The City of Austin International Economic Development Program is the City’s focal point for international business, trade, educational and cultural activities. This month, they featured Tech Ranch® in their newsletter:
Thinking Local, Going Global: Austin Business Profile of the Month Tech Ranch
Tech Ranch® Austin is a local business accelerator that is bringing its model of entrepreneurship to international markets and helping foreign companies launch in the United States market. The Tech Ranch® staff answered our questions about its international approach to fostering entrepreneurship, in particular its long-standing partnerships in Chile.
Tell us about Tech Ranch® and its international reach:
Tech Ranch® Austin is the place where tech entrepreneurs come to get the knowledge, support and inspiration they need to launch companies that impact our most critical global challenges. Our focus is to support entrepreneurs at the earliest stages of their process, through building a community around the entrepreneurs- and through this community access to resources, employees, investment connections, and more.
Our founder Kevin Koym’s first client for his first startup was actually a bank in Mexico in 1994. It is through this experience that Kevin recognized that early adopting customers for an entrepreneur’s start-up might be international. Tech Ranch® Austin’s larger network has supported entrepreneurs to both come to Austin as well as go to the world, especially focused in the Americas.
What obstacles did you face to doing business in international markets, and how did you overcome them?
Our biggest barrier was recognizing that we were bringing a new model of entrepreneurship into a country that was not ready in 2003 for US style entrepreneurship. To overcome this barrier, we nurtured long-term relationships of several years with partners in Chile including the management consulting firm Gestacion y Liderazgo and Gulliver. Through these relationships we were able to seize the moment that presented itself as Chile’s startup business environment began to open. A key indication of the changing environment was the launch of the StartupChile program in 2010. This program focuses on increasing the ability of Chile to build entrepreneurial startups. When this program launched, we were able to take advantage of our prior work and relationships in Chile to “hit the ground running” and serve the growing wave of entrepreneurialism.
How has expanding abroad benefited Tech Ranch?
Expanding abroad has opened up opportunities for Tech Ranch® Austin entrepreneurs to have access to other markets that have not been in recession- specifically parts of Chile have been on a growth rate of 6% per year. That level of growth creates great demand for new ways of doing things- to respond to the demand- creating opportunities for early stage tech entrepreneurs to build startups…. it is through opening these opportunities to our entrepreneurs that the Tech Ranch® Community has benefited. As well, it is because of this opening that entrepreneurs from Chile and Mexico have taken note of Austin, and have started landing at the Tech Ranch® to gain access to the U.S. market.
What tips do you have for other local businesses thinking about expanding their business globally?
Key insight: find the right partnerships, and build those partnerships deep. Our deep relationship with our Chilean partners alone have paid many dividends- beyond just the monetary amounts of a return. Our partners have as well taught us many new practices that have had a valuable impact on the way that we run Austin-based operations and how we manage the Tech Ranch® community.
What’s next for Tech Ranch?
Tech Ranch® is in a period of growth- as we’ve bootstrapped our firm to the level that it is now, we are opening conversations to investors that are looking for access to early stage tech startups that often times have been directly introduced to their early adopter customers. We’re growing our Austin base operation, building out our executive team, and engaging an ever-growing number of entrepreneurs into our community.