Unlocking Cultural Nuances for International Expansion with Hugo Pereira

Taking a business global sounds exciting. The prospect of entering new markets, reaching new customers, and scaling revenue across continents is compelling. But the reality? International expansion is messy, complex, and filled with pitfalls that many companies don't see coming. The good news: these pitfalls are predictable, and they're avoidable if you know what to look for, particularly when you understand the role of multilingual marketing in international expansion.

Hugo Pereira has spent the better part of his career figuring out how to make companies grow without falling apart in the process. His insights on scaling businesses internationally, particularly around cultural nuances for international expansion, offer a roadmap for companies ready to go global and a reality check for those who aren't quite ready yet.

Who is Hugo Pereira?

Hugo's journey into the world of international expansion started unconventionally. He was a global president at AIESEC, a youth leadership organization, which gave him "the first real taste of working across borders and cultures." That early experience shaped everything that came after, teaching him a lesson that still drives his work today: "what works in one market rarely works exactly the same way somewhere else."

From there, his career trajectory took him through the startup and scale-up trenches. He led product growth at TalentSquare, then joined EVBox as Chief Growth Officer, where he experienced expansion at scale. During his seven years there, the company went from 10 to over 700 employees, and from 10 to over 100 million in revenue, while expanding into dozens of markets. He describes it honestly: "It was chaotic, crazy. And honestly, we made every mistake and every success in the book."

Today, Hugo works as a fractional growth advisor and fractional growth executive for scale-ups, and he founded Ritmoo, a B2B sales call management platform. He's also the author of Teams in Hell - How to End Bad Management. Throughout all of these ventures, one thread remains constant: scaling companies internationally while keeping focus on the foundation.

What Is the Foundation of Cultural Nuances for International Expansion?

Here's where most companies stumble: they treat cultural differences as a translation problem. They translate their website, hire local sales reps, and assume they're ready to go. But that's missing the point entirely.

"Culture shapes how people make decisions, how they perceive value, and what trust even means," Hugo explains. Translation is just the foundation. The real work is understanding how culture influences every aspect of your business model, a lesson echoed by modern SaaS growth strategy best practices.

Take EVBox's expansion across Europe as an example. The company sold electric vehicle charging stations and software. Same product. Different markets. Completely different customer journeys.

In the Netherlands, sustainability was the primary buying factor. Customers already cared deeply about the environment, so messaging around sustainability resonated immediately. But when EVBox entered Germany, sustainability wasn't enough. Hugo tells us German customers wanted engineering specs, certifications, and proof points. They needed to see technical superiority before anything else mattered. The UK was different again. British customers cared about convenience and future-proofing. They wanted to know how the product fit into their lifestyle and whether they'd be left with outdated technology in a few years. The product remained the same across all three markets, yet the customer conversations were entirely different.

Hugo identifies three critical areas where cultural nuances for international expansion significantly impact business strategy:

1. Decision-Making Speed

The pace at which decisions are made varies drastically from one market to another. In some markets, decisions happen fast. In others, they can take months.

2. Trust Signals

What builds trust in one market can destroy it in another. "Aggressive sales tactics might work in some places, but in others they can make you look desperate or untrustworthy." Understanding what signals trust in your target market is essential.

3. Payment Behaviors

This one sounds basic, but it's a huge topic. Some markets want to pay upfront. Others expect invoicing. Still others expect payment plans. "If the checkout flow doesn't really match local expectations, you can be leaving a lot of money on the table."

These aren't minor details. They're major strategic decisions that most companies underestimate when they expand, especially in the B2B SaaS sector, where localized marketing can make or break international success.

How Should You Approach Channel Strategy?

When Hugo talks about channel strategy across different markets, he makes an important distinction. A partner-led motion, for example, might work in France, Germany, the UK, and elsewhere. But sourcing the right partners and structuring the partnerships requires understanding local nuances.

With EVBox, the company wanted a partner-led model: resellers, wholesale retailers, and electricians who would sell on their behalf to workplace businesses, hotels, and charging destinations. The model was sound, but its execution had to be adapted to the requirements of each market.

In the Netherlands and Germany, for example, Hugo shares that partners cared a lot about exclusivity. They wanted to be the only provider in their region. In Spain, on the other hand, the approach was completely different. The company worked with 20 smaller partners because that's what worked best there.

"The motion is the same," Hugo says. "But the way to get there might have been completely different because of the kind of relationship." This is a critical insight: you can't just copy-paste your go-to-market strategy across countries.

When expanding to a new market, Hugo's first instinct isn't to immediately roll out your full channel strategy, a lesson echoed in Tamara Ceman’s SaaS playbook on tackling B2B growth challenges globally. Instead, start simple. "The entry point is first to hire sales, an SDR or an account executive." Test which messaging resonates. Learn which channels might work best. Most of the time, one person won't move the needle, but they'll help you understand what works.

Hugo learned first-hand how challenging it can be to enter new markets, and shares a few examples from his experience.

United States 

EVBox tried rolling out in the US the reseller, retailer, and electrician channel approach that had worked in Europe. It was, by his own admission, "just a massive fail." The issue wasn't the product. It was the trust model. In Europe, people trusted their local electrician's recommendation. In the US, customers trusted the provider directly. The takeaway: "You might have the same channel for growth. You just might have to think if it's exactly the same process to get the same outcome."

France

Hugo recently worked with a company entering France. On paper, the expansion seemed straightforward: translate the materials, hire local sales reps, and start selling. But engagement levels were terrible. Conversion rates were a fraction of what they saw in other markets.

After talking to prospects, including those who said no, the company discovered the problem. They were leading with business cases and ROI calculations. This approach had worked well in their mature home market, but French customers found it "impersonal." They wanted a relationship. They wanted to know who the company was, why they were doing this, and what their vision was. "They wanted to feel that we were partnering with them, not just buying a product."

The company switched approaches. Instead of leading with ROI, they started with a story explaining why this was a shift and why working with them was a long-term investment. "The sales cycle got a little bit longer, but our close rates, I think, tripled within a few months."

Spain

Another recent client was a Northern Europe-based B2B company expanding into Spanish and Latin American markets. Their model was self-service onboarding: sign up, watch videos, figure it out yourself. This approach had scaled efficiently in Northern Europe. In Spain, however, it was a disaster. Customers would sign up, but churn was through the roof. The product wasn't the problem. The onboarding was. Spanish customers expected more human interaction. They wanted a walk-through, someone to talk to, a little more hand-holding. The company made onboarding calls mandatory for customers who fit their target profile. Within three months, retention grew by 40%.

"Culture shapes expectations at every touchpoint," Hugo emphasizes. These aren't edge cases. They're the norm. And they apply across Europe, different US states, and different continents.

Market Entry Timing: When Should You Really Expand?

Timing is everything. Most companies get it wrong by moving either too early or too late. Rather than hard rules, Hugo suggests thinking about key principles:

Product-Market Fit is Non-Negotiable

"If you haven't nailed that down, you are not ready. Period." International expansion doesn't fix a broken product. It just spreads the problem across more markets.

This principle applies to your home market or home use case. Some B2B SaaS companies don't have a traditional home market because they're built to scale anywhere. But even for them, the principle holds: nail down your best use case and ideal customer profile before expanding to another one.

Look for Demand Signals

Do people in the market already want what you're offering? Are you getting inbound inquiries and partnership requests from people asking you to bring your product to their market?

This was exactly what happened with EVBox in Spain. The company didn't enter Spain because it identified Spain as a massive market opportunity. They entered Spain "because we kept receiving partnership requests from Spain." There was organic demand.

If there's no pull, you'll have to create demand from scratch. That's expensive and slow. Starting where there's already a signal is smarter.

Ensure Your Company Supports the Market

This is where most companies fall short. "They enter the market without the infrastructure to serve it properly." You don't need a full office right away. But you need something: a local partner, a distributor, a consultant, or someone on the ground who understands the landscape. There are several international strategies and models you can explore. "If you can't support customers properly, don't enter." Do you have the cash, the people, and the attention to give this market what it needs? International expansion is a resource drain if you're not equipped for it.

Prioritize Regulatory and Compliance Considerations

For some markets, especially in Europe, this is critical. "Germany is a compliance nightmare," Hugo notes. If you don't have the resources to navigate the legal and compliance landscape, it's going to kill your margins.

What Role Does AI Play in International Business?

In this landscape, many SaaS leaders are interested in how conversational AI is changing customer Interactions. Hugo doesn't refer to this technology as “chatbots” anymore. He calls them "AI conversational experiences." This distinction matters because the technology has evolved beyond the mechanical if-then responses of traditional chatbots.

"In the past, the chatbot was very mechanical," he explains. The assumption was simple: translate the chatbot, and you solve the problem. But that only addresses the surface.

What's actually changing is the expectation around interaction. People now have experience with ChatGPT and other advanced AI tools. They're expecting conversational experiences to offer real value, not just surface-level answers.

Hugo recently incorporated a conversational AI experience into the website of a client called Frends, an AI workflow automation platform. Within three months, the site had "close to 500 unique conversations." People weren't just clicking through the website. They were actually conversing with the AI, asking for clarifications on technical features, differentiation, and use cases.

And, while he’s conceding that soon enough people might visit websites and just have a conversation the same way that they do with ChatGPT, he stresses the importance of training your AI model properly. The quality of a conversational AI depends entirely on the information it has access to. For Frends, Hugo's team trained the AI model on 7,749 questions. "The chances of getting a question that we don't know the answer to are just very low."

The knowledge bank included sales decks, white papers, analyst reviews, G2 reviews, and customer success stories. Every time they add new resources, they retrain the model.

They also segmented the knowledge bank by topic: questions about product functionality, use cases, pain points, competition, and pricing. They track sessions weekly to see if answers are good and if conversations continue naturally. When they identify a bad answer, they improve it for next time.

It's a fundamentally different approach from traditional chatbots with their massive flowcharts and if-then logic. "Now the AI is making its own choices and figuring out what to answer based on the questions."

What's particularly impressive is the fact that their conversational AI can handle multiple languages seamlessly. Everything in the knowledge bank is in English. But the system is instructed, when someone writes in a different language, to figure out what language it is and reply in the same language. It doesn’t always work perfectly, but people seem willing to tolerate small oddities when they know they're talking to AI. It's a different expectation than when talking to a human.

Hugo, however, warns about the limits of AI and the challenges it cannot overcome: "The biggest challenge is that AI as a whole does not understand culture. It understands patterns." AI can recognize patterns across millions of conversations in a specific language. But it still misses cultural nuances about what's appropriate, expected, and what feels right. Take humor. What's funny in one culture can be confusing or offensive in another. Or consider directness. The Dutch value directness as a virtue. In Portuguese culture, being direct can come across as rude. These aren't rules you can code. They're contextual.

In light of this, Hugo's recommendation is clear: "You cannot rely on the AI alone."

AI handles the easy stuff: FAQs, basic navigation, and transactional queries. But for nuance, cultural appropriateness, and ensuring the brand voice is maintained, you need humans in the loop.

For Frends, Hugo's team reviews everything on a weekly basis. They check if answers are good, if they're going off the rails, and if the model is staying on brand. This weekly review process is essential to catch instances where the AI might be prompted to go off-topic or stray from its intended purpose. Finally, Hugo shares some practical advice for companies implementing conversational AI:

• Stop thinking about chatbots. Start thinking about conversational experiences.

• Train the model with your actual knowledge base.

• Start testing on one page, not all of them.

• Make sure you can audit conversations and evolve answers over time.

How to Ensure Alignment During Expansion?

International expansion doesn't just test your product and business model. It tests your people.

"International expansion can also break teams," Hugo says plainly. Everyone focuses on market strategy, pricing, and localization. But the real challenge is internal.

When you expand, you introduce timezone differences, language barriers, competing regional priorities, and geographic distance; not just between offices, but between teams'

understanding of goals and direction. Addressing these operational challenges effectively can significantly smooth the path to successful international growth, but ignoring them can be damaging. Local teams feel disconnected from headquarters. HQ makes decisions without understanding what's actually happening on the ground.

Hugo saw this happen at EVBox during rapid expansion. "The distance between the markets and the core team grew. Not just geographically, but actually culturally and operationally."

The antidote is clarity. "Goal alignment isn't a nice-to-have; you have to be very sharp and clear on what the goals are. Because they are the only thing that keeps you from falling apart."

Make a bet on a specific focus area, customer profile, or pain point that can be replicated across markets. Test it relentlessly for 3 to 6 months. Then adjust based on learnings. But keep the goal clear so the entire organization knows where to focus.

Before entering a new market, establish internal systems that can handle complexity: communication grids, team alignment, prioritization frameworks, and clear expectation-setting, all of which are core principles of an effective B2B SaaS marketing strategy.

Why Isn't Growth Linear and Success Guaranteed?

Here's the hard truth that doesn't get enough airtime: the crazy growth stories you see on LinkedIn, the ones that involve 50 million in 3 months, 100 million in 8 months, the companies that expand everywhere at once, according to Hugo, are the exception, not the rule. They were able to do that because they found the sweet spot of a product that works cross-border, because the pain point is exactly the same in all markets.

When it comes to international expansion, Hugo recommends setting realistic goals. You're looking for signals first, not immediate impact. And if you're expanding beyond pure SaaS, adding services, hardware, or products, the timeline stretches even further. And that’s where product marketing becomes a critical piece of international growth.

Hugo's final advice: expansion is a conscious choice. If you're going to do it, commit to it properly. Don't expect results overnight. Don't try to be everywhere at once. Instead, pick your battles, understand your customers deeply, support them properly, and protect your team in the process.

At Undertow, we know international expansion is hard. But we also know that, with the right mindset, the right preparation, and a willingness to adapt to cultural nuances, it's absolutely achievable. That’s why we are committed to helping SaaS businesses approach localization in a strategic manner, creating dedicated operations that can scale as your company grows. Get in touch if you want to know more.