Running an English speaking company in Europe

This is pretty much standard for most tech startups in Amsterdam, and I suspect several other European cities. The main reason isn&#x27;t the ambition to expand internationally, but staffing.<p>However, I&#x27;ve also encountered a lot of resistance, especially outside such international cities. Some people fundamentally dislike the idea of having to speak English if working for or partnering with a local company. It&#x27;s also heavily associated with pretentiousness.

I wish more companies did this. Especially in Sweden, at least would lessen the burden for my partner to get a job. Speaks Mandarin and English fluently. Even jobs that could be done in English requires Swedish.

I love this idea and I truly hope that more companies see that as a feasible option. More so, because I&#x27;ve been contemplating the idea of leaving London for Croatia for some time, but Croatian is an incredibly hard language to learn.<p>On a second thought, it&#x27;s also fair to say that the idea is all well and good, but all you need is a disgruntled employee to ruin it to everybody else. But then, I guess it&#x27;s all up to what type of people you hire in the first place, and how the company shows those new-hires what kind of culture is expected from them.<p>There are few rulings in the UK, based on EU&#x27;s laws, supporting employees speaking they own language even when the nature of the business require them to speak English. The most recent case I recall of, is that of a Polish nurse&#x2F;nanny&#x2F;babysitter who would speak Polish to Polish-parents and Polish co-workers. But her managers required there to stick to English at all times, even when approached by Polish speaking parents and co-workers. She sued and won.

This is a similar route my company has taken. We are based in Madrid and are just about to break out of Spain in terms of customer base.<p>We are more a traditional company competing in an existing industry hence Silicon Valley is not a location we compete with in terms of culture or product design.<p>What has been a big challenge for us after switching to English has really been acquiring local talent that is already here or willing to move here, can speak English well and also have great coding skills (in C# .Net if you want to know)<p>We have been successful in recruiting people in rural Spain and across Europe but it seems that all the English talent in MAdrid already is quite comfortable in their jobs.<p>So in summary - I think if you are in non-english Europe and do the switch, be prepared to diversify your operations and look at remote workers or branch offices away from your HQ.<p>YMMV of course.

It might be a problem to keep your best developers working in Barcelona on Spanish level salaries if they are good, young and fluent in English. It&#x27;s not just the absolute salary numbers: the relative purchasing power of even decent Spanish salaries is pitiful. I only stay here because I&#x27;m not so young anymore and have a family, but otherwise I would move somewhere that might be twice as expensive but pay more like 3x.

I hate this configuration where development is in one place and suits in the other, moreover when one is way more expensive than the other (often with the suits in the more expensive). I leads to incredible culture divisions.<p>I&#x27;m still struggling for solutions, because having the sales next to the customers HQ makes sense somehow.

Starting an international SaaS company is a beast of an undertaking, kudos.