© Luxinnovation Choosing a company’s location is just the start of a journey. Many challenges don’t come with an instruction manual – but knowing who to turn to for guidance can help. We spoke to the Luxembourg Trade & Invest team about the key insights they’ve gained while supporting founders setting up shop in the Grand Duchy. Jenny Hällen Hedberg has been helping innovative international companies find their footing in Luxembourg for more than six years. Her number one piece of advice is: don’t isolate yourself. She rec- ommends renting a desk or an office in an incubator as it’s a good starting point for meeting fellow entrepreneurs. She notes that people in the business community are willing to help each other and introduce newcomers further. “Luxem- bourg is open, international and accessible. There is a strong culture of collaboration.” She advises founders to think further than just their own business. “Show your contacts that you are not just out for your own good, but that you have a win-win men- tality in your dealings with them. Your per- sonality is central to success.” After 20 years helping innovative Korean companies expand into Europe as head of the Luxembourg Trade and Investment Of- fice (LTIO) in Seoul, Younhee Kim did what the companies she advises do: she packed her family and moved to Luxembourg. “For Asian investors, education is the top consideration,” she says. Luxembourg’s education system includes trilingual na- tional education as well as internationally recognised programmes taught in English, German or French. International students don’t feel isolated. “With so many foreign- ers living in the country, everybody is in the same boat. Children make friends quickly.” A happy family boosts any entre- preneur’s confidence. Finding an R&D partner in Europe isn’t the hard part. Finding the right one is. For almost a decade, David Foy has been helping international companies in Luxembourg succeed in exactly that. “The first step is to figure out what you actually need. That’s harder than it sounds,” he says. His job is to meet with innovative compa- nies from different countries and cultures. “This teaches us to quickly understand what they are doing. We don’t necessarily under- stand all the aspects of their technologies – they are often very complex. But after some discussion, we usually have a picture of their objectives and use case. We then ben- efit from our personal relationships with the research community to match them with the right partner.” Head of International Business Relationships Head of International Business Relationships - Digital Economy Senior Adviser - International Business Relationships Subscribe to the Crossroads newsletter and get the next expert conversation delivered straight to your inbox.