Positioning is not a branding exercise. It’s a decision about which fight you want to win. The clearest signal that a CEE startup is ready to communicate globally is when they can communicate, in one sentence, what will still be broken if their company doesn’t exist in five years. Most can’t. They describe features. They describe their team. They describe the market size. None of that is positioning.
Turning a Local Product into a Global Narrative
The practical process is three steps, and it doesn’t require an agency or a large budget:
- First, identify the problem your product solves that exists identically in multiple markets — not a localised version, the exact same problem. If it only exists in Hungary or Poland, you don’t have a global story yet. If it exists in Warsaw, in Stockholm, and in Singapore, you do.
- Second, find the data point that makes that problem concrete to someone who has never heard of you. Not your own data — external research, industry figures, something a journalist in San Francisco would recognise. Allonic used the robotics industry’s own publicly acknowledged constraint: the widening gap between AI software progress and hardware manufacturing capability. They didn’t invent the problem. They named it more precisely than anyone else had.
- Third, anchor your solution to a category that already exists in the global conversation, then explain exactly how you fit differently. Allonic called themselves infrastructure — not a robotics company, not a hardware manufacturer. Infrastructure is a category that investors and enterprise buyers already fund and understand. The product is new. The category is familiar. That combination is easier to buy than something entirely novel.
Why Founder Visibility Is Not Optional
For a CEE startup going global, the founder is usually the only credible distribution channel available. There’s no brand recognition to substitute for it. You are the first proof point that the company is worth talking to.
This doesn’t mean writing LinkedIn posts about lessons you’ve learned. It means having a public position on the specific problem your company exists to solve — and repeating that position consistently across every channel where your target audience spends time. When Benedek Tasi says publicly that AI has reached a hardware bottleneck and his company is attacking it at the manufacturing layer, he’s not promoting Allonic. He’s educating the market in a way that makes Allonic the obvious next question.
Earned media in global tier-one publications accelerates this significantly. A single placement in TechCrunch, Sifted, or Wired does not get you customers — but it changes every subsequent conversation. Investors in New York City who’ve never heard of your city will take the meeting. Enterprise buyers in London who would normally require a warm introduction will respond to a cold email. The coverage functions as a credibility token that travels further than any ad spend would.
The Mistake Most CEE Startups Actually Make
The most common communication mistake is waiting. Waiting until the product is more complete, the team is larger, the funding is secured, and the US office is open. The companies that break through internationally do the communication work at the same time they build the product, not after.
The second mistake is assuming the global market needs to understand where you’re from before they can understand what you do. It doesn’t. Budapest, Warsaw, Bucharest — these cities carry no brand liability with a Silicon Valley investor or a London enterprise buyer. The geography becomes interesting after the product concept lands. Lead with the problem, not the origin story.
Big tech companies don’t speak differently because they have bigger budgets. Instead, it’s because they made a decision to own a category and then said the same thing about that category for five years in a row. CEE startups have the same option. Most just haven’t made the decision yet.
Stepan Burov is the co-founder of 8bitPR, a Budapest-based boutique tech/VC PR agency based. With 9 years of experience in PR for technology companies and venture capital — from early-stage startups to global brands — he brings a deeply focused, business-driven approach to communications. As the co-founder of an award-winning boutique agency, Stepan works with clients across the US, UK, Europe, MENA, and LatAm, helping them build credibility, raise capital, enter new markets, and gain recognition from the right media and industry stakeholders.
