What are the best market penetration strategies for global web startups that entrepreneurs from developing countries can adopt to achieve market potential?

It is a bit difficult to give a direct/specific/useful answer to this somewhat general question. That said, I'd recommend reading as much as you can about the M-Pesa story (tons of articles have been written about it) to spur your own ideas about how to build a company keeping in mind the peculiar constraints (tech, economic, social, institutional, etc.) and the needs of the market/s you are trying to target. The specific ideas from M-Pesa may or may not apply in your context, but it might help get the creative juices flowing in your team. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa Also, this article from the just-published Fall 2012 issue of the MIT-Sloan Management Review could be a potentially useful read to get a broader perspective related to your question (free registration may be required to access full-text of article):   How Disruptive Will Innovations from Emerging Markets Be? "Companies located in developing countries are currently serving billions of local consumers with innovative and inexpensive products. What happens when more of those companies make the leap into more developed markets?" http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2012-fall/54120/how-disruptive-will-innovations-from-emerging-markets-be/

In my view, there's no such way. I have been thinking and this is what I feel. In order to do that (be a global startup and gain a large global user base) you have to sooner than later move to the Silicon Valley. Or you will see someone else from there do what you were doing and do better than you because they have all the support, network and finance. If by luck you did do really well globally, you will soon be poached by the valley (America). Japan, Korea, Singapore and some Scandinavian countries have higher Internet penetration, higher literacy rates, higher per capita and more funding available than the US but yet we do not see start-ups from these countries go global. Why? There could be only two reasons - one, they all don't speak English or two, they are not in America (or funded by Americans). I don't think one makes impact, though it makes sense. (How about really global, really big, British, Singaporean, Canadian web companies?) I think the Valley culture, the close knit community, the start-up ecosystem, the talent pool, the funding available, the language advantage everything makes the valley THE place to launch Global startups and become global companies. I do not know if even Facebook would have become such a big success if Mark hadn't moved from east coast to the valley. That's the kind of impact valley seems to make and wants to make. So the answer is: Get the Valley connection ASAP.

Yoav and Greg have wise answers. I would only expand on what they've written. Have scenarios and cases for business and financial realities in global environments down to a "T", and ready to be rapidly changed at a moment's notice. (Ex., infrastructure investments, costs and maintenance or unfavorable regulatory environments.) Be cognizant of the country and region cultures and traditions. This can be the huge, silent factor that would make or break entrepreneurial efforts. (Ex., if you're building a network in Northern Africa and supposing it has good representation of smartphones, push notifications during prayer times could lead to platform abandonment. Corollary, giving users in this case an option to hold notifications during prayer time, Ramadan, etc., could be a huge point of sale and trust to your users.)

You can always have a glocal representative/partner/Co-Founder in the USA (who travels) to assist you with funding, recruitment, globalization etc. FYI we have investors and assist many global startups to reach their full potential: http://www.paulinetruong.com/ .