Some Thoughts on Going Global for Software Companies: From Zero to One | 5Y Capital's Little Tavern Vol. 24 with Dongxu Huang of PingCAP
Experience, lessons learned, and methodology.
Today's post comes from a recent closed-door event organized by 5Y Capital, where Dongxu Huang, co-founder and CTO of PingCAP, shared his experience taking an enterprise software company global from zero to one. Founded in 2015, PingCAP is an enterprise-grade open-source distributed database company that positioned itself as a global Chinese database vendor from day one. In 2017, PingCAP began exploring international markets. According to a Gartner report, by 2023, PingCAP had become the fastest-growing vendor in the global database management systems market.
Over three hours of sharing and discussion, Dongxu Huang detailed in depth the challenges, pitfalls, and accumulated methodologies PingCAP encountered since 2017 in expanding overseas. We've excerpted portions of his talk below. These experiences reflect PingCAP's particular path — every company's journey is different, and this advice won't suit every founder — but they may offer some useful inspiration and food for thought.
Speaker: Dongxu Huang, Co-founder and CTO of PingCAP
Going Out or Going Global?
I really dislike the term "chuhai" (going out to sea), though I use it sometimes. For Chinese teams, it implies that your starting point is China and you're trying to get somewhere else. That mindset was actually one of our biggest pitfalls. When we first started building international business, our organizational structure treated China as one large region and carved out a department called "Overseas." But the problem is, there's no place called "Overseas." It's an empty concept, and our so-called "chuhai lead" was completely lost.
For a truly global company, I think the mark of success is that you can't really tell where the company is from. Take Nokia — when the brand was at its peak, everyone knew it as a global brand. Many people mistakenly thought it was American, or vaguely European. When you reach a certain level of globalization, where you're from stops mattering. Globalization is really about localization, one region at a time.
What Matters Is the Founder's Mindset Shift
I once came across a quote from Xing Wang: most people think war is made of fighting, but it's actually made of waiting and enduring. That resonates deeply with our years overseas. The most significant change in my personal growth has been my increased capacity for patience — all built from waiting and enduring.
After examining and sorting through all the strategic-level questions, what it comes down to is the founder's mindset shift. Once that shift happens, everything else — resources, talent, execution — follows. The rest becomes tactical.
Determine Whether Your Product's DNA Suits Globalization
Talking about globalization without grounding it in your actual business is meaningless. PingCAP is best known for being open source, and open source is inherently tied to globalization. From the start, we built a fully remote work culture, which is a huge advantage for going global.
When we founded the company in 2015, we recognized that infrastructure software is a universal need — Chinese people need it, Americans need it, Europeans need it. It's like a hammer. If we could build an exceptionally good hammer, we shouldn't limit our market to China; we should sell it globally. Of course, we were young then, and this was a beautiful vision. We later discovered that execution was far more complicated than we'd imagined.
But I believe that if you want to go global, you first need to examine whether your product addresses a universally applicable need — what you might call global DNA. If your product relies on Chinese cultural attributes or a specific market context, directly transplanting it to the US will be difficult. Then you need to reconsider whether globalization is the right choice and whether that market is worth the investment.
Strategy Is What You Die Without
People talk about strategy a lot, and every CEO has their own definition. Mine is simple: strategy is what you die without. If a strategy requires multiple pages of PowerPoint to explain, it's not real strategy. For PingCAP, globalization is a strategy, open source is a strategy, cloud is a strategy — just these three. Everything else is execution.
Strategy helps you subtract. Once you've identified these three core strategies, you can recognize which battles to ignore and avoid getting consumed by trivialities. With this lens, look at your global business: if going overseas is something your company dies without, then commit to it unwaveringly.
Do You Have the Conviction for Long-Termism?
We began seriously investing resources in globalization in 2017. I've personally experienced everything — building customer relationships, hiring our first overseas employee, setting up offices, finding locations, company registration, all kinds of bizarre situations. I've stepped in countless holes.
If you count from when we first came to the US to start the company, the first four years generated basically zero revenue. The early years were still okay since the team was small. But later, we were investing millions of dollars annually with not a single dollar coming in. What do you do then?
When chatting with friends, I'd say: if you really want to copy PingCAP's path, let me ask you one question. Assuming you're fully committed, can you survive three years without making money? If you can, then go for it.
Execution: Security and Compliance Are Key
A defining characteristic of the US market is that it's compliance-driven. In China's software industry, compliance hasn't been widely emphasized until recently; now "xinchuang" (IT innovation/self-reliance) has finally established a framework and standards, and people are waking up to the importance of compliance and security. By contrast, after four or five decades of development, US software has evolved compliance into a fully marketized standard. Specific requirements and details are all on paper — standards like SOC 2, ISO/IEC 27001, and GDPR, as well as industry-specific entry and compliance requirements, are broken down into concrete implementation details.
This brings one advantage: even as a Chinese person, I can build something that meets US compliance standards. China's market maturity hasn't reached this point yet, but the US market is relatively mature — Silicon Valley even has many companies that help startups achieve compliance. Getting this right establishes a solid foundation for market entry.
Early Stage: The CEO Is the Biggest Salesperson
We initially set up a so-called "chuhai lead," but later realized this was completely wrong. The person responsible for overseas business should be the CEO. Also, I think many founders and companies make a common mistake: they figure they're unknown overseas, so they should build brand awareness first, and their first hire might be BD or marketing. This seemingly straightforward approach is usually a trap. It looks like you're doing something certain, but it may yield nothing — because spending money is always easier than making it.
In the early stage, the CEO should be the company's biggest salesperson in that region. You'll eventually need to hire a local lead, but if you can't evaluate their work, that's a problem. By whatever means necessary, before you earn your first million dollars, you shouldn't be a hands-off owner or remote manager. You should personally gather resources and reach out to customers, because the CEO's resources are the company's resources — things you can mobilize.
For founders who genuinely want to do globalization well, I think the first to-do item is deciding when you're going to move there. Often people look at their situation and say, I still have hundreds of millions in revenue in China, these clients still need me. But based on my actual experience, where you spend your time matters enormously.
Where my physical body is, my attention naturally follows. Never approach this with a business-trip mentality. Your attention itself is an investment — this matters because it shapes company culture.
What are your thoughts on software product globalization, or what takeaways did you get from this piece? Share your views in the comments — we'll select two standout comments to receive a gift from 5Y Capital.
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