Health Check Research Report
If your company is heading to the US, these findings are almost certainly about you
Earlier this year we ran structured US market entry assessments across twenty-one UK companies in fourteen sectors. The founders and commercial directors who came through the programme ranged from pre-entry businesses stress-testing their assumptions to companies already generating significant US revenue but operating without the infrastructure to sustain it.
The findings were consistent enough to constitute a pattern rather than a collection of individual circumstances. The same gaps appeared across sectors and stages with a frequency that tells you something important: the problems are not company-specific. They are structural. And most of them are invisible until someone who has seen them before knows where to look.
The report documents what we found, why the same issues recur, and what the companies asking the best questions were doing differently.
What the assessments found
These are not the most dramatic findings. They are the most common ones.
Seven out of ten companies we assessed were carrying personal liability exposure at director level in the US. None of them knew.
Without proper structural separation between the UK parent and the US entity, product liability claims, contractual disputes, and regulatory actions can travel directly to the UK company — and in many cases to its directors personally. This is not a hypothetical. It is a condition that exists the moment you start trading without the right structure in place, and it persists until someone addresses it. The report explains what the exposure looks like, why it is so consistently missed, and why it is also among the simpler gaps to close once it has been identified.
More than 80% of companies already generating US revenue had triggered state sales tax obligations they had not addressed. Most of them found out at the worst possible moment.
The threshold rules vary by state. Software and services sit in a more complicated position than physical goods. But the exposure is wider than founders expect, and almost none of them find out about it at a time of their choosing. When it surfaces — typically during a fundraise, an acquisition process, or a state revenue authority enquiry — the liability includes backdated tax plus interest, and in some states a penalties layer on top. The timing, in most cases, could not be worse. The report covers why this happens at the scale it does, and what the range of outcomes looks like for companies at different stages of exposure.
44% of companies planned a direct US sales hire as their primary route to market. In more than a third of engagements, it was the wrong answer at that stage.
The fully loaded cost of a US sales hire runs 40 to 60% higher than the equivalent UK role. When it does not work — and it fails in the first year more often than founders expect — unwinding it costs another six to nine months. There are faster, lower-risk routes to early US commercial traction. Most founders have not properly evaluated them before committing to a hire. The report describes what those alternatives look like and when they consistently outperform.
Those three findings come from a single domain. The report examines eight. If you count the ones below where you have not yet done detailed work, you have already answered the question of whether to download it.
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Ten insightful pages of what the US actually requires
The full report covers all eight domains — structured findings from twenty-one real assessments across fourteen sectors. It is candid, specific, and worth having before you make your next decision about the US. It is free. All we ask for is a work email address.
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Talk it through with an Allentra advisor
If anything in the report reflects where your business is or where it is heading, a thirty-minute discovery call is the fastest way to understand what it means for your specific situation. No pitch. No hand-off.
Bring the findings to your members or clients
If you run a membership organisation, trade body, accelerator, or professional community whose members are considering or actively pursuing US expansion, we offer a free report briefing as a hosted webinar or event. An Allentra advisor presents the findings, takes questions, and leaves your audience with a clearer picture of what the US actually requires.
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