Investors explained how they assess a startup's readiness for entering the global market

Entering the international market requires a startup not only to have a scalable product but also to be ready to adapt to new customers, regulations, and the competitive landscape. Investors from Central Asia and other markets shared what metrics and signals they pay attention to when assessing the potential for international expansion.

Samir Hajibeyli, Venture Investor at Caucasus Ventures, LinkedIn

When assessing a startup's potential for international expansion, one of the first things we look for is whether founders understand that international expansion rarely works on a "launch and forget" principle. Even on seemingly similar markets, customer behavior, sales cycles, pricing, regulation, competition, and approaches to building business relationships can differ significantly.

Based on our experience, successful expansion usually requires a deep understanding of the local market. Companies often enter a new market through local specialists, partners, or agencies. If the market is strategically important and large enough, they may hire experienced local industry specialists and build operational activities within the company.

Capital also plays an important role. International expansion requires real market testing, meetings with customers, travel, hiring employees, and sometimes several iterations before the right approach is found. Therefore, when a startup raises investment specifically for expansion, we want to see that founders have already conducted the necessary preparation. Ideally, they have visited the target market, established initial contacts with potential customers or partners, studied how similar companies entered this market, and tested some of their hypotheses in practice.

For us, the key question is not just whether the product can work in the international market, but whether founders understand what it will actually take to make it successful in a specific market.

Dalerkhon Nodirov, CEO of IT Park Ventures, LinkedIn

Defining a startup's potential for global scaling is assessing how much the product can grow geometrically without fundamentally restructuring the business model for each new country.

Clarity of the problem everywhere. If the product solves a pain point that exists for individuals or businesses anywhere in the world — that's great. If you've built a food delivery app for a specific city — abroad, local giants will crush you.

Sales without on-site presence. Can the product simply be downloaded, purchased with a card, and started using? Excellent. If for every sale you need to fly to another country, hire a bunch of salespeople there, and go door-to-door — scaling will be expensive and painful.

No dependency on laws. Programs for designers or programmers are sold the same way worldwide. But services for lawyers, accountants, or medicine stumble over the laws of specific countries. Rewriting code for the rules of each new state is costly.

A team capable of working globally. We assess the ambitions and competencies of the founders, their ability to think big and respond flexibly to new challenges.

Abdulaziz Yakubov, CEO of Yoshlar Ventures, LinkedIn

1. Global problem. The more universal the problem, the easier it is to scale the product.
2. Product adaptability. Ideally, to enter a new market, it is enough to change the language, interface, prices, and regulatory settings, while keeping the core of the product.
3. Unit economics. It is important whether CAC, LTV, retention, and margin are maintained in new markets.
4. Founder's global mindset. The ability to adapt, learn, sell, hire, and build partnerships is important.
5. Competitive advantage. It is necessary to understand why this particular startup will be able to win in the new market.
6. Timing. It is important not only to scale the product but also the relevance of the market right now.
7. International demand. Paying users or customers from other countries even before official expansion — a strong signal.
8. Global readiness. Architecture, data, product, and processes must allow scaling beyond the home market.

Global potential = global problem × scalable product × strong team × healthy economics × competitive advantage.

Nazerke Kalidolda, Venture Investor at Sturgeon Capital, LinkedIn

I look less at the founder's ambition to "go abroad" and more at whether the solution is transferable at all. That is, is the problem the startup solves specific to this country — bypassing some local regulation, tied to local logistics or habits — or is it a pain point common to developing markets as a whole.

Startups from Central Asia often scale well precisely because they solve problems that are quite universal for developing markets — fragmented payments, distrust of intermediaries, weak digitalization of government services, and so on. But if the product relies on the founder's connections with specific local players or on using features of local regulation, this is rather a warning signal for expansion, even if everything is good with metrics within the country.

The second is unit economics outside of greenhouse conditions. In our region, metrics are often artificially good simply because of low competition and cheap traffic. I am interested in whether CAC/LTV will hold up in a market with 5-10 similar players and more expensive acquisition. This is a good indicator of whether the company will survive at all, not just in "home" conditions.

The third thing that seems really underestimated to me is organic inbound demand from another country even before any formal expansion. If users or customers from another market are already asking for access themselves, this is a strong signal.

Another important point is founder presence and visa runway. Can the founder physically be on the target market long enough to really build GTM, rather than managing expansion remotely from Almaty? Having a visa is not a formality; it literally determines the speed of expansion.

"Cheaper" strong engineers from Central Asia are a competitive advantage from the perspective of product development, but sales and corporate business development in a new market require hiring an experienced local specialist. And finding such a person is expensive and often not easy.

At the same time, at the time of assessment, the startup should already have at least one client in the target market. Traction in Kazakhstan for entering foreign markets, especially, for example, the US, is practically not taken into account.