An emerging topic in the field of International Entrepreneurship (IE) is currently focused on international new ventures (INVs) and/or born-globals (Oviatt and McDougall, 1997; Madsen and Servais, 1997; Knight and Cavusgil, 1996) which are, by theoretic definition, start-ups that become international at inception or very shortly thereafter. More concretely, INVs have been previously defined as “a business organization that, from inception, seeks to derive significant competitive advantage from the use of resources and the sale of outputs in multiple countries” (Oviatt and McDougall, 1994: 49; McDougall et al., 1994:470). Quite similarly, Knight and Cavusgil (1996:11) conceptualise the born-global firm as ““small, [usually] technology-oriented companies that operate in international markets from the earliest days of their establishment”.

Even if the born global research has grown rapidly during the last decades, most studies have focused on entrepreneurs, resources and networks and only a few researchers are observant about the context in which the born global firms are established and thrives. Literature reviews in international entrepreneurship has shown that most research in this area is based on business to business firms (Jones et al, 2012). However, we have not found any studies which go deeper in the different customer-supplier relationships that exist in a B2B context.

Adaptation on B2B markets is important to make a relationship more productive, according to Hagberg-Anderson (2006).  There are structural factors, in the relationship between sellers and buyers which make different internationalization strategies more likely to succeed (Andersson, 2000).In this article we thoroughly discuss and review scientific articles that highlights the variation, differentiation and typology of international new venture. We complement this review with literature dealing with buyer-seller relationship in a B2B context. Based on these two strands on literature we develop a framework of different types of international new ventures in a business to business context. The framework gives theoretical contributions to the area of international entrepreneurship research but also managerial implication, showing how different types of relationships with customers make different internationalization strategies more or less likely to succeed.