Organizational growth often requires global expansion. But how do companies navigate the complexity of hiring people from all over the world, taking into account various regulations, taxes and wages—while creating benefit parity across the board? Jessica Lessin, founder and CEO of The Information, sat down for a virtual panel with three experts to find out what this all means for a company’s financial strategy:
- Michael B. Tannenbaum, chief operating officer and chief financial officer of Brex
- Alexa von Tobel, founder and managing partner of Inspired Capital
- Alex Bouaziz, co-founder and CEO of Deel
Why Going Global Is a Must
Lessin started the conversation by asking the panelists why thinking globally is so important right now. Michael Tannenbaum of Brex said he felt the pandemic normalized the idea of having teams all over the world. “So much of the way people are working has changed. It was already changing and the pandemic really just sped things up. Companies of Brex’s size and much smaller are taking advantage of a global workforce. And as soon as you have that global workforce, you’re naturally going to have the need for different human resource, IT and finance infrastructures.”
Alex Bouaziz of Deel, an all-in-one HR platform for global teams, talked about the practical difficulty of growing when you’re only in the U.S. “There’s a moment where the business just doesn’t make sense if you only have people in the [San Francisco] Bay Area and New York. It’s just become very hard to make the business profitable, which is the big focus for the years to come. There is incredible talent everywhere, and you can give a chance to amazing people to be able to work for you. You always need to control your spend, and a great way to do that is to hire globally.”
Tools That Meet the Moment
Alexa von Tobel talked about the impact of tools that make working globally easier. “As the world has become flat, there’s incredible asynchronous tools now, from Slack to Loom and all these other ways of working that have made it common to be able to hire exceptional talent, not just in engineering, but in every category across the globe. The tools are just getting better every quarter to make it more of an advantage to do so.”
Though businesses are introducing and adopting productivity and communication tools quickly, HR and financial tools have been slow to catch up. As Tannenbaum said, “There’s this way of collaborating in a remote way that allows you to leverage cost savings, but what hasn’t necessarily evolved is the financial infrastructure. The thing that everybody is trying to do is to make global employees have parity with someone in the U.S.—things like corporate card expense management, travel, all those financial services that touch employees.…Those are the areas that you should be thinking about from an infrastructure perspective.” In other words, companies need borderless financial solutions that bring their global teams together with one consistent experience on that platform. And Michael noted “that is what Brex offers.”
Globalization Going Forward
Given the complexities and the undeniable opportunities of going global, what should founders be thinking about in the coming months?
Von Tobel said the key is to think about the macro environment. “You have to keep one eye open to the macro because it’s going to really impact capital dilution, cash revenue, how you think about talent and what you pay talent. That’s always mattered. But I believe it matters significantly more now and is a real skill set of your best founders.”
One thing Bouaziz is looking forward to in the next year is reducing the number of tools companies use. “On average, companies use over 16 different tools. I’m pretty excited about some of the recent launches from Brex because we’re seeing a lot of consolidation. To us, consolidation is definitely something that’s going to be really big over the next few months.”
Go Forth Into the World
It’s almost an imperative for growing companies to go global. Not only does it open up new markets and offer cost savings, but it also opens up new pools of talent. After all, exceptional engineers exist all over the world. Communication tools make working globally seamless. And with fintechs like Brex and HR platforms like Deel supporting them, companies will be able to explore new territory and offer parity for all employees, wherever they are.
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