North America – the promised land for Latvian businesses

North America is one of the most practical first steps for European scale-ups. The entry conditions are favourable, the ecosystem is supportive, and the market is large enough to validate a North American thesis without the exposure of a direct U.S. launch. And some Latvian startups like Prime Prometics, FYUL, and SonarWorks have already proved their strength in this market.

For European startups ready to test North American demand, Canada offers something the United States does not: a structured, lower-risk entry point. The regulatory environment mirrors what most European founders already understand, and the cultural norms around enterprise procurement, while rigorous, are approachable for teams that are new to the market.

"From a cost perspective, Canada remains meaningfully more accessible than major U.S. hubs. Office space, early talent, and operational overhead in Toronto are considerably lower than comparable costs in New York, San Francisco, or Boston. For a team still finding its footing in a new market, those cost savings mean the difference between a second chance and a premature exit," explains Cia Prior, Director of Global Partnerships from Toronto Business Development Centre.

Federal and provincial programs provide grants, co-investment, workspace, and introductions that a founder would spend months building from scratch in the U.S. "The soft landing designation is not marketing language; it reflects a genuine policy commitment to attracting international technology companies and integrating them into the Canadian innovation ecosystem," emphasizes C. Prior.

But "soft" refers to the entry conditions, not the buyer's expectations. Toronto-based enterprise clients and the Canadian subsidiaries of U.S. multinationals, which make up a significant share of the addressable market, evaluate software vendors with the same diligence applied anywhere in North America. Security assessments, data residency requirements, support SLAs, and financial stability reviews are standard. "A warm introduction opens the door; your operational readiness determines whether you walk through it," adds C. Prior.

Winning in North America requires more than a great product

"The founders who succeed in expanding into North America are not the ones with the most polished pitch deck or the largest engineering team. They are the ones who invest in readiness before they invest in visibility, who understand the buyer before they get in front of the buyer, and who build the operational infrastructure to support a sale before they try to close one," Cia is sure.

Latvian startups are well known by their global mindset. Because the home market – Latvia – is quite small, they are forced to think about the global market from the first day of operations. Ernests Jenavs, co-founder of Edurio, Chairman of Board of Latvian Startup Association Startin.LV, explains that as Latvian startups scale, frequently they will build teams in their key markets that often is North America while retaining operations and engineering in Latvia. Due to the asynchronous nature of engineering work and the high English language capabilities in Latvia, operationally this is easy to manage as long as there is planned engagement between the product teams and commercial teams or customers. 

"However, at this point retaining company culture becomes critically important – retaining a sense of unity and alignment is more difficult working across continents. The strongest startups plan for this by having at least a couple of weeks every year for the company working physically together and coordinating their meetings around the shared time zone slots. At scale, investment in culture and community needs to be a very conscious effort – if gotten right it unlocks a lot of power from the joint setup," said E. Jenavs.

You can’t enter North America with a small-market mindset

For FYUL North America was never treated as a secondary expansion market – it was part of the company’s strategic architecture from the outset. As a result, the transition was not about retrofitting the business for a larger geography, but about evolving the organization from high-velocity, founder-led execution into a scalable operating model built for long-term enterprise growth. That required materially stronger governance around ownership, prioritization, release management, and cross-functional alignment across Product, Engineering, Sales, Customer Success, and Partnerships.

"For Latvian scale-ups, the implication is clear: succeeding in Canada or the U.S. requires building the company to North American standards from day one. The market operates with materially higher expectations around responsiveness, reliability, execution quality, and accountability. You cannot sustainably compete in those markets with processes, structures, or decision-making models designed for a smaller regional business," shares Kaspars Sils, FYUL General Manager of Strategy & Operations.

In his mind, one of the most common scaling failures is allowing short-term commercial pressure to continuously override product and engineering discipline. High-growth companies need commercial and technical organizations to remain deeply connected to customer reality – but equally capable of maintaining strategic focus. "The organizations that scale successfully are those that can differentiate between urgency and importance, sequence investments deliberately, and build products and operating systems that scale beyond individual customer requests or near-term revenue opportunities," K. Sils is sure.

From Kaspars Eglītis, founder and CEO of Prime Prometics, perspective for Latvian scale-ups entering the U.S. or Canada, the priorities are clear: "Build for that market from day one, choose the right partners early, and ensure your team is set up for ownership and scalability."

With North America in mind from the start

"From the very beginning, Prime Prometics was built with North American customers in mind, so we designed our operating model early to meet high expectations for quality, speed, and reliability. Operating in the fast-moving beauty industry, we also need to react quickly to trends while consistently delivering on quality and timelines. A key part of this has been working with reliable North American partners who can meet production standards and fast delivery expectations, allowing us to scale without overloading internal teams. At the same time, we rely on a lean, highly motivated, and dynamic team that can move quickly, stay close to customer needs, and maintain strong accountability without unnecessary complexity," shares Kaspars Eglītis, founder of Prime Prometics.

It was very similar to Sonarworks as well. "For Sonarworks US was our target market nr1. We never even focused on the local market at all (too small). My main lesson and advice is to pay a lot of attention to the candidate’s culture fit with the local home team. Spend as much time as possible with the candidate before hiring. My second lesson about building a sales team is paying extra attention to costs, as in the US they can quickly escalate beyond the wildest dreams," shares Helmuts Bēms, co-founder and CEO of Sonarworks.

Co-founder and COO of Trace.Space Mikus Krams has noticed that the North America market is full of false positives: people sell themselves brilliantly but can't deliver, and many prey on uninitiated startups with cash. So he advises to never skip references – anyone good takes pride in their past work and provides them readily. "Only work with locals who have already had real success there. Either get someone very good, or take no one at all," said M. Krams. 

If your business requires engineers being online during North America’s business hours the first idea could be to hire a local engineer there. MoonMoon CEO Uldis Karlovs-Karlovskis doesn’t agree on that: "Don't go there. Adapting someone to your existing engineering culture when being 100% remote and in a different timezone rarely ends well. Start with finding a way to use the existing team. If there's truly no other option than start hiring engineers overseas, start with deploying your teamlead."

Customers are less tolerant than ever before

If 100 years ago the main export product was physical products, then today most of them are digital. Engineers often assume IT works the same everywhere. U. Karlovs-Karlovskis thinks differently: "It does not. Even cloud services behave differently across regions due to legal and operational constraints. If your business depends on software, you must understand North American providers and expectations."

He has noticed that engineers used to the Latvian scale often underestimate the North American scale. But performance is rarely the main concern when your peak load is a few thousand concurrent users. Many teams assume that in the worst case, the system will just slow down and recover. "On a launch day in a new market, that slowdown can kill momentum completely," said Uldis Karlovs-Karlovskis. He advises companies to ask their engineers to think in order of magnitude, simulate unrealistic traffic, and break their own system before real users do it. If those simulations run automatically on every major change, the company already is ahead of most competitors. "The investment is significant, but smaller than recovering from a failed entry. Customers are less tolerant than before. News spreads fast, and even small incidents can damage a reputation at scale," U. Karlovs-Karlovskis is sure.

As Adventum Tech expanded into more demanding international markets, the company moved from "ship fast" to "ship right, every time" by adding structure without sacrificing innovation. "We separated engineering from deployment, standardized repeatable system configurations, and created clear interfaces between commercial and technical teams to protect focus and quality. We also treated documentation as a core scaling tool to ensure consistent delivery across markets," said Ņikita Gorbatko, CEO of Adventum Tech. His advice to other startups: productize your offering early, define clear ownership across teams, and build predictable deployment processes before pushing for aggressive growth!

Don’t forget about regulation

"Good digital products stand on three pillars: process maturity, level of automation, and engineering culture. Even with all three in place, expansion requires local knowledge of regulation and third-party systems. North America adds its own specifics. That becomes the fourth dimension you must handle," said U. Karlovs-Karlovskis.

One thing entrepreneurs need to keep in mind is regulation. Despite it’s less centralized than in the EU, it doesn't mean regulation in North America is lighter. It is fragmented across industries and states, and enforced through contracts as much as law. Customers and auditors will impose requirements that regulators never mention directly. Large enterprises will demand proof of software supply chain security. 

"Expect requests for Software Bill of Materials, vulnerability disclosure processes, and verifiable build integrity. Without them, vendor onboarding may stop before it begins. Privacy rules are also fragmented. Instead of a single General Data Protection Regulation framework, you face a mix of state laws and sector regulations. Data residency questions will appear in sales conversations, not only legal reviews. Your architecture must support regional isolation and prove it. Compliance culture is audit-driven. Standard for information security management systems like ISO 27001 may open doors, but System and Organization Controls 2 reports are often the real ticket. Auditors will ask for evidence. Logs, access history, change records, and incident reports. If your DevOps practice cannot produce them on demand, deals will stall. You are not only shipping software. You are shipping trust," emphasizes U. Karlovs-Karlovskis.

Taking action is what makes or breaks the deal

Everyone is talking about AI today, right? U. Karlovs-Karlovskis thinks that European engineering in this area still trails North America in funding, talent concentration, and market pressure. Trying to impress the North American market with yet another AI feature is unlikely to work. "What wins is business innovation. Combining existing platforms into new services that solve real problems. That has always been the pattern," he emphasizes.

"AI is a very strong starting point for North America expansion because it helps founders structure the first layer of research: competitors, buyer personas, outreach drafts, pricing assumptions, and the right questions to ask. The danger is when this starts to feel like real validation. Canada or the U.S. is not "opened" just because ChatGPT produced a clean go-to-market plan," said Dainis Dulbinskis, co-founder of Rozie.

He would use AI to reduce the cost of preparation, but the moment you are speaking to real customers, negotiating partnerships, hiring locally, or promising service levels, you need people with actual market context. "That can be an outsourced specialist, a targeted advisor, a fractional leader, or eventually your first local operator. One good local operator can save you from six months of polite meetings that feel productive but do not turn into revenue," he explains.

M. Krams also thinks that AI helps you think through an issue, but he suggests talking to a trusted human before major decisions – investors who share your interests, or people with no incentive to sell you on a specific path.

"I entered the US market in 2021, before AI was a thing. My honest take: market entry is less about intelligence and more about action, i.e. placing ads, opening physical locations, or relocating closer to customers. AI can help with research, but research isn't usually the bottleneck. What actually matters is finding the right connections, talent, and intros to accelerate entry and growth – and that's deeply human. Whether consultants, fractional execs, or advisors help is case-by-case. We've had terrible advisory experiences in the US, and we've had advisors who became full-time hires at Supliful. The pattern I'd trust most: people who'll roll up their sleeves with you, not just deliver decks and tell you what to do. Either way, taking action is what makes or breaks a US market entry, not the quality of your research," said Mārtiņš Lasmanis, co-founder of Supliful. 

Expansion support in practice

Most founders who have successfully entered the Canadian market share a common observation: introductions and visibility they thought they needed going in were less important than structural readiness and local context they didn’t know they needed. 

Before any flights are booked or meetings scheduled, the most valuable work happens at a desk. The output of this phase should clearly answer three questions: 

• Is there real demand for your product in this market, at your price point, among buyers you can realistically reach? 
• What do you need to change about how you present, sell, and support it? 
• What does your competitive position look like relative to established North American alternatives?

Before deploying full-scale operations, have a well-structured Sprint Week of pre-vetted, high-signal meetings with prospects, partners, investors, and ecosystem connectors who are already primed to evaluate your category. "The critical word there is pre-vetted. Generic introductions produce generic conversations. What moves the needle is alignment between your product's current capabilities, your target buyer's immediate procurement cycle, and the introducer's credibility with that buyer. When all three are in place, a first meeting can become a qualified opportunity within weeks rather than quarters," said C. Prior.

North America, the promised land for Latvian businesses, is not a crowded battlefield. It is still a blue ocean for those willing to prepare properly, move decisively, and build for a larger scale than they ever needed at home. The market is large enough for hundreds of different success stories, and there is room for far more Latvian businesses than we often dare to imagine.