US expansion is an Australian startup’s dream.
As a Californian expat and founder of a 24-week US-expansion Melbourne accelerator and Silicon Valley landing pad to prepare Australian startups for the jump, and support them once they’re there, I see the attraction.
I’m not alone: 61% of Aussie startups said the US was top of their expansion plans, followed by Australia, the UK, NZ and India, according to the 2024 Startup Muster survey.
Still, according to Startup Muster 2024, the US is the second-largest customer base for Aussie startups, after Australia itself. Yet 42 per cent of startup failures stem from a lack of market demand, and Australian assumptions often misalign with US preferences, risking irrelevance. With a market that close, yet so critical to Australian startups, it’s no wonder the leap still feels daunting.
So I turned to our Oz2US Australian and US expansion experts, mentors, VC advisors and Australian founders who have successfully scaled to the US and asked them: “What are the best things you’ve seen Australian startups do to successfully launch and scale in the US? What are the worst mistakes you’ve seen startups make or experienced that have led to failure, setbacks, or retreats? And what is the one piece of advice you have for Australian founders considering expanding to the US?”
Here’s what they said:
Trena Blair
CEO, FD Global Connections and Founder/CEO, FD Global Academy, Sydney, NSW
Trena Blair
The best
“In over a decade of guiding international scaleups to expand into the US, I’ve seen ambition soar – and crash. The difference between the two often comes down to one deceptively simple principle: operational immersion.The best leaders have learnt the art of delegation – and establish a straightforward delegated authority process that empowers their team to operate effectively without constant oversight. This gives the leader the space and focus required to drive global growth.
With that foundation in place, the most impactful step I’ve seen founders take to succeed in the US market is this: they spend meaningful time in the market to understand it.
The US isn’t one market—it’s 50. Each state has its own culture, regulations, customer expectations, and ways of doing business. What lands well in California may miss entirely in Georgia. What gains traction in Chicago might stall in Seattle. Founders who succeed immerse themselves. They listen. They test. They learn. And critically – they adapt.”
The worst
“The fly-in-fly-out model without a longer-term plan. It’s tempting – especially for resource-constrained businesses – to try and make magic happen over a week of meetings. But partnerships, customers, and investor trust aren’t built on Zoom or drive-by networking events. US business is relationship-driven, and relationships require a founder-led, boots-on-the-ground approach. Founders who delegate this to others, or treat US expansion like a side project, almost always stall – or fail.”
Advice
“Draft your market entry strategy first – then test it in the market. That means walking the streets, meeting with customers, negotiating with partners, and absorbing the cultural and regulatory nuances firsthand. Your strategy is not static. It should evolve as your knowledge deepens; immerse yourself with a strategic and operational lens.”
Alan Jones
Founder, General Partner, M8 Ventures, Sydney, NSW
Alan Jones
The best
“Startups that spend significant time on the ground in the US building relationships before they need them. The ones that succeed don’t just fly over for a few pitch meetings – they invest in understanding the market deeply and building genuine connections.
Those that do fly over should start reaching out to get meetings two months before they actually land — it’s expensive to travel there so every hour you spend in the US not meeting potential contacts or travelling between them is time wasted and expensive.”
The worst
“Underestimating how different the market actually is. Australian startups often think they can just copy-paste their local approach, but customer behaviour, sales cycles, regulatory environment – it’s all different. Don’t forget it’s unlikely that US execs will have even heard of any large Australian organisations other than Canva, Atlassian, Qantas and Westfield (Scentre Group) — our biggest banks, retailers, insurers, and telcos are still practically unknown in the US. The biggest surprise may be how willingly and rapidly large US organisations may agree to run a small commercial pilot or POC compared to their Australian peers — make sure you have the capacity to service the POCs you pitch for before you pitch.”
Advice
“Don’t rush it. Take time to really understand your target customer in the US context before you commit significant resources. And find local advisors who know your specific sector.”
Josh Pugh
Founder, Executive Director, America Josh, New York, NY
Josh Pugh
The best
“The best thing I’ve seen startups do to launch successfully and scale is to listen to their community and actively engage with it. Often, we see brands talking about community as if it were important, but not listening to or responding to the feedback and criticisms that come from it. There is power in numbers, and while it should not always be followed rigidly, it should always be included as part of the discussion.”
The worst
“The worst thing I’ve seen has been scale without capacity. The United States’ large market is a double-edged sword, and while it brings the possibility of wild success, it also has the potential to leave founders chasing goals they’re not ready for. A staged and steady approach to the market, and sticking to those principles, is important for long-term success.”
Advice
“The best advice I would give is to immerse yourself in community and start with a focused market. The US is like 50 different countries rolled into one, and within each of those regions are unique hubs of innovation, culture, and communication. While Australian markets are generally more homogeneous, the US market values individualism and, importantly, prefers messaging that is customised to each audience. New York is not San Francisco, let alone Phoenix.”
Russ Macumber
Cofounder and Managing Director, Impressive Digital, Austin, TX
Russ Macumber
The best
“Choose a niche and an ICP and develop GTM religiously around that niche market.”
The worst
“The opposite: come in as a generalist, work with anyone who’ll pay, not narrow down their ideal customer and then wonder why they have churn, inefficient resourcing, vague value prop, and an early flight back home.”
Advice
“For service providers, choose a mid-size city (1m–5m people) and aim to be the one solution that serves that market with your service, that everyone knows. Narrow and deep… for tech/broader providers, same rationale but narrow and deep into a specific niche and ICP. Become the go-to solution, build an adjacent partner network to fuel the flywheel. Narrow and deep. The country is not one market, don’t treat it as such.”
Jason Seed
Operating Partner, Scalerr Advisory, Palo Alto, CA
Jason Seed
The best
“After doing deep research and getting an understanding of the market and the opportunity, they commit. You have to get feet on the ground and start working from within this market to really take it on.”
The worst
“Hire a ‘sales person’ from afar and just expect success. It takes time to find the best fit for your business and you need to first shape the product, the marketing and the sales process for the US. You cannot expect a salesperson to be successful with the playbook you used at home.”
Advice
“Get here, have 100 cups of coffee over three months.”
Jason Booth
President and CEO, Tax Studio, Austin, TX
Jason Booth
The best
“Having patience with the US tax system. It’s slow, it’s archaic. It requires a wet signature and sometimes cheques are issued or required to make payment. The correspondence can often times be by mail and not email, etc. Having a solid physical address, having patience and having a good team around is the best thing.
Operationally, I do think finding a targeted number of states to operate in is a good thing – e.g., our growth plan is to hire 20 people in the US. Make sure this is not 20 people in 20 different states. Make it five, pick five and stick with it. Hire future hires then, in those selected states. Help lower that admin burden. Being compliant in Arkansas might be more of a headache than Colorado and yet not a strategic hire in Arkansas. Really good to think about location of hire from the start.
This can help drive down employment law issues, legal fees, admin burden, compliance costs, tax exposure, sales tax obligations, etc.”
The worst
“The ‘WORST’ is a tough one to nail down to just one thing. I would give you a couple of issues that we see and see more often than we would like:
First, setting up a company, starting to trade and not being compliant. US tax authorities (the IRS) impose steep penalties for failure to timely file tax returns involving transactions with foreign-related entities – these can be as high as $25,000 per filing per year. They can be triggered regardless of whether the overall group is profitable. We’ve seen this time and time again – from just a one-time offence to $400k+.
Another one is getting into employment/labour law issues with a new hire (not providing something they promised, not adhering to state-level rules on certain things, etc.). These might not be catastrophic, but we’ve seen it happen quite a bit that the first hire doesn’t work out, there is no plan B, and the company is set to retreat back to Australia and hit the reset button.
Flipping into the US top Co not as a result of a fundraise but doing it for perhaps other reasons (looks ‘cool’, in hopes of fundraising etc.) is another pitfall. Getting IP trapped into US parent company structure is not generally a great US tax answer, and flipping into the US should be driven by fundraising.”
Advice
“Get your trusted partners lined up early. I think of expansion from US tax advisory and compliance in four stages:
- Stage 1 is ‘I’m curious’.
- Stage 2 is ‘planning mode’.
- Stage 3 is ‘early reactive’ (e.g., just formed a company).
- Stage 4 is ‘very reactive’, and the company has been operating or in existence for some time.
I love talking to clients and getting locked in at Stage 2 – ‘let’s plan’. Get comfortable that you have most (not all) covered in terms of support. Tax, legal, and perhaps insurance pending the business, business advisors who understand US expansion. It’s a somewhat simple answer but the work gets done in building the plan of attack to enter the US market.”
Ben Wunderman
(Australian) Cofounder and CEO, Packsmith, San Francisco, CA
Ben Wunderman
The best
“Work to understand and segment the competitive size and scale of the market in the US.”
The worst
“Assuming that the US is like Australia as a market (not doing one).”
Advice
“Understand why you are entering the market and get prepared — work with the right partners, investors, and fellow founders to execute the move cleanly.
One of the recurring challenges with Australian startups looking to break into the US market is a fundamental misstep in market understanding. Some Australian founders do the hard work to deeply understand the size, segmentation, and geographic dynamics of the US—a market that is not only 15x larger but also more competitively complex. But many skip this step entirely, operating under the dangerous assumption that the US is simply a scaled-up version of Australia’s domestic market. It’s not. The customer expectations are different, the sales cycles are longer (or faster), the capital markets are more aggressive, and the competition is relentless.
Before entering the US market, startup founders need to be brutally clear on why they’re expanding—what the US offers that the Australian domestic market doesn’t—and then prepare their business accordingly.
That means surrounding yourself with the right investors, local partners, and other founders who’ve done it before or who understand how it is done best. The US rewards startup focus and precision with a huge TAM. But Australian startups need to do their homework first.”
Trent Scheirs
Cofounder and director, Grant Help, Melbourne, VIC
Trent Schiers
The best
“The smartest thing I’ve seen founders do is jump on a plane and spend time on the ground before going all in. A lot of people try to scale too early or from a distance, but the ones who win are the ones who treat it like a proper recon mission. They meet with potential customers, distributors, or partners, and they get a feel for whether there’s real demand before they start burning serious cash. Especially for product-based businesses, where logistics, compliance, and fulfilment can get expensive quickly, doing that upfront research and validation makes all the difference. The ones that take the time to understand the regulatory landscape and set up relationships ahead of a full-scale launch tend to scale faster and avoid some of the early stumbles others make by diving in blind.”
The worst
“ The worst move I see, which happens more often than you’d think, is when a business that’s not even solid in Australia decides that going offshore will magically fix their problems. If you’re already struggling here, trying to crack a bigger, more competitive market is not often the best solution. The costs are higher, the learning curve is brutal, and without a proven model or strong local traction, you’re flying blind with your burn rate climbing fast. Nine times out of ten, they end up retreating with less cash and more stress. The lesson? Nail your home market first, build real traction, prove product-market fit, get your ops tight, then think about expanding globally.”
Advice
“Zoom out and understand the macro. Too many founders are so deep in the day-to-day that they forget the global forces shaping their industry. Right now, with the USA throwing up new tariffs, a lot of countries are finding it near impossible to stay competitive in the US market, which means they’re looking elsewhere. These countries have now shifted their attention to the Australian and the UK markets. We’ve got similar buying behaviour, aligned values, and we’re not matching those same tariff hikes.
But here’s the kicker – because of that, Australia and the UK are already being flooded with cheap products. That’s putting real pressure on Australian businesses, especially the ones that pride themselves on quality. So if you’re not thinking about offshore markets now, you’re probably already behind. You can’t wait for the squeeze and then react; you’ve got to be proactive.
One of the smartest things you can do is tap into the support that’s already there. The Export Market Development Grant gives you up to $80k a year in matched funding to fuel your global growth — and yet most founders don’t even know it exists. If you’re planning to scale internationally, don’t just throw money at the problem; be strategic, use the tools, and play the long game.”
Jason Atkins
Cofounder, Cake, and Managing Partner, Torus, Gold Coast, QLD
Jason Atkins
The best
“Revisiting every assumption in the business. The US market is complex with many variables by user, region, city, customer size and more. The best startups rely on their data, testing and iterating every element as needed to secure product/market fit.”
The worst
“Going too soon and without the right platform. The vast majority of US investors are investing in US growth, so pitching without this will result in failure and setbacks.”
Advice
“Join the Austrade Landing Pad in SF. It’s full of quality insights and networks to get you up and running.”
Michele Leonelli
Founder, Attorney at Law, Studio Leonelli Legal, Austin, TX
The best
“Find the right team (advisors, lawyers, CPAs, etc.). This means the right capabilities, they understand your situation (where you come from, whatever fears or worries you may have, etc.), you’re not overpaying, they work well together, and they care about seeing you succeed.”
The Worst
“Picking the wrong team and not coming to the US with some money already in the bank.”
Advice
“Pick the right team.”
Sharmaine Ramasamy
Senior Director Investment and Operations, Victorian govt, San Francisco, CA, and former Director Defence and National Security Science & Technology, Dept of Defence (Australia), Washington, DC
Sharmaine Ramasamy
The best
“The startups that I’ve seen do the best are those that (1) do their research to understand the US market (which varies across coasts and cities); and (2) have a solid pitch that they’ve test run with people who have US commercial experience and understand US fundraising.”
The worst
“A few things that I’ve seen startups routinely do that lead to failure (e.g. lack of securing funding):
- (1) Assumptions about the US market and being ill-prepared for meetings.
- (2) Bringing Australia’s more casual way of doing business into the US setting. I’ve found Americans to (at times) be quite formal, so when Australians have come in more informally (perhaps dropping a cuss word here and there), it sometimes doesn’t come across well. Best to start formal and lean to informal if the client goes that way.”
Advice
“(1) Ask lots of questions of people who have worked in the market for a long time; (2) form a network and get good advice on the market (pay for it if you have to, it’s money worth investing in); and (3) know your market and understand your unique value proposition within the market you’re looking to enter.”
Robert Gallup
Founder and principal, Oz2US Ventures and Gallup Global Sales & Marketing, Melbourne VIC, and Santa Barbara, CA
Robert Gallup
The best
“Nothing matters more than ensuring product-market fit in the US market. The startups that are most successful at connecting with an US audience have localised their product, go-to-market strategy, along with UX/UI, pricing, case studies, and marketing, while establishing US feedback loops.
They also don’t skimp on properly setting up a US entity. 80 per cent of pitches fail due to complex structures or lack of a US entity when most US VCs require a Delaware C-Corp with a clean cap table. Engaging vetted US legal, tax, and immigration specialists helps ensure optimum structure and compliance. This is useful to navigate the US regulatory and immigration hurdles (SEC, CCPA) and sector-specific laws (e.g., fintech, healthtech).”
The worst
“Assuming the US is just a bigger Australia. There are many pitfalls resulting from not doing your homework. Common ones include launching without deep due diligence on US competitors, assuming Australian competitive advantages apply, or that cold outreach to VCs will work, neglecting US-specific operational infrastructure.
HR is a good example of what can go wrong: in the US, quality beats quantity. Cultural misalignment and high salary costs (USD $300,500 for a five-person team) can lead to costly mistakes. Copying Australian hiring practices or employment agreements, ignoring US state-level employment laws and HR practices can lead to serious fines, lawsuits, or reputational damage.”
Advice
“Localisation beats perfection: localise everything, including yourself, your team, product, go-to-market and your network. And now beats tomorrow, as the US landscape moves at breakneck speed and opportunities disappear quickly.
If you’re a founder considering raising capital in the US, my best two pieces of advice are to create a robust funding strategy and start building your network as soon as possible, as 80 per cent of VC deals come from referrals and foreign startups face 50 per cent lower funding odds. Do not try to launch and scale your company in the US while raising capital. Each is a full-time job and demands all of your time and focus.
Australian startups already have the talent, the tech, and the tenacity. What they need next to conquer their American dream is diligent preparation, expert resources, and a plane ticket.”
- More information and upcoming free US expansion and funding workshops can be found here.
