Many UK and European founders want a US venture firm to lead their Seed or Series A. It’s an understandable ambition. They have large pools of capital, deep networks, and the market validation of an American fund. But US VCs are drawn to a particular profile, and trying to fit the US square peg into the round hole of a company that isn’t yet ready can waste months and burn runway you can’t get back. At the earliest stages, it’s existential.
The data bears it out. When we partnered with Beauhurst to review UK Seed and Series A rounds across 2018 and 2019, just 1.9% were led by US VCs with no UK or European office into UK companies with no US operations.
US capital has grown more central to UK and European tech in the years since. Atomico’s 2024 State of European Tech report found that as many as half of UK/European scaleups have raised from a US investor, and leading US funds have opened UK/European offices. But neither undercuts the prior finding. The 1.9% counted only US funds with no local office, and raising from a US investor at a later stage or as a participant in a round isn’t the same as one leading your Seed or Series A. For US funds without a presence here, the pattern holds.
Part of the reason is that US Seed and Series A investors are often former operators who built and scaled startups. As investors, they look to roll up their sleeves and lend their networks to help founders grow. That playbook is usually honed for American businesses, not non-US ones.
When advising UK/European founders, I’m regularly asked when seeking a US lead investor makes sense. Setting aside the US funds with UK or European offices (which are often inclined to invest earlier), we find that US VCs will typically lead at Seed or Series A only when a UK or European company ticks at least one of what I call the Four Boxes. Not all four, but at least one.
The first is management on the ground in the US: a decision-maker the investor can work with in person to build a business that wins in America. The second is US traction: meaningful revenue or users in the States, a sign of something investable there. The third is prior US experience on the founding team: founders who have run a US business or raised from US investors before. Investing this early runs on pattern-matching, and a team that has done it before is seen as a safer bet.
Those first three are variations on one idea, i.e., a credible US story. The fourth box is what you need without a US story: being materially better than US-based alternatives. A UK or European startup carries geography risk on top of ordinary early-stage risk, and more downside demands more upside. If you’re only as good as the American option, a US investor may not want the extra risk.
That doesn’t mean it never happens. To cite just two examples: New York-based FirstMark led the Seed for London-based open-source database SurrealDB, and Silicon Valley-based Khosla led the Seed for London clinical-AI company Tortus. Neither VC has an office in the UK or Europe. Still, Seed and Series A rounds that rest on box four alone remain uncommon, and it is hard to appreciate from this side of the Atlantic how strongly US early-stage VCs favour US over non-US businesses.
Now, there are a few caveats. It concerns US VCs leading early-stage rounds, and matters far less for US angels (too individual to generalize), corporate VCs (whose non-US arms can support non-US deals), US funds participating rather than leading (a local lead carries documents, diligence and support), and growth rounds (more metrics-driven, less geography-sensitive).
The pattern underneath all the above four boxes is consistent. At Seed and Series A, US fundraising follows a US story — or, without one, upside big enough to justify the bet. Not the other way around. And a US story means the business, not the corporate structure. A Delaware Flip is sometimes necessary to close a US-led Seed or Series A, but it is never sufficient.
So what to do? If a US lead is a “nice-to-have” and you tick no box, take your shot; but just know the odds are long. If it is a “need-to-have,” the most direct path is to base your CEO and go-to-market in the US ahead of the round, while engineering and product stay home.
None of this is a reason not to aim for the US. It is a reason to pursue the round you can actually land. The time you save is the extra runway you get to keep in the bank and in time.
Daniel Glazer is the Managing Partner at Wilson Sonsini’s London Office
