Mind The Gap
The guidebook for navigating the unwritten rules of scaling companies across cultures — told through real founder stories from around the globe.
About the Book
👉 Scaling across borders isn’t just about strategy — it’s about culture. Mind the Gap: Scaling Businesses Across Cultures uncovers the hidden rules that determine success or failure when companies expand internationally.
Blending founder stories, firsthand experience, and practical frameworks, the book helps leaders decide if they should expand abroad, which markets to target, and how to enter successfully. It’s not a theory-heavy textbook — it’s a real-world guide drawn from decades of cross-border deals, venture building, and lessons learned the hard way.
Who It's For
This book is written for:
🚀 Founders & entrepreneurs weighing expansion beyond their home country
💼 Business leaders & investors navigating cross-border growth
🎓 MBA students & global professionals eager to learn the unwritten rules of international business
Why Now
🧭 Borders are hardening, nationalism is rising, and geopolitics is increasingly driving an “us vs. them” mentality. In this environment, the ability to navigate cultural differences has never been more important. Success in scaling internationally now depends on more than capital and ambition — it requires mastering the art of cultural code-switching.
Meet the Authors
🧑🚀 Vincent Lauria is a two-time Silicon Valley entrepreneur turned venture capitalist. As Founding Partner of Golden Gate Ventures, he has scaled a global VC firm across three continents and backed more than 100 startups, including unicorns Stripe, Carro, Xendit, and Carousell. A Kauffman Fellow and guest lecturer at Stanford, Berkeley, and NUS, Vinnie brings decades of experience helping founders expand internationally.
🤺 Stefano Pellegrino is a three-time founder and international business builder. An EU national, he began his career in law, taking the bar in the U.S. before moving to Asia to lead M&A for global corporates acquiring across the region. He cut his teeth navigating cultural code-switching in high-stakes cross-border deals, later teaching International M&A at Ho Chi Minh City University of Law. Today, as founder of Aquila, a ClimateTech company backed by top global VCs, he continues to scale businesses at the intersection of cultures.
Together, with over 40 years of combined experience, we’ve lived the challenges of expanding into new markets — and wrote this book to help the next generation of leaders avoid the pitfalls we faced.
📖 Published by Wiley
Mind the Gap: Scaling Businesses Across Cultures is published by Wiley, a global leader in business, academic, and professional publishing for over 200 years.
Wiley has partnered with some of the world’s foremost business thinkers and entrepreneurs — ensuring this book reaches a global audience of leaders, students, and innovators who are shaping the future of international business.
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