Deel intentionally expanded globally from year one, viewing it as a core strategy. This resulted in 50% of revenue coming from non-US companies. CEO Alex Bouaziz believes this is a massive differentiator for any company that has found product-market fit.

Instead of a country-by-country rollout, Kavak expands city by city, targeting dense urban areas with multi-billion dollar markets and significant problems like high fraud and low financing. This allows them to master the playbook in one complex environment before replicating it.

The path to a multi-million dollar local business involves three steps. First, maximize your current location's capacity and marketing channels. Once that's capped, the real scale comes from duplicating the successful model in new locations, turning a small opportunity into a large one.

Just Eat Takeaway observes strong demand for new services like grocery in specific markets first. They develop solutions there, gaining insights and building features that are ready to deploy globally as consumer demand emerges elsewhere, turning regional trends into a strategic advantage.

Instead of concentrating its sales force in one region, Deel hired individual salespeople in various countries early in its journey. This counterintuitive move, often criticized as defocusing, allowed the company to quickly test and understand multiple markets in parallel. This strategy was key to rapidly ramping up a global go-to-market motion with localized insights.

The allure of expanding into a major market like New York City can be a trap. Fully exploit the potential of your existing, more manageable markets first. Chasing expansion for the sake of prestige before you've maximized local potential is a common business mistake.

Unlike US startups serving one large market, Legora's Swedish origins necessitated immediate expansion into different countries with unique languages and laws. This built a core competency in multi-market operations, making global expansion a natural next step.

European firm Permira successfully entered the US not by just opening an office, but by relocating its top talent, empowering local decision-making, and accepting years of minimal activity to build relationships and market knowledge before scaling.

European founders can de-risk US expansion by proving they can sell to and serve top-tier American enterprise clients from abroad. Legora's CEO set a goal to sign two 'AMLA 200' law firms from Europe first. Achieving this validated their GTM strategy and gave them the confidence to invest in a physical US presence.