Edu: Moving to the US - is it unpatriotic? w/ Jack Bloomfield

Chris: I remember within a week of landing in San Francisco, I felt like I had found my people. felt like I'd come home, I'd moved from feeling a bit like a black sheep my whole life to feeling like, oh, this is where all the black sheep hang out. This is, my people. Hey, I'm Chris

Jack Bloomfield: And hey, I'm Jack.

Chris: That's right. Yaniv is the one who's out today, he's on vacation. But we are gonna discuss how important and useful it might be to move to the US for your startup. Jack Bloomfield has actually recently moved to the US And he's an incredible young founder.

So we thought we'd get him on the show and have him talk about that experience, why he did it, what he experienced when he did it, and also maybe some of the devil's advocate arguments for not doing it and see if they hold water. Now, Jack, in full disclosure, you and I work together.

I'm an advisor to you and your company, right? So we should tell the audience about that.

Jack Bloomfield: You've been with me for the last, what, two years now?

Chris: I think it's been about two years, which is pretty incredible. If you haven't heard of Jack before Google, him, Jack Bloomfield, you'll be surprised by how much he's done at such a young age.

Jack Bloomfield: You're too kind.

Chris: Jack, how about you tell people a little bit about your background first and then let's dive into the topic of moving to the us,

Jack Bloomfield: I grew up in, the small town of Brisbane and mum and dad bought a small business 20 odd years ago. It was a tennis center with four tennis courts. They sold shoes and rackets out of the bottom of the house.

We lived above that for the first seven, eight years of my life. I saw from a very young age, what it took to start a business from absolutely nothing. I had always wanted to start. As you can probably expect, 7, 8, 9, 10 years old was always just doing everything I could to make some money on the side.

My first real business, I guess, was when I turned 15. I came across a couple of people who were online doing these YouTube videos, talking about how they found these products overseas. they were buying these products and they were shipping them to places like the. But they never actually had to buy the inventory in bulk.

So I thought that seemed cool. I had no money at the time. so it was a good opportunity to find a way to make some money, do some marketing, and spend some time on weekends. So I started my first Facebook ad. I had $500 I got from Mowing Lawrence next door. I lost it all within two weeks on that first Facebook ad.

From that point there found a num number of products that started to work very, very well. those products scaled extremely well and started to make quite a bit of money on the side with, this e-commerce business. So through that we started to have massive issues with customer pain points. one of those things being refunds.

So we started experimenting with things like an instant refunds policy. we would give customers their money back straight away, before they had even returned the product to us. The subset of customers we did this on was, say, very small because there was inherent risk involved with, giving people their money back weeks in advance.

So, beautify itself, which I started in early 2020, the whole idea was if you could find these customers, essentially place them on this spectrum of. Understand. Are they part of the 1, 2, 3, 4% of people who love to take advantage of brands they buy from, or are they the 97%, Chris, hopefully like you and I, who do the right thing online when we shop.

So how can brands go above and beyond to reward those customers and give them an incredible experience?

Chris: Very cool, very cool. And yeah, you started that company in Brisbane moved it to the us.vAnd so that's really what we wanna talk about today. if you've been listening to the podcast for a while now, you'll remember our episode about finding the right market for your startup. And we talked about this idea that most founders will start to sell their product.

To the market that their ass happens to be sitting in, usually in Australia and Southeast Asia and Europe somewhere. Instead of choosing that market as intentionally as they might choose, the startup they're gonna build or the next feature they're gonna focus on. And we also settled on episode you should target a market specifically, and that if you're gonna target a market other than where you live, it would be really ideal to go live in that market. So in this episode, we're gonna talk about, well, what does it take to move to that market?

And why is the US. Often the right market. And why is Silicon Valley and New York specifically often the right place to build a killer startup? so Jack, let's kind of just start with the basics, right? Why did you move to the US.

Jack Bloomfield: So maybe I think of this as like three buckets. First was capital. all businesses, money itself is the lifeblood. You need money to hire people, build a product, bring awesome people like Chris on, just to have something there. So we were very lucky that the second round of capital that we raised, was primarily from us.

1. To be fair though, at the same time I had the intention of moving to the US and it was a very compelling argument to make that I was moving to the US anyways. We were still in Australian business, but our market was very much the US. Which bleeds into the second point being customers. Our focus very much from day one was US businesses.

We'd always kind of looked at Australia as this like sandbox testing ground where you could figure out whether there was some level of product market fit. You could find some local Australian merchants that you're like buddy buddy with, who hopefully use the thing that you were building. But real product market fit was always gonna come from the largest brands in the world and they so happened to be in the.

Third point being a team. So to hire the very best people who had built the type of products that we want to build. Ones that service millions of people, and ones that are built for scale. Australians, now, thankfully, through the likes of Atlassian and Canberra, there's Relevant experience here, but that talent pool is still very, very small.

Whereas you go to a place like the US and you've got people who have built these massive businesses. They've been there from the start, they're onto like fourth or fifth startup that's gone from zero to a billion and there's still like a senior product manager and there's tons of people in that category.

So to be able to get those people on the journey as soon as possible, being there in person and like really committing to the market, made that a lot.

Chris: The way I like to summarize this, I think is, if you wanna make a Blockbuster movie, you go to Hollywood, that's where you make blockbuster movies. if you wanna make a blockbuster unicorn, go to Silicon Valley, you're in New York.

That's where unicorns are born it's pretty much that simple. there are exceptions to every rule. there are some really great startups out of Europe and there's some really great startups out of Australia and we can probably count them on one or maybe two hands.

I should clarify when I say great, I'm talking about hit it out of the park. epic success stories, household names that are on the home screen of your iPhone, or in your pinned browser tabs, right?

And the ones you use every day. those success stories are, much harder to achieve when you're not in these talent. Capital rich and market rich environments. And so, it's really a little bit of, removing headwind and putting that wind at your back when you move to something like Silicon Valley or New York.

Now, Jack, how long have you been in New York? And what do you think has happened that has directly affected your success or your momentum as a result of you moving to New York?

Jack Bloomfield: So to be coming up on, I guess about 10 months now. So I moved July of last year.

First, if you look at it from a personal perspective, there is this mindset shift of the people that you hang around, the people that you spend time with. the expectation and the bar itself gets higher. It is higher.

People there are doing better. and the expectation of how fast you should go from zero to one, is extreme It's extreme when you look at it from the outside, from a place like Australia or Europe or kind of anywhere that's not say a Silicon Valley or in New York. But when you're there, it becomes the status quo.

It becomes the mean. So if you wanna do better than the mean, you're running even faster than what the people there are doing because you want to stand out and you want to become a success just like everyone else there as well, wants to become. So it is this mindset shift, which then bleeds into the business component, which is.

Things don't get done over the space of a couple of days. Things get done in the space of hours. even text reply times when there is someone who is important and you want to keep a conversation going or you want to get something done or you want to make a hire.

You don't send the contract out the next day. You do it the minute of and when you've got nine different plates spinning in the air that you. Because you've gotta do that to be in a place like New York. you just keep things moving and I think because things happen at a different pace, it builds momentum. And the best way to build a great business and one with thousands of employees and billions of dollars in revenue is momentum. I think the environment is conducive for that and it's much easier when everyone else is kind of operating on wave.

Chris: I exactly the same thing. you can read a lot of the blogs and the books and the. YouTube videos and none of it really clicks in visceral way in your DNA until you actually go and show up. And my first trip to the US I went to San Francisco Silicon Valley for a month, and that month changed. My life. recalibrated the way that I thought. there was a series of events not the least of which was Joining Uber, which again was a whole other level of, speed and quality of execution. you get that through osmosis, your vocabulary starts to change. The speed of your thinking and execution starts to change the enthusiasm of the people around you. Is infectious and it starts to make you more enthusiastic. You get to learn from more experienced people and these subtle cultural quirks that grate on you in Australia, like tall poppy syndrome, evaporate. And actually again, it starts to become like a wind at your back that makes everything move more quickly and flow more easily.

I remember within a week of landing in San Francisco, I felt like I had found my people. felt like I'd come home, I'd moved from feeling a bit like a black sheep my whole life to feeling like, oh, this is where all the black sheep hang out. This is, my people. Now, this is a little bit different now because since I've come back to Australia, it has felt a little bit like Silicon Valley, like 2007, 2008, people are excited and enthusiastic there's a little less tall poppy in, the startup ecosystem here, people are using some of the same vocabulary. But you have to realize that the US has moved on from that another 10 years, right? the thinking, the business models of vocabulary has changed again. And so it's, very, very exciting. And if you haven't physically gone there, it's hard to relate to it.

I had the same experience when I went to China for about three or four weeks, and this was before some of the more recent political ickiness in China around the Uyghurs and around Hong Kong riots and things. Prior to that as China was ostensibly trying to open up a little bit and become a little bit more commercially savvy and a little bit more, democratically minded, even though they're not obviously anywhere near that.

Uber was working in China a lot, and so I heard a lot about China and it wasn't until I landed there and spent a few days and then a few weeks there, did it like hit me. Wow. the momentum and the energy and the enthusiasm and the money and the people here are next level, next, next level. And just hit me in my bones. going to a place and living in that place, I'm not talking about a weekend or conference or just a week. I'm talking 3, 4, 5 weeks it does recalibrate your brain help you understand things in a different visceral way.

And if all of that sounds exhausting, you have to remember you are in a globally competitive landscape, If you are listening to this show, you are ostensibly interested in Silicon Valley style startups. That is not a small. That is a globally focused, company designed for exponential growth. And so if everything we're talking about sounds exhausting, then you are either not interested in or not really building a Silicon Valley style startup and you probably should stop pretending that you are, cuz this is, not exhausting, it's exhilarating. And so I'd really encourage you to rethink your mindset.

So I think the next few bits we wanna talk about is what I would call like devil's advocate arguments, you know, the audience might be listening, thinking, Well, what about this? Or what about that? And I don't buy it because of this. and I wanna try to touch on all of the things that I think are common objections or arguments against moving to somewhere like Silicon Valley or New York.

The first one I have here is, what about all those people that say the US isn't that great? It's overrated. It's dangerous, it's arrogant. What about all the school shootings or what about all the poverty or what about all of the, decay? They're just full of themselves, they like to think they're all great, but it's just not that great a place. Australia's just as good or better. It's a wonderful, safe environment. the government is fantastic and the people are warm and friendly or Europe, or Southeast Asia, what have you. Right. And the US is just overrated. what would you say about that, Jack?

Jack Bloomfield: Well, first comment is, if you wanna find problems with somewhere, you'll always be able to find it. You wanna look at Australia? You can pick holes in Australia. You wanna look at Europe, you can pick holes in Europe. There are always problems with somewhere. But the point you made earlier around startups, the whole point of a startup is it is unsafe, it is uncertain. The characteristics of the US that people don't like, a lot of those same characteristics are what you are going to experience whilst building a startup. So you could take this physical of like, I generally feel unsafe being in the US and you balance that with, well, the prosperity that I'm able to build for myself, the type of company I'm able to build, the reward I'm able to get outta this. It's a bouncing act. So if you are not comfortable with that, that's cool, but you're probably also not the right person to go and build a super high risk business that encourages you to make these super risky decisions and let people down every single day, and make really hard calls. It's just probably not built for you.

So look, I would say that. It is not for everyone. And that is the same reason why there are a group of people who would never move to the US because of the reasons that you, Chris outlined there perfectly before. but there's also another group of people that are fully in the camp of, doesn't bother me, I'll go do it anyway.

And there's probably people sitting in the middle. So if you're sitting in the middle, again, come back to that whole idea of what type of business do you want to build. Is it a high risk, scalable business that requires you to make those hard calls every day that makes you feel uncomfortable every day? Well, the US is probably gonna be that as well. So the business matches the location. and those two things probably go hand in hand for the greatest level of success.

Chris: I would just quibble with one phrase you said, which is it's a balancing act. I would actually characterize it as an act of optimization, each country and in some cases, each state and city, especially in the US, are optimized for different things, So Australia's optimized for lifestyle and it's kind of egalitarian. civilization where the highs aren't too high and the lows aren't too low, Europe is optimized a little bit like that as well, a little bit egalitarian. Southeast Asia I think is more hustle and bustle and a bit more raw and a bit more optimized for, less rules and regulation, I'd say almost to a fault where it's kind of the wild west and you can't almost trust a transaction necessarily that you're doing and you gotta think twice where. the US and especially Silicon Valley, New York, those kind of places, they're optimized for business. They're optimized for high growth, capital intensive hockey stick curves.

And sure if you are not super competent, not wanting to do something big, bold, and ambitious, or struggling with your health or your mental health, we'll have, family obligations. Then the US is not the place for you. That's not what it's optimized for. But if you are trying to build that high growth Silicon Valley style startup, it is absolutely optimized for that.

And I would argue that It's a little bit of, arrogance I think that some people have in Australia or outside of the US where they're like, well, our country is better. Or, I'm quite happy here. Thanks. Or, I don't need those guys. I think it is arrogance and I think it is also a bit of a self-limiting belief and an excuse to justify not getting up off your butt and making the hard call.

Jack Bloomfield: You'll be able to find problems in anything. There is only so much you can plan for. There is only so much you can think through. and it does take a certain type of person that is happy. To not just put one foot in the deep end to like put two feet in and dive headfirst, because by nature of just getting up and by moving, which is what I did, you figure it out and there's a lot of uncertainty.

There are a lot of things that you just don't know what the outcome is going to be, just go head first because you figure it. You have to figure it out. And when you have to figure it out, there is no other option. You don't wanna fail, you don't want to be on the street. So, you'll make it work.

Chris: And I would say as a founder, as an entrepreneur, your job is to solve hard problems at pace and at scale. That's your job and oftentimes, I remember when I was growing up, I would talk about, Hey, wouldn't it be cool to build a business like this that seems like a, hard bit of friction in the world. We should solve it. it seemed like the immediate reaction for people around me was, oh yeah, but that's really hard to do. You would need to do all of this hard work. And I'm like, that's what businesses are designed to do, is to solve problems.

There's a classic saying, which is, opportunities at first appear like hard work, this is your job as a founder, as an entrepreneur, as a builder of a company, is to solve hard problems. And so if you can't solve the hard problem of moving, then you need to really ask yourself, are you able to solve the other hard problems in your business?

Jack Bloomfield: Like If you speak to people who have not moved or have no intention of moving, they are going to tell you that moving is a bad idea. Whereas if you go and ask the people who have moved who are doing the things that you want to do, more often than not, they are probably gonna tell you that moving was a great idea.

So if you want the results of the people who have done it and have the level of success or the thing that you are looking for, it is much better to go and talk to those people, as opposed to the ones who haven't done the thing. Because I think we can probably all agree. Those people are going to say you shouldn't do it.

Probably outta the whole insecurity of the fact that they haven't done it or they've just got no interest cuz their priorities are elsewhere and they wanna do different things with their lives.

Chris: And here's the great thing, it's a self, filtering process, right? So once you go and move there, you will meet other people who are equally ambitious and effective from your home country. And so you find this really incredible community of people who think and act like you. And so for nothing else, you surround yourself with incredible friends like you who willing to do the hustle and get stuff done.

So let's say Jack, the people listening are thoroughly convinced that, Silicon Valley, New York, the US is amazing, but they're like, hang on a second. What about post covid? Isn't remote work the thing now, hasn't everybody left San Francisco and New York haven't. I missed the boat.

Tell me about your experience with that, post Covid landing in New York. does it feel like it's a ghost town? Everyone's left, or what's going on?

Jack Bloomfield: The, first day I arrived in New York, I got sent this list, and it was an Excel file, maybe like 120 rows long, and it was all the New York City Tech events and parties and things going on. And I had actually heard before I'd left one person say that exact thing you just said there, which is that New York is dead, San Francisco is dead.

Everyone's doing remote work, and there's no real need to be in a big city like New York anymore. So when I got this list, I was like, all let's try it out. So I went to an event. The day that I got there, I was super jet lagged. I really didn't want to. But I went, anyway. I walked in and there was like 300 people, in this event packed together.

You could hardly even move. I'd come out of Australia where Australia had been out of lockdown for just four months. Sort of walk into a place like this where you've got everyone side by side. I being an Australian, oh great, I'm gonna get Covid or something like that. You go around and you meet these people.

They're all doing something and whether it's in tech, whether it's in music, whether they're acting, whatever it is, they've all got this story of I moved to New York because of this, and as soon as I told them that it was my first day in New York. The reaction was not, oh, this, oh, that.

It was excitement, it was thrill. Like these people couldn't believe that it was my first day. because everyone has had a first day in New York or San Francisco or a city, like one of those two. So to be in that environment where everyone is in the same boat, where, to your point earlier, Chris, like. The caliber of people by default are people who have made the move, who have made the decision to kind of jump over and go, and you're surrounded by this community, and that community has not gone anywhere after Covid. This whole notion of you can just do remote work cuts out pretty well. All the benefits that we've been speaking about so far, which is the people you get to meet, the people, you get to hire the opportunities that come your way.

This mindset shift, this improvement. You don't get that on a Zoom call. You don't get that by just talking to someone who lives in New York. you have to be there and I think it's very, very hard to justify unless you are there, unless you have experienced it. and I appreciate why some people might be sitting on the fence going, remote work might be the thing.

But nothing beats shaking someone's hand. Being able to sit down with coffee one-on-one with someone and not just showing your commitment to being there in front of them that you really care. This relationship or this conversation. but the benefits to you were beyond. So I don't think anything's changed and I don't think anyone has ever brought up the word covid, It's like this, almost distant memory.

Chris: When I went to New York and actually visited you for a bit, it's almost like covid is irrelevant. You may have all sorts of perspectives on covid and masking and how it should be treated, and, I have my own, and it's not necessarily aligned with this. But we would actually tell people, my wife and I, Hey, we actually have a bit of flu-like symptoms today, we'd understand if you wanna rain check. And people go like, I don't care. just come. Because everyone is just dealing with the soup of life in New York and people get sick and they get better . There's a sense that like, Covid is not gonna stop us. The flu's not gonna stop us, recession's not gonna stop us. We're just gonna show up and do the work. And again, I'm not saying that's my personal, advocacy around Covid health. I'm just saying that's the attitude in New York, for example, it's a very different culture around that.

And you mentioned Jack, interesting people. I actually found. being more interested by my Uber driver and my taxi driver's life story than some of the ostensibly successful people that I meet in Australia. I was like, this guy's life story is, almost more interesting to me than some of the stories I've heard from people who you would think of as being some of the most interesting people in Australia.

And I was like, this is bizarre. I'd, I'd spend the whole trip, going uptown or downtown and Manhattan, digging into his story and how he came over to the country and how he's, working this job and what his family's doing how they're making it work in New York. It was really, really quite interesting.

You mentioned 300 people in, this event that you went to. I'm now seeing, videos and stories and events come through for AI hackathons in San Francisco that are just rooms packed with people, engineers and designers and product managers who are literally creating the next generation of the internet.

It was Web 1.0, the.com era, web 2.0 with all the Ajax realtime responsive web apps, and it was iPhone and mobile world and on demand economy that Uber and others kicked off. And now AI is the new platform, and we're gonna have a whole episode probably on AI. And this is the next.

Cambrian explosion, the next great reshuffling of the deck where there will be new winners and losers. And so if you are gonna ever move to the us this is an inflection point to do it now. it's just so, so exciting.

 So another devil's advocate argument is, well, I just want build my early prototype and fine product market fit in Australia first, and then I want to move to Silicon Valley or to New York.

And I mentioned Jack, that you tried that at the beginning as well. And I have very strong opinions on this idea that a lot of Australians feel like they need to prove themselves in academic ways By getting covered by the media or by getting a grant or getting acknowledged by the government, which are not the ways that you need to prove yourself. You need to prove yourself in terms of traction, actual users using your actual product. That's the first thing to know.

The second thing to know is what you're proving in Australia in terms of traction is how to convince Australians to use your product, which is way harder than convincing Americans, because Americans tend to be more enthusiastic, more densely packed, have deeper problems, deeper pockets. They tend to be more mouthy. they talk to each other more. They have different problems because their government supports them in different or lesser ways. They have, Different regulations, different tools, different proclivities, different cultural touchstones. And so by proving that your product works and grows in Australia, you have not necessarily proven that it works in the us what you've done is just wasted a bunch of time.

Localizing it to Australia, that can often be just a giant distraction, and lead you down the wrong business model, the wrong sales motion, the wrong value props, the wrong assumptions, the wrong unit. Economics. Everything is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. this is not a universal rule if you are building a tourism app that's uniquely solving an Australian problem.

I would argue that's not necessarily a Silicon Valley style exponential curve startup, but let's just put that out there. If it's a uniquely Australian thing. Then as we said in the choosing your market intentionally, maybe Australia's the right place to start and launch, and it's the right place for you to live and work.

But if you're intending to build a global startup, then as we said in that Choosing your Market episode, pick your market intentionally where there's deep pain, deep pockets, deep, deep enthusiasm and go sit your butt in that market. more often than not, that market is probably the us not always, but probably the US.

And if so, get your butt to San Francisco or New York.

Jack Bloomfield: So you are right. my original thought point, like I started this beautify when I was 17. We raised 1.3 million from Australian investors and the original pitch was that we wanted to sell to Australian brands and we wanted to build this for the Australian market. the decision was made of that because I had no better idea.

And that was what's seen the easiest path to getting something out there and proving something out. As you mentioned there, Chris, as we went through the first year, year and a half of selling to brands, of scratching and pouring, really trying to figure out, Australians, they love to, have the conversation, people will kind of tell you what you want to hear, but when it comes to signing a piece of paper, you'll wonder why that piece of paper never got signed for the first month or two months or three months. And even if they do use the product and then you turn around in three months time or every single week and you say, Hey, how do you like the product? And they say, oh, it's fantastic. I love it. And then they cancel on three months. And it's like, why'd you cancel if you loved it? It's because they don't want to tell you the blunt truth. My personal experience is, building a business in the us, people are much more blunt. They are much more to the point. They are even more willing to take that initial conversation.

But it does hurt when they turn around and they say, oh, I don't like the product, but they don't just say they don't like it. They'll give you the three, exact pointed reasons as to why they don't like the product. And those three reasons could be the difference or the things that you can go and change that will make the product useful, to 20, 30 million odd other people.

So that was a very, very big shift for me personally. it probably took a year and a half longer than it needed to take, but as soon as we started. Different conversations that didn't involve scratching and clawing to having conversations with people who were more willing to make a decision. But at the same time, the pitch had to change.

We weren't just talking about solving a very small problem for a smaller brand and like, Hey, we'll be able to save you X amount of money. pitch had to change to be great. We want to fundamentally change the way you do your business, and we will fundamentally solve this for you. we want to have X impact and if the impact is not meaningful, if it's not a meaningful problem for them.

They will tell you that, whereas I find Australians more often than not, will not, it's just a less of a bigger picture focus. So that was a transition that I had to learn the hard way. I wish I had learned it a year and a half before, but it was certainly an interesting experience.

Chris: I'm pretty sure I was one of the people who told you to move to the US right?

Jack Bloomfield: were. Yes, it's funny, the same, reasons to not move to the US that we've discussed over the last, 20, 30 minutes were the same things that went through in my head I think they go through everyone's head. So I'm really glad that we are even talking about it today because there was no podcast, there was no one thing that I could listen to. I think I was reading articles on how do you move to the US as an expat and like things to look out for in New York but, What actually did help was talking to people who had made the move, who had done it before.

And the point I made earlier around, not one of those people actually said it would be a bad idea, but everyone who hadn't done it, more often than not said it was a bad idea or at least pointed to problems with doing it. So, it was just very different and something I had to get my head around.

Chris: All right, one last, devil's advocate question for you, Jack. maybe you're thoroughly convinced that the US or some other market is the place to move to.

even in a post covid world. That's still a thing to do, but what about if you're kind of patriotic and you feel like I should stay in my own country, build my business help the community and the ecosystem here get developed, and change things from the inside, and, going to the US or whatever feels mercenary unpatriotic or kind of. An Australian in some ways. What would you say to that?

Jack Bloomfield: I think the most patriotic thing that you could do is get out of the country, go to another country, wave the flag around, with your funny Australian accent like mine, and go and. Shoot the lights out. to be able to say like, I'm an Australian. This is the massive business that I've built over here in the us.

Not only does it inspire other Australians who sit there and go, wow, the kid who grew up in Brisbane, moved halfway across the world and built a really big business. you know, as Australian did that, I view that as a success story.

I hope that as I build, beautify over these next couple of years. financial outcomes. Cool. But this whole idea that you can start as a very average person. You can have a big dream, you can do whatever you want.

You can go out and you can make it work, I feel like is the most patriotic thing that anyone could do. And the more Australians that are running around places like New York, the more Australians that are running around places like San Francisco, in my opinion, the better.

Chris: Love that you reframed the whole thing. It's Not only, okay, it's extremely patriotic to go wave the flag and go have a big win for your country. I would add to that. you can then bring that win back to your country and invest in your country, invest in fellow founders who are coming up behind you, bring that experience and that talent back, from all the stuff that you've learned in the us.

And essentially that's what I've done, right? I, spent 10, 12 years in the US and now I am back in Australia, right? And I've brought some of that learning back to Australia and I'd also. More selfishly, you need to put the oxygen on yourself before you can put the oxygen on other people. And so you need to go and have that win and understand what it means to win before you can start to try to help your fellow, countrymen and women.

Right? the other thing I'll say is, Trying to build the ecosystem while trying to build your startup is kind of like trying to build a plane while you're trying to fly the plane, Flying the plane is hard enough. Trying to snap the wings on and get the engines to start while you are falling through the air is basically impossible,

Jack Bloomfield: The runway being the startup ecosystem has holes not even fully built. it's half there and you've got your plane that you've, built yourself and you're trying to take this plane off, but there's no runway to take it off on.

Chris: Yeah, that's right. You don't have all the parts. The runway is broken, and so you've got to go where ecosystem is built because your job as a founder is to build your company, not build the ecosystem. Now again, once you've had some success and you're able to come back and invest in that ecosystem, Educate the ecosystem. Contribute. That makes a lot of sense for sure. If you are a community builder, an ecosystem builder, a, a great talker, a great builder of facilities and programs, then sure, sit here and build the ecosystem. But if you're a founder, that's not what you do. there are too many founders who are too interested too often in this warm and fuzzy community stuff when their startups are not yet on the right track.

This might sound terribly selfish to some people listening here, but it's not. Startups are about focus. Startups are the hardest things or some of the hardest things you will ever do in your. You need to be focused, you need to take that oxygen in. And once you are safe and once you are established, you then can turn around and give that oxygen mask to the people coming up behind you.

The other thing I'll say is, As an Australian, you have advantages, speaking of patriotism, going somewhere like the US cuz while people in the US are enthusiastic, they're storytellers, they're great salesmen and women, Australians tend to be very pragmatic. They tend to be very good at building stuff off the smell of an oily rag.

They tend to be no bullshit they get stuff done and Americans know. They like that, they like the accent, they like the cultural proclivities to be no bullshit, get stuff done, type people. and they like us. And so, you know, you can really use that to your advantage, in an ethical way, I should say.

Not that you'd be taking advantage of anyone, but that your contribution to the US is that kind of pragmatism that only Australians can bring. And so you should be very, very proud of that.

Jack Bloomfield: You mentioned early in this episode around c. household names, incredible businesses. And you look at Atlassian for example, or Canva as two examples. Those businesses, yes, they might be headquartered in Australia, the business itself was built in the us like Canva's, 40, 50, 60 billion valuation didn't come because they're a household name in a.

Became because they're a household name in the US and they built the business there. So on the front and like the window dressing is, yes, we're an Australian company. Yes, we're Australian founders. And yes, the business is headquartered here, but actually the scale itself came from the us. The valuation came from the US and this global first approach was the thing that actually helped them build the business and get them to where they are today.

Chris: Alright. Awesome Jack. So we have hopefully thoroughly convinced the right people listening to this, that the right move is to go to the US or at least go to a market that is right for them.

Like they've decided, okay, I'm gonna go follow Jack to New York. What would you suggest to people to kind of kickstart this process?

Jack Bloomfield: I mentioned earlier that we raised a second round of funding back in December of 2021, and that was primarily from US investors. the commitment that I made at the time was I was moving to the US it is always easier when you find a reason to go.

I want to go and build the business there, or I've got someone I really want to hire. And being there in person to onboard that person and work with them together is easier.

I always find that it is easier if you're able to at least find some sort of anchoring point to go.

For me, that was the biggest thing. I appreciate as well that if you have a family and you have to bring the entire family over to the us it's a much bigger decision and again, involves more of an attitude of there are certain things that we want to establish before going, but that might only be 10 or 20% of the things that we need to figure out the rest of the 80% we are just gonna figure out whilst we are there.

And also find that Americans, especially in places like new. Are supportive to the fact that everyone has moved to there. Not many people have actually grown up in cities like San Francisco or New York. So everyone has an experience. Everyone has their story of how they figured it out, and as soon as you are there, you'll meet people who are very much in the same stage of life.

So when you are trying to figure out, how do I find a proper apartment, cuz I don't like the Airbnb that I've been hold up in for the last 2, 3, 4, 5 weeks, and I need to find an apartment. How did you find an apartment? How did you start paying utility bills? How did you sort out your taxes? You don't get that whilst you're sitting here in your home country, in front of your computer typing away, trying to figure it out before actually making the move.

Chris: I think you're right. Family makes it much harder, right? When you have a spouse and you have kids and you have to think about school, we have to be very thoughtful about the privilege. Of doing this while you're young and while you're single?

Certainly now my wife and I are talking about potentially moving back to the US or moving somewhere else, and it's certainly much more complicated now than when I was younger. But complicated doesn't mean, not doable. you've gotta stack rank the things that are actual blockers from the things that are just hard.

And you've gotta push through those, things that are hard. I'd also say, you mentioned people are willing to help, People look at New York City through the lens of like, these movies in the eighties or, even modern movies. And New York has painted sometimes this very harsh place.

And in my experience at least, and maybe I'm just hanging out with good people or in good neighborhoods. The people in New York are much, much nicer than you would expect. We had people holding doors for us with our stroller and, being super enthusiastic about, us being there, about our accent.

We had other expats and local New Yorkers being enthusiastic about the idea that we might wanna move there again. And it was just, Positivity everywhere. Everywhere. it is not this kind of hard coalface city that you expect, and certainly San Francisco is not that either. For my part in terms of the move and what you should do, I would encourage you to go to wherever you're thinking about or go to a few places that you're thinking about.

For upwards of a month. not a week. Two weeks is getting closer. Three weeks, definitely the minimum four weeks is better. Go there for a month live like a local, get an Airbnb or an executive. Furnished housing and just feel what it's like to live there. And before you go set up, back to back meetings.

Jack talked about hustle, right? People to kinda show up and go, okay, I'm here. Let's, what's gonna fall into my lap? no. Reach out to people, reach out to friends of friends, ask for intros. Set up those meetings. at least half a day every day meet as many people as you can meet. Go to as many events as you can go to and really try to live and breathe the DNA of the city. And then when you go back, you'll be changed. You'll be changed forever. You'll never feel at home in your hometown ever again. Let me just tell you that. If you're in Australia, we have this thing called an E3 Visa.

It's like a H1B, which is the European Visa for the US we have our own allocation. A company can sponsor you it's actually quite easy to get. go talk to an immigration lawyer, figure out the visa situation.

I went there. One suitcase, Jack. my whole life was in one suitcase. I showed up, I apartment hunted and I rocked up it was actually my first apartment in my name. I showed up no furniture. the next day I went to Ikea and bought everything. And the day after that, I had a housewarming party.

And that's it. You just work it out as you go and you gotta bet on yourself and your ability to competently navigate the world. there is all sorts of great apps there that make life a little bit easier. some of the apps you're familiar with now in your hometown, likely were in the US 10 years ago.

So like Instacart that go shop for you. They had Task Rabbit there. 15 years ago, the ability to connect and disconnect services is often quite easy. So just, jump in the deep end as you said, Jack, and, give it a go.

So Jack, thank you so much for joining me on the show today and filling in for Yanev.

It's been absolutely great to have you. How can people find you online and learn more about your, company dispute?

Jack Bloomfield: If you're on Instagram, it's just Jack Bloomfield. If it's Facebook, it's Jack Bloomfield. If it's Twitter, it's the same. just beautify.com being the company itself.

Chris: Check him out. you'll love his story and he's super cool. So reach out to Jack on all the social media and also don't forget if you've been listening to. The show for a few episodes and getting a ton of value from it. we've got the startup Packed, which says, the thing you can do in return for us is subscribe to us in your favorite podcast app.

rate us and review us in that same app. And the new thing is, if you could please subscribe to us. On YouTube because we're trying to get that YouTube channel up and running. And if you're not watching this on YouTube, you can actually see Jack's handsome face over on YouTube. We are doing full video episodes now, so check that out.

Otherwise you can find me at chrissaad on all the social media, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. I'd love to catch you there and of course, if what we are talking about on the show is interesting to you and you wanna supercharge your startup, I have carved out just a little time to work with a small handful of companies.

So you can learn more about that at chrissaad.com/advisory. All right. Thanks everybody. Thanks for cheering in. We'll catch you in the next one. Bye-bye.