Starting a Wholesale Umbrella Company

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Maxim Obeidallah: We started with a pretty narrow focus at fair, which i think is always a good idea. Every market place, unless you are born into like a magic market the way that maybe ober was, you're going to have to find ways to expand your market place and meet the needs of new customers. And for us, it turned out to be pretty easy, because this vira loop just naturally led us in the directions that were the most adjacent.

Today’s episode is with Max Rhodes, the co-founder and CEO of Faire, an online wholesale marketplace that connects independent retailers and brands.

Prior to starting Faire in 2017, Max spent several years at Square, where he was a founding member of Square Capital, the first product manager on Square Cash, and a Director of Consumer Product for Caviar.

In today’s conversation, we dive deep into how startups can get international expansion right. After launching in the U.K. and Netherlands in March 2021, Faire company expanded into countries like France, Germany, Italy and the Nordic region. They’re now in 15 markets, with over 700 employees in 10 offices around the world.

After sharing the company’s origin story and initial strategy, Max offers a helpful analogy that helped him decide when to go international, and details some lessons he learned from other companies like DoorDash and Airbnb.

Next, Max takes us through the nuts and bolts of how the Faire team approached their first international launch, from staffing and operations, to how they thought about local competitors. Max also walks us through the operating cadence and strategic planning process that powered Faire’s international growth. We also talk about the human side of scaling internationally, and the growing pains that come along with it.

To help mitigate the effects, Max shares how he’s implemented the concepts from the First Round Review article on “Giving away your Legos.” Read the article here: https://review.firstround.com/give-away-your-legos-and-other-commandments-for-scaling-startups

You can follow Max on Twitter at @MaxRhodesOK. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.