How Brit start-ups can crack the US

Marketing - not technology - is the key to UK start-ups breaking into the US market, according to Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch.

Speaking at the Gorillas of Tomorrow conference at Cambridge University, which discussed how start-ups can grow to be successful global businesses, the software company's CEO said: "The US is not a choice if you want to be a global player [and] moderate success in the US will dwarf any major successes in Europe."

Autonomy is one of the few UK success stories in terms of homegrown tech vendors that have broken into the US market but Lynch said UK companies face many challenges in trying to make it across the pond.

Lynch said the US is "very arrogant" and believes it is the only country capable of producing good technology, and in order to persuade them otherwise UK companies need to "Americanise" their organisations.

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The US "believes that America is all about freedom and that the UK is all about the class system and... making very good bone china", he said.

Lynch said UK companies must have a clear vision and excellent marketing to "rise above the noise" because "it's PR, PR, PR" in the US.

He added: "The biggest problem we have making the gorillas of tomorrow out of Cambridge graduates is not the technology, it's the marketing."

Lynch said breaking the US is, in effect, a "re-start-up" for UK companies because the US is also not interested in any existing successes a business has outside of their borders.

When moving across to the US, or another country, a company should also send over one key employee to network and assemble other employees to break into new territories, he advised.