Has anyone on your leadership team said the words “we should open Europe” in the last quarter? And did the sentence after it start with “London, probably”?
It usually does. London is the default because it is English-speaking, because the flights are easy and because everyone has a friend who did it that way. Sometimes it is also the right answer. But it is chosen far more often than it is checked.
So here is a more useful way to make the decision.
Let's Dive In!
Start with the deals, not the map
Before anyone looks at office space, pull every closed deal and every open opportunity from the last twelve months and sort them by country. Not by region. Not by “EMEA”. By country.
What you will usually find is that Europe is already telling you where it wants you. A cluster of inbound from Germany. A run of Nordic logos that closed quickly and renewed. A Dutch customer who keeps referring you to their peers.
That cluster is where the first hire goes. The map does not get a vote.
If the deals are spread evenly across six countries with no pattern, that is information too. It probably means you do not have a European market yet. You have European interest, which is not the same thing, and the first hire needs to be someone who can turn one into the other.
Are you opening a city or a language?
This is the question that gets skipped, and it changes everything about the search.
A London-based seller with the right background can cover the UK, Ireland, the Nordics and Benelux from one desk. Those markets buy in English, run similar sales cycles and are comfortable with a rep who flies in for the important meetings. One hire, one contract, wide coverage.
Germany, Austria and Switzerland do not work like that. Nor does France. Enterprise buyers there expect a native-language seller, usually based in-country, who understands how procurement, works councils and relationship-building actually operate. A London AE with good German is not the same hire as a Munich AE, and the candidates know it even if the job description does not.
So if your deal data points to DACH, you are not opening London. You are opening Germany, and the search should be run as a German search from day one.
Hire a seller who can open, not a leader who has to sell
The most common first-hire mistake we see is the regional VP with a mandate to “build the team”.
It sounds sensible. Hire the leader, let them hire the team, hold them to the number. In practice, the leader arrives, finds there is no team, no local pipeline and no entity, and spends year one doing the founding AE job at a VP salary. Some are good at it. Many are not, because it is not what they were hired to be good at.
The first hire should be someone who can close a deal on Tuesday and tell you on Wednesday that the pricing does not translate. A founding Account Executive or a country lead with a personal quota. Give them a real territory, a realistic first-year number built from the pipeline you actually have, and a direct line to whoever owns revenue.
Then hire the leader when there is something to lead. A team of two or three, a number that justifies a manager, a clear view of which second market comes next. That is when a Head of EMEA earns their salary.
Decide the reporting line before you decide the person
A founding AE in Stockholm reporting to a VP Sales in San Francisco is a different job from one reporting to a UK-based CRO. The time difference alone shapes who will thrive in it.
Candidates who have done a first-on-the-ground role before will ask about this in the first conversation. If the answer is vague, the strong ones quietly withdraw. So settle it before the search opens. Who does this person call when a deal is stuck at 4pm their time? Who signs off a discount? Who notices if they are struggling in month three?
Be honest about the contract and the number
Two practical things that catch companies out.
Notice periods. Across much of Europe they run to three months, sometimes more at senior level. If you need someone in-seat by January, you are hiring in September. Build that into the plan rather than discovering it at offer stage.
The entity. An employer of record is a perfectly good way to make your first one or two European hires without setting up a company. Candidates at country-lead level will ask what the plan is beyond that, and “we’ll see” is not an answer that lands well with someone being asked to leave a permanent job. Have a view, even if the timeline is loose.
And the number. First-year European quotas are routinely set by taking the US ramp curve and translating the currency. That is not a plan. Build the target from the pipeline you have, agree what good looks like at six months, and write it down so nobody is guessing later.
So, where should the first hire go?
Where the deals are. Usually that means one of three answers.
If the pipeline clusters in the UK, Ireland, the Nordics or Benelux, a London-based founding AE selling in English is probably right, and it keeps your options open.
If it clusters in DACH or France, hire in-country, in the local language, and treat London as a later decision rather than a starting point.
If there is no cluster yet, hire one person whose whole job is to find it. Make the role narrow, the reporting line clear and the first-year number honest.
Whichever it is, the person you hire first will tell you more about your European business than any market report. Choose them for their judgement as much as their closing record.
f you are somewhere between “we should open Europe” and “London, probably”, book a call and bring the pipeline by country. That conversation is usually the most useful hour of the whole expansion.
