Weak Dollar Means More European Business
I recently started seven straight work days with phone calls to Europe. That was a little jarring at first but made some sense because we’d just run successful networks for conferences in London and Berlin. What took me a little longer to figure out was how little pushback I got on prices. The conversations we’re all about whether it was a good fit, not whether they had budget available. At first I thought it was just a different style of negotiation. But then I realized that with the weak dollar our prices are extremely cheap.
That’s a good thing when you’re trying to bootstrap a business. I’ve often wondered if it would be easier to start this business if I lived in Brazil (my aunt has an apartment there) where costs are low but continued to sell to the US where prices are comparitively much higher. Lucky me: I found the exact same dynamic living here and selling to Europe.
I’ve been wondering if other small businesses are on to this trend. Apparently, yes. Marci Alboher (who interviewed me for this NY Times piece on small business blogging) published an article in today’s small business section: Weak Dollar Has Small Businesses Thinking Globally.
The main reason CrowdVine has been so against taking investment or debt is because as programmers we think it’s more rewarding to run an independent company than to run a company that’s dependent on VCs or credit card companies. It wasn’t all personal preference, a lot of trends were pointing this way. Cost of development went way down. So did hosting, hardware, and bandwidth. And now there’s an entire continent of wealthy customers.
Not everything about the weak dollar makes me happy. I’d like to travel in Europe for example. But it is an opportunity for small business, and that’s fine by me.
Tags: conferences, crowdvine, economics, smallbusiness
February 2nd, 2008 at 7:34 pm
I think a lot of things traditional business usually worries about may be less of a concern for bootstrappers. A weak American dollar may be just one of them. Interest rates for example may make little difference unless you’re selling something people can’t afford because they’re all too deeply in debt. How does it impact the bootstrapper? Not much if he/she plans to reinvest earnings and won’t be borrowing to expand. It may even increase valuation with few debts when it comes time to sell.
February 17th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Thank you for this…will come in handy on some research i’m doing. Our company is looking to expand further globally.