Global Strategy
US entry fails on operations far more often than on demand. The product usually works; the invoice, the support hour and the positioning are what break.
Decide the entity question before the marketing question
Selling into the US from a European entity is viable for some models and a barrier in others: enterprise procurement, state-level tax registration and payment processing all behave differently once there is a domestic entity. The decision changes pricing, cashflow and hiring, so it belongs at the start - not after the first campaign has generated leads that cannot be invoiced cleanly.
Price in dollars, and price for the market
A converted European price list reads as arbitrary in the US, and it usually reads as cheap. Pricing has to be set against domestic competitors and the value delivered, in round dollar figures, with the tax treatment stated. Currency conversion is an accounting detail; positioning is not.
The operational checklist
- Entity and tax: whether a US entity is required, and where sales tax or nexus obligations arise.
- Payments: a processor that settles in USD, with the card and ACH methods buyers expect.
- Contracting: terms, liability and data-processing language a US legal team will accept without a three-week negotiation.
- Support hours: coverage across US time zones, stated publicly. A European-only support window caps conversion on its own.
- Domain and content: one canonical site with US-specific pages where the offer genuinely differs - not a duplicated site competing with itself.
- Proof: references, case evidence or named clients that mean something to a US buyer.
Advertising into a market the business cannot invoice, support or contract in buys expensive proof that it was not ready.
Sequence the launch
Operations first, then positioning, then a narrow paid test in one segment with a measurable cost per qualified lead, then expansion of the segment that works. Each stage produces the evidence that justifies the next, which is also what makes the spend defensible to a board.
Done in that order, US entry is a sequence of decisions with known costs. Done in reverse, it is a marketing budget spent on discovering the decisions.
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Written by the team in New York - engineers, strategists and marketers who build and grow the companies they write about.
