch thing.

Jerome (1:08:18)
too.

Christina (1:08:35)
when they wanted to go into the US market. So we worked, I worked on that project. I'm not going to say like I am responsible for the getting them into the US market. It wasn't that, but we did work on the messaging and the communications and Pum Put in French. I mean that, that evokes something, Pum, the apples, put your friends. And then it's for me kind of a product that even though all people love it in France, it's kind of like

you imagine like school children in the playground with their friends, their buddies, et cetera. And so that's a very evocative. In the U.S. market, it doesn't mean anything. And it's hard to pronounce and it's just kind of, it doesn't work. So when they went into the U.S. market, they totally rebranded. And when I say rebranded, everything, they changed that it's go-go squeeze in the U.S. Their marketing in France, if you go and look at their website, it's all about, you know,

doing a lot with little and simplicity and the quality of the fruit, things that are very important in French culture. So they nail it on there. Going into the US market, they became applesauce with electrolytes to fuel your day because you're unique and you never want to stop and blah, blah. And I mean, that wouldn't work in France.

for this product, let's say. Whereas in the US, we know that, for example, when you're a kid, and I have lived this personally, you start school at like 7.30, you finish school at 2.30, then you've got all of your extracurricular activities, you're doing band practice for three hours a day, and then you're doing soccer practice until like nine o'clock at night. And you are on the go all the time. And if that's their target, maybe, let's say,

school kids and teenagers in the US, they have understood that you're constantly on the go. You need to be fueled. You need to have all of that energy. And so, you know, from their name, GoGo Squeeze, which already sounds a bit dynamic, let's say, to their positioning and their messaging and their marketing, all of that had to change. And now they succeeded in doing something which is very hard, meaning

they went into a market where their concept didn't exist. Like they created that market in the US and now they're number, like they own that market. So if you can get this right, there are huge rewards. So I would say, yeah, naming, make sure it works in the US. Another good example, Wallachsy, I don't know if they're in the US or not, but that name would very easily go over because it's easy to pronounce. Galaxy, you think of big, infinite.

which is maybe kind of what you want when you're prospecting. Datadome, which is a client of ours, that name clear, easy to pronounce. There's a little bit of alliteration with the data dome. And you can imagine a dome protecting your data, is there in cybersecurity. Make sure that your name doesn't translate or doesn't evoke something vulgar, I would say. And I'm thinking of a company which I will not name because I don't want to name in shame.

I think they do, and I might be getting this wrong, small portions of Southern California street food, I think. If you took them and their name and you brought it into France and someone Googled their name, let's just say that you would find some very vulgar results. So they would have to change because they're coming into a different market. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But what about, you know, that

Jerome (1:11:50)
True. 100%.

Christina (1:11:53)
Thinking about the name, that is one form of anticipation. But what about from an economic standpoint? What do you think are some of the key differences that European entrepreneurs should anticipate when they're scaling into the US?

Jerome (1:12:06)
they should anticipate that there are much bigger money pockets there. Things go fast and they go really big. So when you're talking about raising funds, a lot of people don't expect that kind of seed level than the one you do in the US. And that's been proven because there is a study where they took similar company.

launching in Europe, launching in the US by European entrepreneur. So that's very similar. And they are like 100 times more valuable and profitable at the end of the day. So that's really like a really huge market going big and not building like fake market, fake customer. They're really like building things that are very huge and have a global impact. And 100 %

Christina (1:12:36)
Yeah.

Jerome (1:12:56)
of global leaders right now, European or not, there's been a study where in any field, tech or not tech, 100 % of the leaders in the industry either targeted the US first or second after the local market. So there really, even if you're like...

Christina (1:13:11)
Okay, right, yeah.

Jerome (1:13:14)
building a quantum mechanic stuff or building a nuclear energy reactor, US should be like first or second. So that's really like a go-no-go because you might want to be a European leader. That's fine. But if you want to be a global leader like Airbnb or media Apple, you want to focus really on

addressing the US market second or first if you are already in the US. That's the difference. And the difference is also that it's okay to fail. even I've seen companies like Lago, which is an open source stripe where they say, okay, we did YC with an idea. It was bad. We raised money on it. And then we raised money again on a different idea.

But then we have some customer validation, but then the VC trusted us because we were a good team. We were going to go there anyway, and they didn't want to be out of the game. And so the 100 % return that they want was way off, like way more. So that's the things that I would say that the market is really in terms of financial capacity.

Christina (1:14:09)
They didn't

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, totally, totally. And I think it was, what was it in 2003, there was, it was like in Europe, there was, it was like 52, 53 billion that were raised versus 138 billion in the U.S. I mean, the scale is just, it's, once you're, I would say past series A, you're probably going to need to be going into the U.S. just because the scale of things are a lot bigger, for better or for worse.

Jerome (1:14:51)
Yeah, I think we're pretty done with this interview.

Christina (1:14:53)
I think we covered a lot of ground. mean, it's just like from personal branding to corporate branding to getting out there, putting yourself out there, the opportunities and yeah.

Jerome (1:15:05)
Yeah, and also getting more time with customers, whether it's in India, France, Germany, the US. Yeah, exactly. And so if people wanted to follow you, where can they find you?

Christina (1:15:12)
in the market, not in your mind.

So on LinkedIn, they look up Christina Roboffay Broaddus. I don't think there's two of us. Or they can go to transatlantia.com and they can find out about our Transatlantic Entrepreneur Accelerator. I've also got a free video there that they can go and watch on the five steps that you must get in place in order to start building up your presence in the U.S. and succeeding with American clients. So they can go and find me over there. And what about you? Where can they find you in reactor media?

Jerome (1:15:23)
haha

So they can find me on LinkedIn, obviously, publishing every day. Also on YouTube and podcasts. On the YouTube, we're going to find a lot of more in-depth interviews with tech founders and deep tech founders. A lot more are coming. Also interview some VCs because they are interesting fellows to interview and they have got a big overview of the industry. And if you want, have a newsletter where I go.

deep dive into some kind of industries. You can always follow me and I'm always looking forward to find new guests for my podcast. So if you want to sit down in Christina's chair. my spot. Yeah, exactly. I'm looking forward to showing the entrepreneur journey and find out more about the company and they are expanding. How they tackle and they translate innovation into real businesses.

So that's it. You can find me. if we are. I'm starting Instagram. I just started. So, you know, it's getting slow, then you got to start somewhere. Thank you very much. See you next time. See you.

Christina (1:16:47)
Yeah. All right. Yeah. Thank you.