Medan · Petaling Jaya · Singapore
Saleh Nabil
Founder, XpandEast
XpandEast became a company later. The work behind it started in 2017, when I needed a way to take companies into markets where nobody knew the name and nobody owed us a meeting.
How it started
I was not trying to build an agency
- 2017Built for our own problemA private way of entering markets where nobody knew the name and nobody owed us a meeting.
- 2017 to 2022Kept private, kept changingUsed across our own ventures and a small circle of companies and partners. No public offer, no packaged method.
- 2022Opened up as XpandEastEnough of it had worked in the field to offer the model beyond the original network.
In 2017 I was trying to solve a problem I kept running into myself. I had to take a company into a market where nobody knew the name, nobody owed us a meeting, and whatever credibility we had elsewhere did not travel with us. So I started building my own way of doing it.
For roughly five years the system stayed private. We used it across our own ventures and a small circle of companies and partners. There was no public offer, no packaged methodology and no reason to call it XpandEast yet. That was useful, because it meant we could keep changing it when things did not work.
The private years
Plenty of it did not work
A message that did not travel
Wording that worked in one country died in the next one.
The obvious buyer
The most obvious job title was sometimes the wrong buyer.
A distributor with nothing behind them
A partner looked useful until we saw there was no demand behind them.
Attention without trust
Remote outreach could get replies and still not carry an enterprise deal.
Those years are where most of the XpandEast model was actually learned. By 2022 we had used enough of it in the field to open the model beyond the original network. That became XpandEast.
Since 2022
The names got bigger. The problem stayed similar.
We have supported GTM work around these companies across direct, partner-led and campaign engagements.
Different industries and different products, and the question usually comes back to the same thing.
How do you get a serious buyer to trust a company they have barely heard of?
Not this
Lead volume
Not this
How many connection requests we can send
This
Whether the market, message, buyer and local credibility are strong enough for an enterprise conversation to go somewhere
Two examples
One motion built familiarity. The other moved offline.
For Loyalytics.AI, the advocate-led motion ran through six advocates and 63 pieces of content. In one month that generated 150,956 tracked impressions, and it compounded to roughly 865,000 over the year. The point was not the impression count. The content was being used to create familiarity around the specific accounts the commercial team wanted to reach.
Read the case study (access code required)- OnlineContent and direct outreachBuilt familiarity around the accounts the commercial team wanted.
- ContactHead of Infrastructure at KWAPReached the person who could move an infrastructure decision.
- InterestThe AI-SIEM propositionDeveloped a real technical interest, not a download.
- HandoffOfflineLogicalis MalaysiaThe opportunity moved through the local systems-integration route.
With Energy Logserver the motion was different. We reached the Head of Infrastructure at KWAP, developed interest around the AI-SIEM proposition, and the opportunity eventually moved offline through Logicalis Malaysia as the local systems-integration route. That is much closer to how enterprise GTM behaves here. Online creates the opening, then relationships, local credibility, partners and human conversations do the heavier work.
Read the case study (access code required)What I actually do
I still sit close to the commercial work
Usually that means looking at a company and asking uncomfortable questions before we start.
Is this actually the right market?
Are we going after the people who can move the deal?
Does the positioning make sense locally, or only at headquarters?
What would make this company believable to the buyer?
Do we need an advocate, a partner, direct outreach, content, local meetings, or a combination?
Should this company be entering this market at all?
I would rather answer that early than spend six months manufacturing activity around a bad assumption.
Scale
The network is larger than the number of companies we accept
The model depends on depth, not on putting every client through the same machine.
2017
Year the system started
XpandEast opened it up in 2022.
~20
Companies a year
Kept deliberately small.
60+
In-market operators
Working inside their own markets.
300+
Advocate pool
Matched by market, category and buyer.
XpandEast is not just me
My co-founder runs the operation underneath the strategy
Wenny Vinciani handles the side of cross-border growth that looks simple on a slide and becomes complicated in real life: teams, countries, delivery, local coordination, operating requirements and client support.
Saleh Nabil
- Which market a company should enter, and whether it should enter at all
- Which buyer can actually move the deal
- How the positioning reads locally, not only at headquarters
- Which motion fits: advocates, partners, direct outreach, content, local meetings
Wenny Vinciani
- Teams and in-market operators in each country
- Delivery and local coordination week to week
- Operating requirements in each market
- Client support and keeping several markets moving together
A GTM strategy is relatively easy to present. Making it work week after week, across borders, is the harder part. That is what we have been building since 2017.
Playbooks I authored
Want to work with my team?
Book a call to scope your entry into Australia, New Zealand or Southeast Asia, or read the Tuesday Brief for what we are seeing in live accounts each week.