Scaling a Startup: Lessons from Advokatguiden/The Lawyer Guide

The natural next step was scaling it. Copy/paste the success into other countries like Sweden 🇸🇪 and Denmark 🇩🇰. Sounds simple, except it wasn’t.

Even if Scandinavians share a lot culturally, they’ll be the first to notice if you treat them like a carbon copy. Neglect the local differences, and you don’t just fail—you get judged hard for it.

PR was weaker in our Swedish and Danish launches and every country opening meant:

→ building a fresh lawyer database
→ adjusting code and technical occurrences
→ translating everything precisely
→ checking every legal angle (remember: we’re building a platform for lawyers)

And this was before AI could automate half of it. Everything was manual, slow, and painful. We didn't get as much traction in these countries as we hoped for.

But hidden in those difficulties was the best learning experience I could have asked for.

By the time we turned to the US, the process felt 10x more straightforward. I knew which shortcuts were safe, how to get operational faster, how to onboard new people without getting stuck in the mud (except maybe the code…)

Now the U.S. has become the main priority. The team is working at full speed on new features, and the flexibility we’ve built into this expansion will circle back to Norway and other markets soon. And we're being careful at who we're building this product for.

That’s basically how I learned everything about legal tech—by tripping on all the wires first. If you’re building in this space, I’m probably the ally you want in your corner.