Flux — EU Market Entry
40% of new signups in the last quarter came organically from EU — but the product is not GDPR-compliant.
The scenario
Flux is a US-based SaaS analytics tool. The EU signal is organic — no marketing spend there. The current product stores all data on US servers, has no data residency options, and lacks a DPA template. Legal has flagged the GDPR gap. Engineering estimates full compliance at 4–6 months.
Constraint
The board wants a go/no-go recommendation in 2 weeks.
Your task
Recommend whether to enter the EU market formally and what it would take to do it right.
1. Clarify: What do you need to know before making a go/no-go call?
Pick the 3 questions you'd ask first.
Model approach (strong picks)
- Strong pickWhat is the profile of the EU users signing up — are they enterprises or SMBs, which industries, which countries?
- Strong pickWhat is our legal exposure if we continue serving EU users without GDPR compliance — fines, enforcement risk?
- Strong pickWhat is the retention and expansion rate of the EU users we already have — are they high-quality customers?
2. Hypothesize: What are the key strategic risks and opportunities?
Pick the 3 most important factors to evaluate.
Model approach (strong picks)
- Strong pickThe organic demand is a strong signal — ignoring EU could mean ceding ground to a GDPR-native competitor.
- Strong pickContinuing to serve EU users without compliance is an active legal liability that could result in significant fines.
- Strong pickA phased entry (limited EU beta with compliance in progress) could preserve demand while reducing risk.
3. Investigate: What do you do in the next 2 weeks before the board meeting?
Pick the 3 highest-leverage moves.
Model approach (strong picks)
- Strong pickGet a legal assessment: exact GDPR exposure for current EU users and minimum viable compliance path.
- Strong pickAnalyze EU cohort quality: activation rate, retention, ACV vs. US cohorts — is the demand signal high-quality?
- Strong pickGet a scoped engineering estimate: what is the minimum compliance work to legally serve EU customers with a DPA and EU data residency?
4. Propose: What is your go/no-go recommendation to the board?
Pick the one recommendation you'd make.
Model approach (strong picks)
- Strong pickConditional go — pause new EU signups, start minimum-viable GDPR compliance work (DPA + EU data residency) on a 90-day track, then re-open to EU with a proper legal foundation.
- Strong pickGo — the organic demand signal is too strong to ignore; assign a compliance squad and enter a limited EU beta immediately while compliance is in progress.