Critical Success Factors for your US business location!
Expanding your company to the US is a major milestone. Deciding where to expand your business is a tricky question: the US is a huge country, approximately 237 times bigger than the Netherlands, with over 4 different time zones, a variety of local cultures, and a host of knowledge centers. Any savvy entrepreneur will tell you that starting out in the wrong location can have potentially devastating effects. So how do you find the perfect location?
There are a lot of factors that go into deciding the right location for your venture. Many companies tend to gravitate towards the "usual suspects": New York, Chicago, Silicon Valley and a few other major cities, because they are big and seem to have what is needed for success. However, often overlooked secondary cities have a lot to offer as well, sometimes more than the major cities. These lesser known cities may offer attractive incentives and a highly skilled labor force. Moreover, the support that local authorities and colleges are able to provide turns out to be a major factor in building a successful American scale up.
Who better to dive into the world of location opportunities and insights than Jaap Donath, the Assistant Executive Director at the Levan Center of Nova Southeastern University in Florida. The Levan center supports the founder’s journey from birth of an idea through successful global expansions providing services to entrepreneurs and early-stage startups for the buildout and scaleup of their business.
What are the drivers for success that allowed you to expand to the US? Companies should identify their drivers and base their location on those, instead of picking a city where everyone else seems to go to. This, and many other factors, can create a competitive advantage for foreign scale ups.
-Jaap Donath
What you will learn:
How to find the state with the most advantageous tax and other incentives for your business
What other factors to consider when deciding where in the US to locate your business
How to identify your drivers for success and use them to determine your location
Identify cultural differences per state (this is still a podcast about cultural differences!)
The roles of labor unions which are different per state
That the accounting rules differ per state
You don't have to go to the big cities to find talent
Resources
Culture Guide - Top 10 insights for doing business in the US
Connect with Jaap Donath on LinkedIn
Levan Center of Innovation - Supports entrepreneurs and early-stage startups for the buildout and scaleup of their business.
Enterprise Florida - principal economic development organization for the state of Florida
The Culture Map - very insightful book about cultural differences. A fun and easy read!
Share your thoughts!
I would love to hear your experiences doing business in the USA? What was your “lesson learned”? Feel free to share your experiences by simply clicking here
Want to know more about successfully doing business in the US
and how you can use the Dutch American differences to your advantage?
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