Dutch brands enter Germany expecting scale. What they get is friction, not because the market is hard, but because they're solving for the wrong behavior.
You've done the math. Germany has 83 million people. The Netherlands has 17 million. The business case writes itself: replicate what's working here, translate the website, maybe hire a German-speaking salesperson, and watch it scale.
Except it doesn't.
Your German landing page gets traffic but doesn't convert. Your ads perform worse than in the Netherlands despite similar targeting. Your first few sales calls feel… off. The prospects are interested but hesitant in ways that Dutch clients never were.
Here's what most Dutch founders miss: Germany isn't a bigger version of your current market. It's a fundamentally different decision-making environment.
And when you approach it as "more of the same, just in German," you're building on the wrong foundation.1q