I’m trying to figure out if I’m being smart or lazy by considering hiring a US-based marketing consultant to help us navigate market entry. And I think the real question isn’t about the consultant—it’s about whether their knowledge is actually worth the cost, or if I should just build the capability in-house.
Here’s the situation: we’re a B2B SaaS company founded in Moscow, and we’re hiring our first US-based team members. We’ve got product-market fit in Russia, but US market dynamics feel completely different. Messaging doesn’t land the same way. Our creator partnerships and influencer strategy that works domestically feels too aggressive for US audiences.
A consultant would run us ~$150-200/hour, maybe 20 hours/month to start. That’s real money. Alternatively, we could hire a US-based marketing person full-time ($80-120k salary, plus everything else), but that’s a bigger bet if we don’t know whether our US expansion actually works.
The middle ground is what confuses me: do we pay for fractional guidance while building internal capability? Do we hire a full-time person and let them figure it out alongside the team? Do we treat the consultant like a short-term crutch while we hire internally?
I’ve seen both work and both fail. I’ve also seen founders waste money on consultants who don’t get their business, and I’ve seen people hire the wrong full-time hire and have to rebuild everything.
What’s your actual decision framework here? How did you structure it when you were deciding whether to buy expertise or build it? And whether there’s a “right” answer, how do you know when you’ve chosen wrong?