The US expansion slide stops making sense when its revenue case depends on spreadsheet assumptions that no customer has confirmed. If every durable revenue assumption came from conversations in Accra, the next move is to test the US thesis before funding it.
In 1985, Coca-Cola chairman Roberto Goizueta faced a problem in Atlanta. Taste tests had supported replacing the company’s original formula with New Coke, but the launch produced a reaction the tests had failed to capture. The numbers measured preference between samples. They did not measure what customers believed Coca-Cola belonged to them.
The company had made a consequential decision using evidence that answered a narrower question than executives thought it did. As Constance L. Hays documents in The Real Thing: Truth and Power at the Coca-Cola Company, Coca-Cola restored the original formula as Coca-Cola Classic after 79 days.
That is the danger hiding in the US expansion slide on Friday evening.
Separate market evidence from spreadsheet logic
The slide probably looks reasonable. It may include US market size, expected contract value, sales-cycle estimates and a hiring plan. Each cell can have a defensible source while the conclusion remains untested.
Then compare it with the assumptions behind the revenue that survived in Accra.
A founder spoke with a buyer. The buyer described the current workaround. Someone objected to the price. Another person asked for a feature the product could not support. A pilot stalled. A smaller version moved forward. Payment, delay and rejection changed the founder’s understanding of the market.
Those conversations produced inconvenient evidence. That is what made the evidence useful.
A spreadsheet can calculate what happens if ten US prospects convert at an assumed rate. It cannot establish why the first prospect would reply, who controls the budget, what security concern appears after the demo or which existing tool has to be displaced.
The gap resembles the one Coca-Cola encountered. Its taste tests were real. The interpretation carried more weight than the tests could support. A founder can make the same error with market reports and revenue models: precise inputs create confidence before the buying conditions are understood.
Put every assumption through a buyer conversation
Before Monday’s investor meeting, I would open the expansion slide and mark each statement according to its source.
“US customers will pay more” needs a conversation with someone who has the problem, authority and budget.
“Our sales cycle will be shorter” needs evidence from an actual buying process, including the people who can delay it.
“We need a US salesperson” needs proof that the bottleneck is access rather than positioning, product readiness or founder-led follow-up.
“The Accra segment is too small” needs a comparison between reachable revenue and theoretical market size. A smaller market where buyers answer, test and pay can extend runway more reliably than a larger market represented by percentages.
This is the same discipline behind deciding whether salary should fund sales evidence or an engineer. The scarce resource is runway. The decision should buy the missing evidence that changes the next call.
The goal before Monday is not to delete the US slide. It is to label its confidence honestly. Separate what buyers have confirmed, what comparable companies suggest and what the model assumes. Investors can evaluate uncertainty. Hidden uncertainty is harder to defend.
Run the smallest credible US test
A US test does not require a US office, a full sales hire or a quarter of product work. It requires contact with the specific buyer named in the expansion thesis.
Choose one narrow segment. Identify a concrete workflow the product already addresses. Speak with enough people to hear objections repeat, then ask for a costly next step: access to data, an introduction to procurement, time from another stakeholder, a paid pilot or a contract.
Compliments do not test expansion. Neither does a demo followed by “keep me posted.”
The strongest signal may still point back to Accra. Perhaps the product solves a more urgent problem there. Perhaps the founder has access that cannot yet be reproduced abroad. Perhaps those customers expose requirements that later improve the US offer. Market credibility can begin in Ghana and travel, but it cannot be assumed to travel unchanged.
Expansion can also pull the product apart. A credible request from one US prospect may demand a different architecture, sales motion or roadmap. That deserves the same scrutiny as any other pilot that requires an architecture the product does not support.
Change the slide before it changes the company
By Monday, the revised slide should show two columns: what we know and what we need to learn.
Under what we know, put the buying behavior observed in Accra. Include the objections, delays and payment evidence that survived contact with customers.
Under what we need to learn, put the US assumptions that still depend on desk research. Attach a low-cost test and a decision date to each one. Expansion becomes a sequence of evidence purchases rather than a commitment disguised as a forecast.
Coca-Cola could restore its original formula after 79 days. An early-stage founder may have less room to recover after hiring ahead of demand, splitting the roadmap or spending months pursuing buyers whose procurement process was never tested.
On Friday, replace the confident US revenue line with the next buyer conversation. That version of the slide may look less impressive. It gives Monday’s room something more valuable to discuss: which assumption deserves the company’s next week of runway.
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