The Operating Pillars and the Fair Five

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The operating pillars are brand, retailer, apparel and international expansion. Each of those groups is like five pods. The fair five are the specific initiatives that one or two of those pods is going after as their sole focus. For example, we launch this event called fair fashion week. That was a big cross functional effort that was within the apparel pillar.

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.