Mind The Gap

INTRODUCTIONStarting the Journey

We are writing to you from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. We live here because this city is an exciting business hub, a place where international ambitions can meet local opportunities. Nearby in our neighborhood is an American coffee shop, operated Asian-style by a company based in Hong Kong. Walking down the street to get there, you see fleets of motorbike drivers weaving through traffic, each with a passenger on the back or a package to be delivered: the drivers who wear green jackets work for a Singapore company. And a lot of the talk at the coffee shop is about outbound trips or incoming visits to meet with people from Germany or Abu Dhabi or Australia. Everywhere there are deals to be done.

This book is meant to help. What inspired us to write it was seeing all the international deals that didn’t get done: the opportunities lost or mishandled, lost revenues that could’ve been had, and the dead apps sitting on customers’ phones from start-ups that died. The problem is global, not confined to Vietnam. There are icebergs waiting for Titanics in waters worldwide. We hope to show you how to navigate past them so your global journey stays on course.

Often the root of the problem is something that many businesspeople fail to grasp. When companies try to launch or scale from one country to another, they aren’t just crossing a border. They are crossing a cultural gap. They are not just entering a new “market,” which can be quantitatively analyzed ...