The Startup CEO's Guide to Global Expansion in 2025:
Omnipresent
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Part 1: How to change your mindset
A recent report from Santander found that almost a third of UK domestic businesses are considering international expansion in the next three years.
Similarly, 56% of businesses in the US, 39% in Spain and 38% in Poland are also considering expanding across borders in pursuit of growth.
If you’re a start-up founder reading this, then you’re probably familiar with some of the motivations to take your company global. Perhaps they’re even front of mind for you as you look forward to 2025.
When they weigh up the opportunities of international expansion, many startup CEOs worry that it's going to be prohibitively complicated.
"Hiring globally? That sounds expensive."
"The legal complexities alone would eat up any salary savings."
"Can we afford the administrative overheads of setting up a new entity?"
But new growth models & expansion strategies are emerging that mean the reverse is true.
In fact, global expansion has arguably never been easier.
With access to the right set of tools and with the willingness to adopt a new mindset, building a global workforce can actually be THE competitive advantage that sets your business up for long-term success.
We'd go further than that.
Global expansion is now simplifying to such an extent that there’s almost a bigger cost in NOT doing it.
Why global expansion has never been more simple
What if you lacked the speed & creativity necessary to take a new tech product to market because you’re looking within your own borders for the best engineering talent?
What if you’re a US-based startup losing out on top sales people because you didn’t think to look at the employment market in Eastern Europe? What is the cost of not going global?
In a world where your startup likely has ten competitors snapping at its heels, you (quite literally) can’t afford to lose out in a race for global talent.
Having worked with startups and scaleups in over 160 countries, we’re familiar with some of the barriers that founders, CEOs and leadership teams face when they first make the decision to hire globally.
Laws and regulations surrounding tax, payroll, employment benefits and worker classification are complex - and changing all the time.
Investing in a new foreign subsidiary costs valuable time and money that many startups simply don’t have.
2025 will likely be another year in which the Employer of Record (EOR) market continues to grow, ?with the overall Employer of Record market expected to reach $6,795 billion by 2028. ?
And there’s a good reason why this particular method of global expansion is becoming more attractive to startup CEOs.
Using an Employer of Record gives companies the opportunity to hire top global talent easily, quickly and cost-effectively.
So in this guide, we’re not just going to explain how to take your startup global, but why you need to think about global expansion differently.
How to adopt a global mindset
Instead of envisioning global expansion as an obstacle to overcome, try to think of it as THE opportunity your company needs to seize.
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Many startups and scaleups will be looking for ways to expand that offer them agility, flexibility and value for money.
Budgets are tight and every penny of revenue counts.
But the co-founders of US-based consultancy Global Class, Klaus B?rme Wehage ???? Wehage and Aaron McDaniel , argue that startup companies need an extra ingredient to their expansion strategy: what they call a "global mindset."
When businesses are in the early stages of their growth, you’ll often hear CEOs and businesses talk about an entrepreneurial mindset.
In Klaus & Aaron's framework, a global mindset is the next step.
It gives your business the capability to navigate complex bureaucracies and learn more about different cultural nuances. ?Here’s how Klaus & Aaron explained it to us.
“If you imagine a pyramid, in the bottom, we have the entrepreneurial mindset, people who are iterative, resilient, growth-focused. In the middle of the pyramid, you have what we call company mindset, people who can navigate bureaucracy, building coalition and buy-in. But the tip of the pyramid is that cultural mindset, cultural curiosity, cultural mindedness, and really being interested in learning about other cultures to understand how you need to adapt in a given market, but also inside a company culture as well.”
Remember the keyword in Klaus & Aaron's quote here - pyramid.
It’s important you don’t lose the agility that having an entrepreneurial mindset gives you - but you also need to adopt a mindset that begins to think about building a global company and culture as well.
Adopting a truly global mindset means
Full interview: how tomorrow's startups can become truly global companies:
In the next few week's we'll be publishing a series of articles to help CEOs at startups & scale-ups to rethink their global expansion strategy - and learn how to build a global team more quickly, efficiently & cost effectively.
We'll show you how to
Stay tuned for the next edition.
This article was adapted from the longer version of 'The Startup CEO's Guide to Global Expansion', which you can read on the Omnipresent website.
Simplify your global employment
For growing companies who need to employ globally, Omnipresent is the only Employer of Record that’s embedded into your business, letting you build your global team your way.?
Omnipresent removes the need for foreign entities as you scale your global business, enabling you to:?