First Cheque with Cheryl Mack & Maxine Minter 
About Brennan O'Donnell
Brennan O'Donnell is a partner at Frontline Ventures, based in Palo Alto, where he works on the firm's Growth fund and invests in growth-stage B2B technology companies.
He spent nearly a decade at Google in go-to-market leadership roles in the US and Europe, including on the team that led Google's European expansion in the early 2000s, and later ran global revenue operations for Google Cloud. He then held C-level and executive roles at Yammer, later acquired by Microsoft; SurveyMonkey; Euclid, later acquired by WeWork; and, most recently, Airtable.
On First Cheque with Cheryl Mack & Maxine Minter, he explained how founders should choose their first market for international expansion.
- Talks about
- Going Global, Growth & Scaling
In conversation.
1 episode
First Cheque with Cheryl Mack & Maxine Minter Go straight to the good bits.
Key moments from How to Pick Your First Market for International Expansion.
- 3:14Brennan’s first investment: Mode Analytics and a lawn mowing business in Texas
- 6:49What’s changed at growth stage and why “growth” is a different world
- 8:30Why AI enablement came first and app layer is finally ready for Series B plus
- 10:10The new risk: fast revenue that’s concentrated and not yet durable
- 14:22Frontline’s model: Europe seed plus US growth and why it’s unique
- 15:58What Frontline looks for: category leaders and a line of sight to a 5x outcome
- 16:20The rough revenue range where growth starts paying attention
- 23:22The four pillars of expansion: timing, go to market, talent, location
- 26:00Timing: the 10 percent pull, exec maturity, and why waiting too long is risky
- 29:36Why Europe expansion has to be a CEO level company priority
The path so far.
- Now
Partner · Frontline Ventures
- Earlier · Scale-up
Chief Revenue Officer · Airtable
- Earlier · Startup
Executive (company later acquired by WeWork) · Euclid
- Earlier · Scale-up
Executive · SurveyMonkey
- Earlier · Scale-up
Executive (company later acquired by Microsoft) · Yammer
- Earlier
Led Global Revenue Operations, Google Cloud; part of the team behind Google's European expansion · Google
Sources: frontline.vc
Frontline Ventures on Day One
Frontline is the venture firm for globally ambitious B2B companies on both sides of the Atlantic. Frontline Seed speeds up ideas at inception across Europe.
1 person · 1 episode
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