The following guest post was written by Ori Lahav, Co-Founder & GM Israel at Outbrain.

Back in 2010, about 4 years after we started Outbrain, our Board of Directors began encouraging us to move out of our comfort zone and “Go Global”. Our board members were smart enough to make the distinction between being an “international organization” that sells in many countries using a single sales force that operates out of one country, to a “Global organization” that sells and operates locally in each of the markets we do business in. Yes, it was a much bigger challenge, but we all agreed that it was the right way to go in order to establish healthier, long-term relationships in every market.

First, here’s a little background:
Outbrain was founded by Yaron and myself in 2006 under the “Lighthouse” (our “mission statement”) of helping readers discover content they can trust to be interesting for them. With this mantra in mind, we tried a few products (like every startup) and eventually started concentrating on providing content recommendations in online content publications. Initially we provided them for free and in 2009 we started our business model of serving paid links to stories. It took several tries and more than a year to figure out the right model but once we did, it was time to scale it. One aspect of the scaling was to go beyond the US and start selling in other markets.

Today, 80% of the world’s leading brands use Outbrain, reaching an audience of 561 million and serving 190 billion recommendations each month, and all of this is done from 17 offices spread across 15 countries (and we keep expanding).

Here are few of the strategic moves that helped us go global:

1. We started to spread. Even in the beginning when it was still just us, the 2 founders, we had Yaron as CEO in the US and myself as CTO in Israel. The question was why to even develop the technology in Israel and not in New York and there were a few considerations, like cost, chutzpa, culture, and even Zionism. But mostly, it just made sense. Yaron and I were very much in sync regarding what is needed so the physical distance was not a disadvantage and working in different time zones even became an advantage when we needed to support users around the clock. The fact that the company was founded on both sides of the Atlantic, helped us form a multi-location culture with all that it entailed, from ways of communicating and honoring each other’s time zone, to respecting each other’s cultures.

2. The “Navy” way of management. A few years after starting Outbrain and beginning to branch out globally we realized that we are managing the company “The Navy Way”. Yaron and I are both Navy officers and as it turned out, most of our management style was based on what we learned in the Navy. In the Navy, every operation or mission is operated by a force which is remote from the headquarters and on many occasions there is no contact between the Admiral and operating force. The first thing we were taught was that if we command an operating force, then we plan the operation, we prepare for it and we execute it. It is entirely our mission and there is no one else to do it for us, and we applied the same idea in Outbrain. Our sales force is divided into regions (North America, Latin America, Europe and APAC) and countries within these regions. Each one of them has a leader who has a goal or mission and it’s his role to plan, budget and execute it. It’s all about empowerment. We believe that’s the right way to operate in different business cultures.

3. Trust between the tech team and the business teams is crucial. A salesperson that doesn’t fully trust that the tech team has his or her back when it’s needed, simply doesn’t have the confidence that’s needed in order to sell. Similarly, a Tech person that doesn’t trust the salespeople to sell only what has been developed always feels like his back is against the wall. We had to maintain this trust and the first thing we introduced was the “Swap” program: Each quarter send one engineer to swap seats with a business guy. This helps each of them get to know the other side better and trust them more. One of our engineers came to me (here in Israel) after returning from a visit to our New York office, amazed by the professionalism and approach of our Business Development guys. As a CTO I approached our head of Business Development and shared how my guy praised his team. “He said that they sell like maniacs”, I told him. His response was: “You know what Ori, it’s because we have a great product”. There’s no better example than this to demonstrate the level of trust that’s required.

4. The first employee in a new country is key. Just as when you first enter a house or a yard, you need the right key, same goes for new markets or countries: Your ‘key’ is the first person that you hire in that market. This person is the one who will hire the others, grow the operation and create the company culture. ‘First employees’ need to be very self-sufficient and resourceful types since most of their work will be done remotely (from the Headquarters), plus they need to be a good match for our company culture since they will be building the equivalent culture in a “mini company”. So in a way, the first employee in a new country is almost like a founder of a ‘sub-business’.

5. The importance of local leadership. As I mentioned before the there is a lot of independence given to the local managers but at the same time our expectations of them are very high. Obviously we expect that they meet their goals but at the same time that they do it “The Outbrain way”, not just by delivering the Outbrain message but also by projecting the company culture. In a way, the Country Managers are the founders’ ambassadors who are charged with maintaining the original culture within their teams. We have to make sure they keep the spirit of the culture and build their teams according to that culture. Whenever I travel to the different offices from time to time, unsurprisingly, it always feels the same: It feels “Outbrain”. Yes, they speak Italian or Japanese but the atmosphere feels like Netanya or New York.  It doesn’t always go well all of the time though. One time we even had to let an entire team in a country go and “restart” that market just because we made a bad hiring decision of a Country Manager. That’s how important that decision is and it’s one of the corners that you just shouldn’t cut.

6. Spreading the company culture. Maintaining the company culture isn’t easy when you’re running remote offices, especially since the local cultures are so different from each other. We invest a lot in this. We just travel. As founders we make sure that one of us visits our remote offices at least once a year and meets with the teams at their base offices. We even do a “culture session” with the new employees and try to spend as much time as we can with them. We feel that it is very important for every employee to experience the culture firsthand from the founders themselves. Also, once a year our sales teams meets for a week at our Global Sales Summit to share knowhow but also for the sake of strengthening the company culture.

7. Embrace the different business cultures. Different countries have different business cultures. Some countries are driven (almost aggressively) by revenue while other cultures are obsessed with “your word” (they have to know that you are accountable for what you say). This is natural when you work in different markets. It also affects how the organization manages the client support culture. The fact that we now work at a local level makes this easier to manage but it is a challenge for our Headquarters as well as for Product and R&D to support the same product with different levels of service based on each market’s unique needs (for example different sales styles, marketing resources etc.).

So as you can see, managing a global company isn’t easy but for an Israeli startup it is crucial. Opening operations abroad is a must in order to scale the business, if that’s your goal. But once you acknowledge that it is a challenge that you must face, it is just a matter of how and when you decide to do it.