Joanne
Fedeyko
Founder & CEO at Connection Silicon Valley & Canadian Women’s Network
"Cross-Border Scaling: How Startups Break Into New Markets and Actually Win"
"Cross-Border Scaling: How Startups Break Into New Markets and Actually Win"
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Session: Cross-Border Scaling: How Startups Break Into New Markets and Actually Win
In Cross-Border Scaling: How Startups Break Into New Markets and Actually Win, Joanne Fedeyko draws on her experience connecting founders between Canada, Silicon Valley, and global innovation hubs to demystify what it really takes to scale beyond your home market. She reveals why talent and product alone don’t determine success—access to the right networks, local champions, and ecosystem intelligence does. Joanne breaks down the key elements of winning cross-border expansion: validating market fit, navigating cultural expectations, building strategic partnerships, and localizing intelligently without losing your core identity. She also shares the most common mistakes startups make when entering new markets and the structural pathways that accelerate growth, investment, and traction. This talk equips founders, scale-up leaders, and innovators with a clear, practical framework for global expansion—designed to help them not just enter new markets, but succeed in them.Key Takeaways
- 1. How to evaluate and choose the right market for cross-border expansion—before investing time or capital.
- 2. The essential elements of smart localization that help startups gain traction quickly in a new ecosystem.
- 3. Why global networks, local champions, and ecosystem intelligence matter more than product alone when entering a new market.
- 4. The most common mistakes founders make when scaling internationally—and how to avoid them.
Bio
Joanne Fedeyko is a global connector, ecosystem strategist, and advocate for inclusive innovation, dedicated to bridging international ecosystems by connecting entrepreneurs with high-impact global networks with a focus on supporting female founders. Joanne founded the Canadian Women's Network, a community of over 1,000 female founders to help them grow locally and scale globally through a signature program, Pathway to Silicon Valley. She is Publisher of Disruption Magazine, an online publication telling stories about emerging technology. She is a Founding Board Member of CELS, a life science accelerator and she Co-Founded an angel fund focused on getting more women on the cap table. Joanne currently serves as Vice President of Mentorship at Startup Genome, a global accelerator working with scaling companies looking to expand into the U.S. market.