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The United States remains the market that ambitious companies around the world most want to enter.
It is large, liquid, and rewards scale. It is also where a surprising number of well-run foreign businesses stumble.
Benjamin Wey has watched that pattern repeat for decades. As CEO of New York Global Group, a firm that counts more than 800 projects worldwide and market entry advisory among its six core disciplines, Wey has advised companies on both sides of the Pacific as they tried to build a presence in American markets.
The mistakes, he says, are remarkably consistent. Here are the ones Benjamin Wey sees most often, and what companies can do about them.
1. Treating US entry as a distribution problem
Benjamin Wey argues that US market entry is first a capital-structure problem. Where will the US entity sit in the corporate structure? How will it be funded, and in what currency? Will it raise capital locally, and if so, from whom and on what terms? How will profits move back to the parent, and what are the tax consequences of each option?
Companies that answer the distribution questions first often find themselves rebuilding their legal and financial structure a year or two later, at considerable cost.
Those that start with structure tend to move more slowly at first and much faster afterward.
2. Underestimating regulatory sequencing
Foreign executives generally know the United States is heavily regulated. What they underestimate, according to Benjamin Wey, is the order in which regulatory steps have to happen.
Licensing, registrations, federal and state filings, sector-specific approvals, and in some industries national security review can depend on one another.
A step taken out of sequence can delay the next one by months. For companies in sensitive sectors, a transaction that triggers review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States can reshape the entire timeline.
Wey’s advice is to map the regulatory path in full before committing to launch dates, hires, or leases. The map will change, but having one prevents the most expensive surprises.
3. Hiring advisors who only understand one side
Cross-border work fails at the seams, and Benjamin Wey believes the most important seam is cultural.
Many companies hire excellent US advisors who do not understand how the parent company makes decisions. That, or they rely on trusted advisors at home who do not understand how American counterparties, regulators, and investors behave.
Either arrangement creates translation problems that have nothing to do with language. A board at home may read a US partner’s directness as aggression.
A US investor may read a foreign company’s consensus-driven pace as indecision. Deals stall over misunderstandings that neither side recognizes as misunderstandings.
Wey, who speaks English and Chinese and has spent more than three decades working between US and Chinese capital markets, has built his own practice around operating in both business cultures at once.
He encourages companies to look for advisors who can do the same, or to build teams that combine both perspectives and communicate constantly.
4. Assuming one market, one strategy
Benjamin Wey cautions that the United States behaves like a federation of markets. State laws, tax regimes, employment rules, and customer expectations vary considerably.
A launch strategy designed for New York may not translate to Texas or California.
Companies that enter with a clear first market, prove their model there, and expand deliberately generally outperform those that try to launch nationally from day one.
5. Neglecting reputation and relationships
In a new market, a company has no history. Benjamin Wey notes that US counterparties, lenders, and customers will look for evidence of credibility before committing, and they will look for it online, through references, and through the people a company chooses to work with.
That means relationships with banks, law firms, auditors, and industry associations are not administrative details.
They are part of the entry strategy. So is a clear, consistent public profile that explains who the company is and why it is in the market.
A checklist for leadership teams
Drawing on Benjamin Wey’s experience, foreign companies preparing to enter the United States should be able to answer the following before committing significant capital:
- How will the US entity be structured, funded, and connected to the parent?
- What is the full regulatory sequence, and which steps depend on others?
- Does the sector or deal structure raise any national security review questions?
- Do our advisors understand both our home market and the US market?
- Which US state or region is the right first market, and why?
- Which banking, legal, and professional relationships do we need in place before launch?
- How will US partners and customers verify who we are?
Preparation over speed
The common thread in Benjamin Wey’s advice is that preparation beats speed. The US market rewards companies that arrive with a sound structure, a realistic regulatory plan, and advisors who can operate in both worlds. It is far less forgiving of companies that treat entry as a marketing campaign.
Wey has written about the human side of cross-border work as well, including what two decades of cross-border deals taught him about trust. More on his background and advisory work is available at benjaminwey.com and on LinkedIn.