Rather than lamenting the distance from Silicon Valley, top European founders frame their location as an advantage. They become the undisputed top company for ambitious, loyal, and less-expensive talent in cities like Stockholm or Warsaw, attracting engineers eager for a generational opportunity.
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A European founder targeting the US market shouldn't dismiss European VCs. You might be the top priority in a European firm's portfolio, receiving more attention and support than you would as a lower-priority deal for a top-tier, oversubscribed Silicon Valley firm.
Fintech giant Ramp attributes its early hiring success to building in New York City. Unlike the hyper-competitive, short-tenure culture of Silicon Valley at the time, NYC offered a pool of talented engineers seeking long-term roles. This talent arbitrage allowed Ramp to build a stable, high-quality team and "punch way above its weight."
Despite YC's push to stay in San Francisco, Hera's founders are returning to Berlin. They believe they can hire top AI talent more affordably and with less competition than in the Bay Area. Since their product is global and consumer-facing, an SF presence isn't critical for customer acquisition.
Shopify intentionally aimed to be the career-defining company in a secondary market (Ottawa), attracting top local talent who would later "disperse" to create a new generation of local startups, building an ecosystem.
European firm Permira successfully entered the US not by just opening an office, but by relocating its top talent, empowering local decision-making, and accepting years of minimal activity to build relationships and market knowledge before scaling.
HubSpot's co-founders were driven by the goal of becoming the biggest tech company in Boston, not the world. While VC Marc Andreessen views this "local maximum" thinking as a flaw, for HubSpot it provided a powerful, tangible anchor that fueled their long-term focus and prevented them from selling early.
Cities like San Francisco and New York act as global talent magnets because they project a powerful and specific "whisper," or core message, about what is valued there. For S.F., it's "build a startup." This clear signal attracts ambitious individuals worldwide who are aligned with that mission.
Beyond a supportive ecosystem, CDR Life's CEO highlights Switzerland's dense concentration of well-trained life science professionals from big pharma, biotech, and top universities as its most critical advantage. This makes it easier to hire and retain the specialized talent essential for a biotech's success.
By building their initial engineering team in Puerto Rico, ServiceUp hired quality developers for about half the cost of mainland US talent ($75-100k vs $150-200k+). This geographic arbitrage was a massive capital efficiency advantage that stretched their seed funding much further.
Europe has vibrant startup scenes, but its core challenge is the "scale-up" phase. Promising companies often relocate to the U.S. to access deeper venture capital markets and a larger, more unified customer base for international expansion.
