Kevin O’Donnell, founder of Global10x and former VP of International Growth at Dropbox, joined Jason Hemingway on the In Other Words podcast to talk about why a copy-and-paste go-to-market strategy fails internationally and what companies need to do differently.
There is a tempting assumption that runs through most international expansion plans. If the product works here, and the go-to-market playbook works here, then with some translation and adaptation, it will work everywhere else.
Kevin O’Donnell has spent more than twenty years testing that idea at Microsoft, Nitro, and Dropbox. His conclusion is unequivocal.
“A copy-and-paste approach to go-to-market will fail. You need to treat global expansion as finding new product-market fit in each market.”
Finding new product-market fit in each market means adapting your product positioning, pricing, messaging, and customer experience to reflect local buying behavior, competitive dynamics, and cultural expectations.
Your existing playbook only gets you so far
Your brand reputation and your existing go-to-market strategy will earn you an initial foothold in a new market. Kevin doesn’t dispute that. What he disputes is the assumption that the same approach will carry you to meaningful, sustained growth.
Every market has its own dynamics. How customers discover products, how they evaluate them, what drives their purchasing decisions, what their support expectations are, how they use the product once they’ve bought it. These vary significantly across markets, and the differences are often invisible from headquarters.
At Dropbox, Kevin saw this firsthand. A company with hundreds of millions of users globally, with a brand that had penetrated markets most companies struggle to reach, still needed to fundamentally rethink how it sold and grew outside its home market.
The product-led growth engine that powered domestic success needed a different commercial approach in markets where buying behavior, price sensitivity, and competitive dynamics were all different.
International growth requires more than translation. It requires rethinking the strategy behind it.
Regional teams know what headquarters doesn’t
One of the most telling observations Kevin makes is about what happens when regional marketing teams receive content from headquarters. Many of them set it aside because it’s too rooted in the assumptions of the home market to be useful.
“They say, well, because we get a lot of material from HQ, but we have to dump it. It is irrelevant for us. It’s very U.S.-centric, or it assumes too much about how users in the U.S. will use it.”
These regional teams have the market knowledge that headquarters lacks. They understand local customer behavior, competitive positioning, and cultural context.
When they’re able to influence strategy from the beginning, the go-to-market approach reflects those realities from the start. When they’re brought in at the end to adapt something that was never designed for their region or audience, the result is rework, frustration, and weaker market performance.
The audit most companies haven’t done
Kevin recommends two starting points for any company that is already international but suspects its growth could be stronger.
The first is a simple audit of the international experience from start to finish. What does it look like? How does it operate? Where is the friction? What potential exists in different markets that isn’t being realized?
The second is the international dashboard, which most companies don’t have. Break the global revenue figure down by market and start looking at the data. What is paid conversion in different markets? What does churn look like? Where is activation strong but commercial follow-through weak?
“By identifying these opportunities very quickly, you can figure out we have two or three key markets that need attention, that need us to change our approach.”
South Korea and the markets you’re overlooking
When asked to name the most underestimated international market, Kevin doesn’t hesitate.
South Korea.
It rarely appears in the top tier when companies plan their Asian expansion, but with focused investment, the B2B growth potential is significant. Kevin made it a priority at Dropbox and saw substantial traction.
The broader point is that the obvious markets are usually the ones every competitor is already chasing. The companies willing to look past the obvious, to invest in markets that require more attention and a more tailored approach, are the ones that find growth where others aren’t looking.
Your brand and your playbook will get you in the door. What matters next is how you adapt, how you listen, and how you invest once you’re there.
Watch the full conversation with Kevin O’Donnell on In Other Words.
