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Scaling Without a Flag
What Global Expansion Really Demands & Why Relationships outperforms roadmaps
EVOLVE Commerce Club
July 13, 2025
Welcome to This Week’s dispatch
In this week’s edition:
The week ahead
Scaling Without A Flag & Why Relationships outperforms roadmaps
Community Round Up
Sponsored by
Braze is a customer engagement platform used by the world’s most loved brands from global retailers to fast-growing disruptors to build deeper, more meaningful relationships with their audiences. What makes Braze unique is its ability to combine real-time data, cross-channel messaging, and human creativity to deliver truly personalized experiences at scale. We believe commerce is evolving toward connection, not just conversion.
Braze shares this vision. Their technology empowers brands to engage customers with authenticity and intelligence values that mirror the ethos of our community.
Now onto this week’s newsletter
🗓️ The Week Ahead
Marketplace Growth: A Founders Perspective from LATAM Matheus Pedralli | Matheus Pedralli CEO & Co-founder What we will explore 🔹Omnik 🔹Marketplaces in LATAM 🔹Choosing the Right Model When: 15/07 - 1 pm CET |
When you move a company abroad, you bring more than a business.
You bring your assumptions. Your processes. Your slide decks. Your shiny go-to-market frameworks. But what you often don’t bring and can’t import is trust.
This week, we sat down with Paulo Felix, who’s lived this friction firsthand. After two decades climbing the corporate ladder at Totvs, SAP, and Oracle in Brazil, he moved to Portugal to build something new. FCamara Europe wasn’t just an expansion it was a live experiment in whether reputation can be rebuilt across borders.
His conclusion?
"In Europe, being unknown is worse than being wrong."
The Playbook You Don’t Find in Pitch Decks
Much of what Paulo shared won’t show up in accelerator workshops or international expansion guides. Not because it isn’t true — but because it’s not scalable advice. It’s slow. Messy. Rooted in context.
He didn’t talk about blitzscaling. He talked about belonging. And how hard it is to be chosen in markets where people only buy from people they trust and trust takes time.
This wasn’t a talk about how to sell software in Spain. It was about the layers that separate a global strategy from a local result.
Build vs. Buy vs. Belong
The central question of the session was deceptively simple:
If you had €30M to expand into Europe, would you build from scratch or buy your way in?
His answer: It depends. But in services? You buy.
Why? Because in Europe, trust isn’t just a value it’s an entry barrier.
He drew a line between product businesses (software, platforms, subscriptions) and service businesses (consulting, implementation, anything that relies on humans).
If you're selling people and process, and no one knows your name? You're playing with a blindfold on.
“A software contract can be canceled. A service contract needs to be earned every day.”
That’s why he leans toward acquisitions not to own more assets, but to buy time. Time you’d otherwise spend cold-starting trust in a market that doesn’t know you yet..
Examples That Prove the Rule
Sage Software scaled across Europe by buying dozens of local players. No migration plans. No integration. Just boots on the ground and brands people already trusted.
Cegid Software kept its Iberian acquisitions operationally separate not to silo, but to protect the trust their clients already had.
Oracle, ever the bulldozer, integrates in 90 days. Because their playbook is consistency at all costs.
And sometimes? You sell the acquisition back.
SAP bought Qualtrics, scaled it globally, then spun it off once the synergy plateaued. Acquisition wasn’t the goal leverage was.
What Paulo’s Story Reveals
Paulo’s real insight wasn’t about M&A. It was about the invisible cost of being unknown.
“First you get considered. Then you get called. Then you compete. Then you get chosen.”
We talk a lot about product-market fit.
Paulo reminded us that sometimes, it’s about founder-market fit. Or partner-market fit. Or just person-fit.
Because when you expand abroad, your value prop isn’t the product you built It’s the people who believe in you enough to bring you into the room.
And that mindset is what we are building at EVOLVE
a global peer group for senior professionals who want to grow beyond borders.
At EVOLVE, we don’t sell leads. We don’t promise growth hacks.
We give senior professionals something more powerful:
Context. Relationships. And the trust that travels.
Join us if you're building across markets or building something new altogether.
We’re in 43+ countries. We know what crossing borders takes.
And we’re not just watching the future of commerce.
We’re shaping it.
If you're curious where this is all headed join us.
Until next week,
Carlos
Founder
EVOLVE Commerce Club
Evolve for Senior Commerce Professionals
What We’re Watching
🌍 Future of Work & Global Careers
1. Graduates squeezed amid AI surge
UK entry-level job vacancies have dropped by a third over the past 2.5 years, largely due to automation and economic pressure. Employers are now demanding AI literacy prompt engineering and AI ethics are emerging roles
Source: The Guardian
2. Marc Benioff takes a contrarian stance
Salesforce’s CEO argues AI is augmenting rather than eliminating white-collar jobs, with a hiring freeze in some roles but new growth in AI deployment within SMBs
Source: Business Insider
3. Economist warns of a 'Mad‑Max' job market
MIT’s David Autor paints a dystopian vision where AI diminishes most mid‑skill jobs, warning of skill devaluation and the need for urgent policy action
Source: Times of India
Commerce & International Partnerships
1. Alibaba + Wix launch global trade alliance
Their new partnership lets Wix merchants onboard on Alibaba.com as “Global Gold” suppliers, with AI‑powered sourcing and storefront tools spanning 200+ countries
Source:Nasdaq
2. EU deepens Global Gateway ties with PNG
On July 10, EU and Papua New Guinea signed a new infrastructure deal under Global Gateway funding—covering ports and water systems
Source: International Partnerships
In Partnership with
Airmeet stands out by designing for connection in a sea of platforms chasing leads. It’s used by companies like Walmart, Accenture, and the University of Toronto, yet it works just as well for emerging communities like ours. We’ve trusted and partnered with Airmeet to run 60+ expert sessions. It’s reliable, intuitive, and built for human interaction, not just metrics.
If you host events where relationships matter more than registrations, Airmeet is worth a closer look
Some of our club members currently lead or have led world leading commerce organizations
Community Round Up
Evolve Expert Sessions
Expert Session #69 - Paulo Felix
In this expert session, Paulo Felix, Client and Services Director at FCAMARA Europe, shares insights on scaling B2B companies across borders. He discusses the strategic choices between acquiring existing companies versus building from scratch, the importance of partnerships, and the challenges of navigating cultural differences in international markets. Felix emphasises the significance of reputation and trust in service-based businesses and explores the role of AI in enhancing operational efficiency. He also highlights the complexities of post-acquisition integration and the necessity of leveraging networks for successful market entry.
Featured Member - Andre Zimmermann
This week, we’re spotlighting a sharp perspective from EVOLVE member & EVOLVE Co-founder - Andre Zimmermann.
Going international is not optional. It’s strategic.
👉 Europeans know this. Small markets force you to scale abroad.
👉 Israel, Singapore, and the Nordics, it’s in their DNA.
👉 Brazil? Still learning to play the long game.
But here’s the real question:
Why go global and how?
It’s not just about ambition.
It’s about valuation, resilience, and optionality.
Tariffs, regulation, and volatility hit fast.
Coffee or code, no one is immune.
That’s why André uses M&A as a tool to grow beyond borders without starting from scratch.
These are the kinds of people we have in our community.
Senior operators. Investors. Founders who’ve done the work.
Want in?
Request to apply and join the conversations that matter.
evolve-community(dot)com
(Even if you're not expanding just yet, you will be.)
Expanding internationally isn’t just smart, it might save your company.
We’ve seen it inside EVOLVE:
The best opportunities don’t come from cold outreach.
They come from showing up—consistently.
Helping without pitching.
Sharing what’s actually working.
This is the new GTM motion.
It doesn’t look like sales.
It looks like conversations.
👀 Have something worth sharing?
If you’re exploring the future of commerce, procurement, AI or just have a sharp perspective grounded in real experience—we’d like to hear from you.
Our members include senior advisors, operators, and decision-makers across 43+ markets. They come to EVOLVE not for noise, but for signal.
If you want your ideas to reach the right people, reply to this newsletter or message us directly.
We’ll guide you from there.
From the Community
Events from our partners
Forum Ecommerce Brasil
Forum E-commerce Brasil is the largest digital commerce event in LATAM over 30,000 participants across three intense days.
It brings together the entire ecosystem: brands, retailers, tech players, and investors from across Brazil and the region.
This year, EVOLVE will be there.
We’re hosting a private dinner for 40 world-class founders, investors, and senior professionals shaping the future of commerce.
We have limited sponsorship opportunities available for the dinner.
Want to be part of it?
Let’s talk
Check our program
Time to Evolve
We now have an official map of our meetups for 2025:
London.
Berlin.
Copenhagen
Madrid.
São Paulo.
Cairo.
Bucharest.
Dubai.
Riyadh.
Each one is an invitation to step outside the silo and into real conversations with senior operators shaping the future of commerce.
If you're interested in partnering with EVOLVE, sharing your events, activating our community, or co-creating something with purpose
Click below to explore how we collaborate.
No noise. Just alignment.
Keep the conversation going in our WhatsApp group and Exclusive Mighty Networks community, that’s where real connections happen.
Make sure to follow our newsletter, where we highlight what’s shaping our club. In the coming months, we’ll be announcing new partnerships, events, meetups, and the opportunities our members are creating together.
