International Business Market Entry Consulting Partner
We’ll help you scale internationally
As an International Business Market Entry Partner, our international expansion consultants can help to:
- Identify new markets
- Prepare for internationalisation
- Plan the right go to market strategy for startups
- Develop products for local markets
- Find the right people to help you grow successfully
- Manage day-to-day international operations
International business market entry
International expansion strategies as a service for startups
strategies as a service for startups
If you’re a high-growth startup, international expansion isn’t optional; it’s the natural next step to ensure you keep growing. But how do you approach international expansion? Where do you begin? And how do you stay in control? With years of experience as an international business market entry consulting partner and a long track record of expanding businesses into international markets, Scaling Partners can help you find the right go-to-market strategy for your startup.
Because our global consulting services for market expansion are modular, you can access just the support and insight you need, keeping your costs down and ensuring your money is better spent.
Partners & Clients who've trusted us to help them grow faster
Expanding your business into international markets with Scaling Partners
Stage 1
Preparation
- Company Expansion Readiness
- Functional Gap Analysis
- Market Identification & Selection
Stage 2
Market Entry Planning
- Strategy Selection
- Blueprint Creation
- Product Localization
- Fundraising / Exit Planning
- Regulatory and compliance
Stage 3
Launch & Grow
Strategy Iteration & Validation
Culture & Recruitment
Commercial Localisation
Marketing
Product Roadmap Fine Tuning
Stage 3
Scale Up
- Operational stability
- Fine Tune International Playbooks
- Bi-Directional Knowledge Transfer Flows
- Local Office & Team
1
1.
Preparation
For every company expanding internationally, there’s a point at which thinking about it turns into actually doing it. Timing that decision is critical. The signs that show your business is ready for expansion may be there, but it’s not always easy to read them. From production capacity to current growth levels to assessing existing overseas interest, Expansion Readiness and Functional Gap Analysis helps you understand the true state of your business.
Then, to ensure you scale with your eyes wide open, Market Identification & Selection provides the data essential to deciding which market to enter.
2
2.
Market Entry Planning
Direct To Market. Licensing. Franchising. Exporting. With so many potential entry strategies for international market expansion, Strategy Selection and Blueprint Creation will help you find the right one. Product Localization will ensure you understand what refinements will be needed to ensure your product or service meets the cultural, legal and practical expectations of your new market. Fundraising will help ensure you have the financial resources to realise your ambitions, while Exit Planning will help you understand the impact potential expansion strategies will have on the future value of your company. And Regulatory & Compliance will make it easier to ensure that, from accounting to product compliance to employee law, you operate within the laws and customs of your new market.
3
3.
Launch and Grow
4
4.
Scale Up
It can be all too easy to focus on expanding your small business into international markets at the expense of considering what happens once you’re embedded in those markets. Our Operational Stability module will ensure you are able to develop and mature your new market while Fine Tuning International Playbooks, and establishing solid Bi-Directional Knowledge Transfer Flows. While Local Growth will help you identify, analyse and act on growth opportunities within the new territory. We’ll support you all the way with launching a Local Office and Team on the ground.
Learn how we help clients succeed on the world stage
Why Scaling Partners?
We are an international business consulting firm of thinkers, problem solvers and entrepreneurs. We’ve scaled startups. We’ve expanded internationally. We’ve led hugely successful IPOs. We know how to make businesses grow. We can help you.
How We Work
Done with you
Our most economical model. A low touch approach where we Analyse and Support the execution
Done for you
Our ‘Let’s Go’ Model where we take care of just about everything. We Analyse, Support, and Execute
Subscription
Our most integrated model working as a full extension to your team on open-ended or midterm projects
FAQ
How do you decide where to expand internationally?
The right choice hits the sweet spot between opportunity and practicality. Until relatively recently that has meant the US, Hong Kong and Singapore for UK startups, partly because they are (or act as gateways to) vast markets, partly because they have been relatively welcoming of overseas businesses, and partly because they speak English. These can still be natural starting points, although political change is making life more complex.
Of course, you may have in-depth language skills and cultural understanding that makes China, Brazil, Russia or India prime markets, although protectionism and red tape may still present barriers.
Whatever the territory, it is more important than ever to ensure you have a guide on your side who understands the landscape.
What is the right entry strategy for a startup scaling internationally?
There’s no single route to internationalisation success. The go to market strategy for startups could be any of the following:
- Licensing
- Exporting
- Franchising
- Joint venture
- Piggybacking
- Foreign direct investment
Some offer a high degree of control and low risk (e.g. exporting), but always keep the new market at arm’s length which may stifle your potential to truly maximise opportunities there. Others (such as piggybacking) can embed your brand more deeply in a new territory, but demand a large amount of coordination and trust to penetrate the market and require you to relinquish a significant amount of control. Our market entry consulting firm can help you identify the right strategy for you.
What are the risks of getting a startup international expansion strategy wrong?
For any business, there’s risk inherent in any international expansion. But for startups, those risks can be magnified. It can be all too easy to lose focus, devoting so much attention to the new market that you take your eye of the ball in the original one. It’s common for expanding startups to lose coherence, finding that that the spark that made a brand so special in its home territory gets lost in translation. And there are the obvious cashflow issues to international expansion, which is why identifying the right go to market strategy for your startup is so important. Scaling Partners can help you identify and mitigate the risks, so your expansion delivers on your ambitions.
How much does an international expansion consultant cost?
As you might expect, international expansion costs vary depending on the consultant, their track record and the specific role you’re requiring of them. With market entry consultancy as a service, however, you can control the cost of expanding your business into international markets.
With Scaling Partners, you only pay for the support and expertise you need, which means every £, $ or € is more carefully targeted and more wisely spent.
What Our Customers Say
Laurent has a sharp commercial mind and was quick to start offering value to our startup. Scaling Partners have helped to sharpen our approach and refine our focus with every session, helping us on key topics such as go-to-market business models to fundraising strategies, providing many actionable tips, and really forcing us to think in a deep way. Laurent has a huge amount of experience and it’s very satisfying to see how much we’ve learned along the way.
Matthew Curley, Founder & CEO
Laurent and the team at Scaling Partners helped us to figure out several missing pieces of the puzzle to help our business take the next stepl, discussing how to find the right investment partner, how to find strategic partners e-commerce operations in Europe and how find a design partner for the fintech operation. Laurent helped us come up with new lines of thinking which was very useful.
Moshe Avrish, Founder & CEO
The experience, support and guidance given to us by Laurent and the team at Scaling Partners was invaluable. Right from the get go they have steered us to avoid the pitfalls the an enthusiastic Entrepreneur would surely fall into and pointed to us to achieve maximum output from the right organisations at the right time in order to take our idea to market.
We are not there yet but Laurent is on speed dial so will get there.
Paul Gilley, CEO
Focused, knowledgeable, and a pleasure to work with. As our business is very tech and Lifesciences focussed, having a commercial sounding board like Scaling Partners, helped us to figure out complex questions to do with pricing, business models, and scalability. Incredibly valuable advice, which has helped us to grow more consistently and even faster.
Chief Revenue Officer
The insights and experience provided by Laurent during a key phase in our business where we were considering both fundraising or exiting proved incredibly helpful. Laurent has deep sector knowledge when it comes to the different fundraising routes a startup can take and talking through different strategies and their implication help us make the best decision for our business.
Cofounder & CEO
Laurent helped our CEO and Leadership team to structure our go-to-market project as we were investigating approaching a new market segment, helping us backfill the gaps in knoeldeg and resources in the business. Laurent helped us create an easy to follow structure to allow the team to do a full competitive and product review as well as looking at pricing and customer ROI.
Chairman
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