In the US, a tailwind makes a big difference to progress in business

Saturday, 31 January 2026

Mike “MOD” O'Donnell is a US-based commentator with extensive experience as a director and adviser to New Zealand businesses. He is currently NZTE’s regional trade director for North America. This column represents his personal opinions.

OPINION: I was lucky enough to own an old Farr 35 Yacht based in Nelson for several years. It wasn’t new, it wasn’t flash and I didn’t really know what I was doing.

I learned to sail the sweet handling Farr with the guidance of a deeply experienced yachtswoman with a low tolerance for nonsense. One of the first things she taught me was that sailing isn’t about flash yachts or looking cool. It’s about understanding the wind, the weather and using them properly.

On a calm day, nothing much happens and you rely on the motor. On a breezy day into a headwind, you work hard for slow progress - lots of tacking and trimming to keep moving. But when the wind is at your back in a broad reach, the boat stiffens, lifts up and takes off. She literally comes alive.

You’re still doing the work, but suddenly the conditions are helping rather than fighting you.

That lesson turns out to be pretty useful outside sailing. Because business - especially export business - works the same way. And it’s pertinent in North America in 2026.

The United States is a huge prize of a market, but it’s also brutally competitive. Scale, regulation, complexity and noise can overwhelm good companies. The natural response is to try harder: more sales effort, more travel, more spend, more grind.

Sometimes that works. Sometimes it just makes people tired.

The companies that do well in the US often have something else going for them. They’re not just working hard — they’re lined up with where the market is already heading.

Right now, some big tailwinds are fairly obvious. The move to cloud computing. Growing pressure around data privacy and security. Decarbonisation becoming a commercial requirement rather than a slogan. More automation, AI and agent-to-agent decision-making. And a sharp focus on supply-chain resilience after years of disruption.

These aren’t future trends. They’re already shaping buying decisions.

A simple test is this: if the market keeps moving the way it is today, does your business benefit — or does it struggle to keep up? This is no time to be selling landline telephones or CDs.

DataMasque is a good example of getting that call right.

It’s a New Zealand-based data security company, founded about five years ago, operating in a part of the tech world most people never think about — until something goes wrong.

What it does is straightforward. It lets organisations replace sensitive customer information with realistic masked data, so teams can build, test and migrate systems without exposing real personal data.

An easy way to think about this is a stunt double. Real customer data is the lead actor — valuable, fragile and not something you want anywhere near risky scenes. Masked data is the stunt double. It looks and behaves the same, so the work gets done properly, without putting the real thing at risk.

That matters because organisations are under pressure from both sides. They’re being told to move faster, use more data and modernise systems. At the same time, regulators, boards and customers expect fewer breaches and tighter controls. In sectors like finance, insurance and healthcare, there’s no room for error.

Data masking has gone from “nice to have” to essential.

Where DataMasque really got the wind at its back was during the shift to the cloud. As companies moved off on-premise systems, many found compliance actually got harder, not easier. Cloud migration exposed gaps around privacy, governance and access controls.

DataMasque positioned itself as part of the solution to that problem — helping regulated organisations move to the cloud without creating new risks.

It also made a smart call on distribution. Instead of treating cloud providers as just another sales channel, it recognised early that the AWS Marketplace was becoming a key part of how US customers buy and deploy software. By getting in early and working closely with AWS, DataMasque aligned itself with a problem AWS customers were already trying to solve.

That alignment helped it gain traction in the US, with customers including ADP, Best Western and New York Life.

If you think we have seen this movie before, you are right.

Xero didn’t invent accounting, and it didn’t succeed by trying to out-sell incumbents on effort alone. It rode the shift from desktop software to the cloud, at exactly the moment small businesses were ready to stop installing updates from CDs and start logging in from anywhere.

Rocket Lab didn’t take on the space industry head-on by copying the old model. It aligned with a new wave of small satellites, cheaper launches and faster deployment — a structural shift in how space is used, not just who uses it.

Allbirds caught a different kind of wind: growing consumer concern about sustainability and materials. Comfortable shoes alone wouldn’t have been enough. The timing — and the cultural shift around carbon, transparency and circularity — mattered.

For New Zealand companies heading into the US, that’s a real lesson. Hard work still matters, but hard work alone doesn’t cut it.

Row directly into a headwind and you’ll make progress - slowly and expensively. Pull the tiller, come about, catch the wind and everything gets easier. In sailing, it’s the difference between a long, punishing day and a fast, enjoyable one.

In business, it’s often the difference between burning cash and building something that lasts.