Kevin O’Donnell, founder of Global10x and former VP of International Growth at Dropbox, joined Jason Hemingway on the In Other Words podcast to talk about why the most common approach to international growth is also the one most likely to fail, and what companies need to change.
The global SaaS market is on track to reach close to $1.5 trillion by 2034, with the fastest growth coming from markets outside North America. The opportunity is enormous. And most companies are pursuing it with an operating model that was never designed for it.
The pattern Kevin O’Donnell describes is one he has watched repeat across more than twenty years at Microsoft, Nitro, and Dropbox. A company builds a product for its home market. The go-to-market strategy reflects one set of customer assumptions. And then, right at the end of the process, everything gets translated and shipped out as a global strategy.
Bolt-on localization is when companies treat international adaptation as a final step in the product or go-to-market process, rather than building it into foundational decisions from the start.
“You never reach your full potential by having this bolt-on process. But again and again, it is how it’s treated.”
An operating model problem
This is not a translation quality issue. When international growth is treated as something that gets bolted on at the end, every foundational decision has already been made with a single market in mind. The product assumptions, the pricing, and the entire go-to-market design all reflect the logic of the market the company was originally built for.
The teams making those decisions are optimizing for the customers they can see from where they’re sitting. The rest of the world falls outside that frame of reference.
A product team launches a feature domestically and adds Germany to the roadmap for later, rather than asking whether they could launch in ten markets at once. A marketing team builds a campaign that works in English and hands it off for adaptation, without considering whether the underlying assumptions travel.
The decisions feel reasonable in isolation. Collectively, they limit international growth before it starts.
Consider Dropbox. One of the most recognized product-led growth stories in SaaS. Hundreds of millions of users worldwide. And underneath that, a significant commercial blind spot. In 2024, Dropbox generated $1.1 billion from markets outside the United States, roughly 43% of total revenue. A substantial number, but by Kevin’s assessment, still only a fraction of what was possible.
If a company with Dropbox’s global footprint wasn’t capturing its full international potential, the question for every other leadership team is uncomfortable. What are you missing in markets you think you’ve covered?
The cost of showing up late
When teams with international expertise only enter the picture at or near launch, the consequences ripple through the business in ways that rarely get traced back to their origin.
Regional marketing teams ignore content from headquarters because it doesn’t fit their market. They become content creators, rebuilding from scratch what should have been designed for them from the beginning. Features ship without consideration for how users in other countries will navigate them. Expensive rework follows.
“I talk with marketing teams who are in different regions. And I would ask them, why do you create so much of your own copy? And they say, well, because we get a lot of material from HQ, but we have to dump it. It is irrelevant for us.”
What shifting left means
In localization, shifting left means moving international expertise earlier in the product development and marketing cycle, from launch time back to design and planning. Kevin’s argument is simple. Instead of reviewing a feature at launch and figuring out how to adapt it, have someone in the design kickoff asking how a Japanese user will navigate it. Instead of adapting a product page for Brazil after it’s written, have someone in the planning meeting questioning whether the pricing structure makes sense for that market.
“That early involvement can add so much value to those teams that lack that expertise. And it avoids a lot of expensive mistakes, rework, and failed launches later on.”
The shift is about moving expertise to the point in the process where it can actually shape the outcome. When regional teams and international specialists are involved from the beginning, the content that comes out of headquarters is built for global usage from day one. That saves significant rework while delivering a far better strategy for everyone involved.
Kevin extends the argument beyond marketing into product development. Product teams are used to building features that can be turned on and off. The same thinking needs to apply to international experiences. How might users in different markets want to use or adapt the product? How does mobile usage differ across regions? These questions only surface when product and design teams understand how their work will be used beyond the home market.
“It’s about looking for ways where your path will be flexible, and your experience will be flexible along that path.”
Making the shift operational
Shifting left is not just a cultural adjustment. It requires infrastructure that allows multilingual content and international input to move through planning, production, and delivery in a connected way.
That is where platforms such as Phrase increasingly fit into the process. The value is not simply managing translation workflows. It is making international considerations visible while decisions are still being shaped.
The bolt-on model keeps failing because it enters the conversation too late to influence the strategy underneath it.
Shifting left changes that by bringing international insight into the process while strategy, product, and go-to-market decisions are still taking shape.
Rethink international growth
Watch the full conversation with Kevin O’Donnell on In Other Words.
