You crossed the Atlantic: the foundation stayed behind.
The pattern
The country you choose to incorporate in made sense for the company you were. The employment contracts followed what you knew. The transfer pricing policy, if there was one, was written before you were operating across two regulatory systems.
These weren't mistakes: they were right for the structure you had at the time. But structures don’t update when the business does: permanent establishment risks accumulate before anyone names them, VAT obligations compound while the product team ships, and the legal architecture you brought in was built for home.
The mandate
With 7+ years at an Accel-backed US company scaling through Series E and F after landing in Europe, I built the structure the next raise will test, while the company keeps moving at speed. Handled as a single integrated problem, not distributed across advisors who share no context or accountability.
The right moment to reach out is six to eighteen months before the next raise, not after due diligence surfaces what the structure has been hiding.
Ralf van Heumen
MSc Financial Economics · LL.M. Business Law · Twelve years in startups and scaleups · Seed to Series F.