Three engagements for NZ founders preparing for US market entry. One lead offer. The architecture is designed before execution begins — before the capital is committed, before the first US hire, before the distribution channel is chosen.
“Six weeks of operator-level architecture — pricing, channel, capital model, and governance framework — built before you commit a dollar to the US market.”
Most NZ businesses entering the US make three structural decisions without adequate architecture: they sequence their first US hire before their entry model is validated ($250,000), they select a distribution channel before their pricing is rebuilt for US market conditions ($150,000), and they commit a marketing budget against NZ customer acquisition benchmarks that underestimate US competitive intensity by a factor of three to five ($250,000+).
The engagement is designed to make those decisions correctly before the capital is committed.
What you have at the end of six weeks: a complete US Entry Architecture — channel decision, pricing model, CAC and capital plan, IP and entity sequencing, and a governance-grade go/no-go framework your board can hold you accountable against. Every decision made before it becomes irreversible.
“The decisions this engagement designs cost $60,000. The decisions it replaces cost $650,000.”
“You will work directly with the founder throughout your engagement. Not a project manager. Not a junior analyst. The person who built the $65M business is the person in your corner.”
Payment: 50% on engagement confirmation, 50% on delivery of the final architecture document.
Book a US Entry Diagnostic — $2,500 NZDIs Pivotal Catalyst just a founder with one good exit?
The Paint Nite credential is one operator experience. The second lens is advisory-level pattern recognition across 20+ companies in consumer products, B2B SaaS, food and beverage, professional services, and manufacturing. The structural mistakes NZ businesses make at the US entry inflection point are consistent across every sector. The pattern is in the moment, not the industry.
You built an experience business. Mine is a product — or SaaS — or food and beverage.
The structural decisions that determine whether a US market entry succeeds — pricing architecture, channel selection, CAC modelling, capital sequencing — appear across every category. Paint Nite provides the US market judgment: how American consumers read price signals, how distribution partners behave, how fast a marketing spend exhausts runway when the benchmarks are wrong. The 20+ advisory relationships provide the cross-sector pattern recognition. The advice doesn’t come from one business. The architecture comes from having made — and had to rebuild — the same decisions across all of them.
$60,000 NZD is a significant commitment.
The engagement fee is 1–2% of annual revenue for the businesses this engagement is designed for. For a $5M NZD business, it is 1.2% of annual revenue. It is approximately one-tenth the cost of the structural mistakes it is designed to prevent. The fee is not the question. The question is whether the architecture is worth more than the mistakes it replaces.
I’m not sure I’m ready yet.
Start with the diagnostic. Two hours. $2,500 NZD, credited in full toward the engagement if you continue. You’ll leave with one named structural recommendation — the single most important thing you’re currently getting wrong in your US entry preparation — whether or not you proceed. If you’re 9–18 months from US market activation and still building your internal case, that is exactly when the diagnostic delivers the most. The full engagement exists when the decision is closer. The diagnostic exists for right now.
By the end of this week: what is the right price for your offer in US market conditions — and why your current price reads as low quality to the buyer you’re trying to impress.
By the end of this week: which distribution channel you enter first, what the viable alternatives are, and what it costs you to get this decision wrong before your capital is committed.
By the end of this week: what it actually costs to acquire a customer in your target US market, how that compares to your current assumptions, and how much runway your capital plan actually requires.
By the end of this week: the correct order of structural decisions — entity, first hire, product localisation, commercial terms — and what reversing the sequence after the fact has cost other founders.
By the end of this week: whether your brand and product are defensible in the US market before you spend a dollar building awareness there — and what the IP architecture decision looks like before it becomes urgent.
By the end of this week: a governance-grade go/no-go framework your board can hold you accountable against — not a founder’s instinct, not a slide deck, a decision document that survives board scrutiny.
3 hours of your time per week, maximum. One 90-minute working session. Preparation brief sent 48 hours prior. No intermediary between sessions.
$2,500 NZD — credited in full toward the engagement
A 2-hour structural conversation for founders who are 9–18 months from US market activation and still building their internal case. You’ll leave with one named structural recommendation — the single most important thing you’re currently getting wrong — whether or not you proceed to the full engagement. The $2,500 fee applies in full toward The US Entry Architecture if you continue.
$9,000–$12,000 NZD
A simulated US buyer conversation, a commercial terms brief, and a positioning framework — so the first real US meeting is not the first time you’ve had it. Designed as an exit engagement: delivered after the architecture is built, before the first US sales conversation begins.
The right move before committing to the full engagement. Two hours, one structural recommendation, $2,500 NZD — credited in full if you continue. If you’ve built a real business in NZ and the US is the next logical move, the diagnostic is where this starts.
Book a US Entry Diagnostic