Is that really true of Silicon Valley startups? It seems that they start focusing on international sales shortly after their inception, mostly from VC pressure. Most SV startups that get big are international by default (can you think of one that wasn’t?).
Uber then named UberCab was limited to just San Francisco at the start, they then did other US cities before going international over a year later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Uber
Even international by default aka pure internet companies like Facebook start as English only and tend to stay that way for a long time.
Facebook was far from international by default. They scaled very slowly, individual college by college (you needed an email address on a whitelisted .edu domain).
You could still use it in a foreign country when you went home for the summer or on a vacation etc. Edu only was all about fake exclusivity and building a network effect not inherent necessity.
Uber on the other hand is only useful inside specific cities.
No, it was about managing the growth curve. Nobody can turn on a website for the world all at once. It would be better for network building if they could.
It's more than just growth curve as they could have simply limited signups to handle growth issues.
Remember they where .edu only for 2 years even thought they had significant funding. Their core problem was if nobody in Australia signs up then it's boring for the first users in Australia. However, by starting with an EDU focus they could leverage word of mouth to grow a network by location.
The path was starting a Harvard, then other ivy's, then other US collages, then US high-schools. That's clearly designed to leverage exclusivity.
