I often tell the story of an entrepreneur who connected with me through LinkedIn. He was pleasant enough in his request to connect and we had several people in common. His follow-up message was straight to the point announcing his upcoming business visit and asking if I could introduce him to the likes of Google, Facebook, Uber, etc.

This illustrates a couple of the issues I have seen when foreign companies come to different areas to try to ‘network’:

(1) No upfront trust relationship between the person that wants access and the person that is being asked for access. We had acquaintances in common, but I did not know this person.

(2) Unclear on what the objective of this person’s visit was.

(3) Fundamentally unclear on what is the value that he himself would bring to the table.

This got me thinking on what had led this otherwise intelligent person to make such a “faux pas” in my book. This led me to identify what I now believe to be the root cause of the “myths of doing business in different countries.”

Myth 1: Cultural differences

For example, most people wear very comfortable clothes in places like Silicon Valley: from khakis and shirt-wearing VC to the T-shirt and/or hoodie-wearing entrepreneur, there might be no other more relaxed environment in the world when it comes to how you dress.

But even there, there is a clue: if you show up in a meeting with an investor — angel or VC — and you are wearing a suit or even a jacket, people on the other side of the table may find it strange.

Myth 2: Relationships are not transactional

While people are not always clearly showing their intent in their search for where the transaction might actually lay, you will often hear the question “How can I be of help?” or “How can I be helpful?” at a meeting. To be clear, these might not just be transactions that lead to financial gain, but more broadly, transactions that lead to a quid pro quo in an introduction later on or some goodwill in a specific matter, expertise when warranted and so on and so forth.

Although there are indeed people that fundamentally want to ‘pay it forward’ — i.e. want to give to others without anything in return — they are still very much a small minority. To actually give a more positive spin to this whole point, I would say that the transactional nature of interactions is actually better than the unclear value one might have from numerous conversations that never amount to anything.

If given the two extremes, I prefer the transactional one.

Myth 3: Business is made on self-confidence and assertiveness

From an external standpoint, it is clearly the case. The way entrepreneurs communicate in places like Silicon Valley when raising money is so assertive that some European entrepreneurs would find it strange.

However, from an internal perspective I would say that Silicon Valley is a place filled with insecure over-achievers. Maybe in some ways, the success of many great entrepreneurs comes precisely from this.

A successful entrepreneur normally needs to communicate well at three levels: internally, with a manageable dose of reality distortion field; externally, with a ridiculous amount of powerful imagery; and to himself, with a clear view of the truth.

Myth 4: There is a ton of capital to invest in start-ups

This one is not a myth … it is actually true. San Francisco start-ups alone received $10.9 billion (Dh40 billion) in VC investment last year from 584 deals, while what we normally call Silicon Valley got around $10.4 billion from 721 deals, with other additional capital being deployed in other regions of the Silicon Valley area.

This is about 40-50 per cent of the total deals and total funding done in the entire US last year. In some ways, the myth resides in start-ups from all over the world thinking there is a lot of money here for them as well, since capital is in abundance, the local angel and VC investors are waiting for further opportunities to invest their money beyond this region.

In summary, every country has great opportunities for people from all over the world, but each is still ruled by its own quirks, unwritten laws and complex human relations. This extends of course more broadly to different countries as well. Ignoring this is not only naive but potentially detrimental to conducting business.

— The writer is a Partner at Delta Partners’ digital practice in San Francisco.