I watched one clause almost kill a market entry.

The company: a startup using satellites and AI models to deliver hyper-local weather forecasts to farmers.

They had a major philanthropy ready to fund it, and NARO, Uganda’s national agricultural research organization, as their delivery partner. On paper, this was a clean path to millions of farmers.

Then they read Section 33 of Uganda’s National Meteorological Authority Act.

According to it, without written authorization from the meteorological authority, it’s a criminal offense to make weather observations, issue forecasts, or release climate information to the public. Fine or up to two years in prison.

So it didn’t matter who funded it or who ran it. The right to present a forecast to a farmer belonged to someone else.

This is something I also heard last week from an eVTOL founder. The aircraft was nearly complete, but certification had yet to begin.

Here’s the part founders are missing. Sometimes, the risk is not whether the market wants you, but whether you are legally allowed to serve it.

This is why, when we take a frontier tech team into Africa or emerging Asia, regulatory is a week-one question, not month-six. And, we settle the regulatory go/no-go alongside the first pipeline of customers and partners.

So if your market-entry plan has a pipeline but no regulatory answer, you don’t have a plan. You have a bet.

Are you eyeing a new market for this year? It’s worth knowing where the landmines are before you start walking. Always happy to compare notes with founders and think it through.