The meeting went well. The introduction was promising. Someone important said, "We should talk." That's the beginning, not the win. What happens next decides whether the US becomes a source of more—and higher-value—work for your company, or an expensive office that sends home invoices instead of orders.
International defense, dual-use, technology, and manufacturing companies entering the US rarely need a second company here. They need a small US foothold—sales, technical support, customer implementation, partnership management—that makes the home operation more competitive. And they need a home operation whose costs, records, and controls can withstand US scrutiny before anything is expanded or replicated.
The visible move is the one that photographs well. A US office. A US hire with a good title. A ribbon. For some executives, a second plant. The board can see it. The press release writes itself.
The decisive move is less photogenic: making the operation you already have worth extending.
Here's what most international executives aren't told until it's expensive. US customers, primes, auditors, and contracting officers don't evaluate your US office. They evaluate your company. Your cost records. Your quality evidence. Your traceability. Your cybersecurity. Your accounting controls. Whether your product works the way they work. At home. The scrutiny is heavier, the financial requirements are stricter, and the regulations are less forgiving than most companies expect. None of it grades on intent.
Extend an operation with thin margins and reconstructed records, and you don't get a stronger company. You get two copies of the same problems—the inefficiency, the weak economics, the lower return—and the scrutiny arrives anyway. Now it lands on a bigger, more expensive target.
The US won't fix your operation. It will find it. Better that you find it first.
Test every improvement against accepted deliveries, margin, and cash contribution. Not activity. Not effort. Results a US buyer would recognize.
Equipment, layout, people, and capacity decisions made on evidence—not on what's loudest in the weekly meeting.
Carry reliable processes and management practices into the US presence. Leave the workarounds at home—better yet, eliminate them.
Ramp-up, cash flow, payback, and return under realistic scenarios. Then validate the case against what actually happens.
The six highest-friction mistakes international companies make in their first 12–18 months in the US: read them here.
The founder had spent a senior career in his country's defense and intelligence establishment, much of it working alongside US counterparts. His company built security operations software aimed squarely at needs he had seen firsthand. If anyone was qualified to sell it to American companies, it was him.
The US market didn't dispute the need. It rejected the product.
Not because the product was wrong about security operations, but because it didn't match how US companies deploy and run these tools. They needed it to scale faster. They needed it run by technicians, not specialists. They expected libraries and scenarios ready out of the box, not a platform they'd have to build on from scratch.
None of it should have been a surprise. The company hadn't found product-market fit at home yet. Its best prospects there had told it what they needed, in detail, more than once. Other features got built; the capabilities they asked for kept getting deferred. The company went to the US hoping a handful of American customers would prove what the home market hadn't. And a leadership style formed in uniform didn't translate to a software startup.
Chasing the US market nearly killed the company. Then the funding environment shifted, and raising more money stopped being an option. They cut staff, pushed hard for profitability, and got there. The company is growing again at home. The US is still on their horizon. They're just not chasing it the way they did.
The founder's unplanned lesson wasn't about the product.
It was learning to be coachable—and coaching only works on someone willing to accept their part in needing it.
Details changed to protect the company.
A US presence earns its cost by doing what the home operation can't do from a distance. It doesn't duplicate what you already do well.
Present when the customer, the prime, or the partner wants a conversation—not eight time zones and a flight away.
Answers in the customer's working day. Problems resolved before they become a reason to choose someone local.
The first delivery to a new US customer sets the terms for every one after it. Someone needs to be here for it.
Primes, integrators, and US partners need a counterpart who owns the relationship and can commit on the company's behalf.
Can the customer buy from you? What do you have to demonstrate? What will qualification and delivery actually cost? Get those answers for one specific opportunity before committing to an expensive pursuit.
Customer fit, procurement routes, partner roles, and the sourcing and technology-access constraints that apply to you. Some opportunities aren't worth pursuing. Better to know before you spend.
Connect what the buyer expects to the evidence you can actually produce: quality records, traceability, delivery history, cybersecurity, and accounting controls.
Actual job costs. Real capacity constraints. The true cost of serving this customer. Then price and commit on that basis—not on hope.
The records a US buyer wants to see are the same records that tell you where your money goes. Build them once, into the work, and they pay twice.
The labor, materials, delays, and rework behind your reported job costs. Pricing decisions made on a baseline you can defend, not one you inherited.
Capture records as the work happens instead of reconstructing them the week before a review. How that works in regulated industries—and why it makes you faster, not slower—is on Regs@Speed.
Find the causes of defects and late delivery, assign ownership, and test whether the fix produces measurable improvement. If it doesn't, it wasn't the fix.
Maryland's defense, cybersecurity, research, and contractor ecosystem is dense and close to the customers that matter. The question is never whether the ecosystem is valuable. It's which parts of it serve your specific commercial purpose.
For some international companies, the fastest way in is the Maryland Global Gateway Soft Landing Program, run by bwtech@UMBC in partnership with the Maryland Department of Commerce. A participating company can send up to two staff at a time and gets office space, mentorship from bwtech's Entrepreneurs in Residence, introductions to Maryland industry leaders, access to legal, accounting, marketing, and business development providers, and UMBC faculty and intern talent. Companies apply and are vetted; applications are rolling.
Two people. That's not a limitation. It's the right size for a foothold.
I'm one of bwtech's Entrepreneurs in Residence. If the program fits your stage and size, I can help you decide whether to apply—that's part of the role.
If it doesn't fit—you're too large, too small, you don't qualify, or you'd rather move on your own terms—the work is the same, and so is the first step. Entinex works with international companies inside the program or outside it.
"The strategic guidance and mentorship received have played a pivotal role…"
— Randhir S., Galaxkey Inc., Maryland Global Gateway participant. Read the full testimonial on bwtech's site, where Galaxkey names Hillel Glazer among those who helped.
More on the Maryland ecosystem: defense and cybersecurity, from the Maryland Department of Commerce.
A target customer. A qualification hurdle. A cost baseline you don't trust. A US presence you're about to fund.
Start with the decision you actually have to make.
Which customer, which offering, which investment. Vague objectives produce expensive pursuits.
We distinguish legal obligations, contract terms, and buyer-specific expectations. Most companies pay to learn that difference the hard way.
Not every gap. The one that determines whether the opportunity is real. Bounded scope, an accountable owner, a measure of success agreed up front.
Responsibilities, costs, milestones, and the next commercial step—based on what we found, not what anyone hoped.
Hillel Glazer's engineering and operations career spans nearly four decades. He founded Entinex in 2001. Clients have included the US Navy, NASA, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, and Israel Aerospace Industries.
He authored High Performance Operations: Leverage Compliance to Lower Costs, Increase Profits, and Gain Competitive Advantage (FT Press, 2012), led the Software Engineering Institute's white paper on reconciling agile with compliance, and spent six years as a Visiting Scientist at Carnegie Mellon. He's an aerospace engineer and a pilot—and an Entrepreneur in Residence at bwtech@UMBC.
Fill out a short intake before we talk. The questions are direct. Your answers tell me whether I can help—inside the Global Gateway program or outside it.
Start HereNo sales call. No deck. A conversation about whether and how to proceed.