Ragu: So, Joe, I am sure a lot of this is management trying to sit down in a boardroom and figure out what makes a lot of sense. But I am going to turn over to Alex and talk about how did you manage through all of this and what was important, strategically from your perspective, during this growth process going from, if you can say to one to thirty countries, correct.
Alex: Right. So it is an interesting story, Ragu, because it actually started before I joined the company. So I would give a little bit of history, and then tie into where I think this is important. But when the company first went internationally, the first country they went into was Germany and that was back in 2013. And being a young company, growing company, trying to figure it out like a lot of probably similar type organizations, they were not sure kind of what they were doing. And so they went into Germany, they were able to get a legal entity set up, they had to find an independent accounting firm to do the books and records, they found a local banking partner, a local legal partner, etc., and set up the entity and started operations. A year later, they decided to go direct in Japan, and they said, “Gosh, I guess we got to do this whole process over again.” So they did the same thing in Japan, finding the local partner, local accounting, banking, etc. A year or so after that, management came to the finance group and said, “We want to go direct in Canada and Australia.” And at that point, the controller at that time said, I cannot continue this, this ad hoc approach.
And that is when he was introduced to Global Upside. And what Global Upside brought to the company, to the organization was a consistent approach, right? A partner that was local in those countries that provided a local accounting firm, a local HR partner, legal partner, tax partner, etc., and helped to form those legal entities and do the back office booking, etc. And that was the key to the explosion that happened right after I joined the company where we went direct, I believe in, I want to say, another 10 to 13 countries over the course of a year or two. And the only way we did that was with the consistent approach that Global Upside as a partner provided us.
Joe: Never could have done it otherwise, truthfully. You know, when you take a step back, the most, some of the intimidating challenges, and Alex talked about them in the company, thankfully, learned how difficult it was, in the context of trying to do Germany and Japan. I think I do not remember Alex, you might, but in Japan, for example, it took us many years to even have our bank accounts opened, right, properly flowing and everything else that was there that process in terms of local labor laws, local incorporation laws, local tax, and regulatory components, not FDA equivalent, but the actual corporate regulatory environment. And then the banking side and everything else that goes along with it is just a chat. It is enough of a challenge for a company like ours to identify the right salespeople, leadership, commercial, the things that we need to drive our business, we could never have gone into that many countries that quickly and focus both on, I will call it, the blocking and tackling of commercial success and the administrative side, we just did not have the resources or knowledge to do that on our own. And that is where Global Upside has been a critical partner for us.
Ragu: Well, thank you both for that endorsement. But you brought up this issue of opening a bank account in Japan took you quite some time. And actually, the environment has gotten worse, in many respects, because of all these KYC, UBO, or broadly AML requirements, anti-money laundering, and sometimes it just is so hard to open bank accounts. And I have traveled the world to open our own bank accounts as our footprint has grown in over 70 countries now so, but I can understand that. And banking is for sure a challenge. But Alex, are there other challenges that you were seeing in this expansion process?
Alex: Absolutely. Probably other than banking which, to your point, you better plan on a nice lead time to get those bank accounts set up given those regulatory requirements. But the other biggest one, biggest complexity that I will just throw out, is around the HR and benefits, employee rules and regulations, and pension plans and all of the things that are dealing with human resources is highly complex, and every country has its own unique set of rules and set of things and complexities. And so, when you are a growing company, and you do not have the resources on the ground, as employees of the company, you have to have a partner that has those resources available to help you. And we could not deal without that.