In 2022, A16Z proclaimed that “the company of the future is Default Global”. They contended that the old model of expanding one-country-at-a-time is being replaced by the need to be “global from day 1”.

This trend is easy to understand. With the rise of global marketing channels like Google's AdWords and Facebook's Ads, clients can now be acquired globally. This has supplanted traditional local marketing channels such as newspapers, billboards, and TV. Equally, international recruitment has been made possible by recruitment websites and simultaneously, global procurement has become possible as services such as AliExpress and Freelancer. These developments all pull companies to go global earlier than ever before.

This trend is also easy to observe: manufacturers that offshore are common, software companies typically have sales offices in multiple countries, and even businesses such as restaurants and shops now often expand internationally based on the “tier” of the city rather than expand locally.

‘Default Global’ obviously isn’t true for all businesses but it is growing.

For those that do go ‘global’, their finance team face an accounting problem - different countries have different accounting softwares, and each accounting software has a unique ecosystem of vendors that integrate with it. This leaves these companies with fragmented systems, siloed data and disparate workflows.

It shouldn’t be this way. A company should be able to use local accounting software for compliance and still have a single financial system of record.

This is what we are building at Translucent.