Go in knowing
I help New Zealand companies test pricing, channels, unit economics and first-buyer assumptions before they hire, spend, or commit capital to a US move.
Book the DiagnosticThe US rewards companies that resolve pricing, channel, and unit economics before they land.
Read: 19 reasons New Zealand companies fail in the US →OPERATOR CREDENTIALS
SCALING RECORD
$110M
ANNUAL REVENUE
GROWTH RANK
#2
FASTEST-GROWING US COMPANY, Inc. 5000
CAPITAL RAISED
$22M
RAISED FROM US VCS
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For New Zealand companies where the US move is the decision that sets the next five years.
You have traction in New Zealand. The product works. The team delivers. Now the question is whether the model you built here can survive a market that is bigger, more expensive, and less forgiving.
NZD $3M–$25M. Proven domestic traction and the financial capacity to fund a serious US move.
Years 2–10. Past early survival. Now facing the question of whether the US is the next logical market.
Profitable B2B or B2C product or service businesses in New Zealand.
You have had early US interest. Then the questions got harder: pricing, channel strategy, first buyer, and margin structure. That is the point I designed this work for.
Settle the model before US execution begins. Know what will break before you commit resources to the move.
NZ companies lose the US on decisions they made before they landed.
Effort and ambition are rarely the constraint. The decisions that cost you most in the US are pricing, channel choice, customer acquisition economics, hiring sequence, and timing. Get those wrong and the cost shows up as hiring too early, the wrong channel, a mispriced offer, cash burned on weak economics, and a year spent learning what should have been settled before launch.
The deeper cost is strategic. The board and investors lose confidence. The domestic business gets distracted. Founder time gets consumed by motion instead of traction.
Expensive “learning”
A failed US entry can easily cost more than $500,000.
Premature hiring. Wrong pricing. Weak channel selection. Poor CAC assumptions. Lost founder time. Each one is recoverable. Together, they are not.
I give founders a reality check before those costs become irreversible.
I find what breaks in your business model.
I look for what breaks. The Diagnostic is a stress test on your model, run against real US numbers. I scaled Paint Nite to $110M across 250+ US markets and raised $22M from US investors, so I know where the numbers stop working for New Zealand companies under US costs. That is what you are buying: 4 years of scar tissue, applied to your model.
I co-founded Paint Nite and grew it to $110M in annual revenue in four years by getting the hard decisions right early: pricing, channels, unit economics, sequencing, and what not to do yet.
As an angel investor, I have advised and mentored more than 20 startups across very different industries. That breadth sharpens pattern recognition: the ability to see which structural mistakes recur across different businesses and what breaks next if the wrong decision gets made. I have also raised capital from US investors and understand how expansion decisions are judged when institutional money is involved.
Based in New Zealand
Auckland-based.
Engagements run remotely or face-to-face. Founder-led from first conversation to final deliverable.
Edmund Hillary Fellow
Investor Fellow of the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, a global fellowship for investors and entrepreneurs based in New Zealand.
SERVICES AND PRICING
One starting point. Two engagements.
Every client starts with the US Market Entry Diagnostic before deciding whether to proceed to the full six-week engagement.
Twelve months executing the wrong plan in the US is harder to recover from than $10,000 spent finding the right one.
$10,000
A paid decision session that finds the thing in your current US expansion thinking most likely to cost you. You leave with a named finding and a direct answer on whether to go, delay, or redesign. If we both decide to proceed, I credit the fee in full toward the US Market Entry Engagement.
$75,000
A six-week founder-led engagement that decides what has to be settled before resources are committed to US expansion. Covers who buys it, what you charge, and which channel gets you there. The output is the Decision Pack. Board-ready · Defensible · Operational from day one.
Where this fits with your other options
Their mandate is helping you export. Mine includes telling you not to, or not yet, if the numbers don't support it.
Genuinely useful for current market data, warm introductions, and advisors in-market at a price nobody else can match. Their mandate is helping you export.
Useful for research and broad market analysis.
Not designed for founder-level decisions on pricing, channel selection, sequencing, and first-move logic.
Gives you someone in-market to execute the plan. If the plan is wrong, they execute it faster.
Often the first instinct of a capable founder. Also the easiest way to carry NZ assumptions into a market where they cost you.
What actually happened when New Zealand companies went to the US.
The commercial mistakes that kill New Zealand companies in the US are consistent. The industry changes. The decision that matters doesn't. Each teardown reconstructs what happened and names the one decision that determined the outcome.
The company that traded New Zealand success for failure in New York
Kiki was a working business in New Zealand. In New York, their service was effectively illegal from day one. They operated for 19 months before finding out, and paid $152,000 in fines on $100,000 in revenue.
How an Australian success became a race to $0 in the US
Sendle raised $100M, shipped 65 million parcels, and still failed in the US. They entered a market where a well-funded competitor was offering the same service for free, and their pricing model had no answer for it.
From 300 Target Stores to 4,000 US Stockists in Four Years — Without a US Office.
Anihana got an inbound call from Target in 2021. By 2025: 4,000+ US stores, 384% revenue growth, and a working capital risk most New Zealand founders never model.
14 teardowns published so far, each sourced and dated.
Read the teardowns →Before you spend in the US, know what has to be true.
Start with a paid US Market Entry Diagnostic. You will leave with a named finding and a direct answer on whether to go, delay, or redesign.
Book the Diagnostic →