WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:04.280 I've got a question for you that's been rattling around my head for months. 00:05.220 --> 00:07.660 Because I hear international expansion, 00:08.420 --> 00:12.940 and I picture you sitting down with a map of Europe, picking a country. 00:13.880 --> 00:16.260 That's exactly how I pictured it at the start. 00:16.660 --> 00:20.100 Right. So, how does it actually work? 00:21.740 --> 00:26.000 Hello. I'm Tomasz Szuster. I built the mojApteczka app. 00:26.000 --> 00:31.580 And today's episode is about something I only learnt once I sat down and did the sums. 00:32.540 --> 00:36.280 The cheapest new market for us isn't a country at all. 00:36.720 --> 00:36.960 Meaning? 00:37.580 --> 00:41.960 Meaning that if I had to spend the first money on going beyond Poland tomorrow, 00:42.620 --> 00:46.040 I wouldn't spend it on translating the app into a new language. 00:46.580 --> 00:50.640 I'd spend it on reaching Poles who already live abroad. 00:51.020 --> 00:55.440 Hang on. So, the new market is the same people, 00:55.440 --> 00:57.280 just somewhere else. 00:57.920 --> 01:02.660 Exactly that. And it sounds like a cop-out, right up until you see the numbers. 01:03.100 --> 01:04.760 Go on then, numbers. 01:05.300 --> 01:09.940 In the UK alone, there are around 984,000 Poles. 01:10.640 --> 01:13.680 In Ireland, 93,000 Polish citizens. 01:14.280 --> 01:17.700 But 124,000 people there speak Polish. 01:17.700 --> 01:21.320 The Netherlands, 128,000. 01:21.860 --> 01:23.520 Norway, 80,000. 01:24.200 --> 01:28.300 Sweden, Denmark and Iceland together, 170,000. 01:28.760 --> 01:30.620 That's starting to add up. 01:31.260 --> 01:33.980 Put that lot together with the Ukrainians living in Poland, 01:34.540 --> 01:35.940 and there are nearly a million of them, 01:36.500 --> 01:38.980 and you're at roughly two and a half million people, 01:39.480 --> 01:42.660 without translating a single line of text. 01:43.080 --> 01:45.720 Without translating? How come? 01:45.720 --> 01:48.400 Because the interface is already there, 01:48.700 --> 01:51.280 in Polish, English, Ukrainian and Russian. 01:52.180 --> 01:54.480 Four languages already in the app. 01:55.140 --> 01:57.700 Fair enough, but language is one thing. 01:58.260 --> 02:01.640 They're buying their medicines in England, not in Poland. 02:02.200 --> 02:03.600 And that's the heart of it. 02:04.100 --> 02:05.000 They buy both. 02:05.880 --> 02:07.860 But you know what people bring back in the suitcase 02:07.860 --> 02:09.660 when they've been to see their parents? 02:10.460 --> 02:11.140 Medicines. 02:11.140 --> 02:11.920 Medicines. 02:12.460 --> 02:14.880 Which is why the Polish Medicines Register 02:14.880 --> 02:17.160 is still their database. 02:17.820 --> 02:20.660 I don't have to integrate with the British Health Service 02:20.660 --> 02:22.880 for that person to get something out of the app. 02:22.880 --> 02:27.880 You mentioned the Ukrainians in Poland. 02:28.700 --> 02:32.760 That's a completely different situation to a Pole in England. 02:33.760 --> 02:36.320 Different, but the mechanism is the same. 02:37.200 --> 02:39.720 Nearly a million people under temporary protection. 02:40.500 --> 02:41.140 They live here. 02:41.620 --> 02:42.880 They go to Polish pharmacies. 02:43.340 --> 02:45.280 They buy medicines from the Polish Register. 02:45.280 --> 02:49.540 So the medicines database already matches. 02:50.680 --> 02:53.500 In a great many cases, the Polish database is enough, 02:53.980 --> 02:57.080 because we're talking about medicines bought in Polish pharmacies. 02:57.740 --> 02:59.500 There's only one thing missing. 03:00.220 --> 03:00.860 The language. 03:01.820 --> 03:03.960 And we've had Ukrainian in the app for ages. 03:05.120 --> 03:07.520 So why isn't it working yet? 03:07.520 --> 03:12.940 Because having a translated interface isn't the same as being found. 03:13.820 --> 03:16.860 Somebody has to type something in Ukrainian into the app store 03:16.860 --> 03:18.220 and actually see us. 03:18.860 --> 03:20.840 That's homework I haven't done yet. 03:21.840 --> 03:24.400 And that's cheaper than a new country. 03:25.620 --> 03:26.660 Many times over. 03:27.420 --> 03:29.740 There isn't a single new integration in it. 03:30.280 --> 03:31.560 No new medicines register. 03:32.000 --> 03:32.960 No new pharmacies. 03:33.540 --> 03:34.620 No new law. 03:34.620 --> 03:35.620 No new law. 03:35.620 --> 03:36.120 One market. 03:36.640 --> 03:37.540 One database. 03:38.080 --> 03:39.020 One jurisdiction. 03:39.920 --> 03:42.740 Just two groups of people speaking different languages. 03:44.700 --> 03:47.680 That might be the most practical thing you've said today. 03:49.180 --> 03:51.020 You said you did the sums. 03:51.860 --> 03:53.460 What exactly were you counting? 03:54.600 --> 03:58.240 I broke ease of entry into five separate things, 03:58.600 --> 04:00.280 because it isn't one variable. 04:01.280 --> 04:01.920 One. 04:02.400 --> 04:03.460 The interface language. 04:03.460 --> 04:04.600 Two. 04:04.600 --> 04:04.640 Two. 04:05.000 --> 04:06.400 The medicines database. 04:07.100 --> 04:10.340 Will the Polish register do, or do you need a local one? 04:11.420 --> 04:11.760 Three. 04:12.220 --> 04:13.540 The legal regime. 04:14.380 --> 04:17.360 Is it the EU, meaning the same data protection rules? 04:18.360 --> 04:18.780 Four. 04:19.240 --> 04:20.380 The pharmacy register. 04:21.100 --> 04:22.260 Is the data open? 04:23.320 --> 04:23.940 Five. 04:24.560 --> 04:25.020 Competition. 04:26.460 --> 04:28.600 And a country is cheap when… 04:28.600 --> 04:33.140 When you land on cheap in at least three of the five. 04:33.140 --> 04:38.480 And it turns out that once you write it all down, your intuition stops working. 04:38.900 --> 04:40.880 How do you mean stops working? 04:40.880 --> 04:42.900 Let me put it another way. 04:42.900 --> 04:47.080 If you had to pick a neighbouring country, where would you go first? 04:47.760 --> 04:49.880 Well, the Czech Republic. 04:50.640 --> 04:53.960 Close by, similar language, similar prices. 04:53.960 --> 04:57.280 And that's exactly the answer I gave myself. 04:57.880 --> 05:01.740 And the Czech Republic came out as one of the more expensive options. 05:02.220 --> 05:03.060 The Czech Republic? 05:03.780 --> 05:04.260 Why? 05:04.920 --> 05:07.420 Two reasons, and neither of them is obvious. 05:08.420 --> 05:11.680 First, the similarity of the language is an illusion. 05:11.680 --> 05:15.540 A Czech isn't going to install an app that's in Polish. 05:15.940 --> 05:19.400 You need a full translation, exactly as you would for German. 05:19.920 --> 05:20.600 And the second? 05:21.220 --> 05:22.700 The second one's uglier. 05:23.320 --> 05:26.180 The medicines data there isn't open the way ours is. 05:26.660 --> 05:30.020 You have to go knocking, and that means time and lawyers. 05:30.420 --> 05:35.560 It comes out at 40,000 to 60,000 euros for the country next door. 05:36.060 --> 05:39.200 That's completely the opposite of what I'd have thought. 05:39.200 --> 05:42.220 Which is why I counted it instead of guessing. 05:42.980 --> 05:46.980 Being close on the map has nothing to do with the cost of getting in. 05:47.520 --> 05:49.760 While we're at it, Germany. 05:50.660 --> 05:53.660 Big market, wealthy, right next door. 05:54.340 --> 05:55.980 Surely that's the obvious one. 05:56.560 --> 05:59.320 Big and wealthy, yes, but not empty. 05:59.760 --> 06:02.440 And that's the difference I underestimated at the start. 06:02.880 --> 06:06.380 Not empty, meaning somebody's already there. 06:06.380 --> 06:12.140 The leader in Germany, Austria and Switzerland is My Therapy, a company out of Munich. 06:12.520 --> 06:19.120 There's also an app called, literally, Digital Home Medicine Cabinet, a direct counterpart to what I'm building. 06:19.700 --> 06:23.200 And on top of that, the state has its own app for electronic prescriptions. 06:23.740 --> 06:25.720 So you'd have someone to compete with. 06:25.820 --> 06:31.000 If I went into Germany, I'd be up against My Therapy and against the Digital Home Medicine Cabinet. 06:31.000 --> 06:35.680 And alongside that, I'd have to factor in the state's e-prescription infrastructure. 06:36.160 --> 06:37.100 That isn't a competitor. 06:37.560 --> 06:40.300 It's part of the landscape everyone there operates in. 06:41.140 --> 06:42.580 That doesn't mean don't go. 06:42.980 --> 06:45.120 It means don't go in with the message, 06:45.520 --> 06:47.680 we've got a medicine cabinet on your phone. 06:48.080 --> 06:50.280 Because that surprises nobody over there. 06:50.920 --> 06:54.180 You need a reason for somebody to switch from something they've already got. 06:54.520 --> 06:55.900 And have you got one? 06:55.900 --> 06:56.380 Honestly? 06:56.620 --> 06:57.060 Honestly? 06:57.660 --> 07:00.280 Not a strong enough one to spend money on it this year. 07:00.840 --> 07:04.460 And I'd rather say that out loud than pretend I've got a plan for everything. 07:06.020 --> 07:09.400 And here I need to be precise so there's no misunderstanding. 07:10.440 --> 07:15.840 What's actually shipped is four interface languages and working with the Polish Medicines Database. 07:16.120 --> 07:22.120 Everything else in this conversation, Estonia, Germany, the UK, is analysis and planning. 07:22.860 --> 07:25.200 I'm not announcing entry into any market. 07:25.900 --> 07:30.900 Then tell me about the country you'd pick as the first real foreign market. 07:31.540 --> 07:32.580 Not a diaspora. 07:33.100 --> 07:33.760 A country. 07:34.740 --> 07:35.280 Estonia. 07:35.880 --> 07:36.520 Estonia? 07:37.200 --> 07:38.920 1.3 million people. 07:39.420 --> 07:40.660 That's a small market. 07:41.620 --> 07:41.980 Small. 07:42.420 --> 07:44.680 And that's the only minus on the whole list. 07:45.380 --> 07:46.060 Go on then. 07:46.320 --> 07:47.200 List the pluses. 07:47.900 --> 07:50.240 Roughly one in five people there speaks Russian. 07:50.640 --> 07:51.780 And English is widespread. 07:51.780 --> 07:56.140 So the language barrier is lower, because we've already got both of those. 07:56.700 --> 07:58.260 That doesn't mean we're ready to go in. 07:58.600 --> 07:59.740 We haven't got Estonian. 08:00.300 --> 08:07.280 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. 08:07.780 --> 08:13.460 Health data is open and well organised, because Estonia built it as shared state infrastructure. 08:13.460 --> 08:18.700 And the competitive landscape in that particular category looks less crowded than Germany's. 08:19.120 --> 08:23.600 Although that's precisely the thing that would need verifying separately before any entry. 08:23.720 --> 08:25.280 So it's nearly a full house. 08:26.060 --> 08:29.300 Three solid pluses, and one thing that still needs checking. 08:29.740 --> 08:31.140 The competition, as it happens. 08:31.140 --> 08:44.080 That sounds absurd when you put the two side by side. 08:44.720 --> 08:45.180 It does. 08:45.540 --> 08:48.220 And that's the best lesson I took from the whole exercise. 08:48.920 --> 08:53.180 A small country with open data can be cheaper than a big country without it. 08:53.880 --> 08:54.480 Right. 08:54.840 --> 09:00.300 Now I have to ask you something, or people will take this whole episode the wrong way. 09:00.300 --> 09:01.560 Go on. 09:02.320 --> 09:04.060 Are we already doing this? 09:04.680 --> 09:08.900 Is the app running in Estonia, in Germany, in the UK? 09:10.040 --> 09:14.520 No, and I'm glad you asked, because I don't want this episode sounding like an announcement. 09:15.360 --> 09:17.280 These are analyses and plans. 09:17.880 --> 09:20.760 Counted, written out, but still plans. 09:21.600 --> 09:23.660 So what's actually done? 09:24.400 --> 09:25.060 Two things. 09:25.060 --> 09:27.560 The app has four interface languages. 09:28.040 --> 09:30.520 Polish, English, Ukrainian and Russian. 09:31.200 --> 09:36.060 And this podcast has an English version, the one you're listening to now, on its own channel. 09:36.600 --> 09:37.140 That's it. 09:37.620 --> 09:39.900 The rest is a spreadsheet with numbers in it. 09:40.900 --> 09:41.500 Honest. 09:42.000 --> 09:43.360 I prefer it that way. 09:43.740 --> 09:44.520 I know the genre. 09:45.020 --> 09:47.600 A founder says, we're present in five markets. 09:47.600 --> 09:54.340 And what it means is the app can be downloaded in five countries, because that's what the store does, by default. 09:55.500 --> 10:00.640 So tell me, to finish, what did all that analysis actually give you? 10:01.160 --> 10:05.240 Because I'm hearing a great deal about what you're not going to do. 10:05.240 --> 10:09.180 It gave me an order, which is something I didn't have before. 10:09.800 --> 10:12.200 Before, I had a list of countries and a hunch. 10:12.960 --> 10:16.160 Now I've got an order in which every step pays for the next one. 10:16.860 --> 10:17.200 Meaning? 10:17.660 --> 10:24.460 The diaspora comes first, because it needs no technical work, just marketing, and making sure the app can be found in English. 10:25.640 --> 10:31.520 Ukrainians in Poland come second, because the interface is already there, and the medicines they buy are Polish. 10:31.520 --> 10:37.520 And only out of whatever those two steps bring in does it make sense to fund the first real country. 10:38.560 --> 10:40.940 So it isn't, we're conquering Europe. 10:41.540 --> 10:45.420 It's, we do one thing that pays for the next one. 10:45.940 --> 10:51.200 Yes, and that's probably the only version of expansion that makes sense when you're doing it on your own. 10:52.100 --> 10:54.100 You know what strikes me about that? 10:54.700 --> 10:58.560 It's the same logic you apply inside the app itself. 10:58.560 --> 11:01.600 Don't promise more than you know. 11:02.320 --> 11:04.480 I hadn't thought of it that way, but you're right. 11:05.080 --> 11:07.380 If I don't know, I say I don't know. 11:07.980 --> 11:08.640 Same in the app. 11:09.100 --> 11:10.380 Same in the expansion plan. 11:11.300 --> 11:15.880 I'd add one more thing, from a completely non-investor point of view. 11:17.020 --> 11:19.260 We've got family scattered across Europe. 11:19.900 --> 11:23.580 Mum rings up and asks about a medicine I haven't got in my hand. 11:23.580 --> 11:25.780 And that's exactly the first group. 11:26.360 --> 11:32.800 Not an abstract British market, but one particular person who moved to the UK and whose medicines are still Polish. 11:33.560 --> 11:38.600 That, at least, sounds like something I know from life, not from a spreadsheet. 11:39.260 --> 11:40.920 Because it came from life first. 11:41.440 --> 11:44.380 The spreadsheet only confirmed there are two and a half million of them. 11:44.380 --> 11:50.440 If you'd like to give it a go, you'll find the link to the mojApteczka app in the episode description. 11:51.220 --> 11:54.600 The app is free, and your medicine cabinet is there offline too. 11:55.440 --> 12:01.420 And if you enjoyed this episode, share it with someone who lives abroad and still brings their medicines back from Poland. 12:01.420 --> 12:02.940 One more thing before we go. 12:03.760 --> 12:06.680 This podcast is made with the help of artificial intelligence. 12:07.580 --> 12:11.460 I wrote the dialogue myself, but the voices you're hearing aren't ours. 12:12.000 --> 12:14.540 They're AI-generated, synthetic voices. 12:15.560 --> 12:20.540 We're telling you this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. 12:21.540 --> 12:24.740 Full details are in the show notes and in every episode description. 12:25.600 --> 12:26.620 Until next time. 12:27.740 --> 12:29.060 Until next time.