Hard-won insights to help you successfully scale your business across countries and cultures

Mind the Gap: Scaling Businesses Across Cultures delivers field-tested and practical guidance on putting together and closing international business deals, navigating culture gaps, and launching successful products and services in foreign countries. A global compendium of collective knowledge, this book includes the lived experiences of over two dozen international business leaders across more than 30 markets, from Singapore to Saudi Arabia, Sweden to Nigeria, and China to Mexico, revealing hard-won lessons that help readers skip the tumultuous learning curve of international business endeavours. Drawing from the authors’ own work operating and investing across Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas, the book introduces the cultural code-switching skills required to work across borders.

In this book, readers will learn about:

• Deciding where to expand and scouting the terrain, choosing strategies for entry and deployment and hiring and managing cross-border teams
• “Preparing to be unprepared,” because new markets are bound to surprise you, and navigating roadblocks, such as sudden shifts in tone with your business partners
• Cultural differences that can break business deals if you’re unprepared, such as when “yes” actually means “no” and how to adjust your approach through cultural code-switching

When you’re trying to break into a new market, cultural misalignment is all but guaranteed. Mind the Gap: Scaling Businesses Across Cultures is an essential read for global leaders, executives, founders, and internationally minded businesspeople, offering a clear roadmap to understand the differences in business across cultures and prepare for the unexpected challenges that will inevitably come their way.

VINCENT LAURIA is a global investor and former Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He has backed 100+ companies across the United States, Asia, the Middle East, and beyond, working closely with founders, boards, and leadership teams navigating cross-border growth.

STEFANO PELLEGRINO is a 3x start-up founder. He began his career in Europe as New York qualified lawyer, later relocating to Asia to work on cross-border M&A. He is currently the founder and CEO of a green fintech operating across continents, and lectures on Inter­national M&A.

PROFESSOR SAVANID “NUI” VATANASAKDAKUL of Carnegie Mellon University has more than 25 years of experience across Asia, Australia, the Middle East, and the United States. Her work focuses on technology, management, and cross-cultural collaboration.

Together, the authors draw on decades of lived experience expanding businesses across borders to help leaders avoid the costly mistakes they learned firsthand.