The following interview is a conversation we had with Hanna Asmussen, CEO and Co-Founder of Localyze, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: Over $48M Raised to Build the Leading Global Mobility Platform for Compani
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Thanks for having me. I’m very excited.
Brett
Yeah, no problem. So to kick things off, could we just start with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Yes, I’ll try and keep it short, but my background is a bit of a weird mix. I’m a former consultant, former engineer, but I always say engineer who doesn’t like numbers and consultant who doesn’t like finance and very happy with the CEO position. I’m probably more of a product focused CEO. That’s my one passion topic, I’d say.
Brett
And would ten year old Hannah be surprised that you ended up being CEO and Co-Founder of a company here? Or did you always think that could possibly happen someday?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Oh, no, like, ten year old Hannah thought that she’d probably be a veterinary or something like that because I grew up on a farm and I always loved animals.
Brett
Oh, nice. Very cool. At what age did that become, like, something that seemed normal for you? Was that like, in college or when did you start to come around this idea of, yeah, maybe I could be a CEO, maybe I could be a Founder?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
I would rather say by chance that my friends would probably say that I realized that I’m basically unemployable and I couldn’t work under a bus, so I had to create my own job. But I think really it was by chance because I loved the topic that we’re working on so much that I wanted to build a company around it. And so it was not from the urge of being a CEO, but really rather from solving that big problem that we’re tackling.
Brett
Nice. That’s amazing. And I know we’re going to dive deeper into that here shortly, but a few quick questions that we like to ask, really just to better understand what makes you tick as a Founder. So first one is what Founder or CEO do you admire the most and what do you admire about them?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Very big fan of Des, the Founder of Intercom, because he’s inspiring. If you ever heard one of his talks, for example, a web summit, that was a great one. Or like podcast that he’s done, he’s very smart. I love the way he’s thinking about product customer focus, but also, he’s generally a very nice human. He’s still very down to earth. So yeah, I would probably name him nice.
Brett
And what about books? Is there a specific book that’s had a major impact on you as a Founder?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Books are a tough one, I have to admit. I love books, but I’m always sticking to thrillers etra. I’m not really of a business book reader. There was one that I really enjoyed, though, which was Patrick Lancione. The dysfunctions of a leadership team.
Brett
What about Thrillers? Give us a book that maybe we haven’t all heard of. What’s a good thriller?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Oh God. I like the typical Scandinavian, like Joe nesbury, et cetera. Viveka Stain is a more recent one that I started reading, but I’ve been through all of them and I’ve probably read most of them at least three times.
Brett
Wow. I have to say it’s a genre I haven’t really explored very much, but that’s one of the fun parts of doing this podcast, is I get to uncover a lot of new and different books that I normally wouldn’t read. So excited to check those out. Now let’s switch gears and let’s dive deeper into Localyze. So just to set us up here for context, can you just give us the elevator pitch? Let’s talk about the problem you solve, who you’re serving, and really what the product does.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Yeah, Localyze helps companies to bring their employees across borders effectively. So we automate immigration lawyers, and then when a company wants to either hire someone from abroad, bring them to them, we really help with everything from the visa to finding housing, et cetera. Also support with business trips. So really everything that comes with moving employees across borders.
Brett
And when we talk about borders, are there specific countries that you’re typically moving workers from to or what does that look like?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
So we have a lot of very typical channels. Of course people think, like if you look at Europe, for example, a lot of engineers that come from Brazil, Nigeria, India. Then if you look at the US, also a lot of engineering talent. Latin America, you also have now actually a lot of mobility from the US to Europe, especially in senior talent that gets hired by the growing tech scene in Europe. But I would say we had 80 or even like 85% of all countries is countries where people come from. So even if there’s, of course, predominant channels, you have a lot of diversity there.
Brett
And are these always tech workers or what industry do they tend to fall in?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
We started with, I would say 99% tech workers and then diversified over time. So right now we also have a lot of folks working in marketing sales, and then over the last year we also ventured out looking at the customer base, like venturing out from the tech scene. We now have customers like infineon Roland Berger. So like going into consulting financial services, going into even the car manufacturers, some of the bigger ones. And so there of course, you also have more diverse talent. We look at blue collar workers now start with we look at healthcare, so really diversifying and expanding into that direction as well.
Brett
And was that the master plan in the early days? Was it, hey, let’s go start with tech, win with tech and then expand out into all these different verticals and industries.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
I would love to say yes, but it’s a no. And I think still right now we have four different expansion dimensions. So to say one is geographical, so like venturing new countries, the other one is going up market, sending to bigger customers, then we have the different industries and then we have product expansion, new features. And so it’s always like thinking about where do we see potential, but also what is our customer base requesting, where do we see traction? And so rather going step by step and growing the market in the different dimensions. But I also think given the environment in the last years with COVID now with the economic downturn, you have to stay flexible in a sense, because also during COVID of course, a lot of things changed. Like now for example, because tech is a bit more impacted, it has accelerated our transition into a more traditional customer segment.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
So I think their expansion is something it will probably always be a bit more flexible on our side.
Brett
Interesting, makes a lot of sense. And I think that’s a shift that a lot of companies are going through right now, right, the startups that sold to other startups and other tech companies now, they’re kind of being forced to expand out to the, I guess you could say like more stable industries or the more established industries. So makes a lot of sense. Now let’s talk about your legal headaches. So I have to imagine with a business like this, it just involves a lot of compliance. There’s a lot of legal aspects that probably have to be navigated and you probably have to deeply understand laws and all of these different countries that you’re operating in. So what’s that like for you as CEO? How are you managing all of that? And just how complex is this from a legal perspective when you have to comply with all these different laws?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Yeah, so for every country that we’re going in, we always need at least one legal expert. Also interesting there, for example, in Germany, you can actually do immigration support without being a lawyer. In the UK you can also do that, but you need to have a certificate, you don’t have to have a law degree, but say this is very unique. Also what you’re able to do, for example, and you really have to dive into how does immigration work in a specific country and then see, okay, who do I need to hire in the UK for? Like you need to have a license to operate. And so we almost always hire one person and then basically scale them via the software. But then you really have to be careful on what is possible and whatnot the good thing is that there have always been traditional agencies like law firms, et cetera.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
So it’s really about digitizing the work that they do. And instead of having ten immigration lawyers in the US, for example, like having one and then scaling their workflows so effectively, then you need to have the basics once, but because it’s workflow automation effectively afterwards, you don’t need to do that much extra work with every new person that you hire.
Brett
And then are there maybe legacy companies doing this or the legacy law firms that specialize in immigration that view you as the disruptor and maybe a threat to the status quo and a threat to their business? Because it sounds like this could eventually or could currently be eating into their customer base and potential customers.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Oh yeah, 100%. Really. In a lot of cases we’re up against more traditional companies, immigration law firms, Fragment, et cetera, but also the big four like Noel PwC now split out their global mobility practice, which now call Vialto. And now we actually have customers where we are up against them, which is interesting. And we also had one case that was in Germany, if I remember correctly, where one immigration lawyer, we took away business from him and then he tried to sue us. And so I think, of course you have some exposure, but we won the lawsuit. That was not such a difficult one because of course there is a bit of a gray area where you have to be really careful. But as long as you also make sure, what do you offer, what do you not offer? I think then when I really set that base for every country you operate in, the risk is very minimal.
Brett
Yeah, I guess it’s not always the rule, but it tends to be the rule that if you’re getting lawsuits and getting sued by someone, then you must be making some moves and making some noise and causing some change. So that’s probably a good indicator in this case at least.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Definitely.
Brett
Now take me back to the early days when the company was first starting. So where did this idea really come from and what was it about this problem that made you and your Co-Founder, or Co-Founder say, yes, this is it, let’s do it?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
It was a very long iteration, I have to say. So when I was 15, I moved to Argentina, spent a year there, went to school, and that really gave me that bug of, okay, I want to explore the world. And so I kept doing that and even though I loved it was always a challenge. I moved to China to settle in, to find housing, to solve all the immigration challenges. And then yeah, same when I went to the US. I was in secondaries, I think, like two or three times, which is slightly scary. And so I think that is really something where I thought, okay, this is a problem. More and more people want to move across borders. The world should be more open so we can support there. But then, because I never worked in the tech sector and didn’t have any access to it, the idea was first evolving around, like, okay, maybe a block that helps international students.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
And then we had different iterations there over the course of, I would really say like five, six years until at some point when I decided that I would not do the PhD that I started a month before. And I had some time on my hands that I was like, hey, I have to do something with that. And then I knew both my co-founders before they had also experienced the pain. Francie had the coverage on the tech side. Lisa knew the HR space, and so ultimately, it all came together. But then I think really kind of then got its own rhythm. It just started gaining traction. Like, we had this idea, we got great feedback, then we got the first customer, and then at some point, it was like, okay, we’re really onto something there. So I would say, like, a bit of a more unique journey to becoming a Founder.
Brett
Nice. Super interesting. I think every Founder has a unique journey, right? And a different journey into this. So makes a lot of sense.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Yeah.
Brett
This show is brought to you by Front Lines Media, a podcast production studio that helps B, two B founders launch, manage, and grow their own podcast. Now, if you’re a Founder, you may be thinking, I don’t have time to host a podcast. I’ve got a company to build. Well, that’s exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host, and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. Now, back today’s episode. Now, in the early days, I’m sure you’ve experienced this, and every Founder experienced this. It’s hard to get paying customers, and it’s hard to land those first paying customers. So take us back to those first couple of big paying customers that you acquired. You don’t have to, of course, say names or anything like that, but how’d you pull it off?
Brett
How were you able to land those first paying customers?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
That’s also a funny anecdote. The very first customer, we literally stumbled upon them. So we hadn’t even launched. We were at an event like HR roadshow, presented our plan, hadn’t even launched the software. And then someone approached us and said, like, hey, look, I actually want to hire someone from India. And then I was just pointing to Lisa, to my Co-Founder, said she can do it because effectively, what we did there is automating Lisa’s Knowledge because she had done immigration cases in Germany and so we said okay, well we’ll try it out with him. And that I think it also takes away a bit of the fear. Like then you have one customer and then the second one becomes easier and then the second one was an introduction through the network. And I remember back then we thought like okay wow, this is actually a company that had maybe like 70, 80 employees and that was more of a sales process already that was really exciting and we had just launched our product and then I think that would great.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
The third what we thought would be our customer went but then they had different requirements and then said no. And then that’s something that takes you back, makes you very sad of course, but then you go on to the next one and then works again. So I do think the first customers, it’s really what YC always says do things that don’t scale. You can probably never put them into proper tiers. Maybe at least half of them are not your ideal customer. Maybe they are too small, maybe they’re too big. And so I think there is just like the iteration that’s important but even more important to lose the fear and to actually say okay, I just want to learn there.
Brett
Amazing. I love that. And what about market category? So how do you think about your market category? Is this a category creation play or is it really just redefining and bringing technology to a category that sounds like it didn’t really use a lot of technology before.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
I would say it’s a mix of both. So one hand of course you have the part about like we are up against immigration law firms, against the relocation agencies replacing them which is of course something that where you replace them at all the companies out there. But then there’s also the category creation part because we have that immigration piece at the core of the software. But then we also have you can call it like a curated marketplace on top where we get housing partners and mobile phone contracts, insurances, like all of that you also need when you’re new to a country and also do things like a buddy system where we pair you with someone else that’s also moving to the same country. And so those are things where we actually also now develop a more consumerized app for people moving, want to develop a whole platform there.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
And I do think that is something where in the careers nowadays it’s very normal to spend time abroad and people are not just moving once they want to explore ten different countries over the course of their career. And so really also helping people new move from one country to another, make that more recurring, make them integrate faster. I think this is really the category creation aspect that we can also have.
Brett
And just to understand the business model and where you’re making money from, is it from the businesses that are paying this cost for the workers or is it the workers themselves paying it? Or is it a split of both? Depending on the use case?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
We effectively have three different revenue streams. If we only do pure like B, two B, we don’t do B to C. And then on the company side, we have a software fee three different tiers depending on what features you use. On top of that, there’s a usage based component on every case that the company then adds. And then the third revenue stream is effectively the commissions that we get from partners from that marketplace component.
Brett
That’s super interesting. And what’s the story to these customers? Is this like an ROI story? Is this a happier worker story? What are you really conveying as you’re having these conversations with these companies?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Definitely the latter. We actually don’t try and compete by price. We’re not that much cheaper than immigration law firm, et cetera, because we don’t have to be. The talent is really important and it’s such a crucial aspect that companies also often really don’t want to save there. And it’s more about the experience. On one hand, it’s also the fact that for HR it’s much easier to manage it. We give them the front end to see. These are the case that are ongoing, these are the tasks that you have to do versus an immigration law firm that either has a very shitty software with not so great Usability or they just straight up send emails to your inbox and that becomes very hard to keep track.
Brett
Yeah, I can imagine that makes a lot of sense. And what are your views when it comes to remote work? So we’ve had a number of big companies on the show like Remote and Oyster, and all of them are very much focused on this remote work idea and hiring workers in other countries but not having them move to the actual country. So what are your views there and how do you just navigate that conversation around remote work?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
It’s a super interesting one because of course, a lot of the customers that we have, they still have some kind of hybrid or in person aspect where they have offices and they want to bring people together in different habs. But we also have companies that are fully remote. And the fact that we are building on is that there was one study that said 80% of millennials want to spend part of their career abroad. And so you’ll always have people that either want to move somewhere or already work outside of the country where they’re from and then they will need a new visa from time to time. They will need support. And so this is the trend that we are building on. And Remote is a good example. We have a partnership with them and yeah, they’re also a customer on the immigration side and so I do think those topics go hand in hand.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
But then ultimately for us, if you think about playing the long term, we would be selling into someone like Google five years time. And then they are that big that even if they allow remote work I’m not sure exactly where Google is at there at the moment, but they have their own entities in the countries where they have employees in and then they bring people in between and then they do kind of like also the global mobility piece themselves. And we are rather a horizontal layer across the whole employee base and are in charge of everything like immigration and relocation related.
Brett
Got it. So it’s like immigration as a service essentially to those companies.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Exactly.
Brett
Super interesting. And what type of growth are you seeing today and have you seen over the last couple of years? And yeah, you don’t have to share anything you’re not comfortable with, but I would say our audience loves metrics. So what can you tell us and tease us with some ideas of the growth that you’re seeing?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Yeah, no, just like very roughly, like in terms of on the customer side, we have around 500 customers at the moment. We’ve been growing quite a bit, especially 21, 22, where explosive growth years I can share the numbers from the last round. So I think there at the Series B, we’ve grown like five or up to six X compared to the Series A that was just a year before. What’s really interesting overall, if you look at our retention of the customer base, you would expect that now of course that companies hire less and move less people across borders, but we’ve always had a global retention of 98% or so, like really low churn and better stayed the same. We are now doing a shift in terms of business model and pricing to get a higher share of upfront commitment and basically more recurring revenue by selling flat fees, like grouping together the two first components of our pricing.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
And we’ve actually did quite a successful shift there and right now have already more than a quarter of our customers on a fully recurring model, which is really interesting. And that plus going up market is really something like working, you can say compared to an immigration law firm, we get a lot of predictability on the revenue side in an environment like that.
Brett
Makes a lot of sense. Super interesting and as I’m sure you’ve seen, there’s just a lot of noise in the market today and it sounds like there’s the established players for you and then of course, there’s some startups that have tossed their hat into the ring and are also probably making a lot of noise. So what have you gotten right? How have you risen above that noise and what do you attribute to that outstanding growth that you’ve seen that’s a very good question.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
I would say, one hand, we’ve just survived. We’ve been super resilient during COVID A lot of people thought we would die. They literally thought, okay, doing immigration when borders are closed is not the smartest thing to do. But we really believed in what we do and really knew that the market would come back, which it did, ultimately. And so I think we just have an incredible belief in the market. The whole team is super mission driven. We’ve all experienced immigration and relocation ourselves, really want to solve the problem. And so I think that just gives you that drive to also persist in the hard times. I do think for founders that just found something for the sake of founding have a harder time, especially when shit hits the fan, I would say. Like, that plus really a very unique understanding of the challenge that we’re solving.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Very much empathy for the people moving. And in a world where HR becomes more and more people centric, this is what actually counts.
Brett
Yeah. And you know, that’s something that I’ve heard in a number of the podcast interviews that I’ve done so far. They’ve said survival. That’s kind of a funny answer, but it just makes sense. If you can just survive the painful parts of the journey of building a company, then you at least need to live another day to be able to adapt and make changes and continue to grow. So I think that’s super interesting. And I totally agree too, on you really being obsessed with the problem. How another Founder talked about it, who was recently on the show said that there’s a big difference between a mercenary and a missionary entrepreneur. And when times get tough, it’s very clear which of those two camps that you fall within. And it sounds like you’re very much on the missionary side and that you’re mission driven and you really believe in solving this problem and tackling this problem.
Brett
So that makes a whole lot of sense.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Yeah.
Brett
Now let’s talk about challenges. So if you had to pick one go to market challenge that you faced so far and overcame, what’s that challenge and how’d you overcome it?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
I would really say complete lack of knowledge of how to build a go to market function. I was lucky to have a Co-Founder, Lisa, who’s incredible at selling. At the Series B, we had a lot of revenue and only basic like her and two AES. And so from that moment on, we knew that wasn’t scalable and that we actually needed more knowledge. And so we’ve always been outbound driven. 95% of our revenue is a complete outbound, but we didn’t even know about the difference between outbound inbound. For us, it was natural because we’ve always like we never had marketing, we just started building it. Now we have someone incredible on the team who’s doing an amazing job there, but we’ve just sold we talked to customers, we’ve sold, but then when we started hiring SDRs, then we actually realized, like, hey, there’s some SDRs that are accustomed to only doing inbound.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
They get leads and then they qualify them. But for us, it was different and so we made a lot of mistakes there. So, yeah, I can’t really say that big challenge is like trying to build a go to market function without building on knowledge on what you’ve seen at other companies.
Brett
Yeah, and I’m sure you’re not the first Founder to experience a couple of go to market challenges, so that also makes sense. Now, let’s reflect on your journey of company building so far. If you reflect on it, what would you say is the number one piece of advice you’d have for yourself if you were just starting this company again today?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
I think we could basically cut off the whole first year because it was just trying to figure out how to build product. And I think that is something where there’s a big clash between the German mentality and the US mentality. When we got into Y Combinator, people just started selling without having any kind of product, and we really tried to build something first to figure that out. And, yeah, that really cost us a lot of time.
Brett
Interesting and final question here for you. Let’s zoom out into the future. So three, five years from today, what’s the vision? Paint an exciting picture for us of what this future is going to look like.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
We always talk about our Bhag, like our big Harry Audacious goal, and that is to bring 100 million people across borders by 2030. That’s a lot of people. I know, but I do think it’s such an exciting world. There are so many people moving across borders in the world that we live in, and I do think we’re in a unique position. So, yeah, that’s always what we are sharing with the team as well.
Brett
Amazing. I love it. All right, Hannah, we are up on time, so we’re going to have to wrap here before we do. If people want to follow along with your journey as you continue to build, where should they go?
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Definitely LinkedIn. I’m still trying to up my Twitter game, but I’m not good there, and I’m also very much not good on Instagram, so I think LinkedIn is the place to be. And then if anyone wants to teach me how to up my Twitter game, I’m always happy to get some lessons there.
Brett
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on, sharing your story and sharing some of those lessons that you’ve learned along the way and really just educating us on what you’re building. I thought it was a really fun conversation and I learned a lot and I’m sure our audience did as well. So thank you so much for taking the time, especially given that it’s late in the evening on a Friday night. So thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Hanna Marie Asmussen
Likewise. Really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.
Brett
All right. Thank you. Keep in touch. This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B2B Founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. And for the latest episode, search for Category Visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
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