Where should entrepreneurs look for their early adopters? A European challenge

It is no secret that early adopters actually shape a new product. Selecting the right early adopters significantly increases chances of success.

Being that Europe has several very large markets, like Germany, France and Italy, European entrepreneurs often find it tempting to ‘test the waters’ locally and then try to ‘go international’.

Much as it looks straightforward, my experience tells that this approach rarely works. And it explains well why we have only a few global tech companies out of countries like Italy, Germany, France etc (with large domestic markets), while we have proportionally very many say from nordic countries (where the domestic market is not even a choice to find early adopters).

In summary, a friendly piece of advice to fellow entrepreneurs from Europe:

Try to find your early adopters from your primary target market.

In most cases (not always), at least as far as B2B software is concerned, this is no other than the US.