1. We have a large homgoneous market where you can build a product and it’s expected it can succeed for hundreds of millions of Americans
2. EU is the easiest second market, and another step change of hundreds of millions of customers in a somewhat unified market
3. there’s not an easy 3rd economy that replaces EUs wealth, population, and comfort with English + technology
When we piss everyone off in the EU tech company growth gets kneecapped and limited to US / Canada. Theres not an easy market to expand to without much deeper focus on that specific market and its needs, for much fewer returns.
What about China? India?
- Business law is in its infancy and local courts excessively favour the Indian side. In the event of a dispute, enforcing the terms of the contract can be very complicated or even illusory.
- Banking and insurance services are complicated, slow and expensive.
- There is not one but many different sets of legislation per province. There are gaps in the legislation and it is necessary to go through a long compliance process based on the manufacturer's or supplier's legislation, involving translation, negotiation, etc.
- Each time there is a change in decision-makers, at least part of the process must be repeated.
I work for an energy company and we have a team that has been working on an Indian project for almost ten years, without the project really seeming to have progressed.
The Indian market is a bottomless pit if you don't have a very high-ranking political sponsor in the Indian government.