From Helsinki To New York: Lauri Eurén’s Playbook For Cross-Border Startup Growth

Most startups expand into the U.S. with the same predictable gameplan: raise capital from American investors, hire a local team, and open an office in New York or San Francisco.

For European founders, this has been the default path to the world’s most competitive market, with nearly 60% of European startups expanding to the U.S. before their Series A funding as recently as a decade ago.

But this approach comes with risk. It assumes product-market fit before it’s proven and prioritizes a physical presence without knowing whether that presence will pay off. It also tends to burn through resources before gaining any real traction.

Serial entrepreneur and seasoned consulting leader Lauri Eurén, founder and CEO of Operating, took a different route. Drawing on years of first-hand experience in European consultancy, he chose to enter the U.S. market by putting strategy and insights before scale.

Here’s a closer look at his life, career, and how he successfully built momentum in the U.S by meeting with firm leaders, organizing events, and listening.

The Idea Behind Operating

Eurén led the Swedish business expansion project at Columbia Road, a prestigious Helsinki-based consultancy, growing his team from three to 30 while managing large enterprise clients. As his team and client base grew, he noticed a pattern: even high-performing firms struggled to stay on top of the basics.

Project assignments were hard to track, profit margins were difficult to monitor, and teams spent too much time piecing together information from spreadsheets, emails, and other disconnected digital tools. The systems everyone was used to weren’t built for the complexity of consulting.

Without that infrastructure, most consulting firms hit their growth ceiling more quickly.

“We’ve lived this problem,” Eurén says. “We’ve rebuilt the same spreadsheets and answered the same questions too many times. Now, we’re solving it.”

How Lauri Eurén Built U.S. Traction Without A U.S. Office

At Columbia Road, Eurén discovered that European consulting firms lacked the operational infrastructure to scale efficiently.

That friction became the foundation for Operating, an SaaS platform built as an operating system for consulting companies. It provides users a single, structured view of all operations, including project assignments for staff, how margins are trending, and where resources are over- or under-utilized.

Eurén wanted to know whether the same operational blindspots for European consulting firms also existed for their U.S. counterparts, so he embedded himself in the U.S. ecosystem.

Bringing Operating to the United States didn’t start with a local team or a flashy fundraising round. Instead, he listened, visiting cities like New York and Austin, meeting with consulting firm leaders, and hosting roundtables.

He quickly found that even the biggest firms had the same pain points. Juggling disconnected software tools, struggling to assign the right people to the right projects, and not having a clear picture of profitability were just as common in America, where business is very dynamic and fast-paced, as they were across the Atlantic.

Operating’s value proposition of helping firms stay organized by putting all their projects, staffing, and time-tracking tools in one place resonated with everyone Eurén spoke to.

Participants in his roundtables helped him refine the product’s messaging and build trust. This paid off, with early customers including Supreme Optimization, Lotis Blue, and Winterberry Group, all before Operating had established offices or staff in the U.S.

“We’ve gained significant momentum for our business in the U.S. without constant presence,” Eurén explains. “We’ve found the right channels to enter, made sales trips there to gain new market share, and found a way to make a product that’s interesting for the U.S. market.”

From Remote Traction To Growth On The Ground

After proving that Operating could win U.S. clients without a physical presence, Eurén is shifting gears and building one. The company is in the process of establishing a formal U.S. footprint, with Eurén personally leading the go-to-market efforts.

Rather than a pivot, he sees it as a progression of his original plan. Months of relationship-building and product validation with future clients have laid the groundwork for deepening Operating’s presence in the market.

That investment will include more frequent travel, expanding partnerships, and a growing U.S. customer base. For Eurén, it’s less about scaling fast and more about getting it right, which is why he’s building based on the understanding he gained from his listening sessions.

Solving a Global Problem, One Firm At A Time

Eurén is confident about the market expansion because he now has evidence that the challenges Operating is built to solve aren’t limited to one region or market.

Consulting firms across the globe face the same operational friction. As a purpose-built platform to solve that friction, Operating provides clarity for leaders looking for a clear view of their human and financial resources.

That clarity matters. Most firms scale their commercial operations long before their internal systems catch up. That makes it difficult to understand staffing availability, profit margins by clients or regions, and potential new market opportunities to explore. Operating closes that gap, letting firms scale without sacrificing coordination.

“It’s essentially the operating system we wished we had while running our own consulting business,” Eurén concludes. “It’s built for the workflows and commercial realities of the industry.”

A New Model For Global Growth

Eurén’s approach has already paid off. Operating has secured clients across both continents, refined its product through real-world feedback, and is now laying the groundwork for a lasting U.S. presence.

Above all, it’s offering a new model for international founders who value strategy over speed and are willing to take their time to make global market growth a reality.

For startups looking to cross borders, Lauri Eurén’s path shows that global growth doesn’t always need to make a big splash. And as Operating continues to gain ground in both Europe and the U.S., it’s clear that the quiet, methodical approach he’s taken may be the most scalable one of all.

BDG Media newsroom and editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.