I) Startups are further along in terms of scaling at the point they expand to the US than they were 5 or 10 years ago, in terms of funding, customers, and headcount. And certain sectors, including finance, luxury, travel, and gaming, have a rich heritage in Europe, offering domain expertise and partners that can actually give Europe a competitive edge versus the US.Īs a result of this evolution in Europe, we are seeing four distinct trends. Europeans, with smaller domestic markets, also tend to think internationally from day one, which is much less common in the US. Starting in Europe nowadays can have advantages technical talent is more available (and affordable) than in the US, and employees tend to be more loyal. With these forces in play, founders have more choices about how long, and in what capacity, to remain in Europe. At the same time, building an engineering team in the Bay Area is more challenging and expensive than ever. Europe has many success stories, including two tech leaders, Adyen and Spotify, approaching $50bn valuations. Zendesk and MySQL are prominent examples of European-born companies that moved over in their entirety at Series A, and continued to build their companies successfully from there. Faced with a paucity of tech-savvy customers, talent and capital, founders often chose to relocate their businesses to the US as early as they could. Changing landscapesįifteen years ago, building a major tech business in Europe was extremely difficult. We aim to help you understand what you need to do, when you need to do it, and how to do it, in order to win in the US. We provide frameworks you can use to plan and execute the right combination of strategic, tactical and practical moves. Transforming into a global tech player by making it in the hyper-competitive US environment is a daunting challenge.
Much of the advice in this book therefore reflects not just the learnings of the entrepreneurs we work with, but our own first hand experience of launching and scaling in the US. We now have a team and portfolio equally balanced across both continents. Index also has personal experience of crossing the Atlantic, being the only European-born VC firm that has successfully expanded to the US. Being involved at every step of the journey - planning, launch, and scaling - has taught us a great deal about the opportunities and pitfalls. We have supported more than 40 European tech companies that have expanded to the US, including 9 that have gone on to become public companies. In the majority of cases, taking on the behemoth that is the US market is a necessity to achieve global leadership.
Operating at this level of ambition requires dedication, grit, and a relentless focus on doing what is best for your company. Index Ventures partners with founders, across both Europe and the US, who are building world changing businesses. The Index Ventures experience Our insight
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