BC Startup Sales Podcast – Going International with Eliot Pence (Anduril)

The team was back in the studio this week for another great episode of the Bowery Capital Startup Sales Podcast. We welcomed Eliot Pence, Head Of International at Anduril Industries, to the show to talk about going international. As more and more b2b companies consider international markets there is a deep consideration required around where to go, how to execute in market, and how to measure success. Going international is not trivial and in many cases can be a huge cost from a time and personnel standpoint. Moving into markets like China, Japan, the Middle East, or Africa can be tricky to navigate. Eliot leads international expansion at Anduril and spends most of his time thinking about going international. He’s building out their presence in EMEA today and prior led the Africa practice for McLarty and The Whitaker Group. This is an exciting hardware & software company shaking things up in the defense industry and we hope you enjoy the episode.

Eliot leads international expansion at Anduril Industries, an artificial intelligence and robotics startup addressing challenges in defense, law enforcement, critical infrastructure and environmental disaster management. Prior to Anduril, Eliot founded and led McLarty Associates’ Africa practice from 2013-2018. He is a Senior Associate at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, a mentor at the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale University and a member of the United States Trade Representative’s Advisory Committee on Africa. He received his M.A. from Yale and B.A. from UVic.

Eliot and I start off the conversation talking a bit about his background and specific expertise around going international. We take a very US centric perspective on launching into new geographies and quickly dive in on when a company should really consider going international. More specifically, what are the qualitative and quantitative inputs that should drive decision making. Next, we move to some of the ways Anduril has thought through this and some of the areas they are thinking about moving into based on demand and access to these markets. We then move in to some of the systems and processes that Eliot is building out around this topic. We cover how he’s thinking about the differences in geographies as well as what he’s seen work and not work.