Why founders consistently fail when expanding to new markets

There's so many kind of things what we could build.

32:14 / 32:50

what works and what doesn't. Because it's the market is huge. There's so many kind of things what we could build. And if we something what I have learned pretty quickly is that me trying to guess what other people in other markets with other intentions want to do is, like, widely off often. Like, we saw that in Wise. We launched, I think, US market, like, five or six times because you think you understand the market, but you need to be a US person to really understand the market. And same for, like, Hungary and Spain and Germany. So you need to be a German person. Yeah.

About this clip

Martin Sokk shares a hard-learned lesson from building Wise: founders often wildly misjudge what customers want in different markets. He explains how Wise had to relaunch in the US market 5-6 times because understanding local customer needs requires being from that market, not just guessing from the outside.

Why this clip

This captures a costly but common founder mistake with a specific, relatable example that other entrepreneurs can learn from.

32:14 - 32:5035spersonal lesson

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Martin Sokk

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What they said next

There's so many different variations of product management people. If I split it roughly into two, then you have a US view where product people lean towards marketing, and European people where product people lean towards operations.

2:19 - 21s · Business Mechanics

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