Episode 20 — The cheapest new market isn't a country

I've got a question for you that's been rattling around my head for months.

Because I hear international expansion,

and I picture you sitting down with a map of Europe, picking a country.

That's exactly how I pictured it at the start.

Right. So, how does it actually work?

Hello. I'm Tomasz Szuster. I built the mojApteczka app.

And today's episode is about something I only learnt once I sat down and did the sums.

The cheapest new market for us isn't a country at all.

Meaning?

Meaning that if I had to spend the first money on going beyond Poland tomorrow,

I wouldn't spend it on translating the app into a new language.

I'd spend it on reaching Poles who already live abroad.

Hang on. So, the new market is the same people,

just somewhere else.

Exactly that. And it sounds like a cop-out, right up until you see the numbers.

Go on then, numbers.

In the UK alone, there are around 984,000 Poles.

In Ireland, 93,000 Polish citizens.

But 124,000 people there speak Polish.

The Netherlands, 128,000.

Norway, 80,000.

Sweden, Denmark and Iceland together, 170,000.

That's starting to add up.

Put that lot together with the Ukrainians living in Poland,

and there are nearly a million of them,

and you're at roughly two and a half million people,

without translating a single line of text.

Without translating? How come?

Because the interface is already there,

in Polish, English, Ukrainian and Russian.

Four languages already in the app.

Fair enough, but language is one thing.

They're buying their medicines in England, not in Poland.

And that's the heart of it.

They buy both.

But you know what people bring back in the suitcase

when they've been to see their parents?

Medicines.

Medicines.

Which is why the Polish Medicines Register

is still their database.

I don't have to integrate with the British Health Service

for that person to get something out of the app.

You mentioned the Ukrainians in Poland.

That's a completely different situation to a Pole in England.

Different, but the mechanism is the same.

Nearly a million people under temporary protection.

They live here.

They go to Polish pharmacies.

They buy medicines from the Polish Register.

So the medicines database already matches.

In a great many cases, the Polish database is enough,

because we're talking about medicines bought in Polish pharmacies.

There's only one thing missing.

The language.

And we've had Ukrainian in the app for ages.

So why isn't it working yet?

Because having a translated interface isn't the same as being found.

Somebody has to type something in Ukrainian into the app store

and actually see us.

That's homework I haven't done yet.

And that's cheaper than a new country.

Many times over.

There isn't a single new integration in it.

No new medicines register.

No new pharmacies.

No new law.

No new law.

One market.

One database.

One jurisdiction.

Just two groups of people speaking different languages.

That might be the most practical thing you've said today.

You said you did the sums.

What exactly were you counting?

I broke ease of entry into five separate things,

because it isn't one variable.

One.

The interface language.

Two.

Two.

The medicines database.

Will the Polish register do, or do you need a local one?

Three.

The legal regime.

Is it the EU, meaning the same data protection rules?

Four.

The pharmacy register.

Is the data open?

Five.

Competition.

And a country is cheap when…

When you land on cheap in at least three of the five.

And it turns out that once you write it all down, your intuition stops working.

How do you mean stops working?

Let me put it another way.

If you had to pick a neighbouring country, where would you go first?

Well, the Czech Republic.

Close by, similar language, similar prices.

And that's exactly the answer I gave myself.

And the Czech Republic came out as one of the more expensive options.

The Czech Republic?

Why?

Two reasons, and neither of them is obvious.

First, the similarity of the language is an illusion.

A Czech isn't going to install an app that's in Polish.

You need a full translation, exactly as you would for German.

And the second?

The second one's uglier.

The medicines data there isn't open the way ours is.

You have to go knocking, and that means time and lawyers.

It comes out at 40,000 to 60,000 euros for the country next door.

That's completely the opposite of what I'd have thought.

Which is why I counted it instead of guessing.

Being close on the map has nothing to do with the cost of getting in.

While we're at it, Germany.

Big market, wealthy, right next door.

Surely that's the obvious one.

Big and wealthy, yes, but not empty.

And that's the difference I underestimated at the start.

Not empty, meaning somebody's already there.

The leader in Germany, Austria and Switzerland is My Therapy, a company out of Munich.

There's also an app called, literally, Digital Home Medicine Cabinet, a direct counterpart to what I'm building.

And on top of that, the state has its own app for electronic prescriptions.

So you'd have someone to compete with.

If I went into Germany, I'd be up against My Therapy and against the Digital Home Medicine Cabinet.

And alongside that, I'd have to factor in the state's e-prescription infrastructure.

That isn't a competitor.

It's part of the landscape everyone there operates in.

That doesn't mean don't go.

It means don't go in with the message,

we've got a medicine cabinet on your phone.

Because that surprises nobody over there.

You need a reason for somebody to switch from something they've already got.

And have you got one?

Honestly?

Honestly?

Not a strong enough one to spend money on it this year.

And I'd rather say that out loud than pretend I've got a plan for everything.

And here I need to be precise so there's no misunderstanding.

What's actually shipped is four interface languages and working with the Polish Medicines Database.

Everything else in this conversation, Estonia, Germany, the UK, is analysis and planning.

I'm not announcing entry into any market.

Then tell me about the country you'd pick as the first real foreign market.

Not a diaspora.

A country.

Estonia.

Estonia?

1.3 million people.

That's a small market.

Small.

And that's the only minus on the whole list.

Go on then.

List the pluses.

Roughly one in five people there speaks Russian.

And English is widespread.

So the language barrier is lower, because we've already got both of those.

That doesn't mean we're ready to go in.

We haven't got Estonian.

It's in the EU, so we'd be under the same GDPR we already work under, though the local requirements would need checking separately.

Health data is open and well organised, because Estonia built it as shared state infrastructure.

And the competitive landscape in that particular category looks less crowded than Germany's.

Although that's precisely the thing that would need verifying separately before any entry.

So it's nearly a full house.

Three solid pluses, and one thing that still needs checking.

The competition, as it happens.

That sounds absurd when you put the two side by side.

It does.

And that's the best lesson I took from the whole exercise.

A small country with open data can be cheaper than a big country without it.

Right.

Now I have to ask you something, or people will take this whole episode the wrong way.

Go on.

Are we already doing this?

Is the app running in Estonia, in Germany, in the UK?

No, and I'm glad you asked, because I don't want this episode sounding like an announcement.

These are analyses and plans.

Counted, written out, but still plans.

So what's actually done?

Two things.

The app has four interface languages.

Polish, English, Ukrainian and Russian.

And this podcast has an English version, the one you're listening to now, on its own channel.

That's it.

The rest is a spreadsheet with numbers in it.

Honest.

I prefer it that way.

I know the genre.

A founder says, we're present in five markets.

And what it means is the app can be downloaded in five countries, because that's what the store does, by default.

So tell me, to finish, what did all that analysis actually give you?

Because I'm hearing a great deal about what you're not going to do.

It gave me an order, which is something I didn't have before.

Before, I had a list of countries and a hunch.

Now I've got an order in which every step pays for the next one.

Meaning?

The diaspora comes first, because it needs no technical work, just marketing, and making sure the app can be found in English.

Ukrainians in Poland come second, because the interface is already there, and the medicines they buy are Polish.

And only out of whatever those two steps bring in does it make sense to fund the first real country.

So it isn't, we're conquering Europe.

It's, we do one thing that pays for the next one.

Yes, and that's probably the only version of expansion that makes sense when you're doing it on your own.

You know what strikes me about that?

It's the same logic you apply inside the app itself.

Don't promise more than you know.

I hadn't thought of it that way, but you're right.

If I don't know, I say I don't know.

Same in the app.

Same in the expansion plan.

I'd add one more thing, from a completely non-investor point of view.

We've got family scattered across Europe.

Mum rings up and asks about a medicine I haven't got in my hand.

And that's exactly the first group.

Not an abstract British market, but one particular person who moved to the UK and whose medicines are still Polish.

That, at least, sounds like something I know from life, not from a spreadsheet.

Because it came from life first.

The spreadsheet only confirmed there are two and a half million of them.

If you'd like to give it a go, you'll find the link to the mojApteczka app in the episode description.

The app is free, and your medicine cabinet is there offline too.

And if you enjoyed this episode, share it with someone who lives abroad and still brings their medicines back from Poland.

One more thing before we go.

This podcast is made with the help of artificial intelligence.

I wrote the dialogue myself, but the voices you're hearing aren't ours.

They're AI-generated, synthetic voices.

We're telling you this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way.

Full details are in the show notes and in every episode description.

Until next time.

Until next time.