Innovation & Talent: Why Machinio Expanded To Europe

The co-founders of Machinio, Dan Pinto (29) and Dmitriy Rokhfeld (30), quickly realized that their technology could not only significantly impact businesses and disrupt the industry in the US, but it could cross borders and provide businesses with access to opportunities all over the world, and especially in Europe.

Europe As A Hub For Innovation & Talent

Brett Ward (Director of Business Development), Dan Pinto (Co-founder and CTO), Dmitriy Rokhfeld (Co-founder and CEO), Robin Hargadon (Director of Operations)

Machinio is a search engine aggregating over 1 million active used equipment listings and connecting highly interested buyers with sellers all over the world through their proprietary technology. The idea came when Pinto was living in Chicago and working as a developer. One of his colleagues purchased second-hand printing presses in the United States and sold them in Ecuador where they lacked a local market for that equipment, Pinto was asked to help find a certain model and started on Google. After searching for about 45 minutes, he decided to build technology to crawl the web, scraping listings and aggregating them.

The startup has brought innovative technology to an almost archaic, 300 billion Euro industry and it didn’t take long for Pinto and Rokhfeld to realize that it could take over Europe. After the last round of raised funds led by Ritchie Bros. in 2016, Machinio launched several versions of the website in other languages, focused on the European market – Machinio.DE, Machinio.FR, Machinio.NL, Machinio.IT and Machinio.ES.

“We grew tremendously in Europe in 2015 and 2016, which ended up accounting for 40% of our total revenue last year. We recognized there was a huge opportunity for us to keep growing in that region and continue to help users find the exact machine they were looking for, no matter their location and/or preferred language. Most importantly, we saw Europe as a hub in terms of innovation and talent – there is an evidently large, diverse talent pool. When the opportunity emerged, there was no hesitation in choosing Europe as the next office location”, shares Laura Pereira from Machinio.

Taking Full Advantage Of A Diverse Talent Pool

In early 2017, Machinio opened its second office in Berlin. With a team of 10+ people from all over Europe, the startup continues to aggressively hire and grow in the region. “We have team members from Germany, Italy, France, Poland and so on. With Germany as Machinio’s largest European market, Berlin made perfect sense” continues Pereira. Many startups see challenges when expanding internationally, but Machinio has found several ways to overcome the obstacles. By religiously using Slack and Google functionalities, for example, the team actively communicates and, even with the time difference, has virtual meetings almost daily.

The startup has exponentially grown since expanding in Europe. On a monthly basis, the search engine receives over 500,000 interested buyers from 190+ countries, generating over 3 million page views. The expansion to Europe, Pereira adds, has equipped Machinio with experience and expertise in entering new markets quickly as well as understanding and interacting with different cultures. The team takes full advantage of the access to diverse talent and how logistically easy it is to travel from one country to another to meet with clients and attend tradeshows. “We have been able to work closely with our international clients, tap into non-domestic talent making diversity a core element of our culture and take advantage of growth opportunities in ways we wouldn’t have been able to, had we limited ourselves to the US market”.

There are certainly a number of cities in the world to look out for when it comes to startup ecosystems, Silicon Valley included; however, it looks like European cities are quickly climbing to the top of the list.

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