What happens today
The patchwork
- A $75,000 proposal and a six-week wait
- One consultant’s read you can’t interrogate
- A slide deck that hides its own sources
- Three markets you can only afford to study one at a time
Atlas playbook
Size three new markets
Three countries in four hours for $297. A consultant would charge $75,000.
- 5 min read
- Intermediate
- 4 moves
- Run per expansion
The number
Three countries analysed and scored in four hours: a decision you can defend, for what a consultant charges to schedule the kickoff.
$297 vs $75,000
The situation
From a $75,000 gut call to a scored, sourced decision.
Name your three candidate countries and describe the business. Atlas analyses each market in turn (market size, competitive density, regulatory friction), then scores them side by side and recommends the way in. Three countries in four hours for $297, not a six-week consulting engagement.
With Atlas
The workflow
- One brief, three markets, one scored comparison
- Every dimension scored 0–100, every claim cited
- A recommended entry mode you can defend to the board
- Your team opens a ranked, evidence-first read in an afternoon.
How the work moves
Four moves.
Atlas runs each market the same way and shows its work as it goes, so you see the evidence behind every score before you commit a dollar. Skip freely once you know which dimensions carry the decision.
Atlas at work
One brief travels through the whole job. Context stays attached until the finished work lands.
Brief
Describe the business and name your three candidate countries.
Atlas starts with your brief and asks only for what’s missing: the product, the model, the markets you’re weighing. No intake form, no kickoff call.
Analyse
Atlas works each market in turn, one dimension at a time.
Market size, competitive density, regulatory friction: researched, cross-checked, and scored per country, with a citation behind every figure you can trace.
Compare
See the three countries scored side by side.
Each market lands on a scored radar you can read at a glance. Trade-offs are named, the gaps between markets explained, the winner surfaced on evidence rather than a hunch.
Recommend
Get the recommended way in, ready to take to the board.
A scored, cited assessment lands with an entry-strategy recommendation, which market first and how to enter it. You pressure-test the last 10%, not the first 90%.
Prompts worth keeping
Paste these into Atlas.
Three prompts: a kickoff, a full run, and a packaging pass. Copy the one that matches the phase you’re in. Rewrite any detail to fit your business and your candidate markets.
Kick it off
You are Atlas. I’m weighing three countries for our next expansion and want a scored, evidence-first read instead of a $75,000 consulting engagement. Here’s the business: [one paragraph on product and model]. The three candidate markets are [country], [country] and [country]. Walk me through the first move and tell me what you need from me.
Run it in one shot
Run the full playbook end-to-end for all three markets: describe the business and name the candidate countries, analyse each one on market size, competitive density and regulatory friction, score them side by side, and hand back a recommended way in. Show your work and cite every claim as you go. Ask before skipping any dimension. I want three countries scored in an afternoon for $297, not $75,000.
Package the output
Deliver the output as a single board-ready brief I can forward: lead with "$297 vs $75,000", then the scored comparison across the three markets, then the receipts behind each score. Call out anything that changed the ranking mid-run and the recommended entry mode for the winning market.
What goes in. What comes back.
Inputs in, outputs out.
Atlas runs on the inputs on the left and hands back the artifacts on the right. Skip any input, the agent will ask for it the first time it needs it.
Give it
- A one-paragraph brief on the business and model
- Three candidate countries to weigh
- The dimensions that decide it for you (size, competition, regulation)
Get back
- A scored 0–100 comparison across all three markets
- A cited, board-ready assessment you can forward
- A recommended entry mode for the winning market
The finished artifact
A scored decision, not a raw report.
Every run ends the same way: a packaged assessment in the channel your team already reads. Here’s a preview of what shows up.
Atlas → your team
Three markets scored, ready for the board
playbooks
Thu 2:14 PM
Here’s the market-entry assessment. I analysed all three candidate countries, scored each on the dimensions you named, flagged what separated the winner, and packaged the recommended way in with sources.
- Describe the business and name your three candidate countries.
- Atlas works each market in turn, one dimension at a time.
- See the three countries scored side by side.
- Get the recommended way in, ready to take to the board.
What moved
$297 vs $75,000
Three countries analysed and scored in four hours: a decision you can defend, for what a consultant charges to schedule the kickoff.
assessment.pdf · scores.csv · comparison.json
Before you run it
Where teams stall.
Three ways we see this go sideways and how to avoid each one.
Keep judgment with the team. The playbook should make the work clearer, not hide the assumptions behind it.
- Handing Atlas a vague brief. Spell out the product, the model and the dimensions that decide it: sharp inputs make the scores worth defending.
- Weighing markets on a hunch you already hold. Read the scored comparison before you argue with it; the evidence is there to be interrogated, not overruled.
- Stopping at the score and skipping the entry mode. The recommendation (direct, partner or acquire) is where the $75,000 decision actually lives.
Questions
Before you start.
For the market-entry decision itself, it covers the same ground: scored market sizing, competitive density and regulatory friction across your candidate countries, every claim cited. It hands back a defensible recommendation in four hours for $297; you bring the strategic judgment a consultant would bill six weeks for.
Three is the sweet spot for a first pass: enough to see real contrast without diluting the read. Atlas analyses each country in turn and scores them side by side, so adding a fourth or fifth candidate is a matter of naming it in the brief, not a separate engagement.
Every dimension lands on a 0–100 scale with the sources behind it, so a score is a claim you can trace, not a hunch. When you take the assessment to the board, each number opens up into the evidence that produced it, which is exactly what a gut-call proposal can’t give you.
Whoever owns the expansion decision: usually strategy, corp dev, or the founder weighing the next market. Atlas does the research and scoring; the owner brings the context and defends the recommended entry mode, so the four hours of work turns into a decision the board can sign off on.
