For startups in Singapore and the wider APAC region, international growth is often discussed as a future milestone. The harder question is whether the company is being built early enough for that future. Customer segments, pricing, sales systems, hiring, compliance, payroll, and support models can all become obstacles if they are designed only for one market.

Going global also no longer means hiring a few sales representatives in different countries and waiting for demand to follow. Companies need to understand local buying behavior, support customers across time zones, build trust in unfamiliar markets, and create systems that can adapt without slowing the organization down. The rise of AI adds another layer to that discussion, especially as go-to-market teams use it for research, preparation, sales operations, and customer engagement.

For APAC founders, the opportunity is not simply to copy expansion playbooks from the US or Europe. The region’s diversity can be an advantage, since companies often learn early how to operate across languages, regulations, cultures, and customer expectations. The challenge is turning that experience into repeatable infrastructure before expansion becomes too complex to manage.

In this TNGlobal Q&A, Ilana Elbaz, Founding Team member and GTM/Head of Sales at Deel, discusses what it takes to build international sales teams, manage distributed organizations, and use AI in go-to-market work without losing customer focus. Elbaz was Deel’s first go-to-market hire and fifth employee, and helped build the company’s sales function as it expanded globally. Based in Singapore, she now leads Deel’s global sales team across segments and works with companies and investors on the operational realities of international hiring, compliance, and market expansion.

Companies often speak about becoming global from day one. What does that require in practical operating terms for an early-stage business based in Singapore or elsewhere in APAC?

Going global from day one is a mindset. It’s not about opening offices everywhere as fast as possible, but making decisions that still hold up when the business crosses borders. For an early-stage company in APAC, that means building systems, pricing, and hiring around the reality that your first customer outside your home market will operate differently.

Get compliance and payroll basics right early. When you don’t, global growth stalls fast. By the time you feel ready to fix it, you’re already behind. The companies that scale globally are the ones that built flexibility into their operations from day one.

What decisions should founders make early around customer segments, pricing, hiring, systems, and market selection if they expect to serve international customers later?

The key early decision is to build your business around the assumption that you’ll operate internationally. It is important not to redesign later, but build flexibility from the beginning.

Your product and sales playbooks should handle different buying styles, currencies, contract terms, and support expectations without a major rebuild. Pricing should travel across markets while reflecting local realities. Hiring should prioritize people who can work across time zones and understand the customer segment you’re targeting next, not just your current customers.

The strongest teams keep their buyer profile consistent, so geography changes, not strategy.

International expansion can create pressure to enter too many markets too quickly. How should companies decide when they are ready to expand, and which market to prioritize first?

Companies should expand when they have repeatable demand, a clear product fit and the internal ability to support customers properly after the sale. The biggest mistake is treating expansion as a signal of ambition instead of a response to evidence. If you do not know how to serve customers in one market seamlessly, adding three more markets will create noise, not growth.

The first market should usually be the one with the strongest proof of demand, the shortest path to trust and the least operational friction. That is not always the biggest market by default. Often, it is the place where your product solves an obvious, urgent problem, or where a local champion or partner can open doors faster than any cold outreach.

What does an effective international sales engine require beyond hiring sales representatives in more countries? How do local market knowledge, partnerships, product readiness, compliance, and customer support affect the outcome?

Hiring sales representatives in a new country and hoping for the best burns capital fast. A true international sales engine depends on the maturity of the infrastructure supporting them. Building that foundation requires upfront investment, but it’s more cost-effective than fixing broken processes after expansion fails.

Global talent also requires local operational alignment. Support must match regional business hours. A European client can’t wait for a Singapore team to wake up. Use local partnerships to gain the market trust and distribution networks that usually take years to build.

This is why commercial and customer-facing roles are becoming the fastest-growing cross-border positions. Demand for global footprint is clear: Deel’s State of Global Hiring report finds that seven of the ten fastest-growing cross-border roles are now in commercial, customer-facing functions.

What mistakes do APAC founders most often make when trying to build demand outside their home market?

The biggest mistake I see founders make is taking a strategy that works in one market and copy-pasting it to a market they think is similar. But what works in Singapore or Australia does not always translate neatly to the UK or the US, even though everyone speaks English. Buying processes, legal expectations, and customer support norms are different.

Another common mistake is dropping a single body in‑market and calling it expansion. If that person cannot sit in front of customers, bring back clear feedback, and operate without much local infrastructure, you are hiring for convenience, not growth.

And don’t underestimate the time and investment required to build trust in a market where nobody knows your name. You’re not just selling a product. You’re proving you understand local customers and can deliver consistently. That’s how you earn the right to be taken seriously.

AI is changing prospect research, sales preparation, customer engagement, and internal workflows. Which uses are generating tangible gains for go-to-market teams, and where should leaders be cautious about assuming that more automated activity will produce better results?

Go‑to‑market teams are seeing real gains from AI in back‑end efficiency. It is very effective at summarising long customer calls, turning scattered notes into usable insights, and helping sales teams prepare for meetings in a fraction of the time. It clears out a lot of administrative noise, which allows team members to spend more time actually talking and connecting with customers. Importantly, they are using AI as augmentation, not replacement: the best sales teams become more effective when AI handles the admin work.

Where leaders need to be careful is outward‑facing automation – flooding inboxes with AI‑generated outreach is not a strategy. Buyers can tell when something is automated. An inbox full of generic AI-generated messages doesn’t convert. A handful of relevant, human-crafted messages does.

You manage a large team across multiple time zones. What operating practices help distributed organizations maintain accountability, alignment, and a consistent customer experience as they grow?

When you run a distributed team, you have to measure output, not just hours. Across time zones, that means being very clear on ownership, deadlines, and what “good” looks like for every role and project. Your first global hires set the tone. They need to engage directly with clients, translate what they see into useful input for product and finance, and maintain momentum in infrastructure-poor environments.

Documentation is critical, not optional. At Deel, we use our internal AI tool, Akai, to help capture decisions and keep knowledge current so our people can work asynchronously without confusion. Shared playbooks and central systems are also critical for customer experience, because the customer should get the same level of care whether they speak to someone in London, Singapore, or India. That is what “global” looks like in practice.

Looking ahead, what should founders in Singapore and the wider APAC region focus on if they want to build globally competitive companies while retaining the speed and local understanding that helped them grow initially?

If you can navigate different languages, cultures, and regulations across APAC, you’ve already built the operating muscle that wins globally. Regional diversity is your competitive advantage, not a limitation.

The challenge is to keep that speed as you scale. Stay close to the ground, empower local teams to make decisions quickly, fix mistakes fast, and build the underlying infrastructure early so the business does not slow itself down later. The best companies do not lose their local sharpness as they go global – they build on it.

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