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We are thrilled to present 'The Journey East', the third edition of Notion Insights, our series of industry reports taking a comprehensive look at some of the most critical challenges facing early stage, highly ambitious European enterprise technology companies.

The challenge of international expansion is one every European tech entrepreneur with big ambitions must face. Once they have solved a problem worth solving in their home market, and are confident in finding, acquiring and retaining their ideal customers efficiently and predictably and once they have proven they are building a business that scales then the next question is where to go next in order to move fast and continue growth towards becoming a global category leader.

Although high-growth businesses are able to expand throughout Europe, the relatively small populations and fragmentation of language can make this an unattractive strategy. The obvious next choice is the US, especially for those seeking market domination. Further information can be found on this vast market in ‘Crossing the Atlantic’, Notion’s comprehensive insight to taking the leap across the pond. While expansion into the US is and will remain the most common journey for most it does not come without its problems. Talent, especially in tech hubs such as Silicon Valley, is very expensive and the competition is enormous, making it a tough and expensive place for European startups to crack.

This is why we have turned our focus eastward, to Asia, with The Journey East. This huge and captivating region has a population in excess of 4.5 billion people and is becoming an increasingly attractive market for European technology firms, due to an incredible shift in financial power, owing to the rapid development of Asian economies and the adoption of advanced technologies. However, differences across Asia can be overwhelming for many European entrepreneurs; Asia cannot be considered in any sense a single market.

This report is therefore intended to be part of the first step on our journey to build our knowledge of both the opportunities and risk of expansion into Asia, as well as the people who can help you. We embarked on this project with the intent of gathering and sharing knowledge with both our portfolio and the wider European ecosystem, as well as building a network of experts and advisors with specialist insight and knowledge in the region.

We hope you find this analysis as useful and insightful as we did curating it. Any contributions, comments or challenges are warmly welcomed.