Cristian Munteanu
Cristian Munteanu
Jan 1, 2026
Tourists vs Immigrants
There are two kinds of founders who “move” to another country for their startup: tourists and immigrants.
Years ago, as a startup founder, I moved to the other side of the Earth — literally: first to Seattle, WA, and then to San Francisco, CA. At that time, venture capital in Central and Eastern Europe was very scarce, and being a startup founder was not cool yet. I did what I had to do to give my company a chance. And moving to the US changed me in ways I never thought possible.
But time passed, and things changed (unfortunately, not always for the better). I wrote this short article for those (many) European founders who talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk.
——
There are two kinds of founders who “move” to another country for their startup: tourists and immigrants.
Tourists buy round-trip tickets, stay in Airbnbs near the conference center, post photos with city skylines, and go home after a week, saying they’ve “tested the market.” Immigrants buy one-way tickets, sign leases, get local SIM cards, and start building a life there.
A surprising number of European founders behave like tourists when they talk about “going to the US.” They fly to San Francisco or New York for a couple of conferences a year, book a few meetings around them, maybe even get on a stage once. Then they’re surprised that nothing material happens: no real term sheets, no meaningful customers, no deep relationships.
They think the problem is bad luck, or timing, or that “US investors don’t understand Europe.” The real problem is that they never actually showed up.
The tourist theory of fundraising
Tourist founders act as if the US startup ecosystem were a vending machine. You put in a flight ticket, a conference badge, a 20-minute pitch, and out comes a $2M seed round and some Fortune 500 logos. When that doesn’t happen, they go home slightly offended. “We flew all the way here, we pitched so many people, and nobody invested. What else are we supposed to do?”
From the outside, this sounds naive. From the inside, it’s worse: it shows a lack of perspective about how the US ecosystem actually works.
The important things in the Valley don’t happen on stage but in the in-between spaces: in repeat coffees, recurring meetups, monthly dinners, the same faces bumping into each other at the same places. The graph that matters is not “who heard your pitch once,” but “who has seen you execute over the last 6–12 months.” You cannot compress that into a long weekend.
Tourist founders underestimate that the US is not just a bigger market, it’s a denser one. The whole system runs on trust, reputation, and shared context. That doesn’t get built by parachuting in twice a year.
Why this hits European founders especially hard
European founders are particularly prone to this mistake. Partly because of distance and cost: a trip to SF from Europe is expensive, so there’s pressure to squeeze in “as much as possible” into a short stay. That leads to conference-hopping instead of embedding. Partly because many European ecosystems are still grant-heavy or event-heavy. You can actually move your company forward at home by winning competitions, pitch days, or government programs. So you internalize the idea that events are where things happen. Then you apply the same model to the US and hit a wall.
But mainly, it’s a mental model problem. Many Europeans, though they loudly declare they are global from day one, still think of the US as “abroad.” Investors don’t. To them, you’re either part of their world, or you’re not. If you fly in, read your slides, and fly out, you’re not.
When a founder says, “We’re expanding to the US,” but their life is still clearly elsewhere, what US investors hear is: “We’d like some of your money and customers, but we’re not willing to take the same risk you took by being here.”
That’s not just a practical issue. It’s a character signal.
What tourist behavior actually signals
Founders think investors evaluate their deck. In reality, investors primarily evaluate the founders.
When a founder treats San Francisco like Disneyland for startups (a place you visit occasionally to be inspired), it tells you several things: first, that they don’t understand how networks are built; second, that they overestimate the value of one-off exposure and underestimate the value of compounding relationships.
Superficial behavior reveals superficial commitment. If you’re not willing to move your body, your calendar, and your life closer to the people you want money and customers from, why would anyone believe you’re going to grind through the truly hard parts?
Investors may never say this explicitly. They’ll say things like “too early,” or “not sure about the market,” because it’s easier. But under the surface, many passes on European companies that “came to the Valley” are really passes on founders who behaved like tourists.
The correct approach: one-way ticket founders
The founders who actually make the US work for them do something much simpler and much harder: they move. They don’t “spend two weeks here.” They don’t “come every quarter.” They move their default life to the place they want to win.
For European founders aiming at US customers and US investors, that often means buying a one-way ticket to San Francisco (or New York, or wherever your customers are), and accepting that for at least a year, this is home.
A one-way ticket sounds dramatic, but that’s the point. It forces you to flip a switch in your head from “trip” to “transition.”
When you do that, several things change:
You stop optimizing for events and start optimizing for routines. Conferences become optional. What matters is the weekly founder meetup where the same ten people show up. The Tuesday coffee with that one operator who knows everyone. The monthly lunch with your early users. These only become visible and valuable when you’re around long enough.
You let time work for you instead of against you. On a two-week trip, every meeting has to “convert,” or you feel it’s wasted time. When you live somewhere, a first meeting is just the first derivative. You can afford to have people see you again 3 months later with better metrics, and again 6 months later with a US customer list. That arc is what changes minds.
You absorb the local level of ambition. This is fundamental and underrated. Ambition is contagious. The way people talk about what they’re building in SF or NYC is different. When you’re here long enough, your own goalposts move. You stop thinking in terms of “closing a €1M seed” and start thinking in terms of “how do we become default-alive in a $10B market.”
You learn the informal rules. How quickly are intros followed up? What does “we should catch up” actually mean? How much traction is really needed for a seed vs a Series A? These things are never written down. You pick them up by being in the room enough times.
Most importantly: you show the right kind of skin in the game. You’re in the same timezone. You’re available for a last-minute 7 am coffee. You can show up in person tomorrow. That sounds trivial until you contrast it with someone who is always “flying in next month.”
What “all-in” actually looks like in practice
People romanticize the one-way ticket, but day to day, it’s mostly unglamorous.
You rent a small apartment in a non-fancy neighborhood. You share a desk in a coworking space. You spend most of your time doing three things: writing code, talking to users, and meeting people who can introduce you to more users and future investors.
A practical version of “all-in” for a European founder moving to the US:
You move your personal base: your laptop, your clothes, your primary phone number, your calendar. Home is where your calendar defaults to.
You commit to at least 6–12 months. Anything less is tourism in disguise.
You structure your week so that you have repeated touchpoints: the same café in the morning, the same coworking space, the same recurring events. This is how you become a familiar face instead of a visitor.
You actively help others: introduce founders to each other, share your EU knowledge, and show up when someone needs a user, a quote, or a beta tester. The quickest way to build a network is to be useful.
You localize your story: your pitch should make obvious sense to someone who has never lived in your home country. Your pricing, design, and onboarding shouldn’t scream “built for somewhere else.”
Notice what’s missing from this list: “attend as many conferences as possible.” By the time you live somewhere, conferences are a side quest. The real game happens in smaller rooms, more often, with people you now know by first name.
But do you really have to move?
Not every startup needs to move to the US. If your market is primarily in Europe, your regulation is local, and your customers are there, staying might be the rational choice.
The point is not “everyone should move to San Francisco.” The point is: if your customers, competitors, and most natural investors are in the US, half-measures are a bad strategy. Either you build a US-centric company and accept the cost of becoming a US founder, or you don’t. Trying to get US outcomes with tourist behavior is the worst of both worlds.
Investors are very good at reading which side of that line you’re on. They don’t just listen to what you say; they look at where you are, again and again. The founders who end up with the prominent US rounds are usually the ones who quietly moved six months before anyone heard of them.
The simple filter
If you’re a European founder thinking about the US, here’s a useful filter: would you be willing to buy a one-way ticket to San Francisco, stay for at least a year, and treat that time as the default, not an exception?
If the answer is no, that’s fine. You can build a good company in Europe. But then stop pretending that flying in for conferences is a substitute for being there.
If the answer is yes, then act like it. Move. Take the smaller apartment, the coworking desk, the awkward coffees. Let geography and time compound in your favor. Become a local.
Years ago, as a startup founder, I moved to the other side of the Earth — literally: first to Seattle, WA, and then to San Francisco, CA. At that time, venture capital in Central and Eastern Europe was very scarce, and being a startup founder was not cool yet. I did what I had to do to give my company a chance. And moving to the US changed me in ways I never thought possible.
But time passed, and things changed (unfortunately, not always for the better). I wrote this short article for those (many) European founders who talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk.
——
There are two kinds of founders who “move” to another country for their startup: tourists and immigrants.
Tourists buy round-trip tickets, stay in Airbnbs near the conference center, post photos with city skylines, and go home after a week, saying they’ve “tested the market.” Immigrants buy one-way tickets, sign leases, get local SIM cards, and start building a life there.
A surprising number of European founders behave like tourists when they talk about “going to the US.” They fly to San Francisco or New York for a couple of conferences a year, book a few meetings around them, maybe even get on a stage once. Then they’re surprised that nothing material happens: no real term sheets, no meaningful customers, no deep relationships.
They think the problem is bad luck, or timing, or that “US investors don’t understand Europe.” The real problem is that they never actually showed up.
The tourist theory of fundraising
Tourist founders act as if the US startup ecosystem were a vending machine. You put in a flight ticket, a conference badge, a 20-minute pitch, and out comes a $2M seed round and some Fortune 500 logos. When that doesn’t happen, they go home slightly offended. “We flew all the way here, we pitched so many people, and nobody invested. What else are we supposed to do?”
From the outside, this sounds naive. From the inside, it’s worse: it shows a lack of perspective about how the US ecosystem actually works.
The important things in the Valley don’t happen on stage but in the in-between spaces: in repeat coffees, recurring meetups, monthly dinners, the same faces bumping into each other at the same places. The graph that matters is not “who heard your pitch once,” but “who has seen you execute over the last 6–12 months.” You cannot compress that into a long weekend.
Tourist founders underestimate that the US is not just a bigger market, it’s a denser one. The whole system runs on trust, reputation, and shared context. That doesn’t get built by parachuting in twice a year.
Why this hits European founders especially hard
European founders are particularly prone to this mistake. Partly because of distance and cost: a trip to SF from Europe is expensive, so there’s pressure to squeeze in “as much as possible” into a short stay. That leads to conference-hopping instead of embedding. Partly because many European ecosystems are still grant-heavy or event-heavy. You can actually move your company forward at home by winning competitions, pitch days, or government programs. So you internalize the idea that events are where things happen. Then you apply the same model to the US and hit a wall.
But mainly, it’s a mental model problem. Many Europeans, though they loudly declare they are global from day one, still think of the US as “abroad.” Investors don’t. To them, you’re either part of their world, or you’re not. If you fly in, read your slides, and fly out, you’re not.
When a founder says, “We’re expanding to the US,” but their life is still clearly elsewhere, what US investors hear is: “We’d like some of your money and customers, but we’re not willing to take the same risk you took by being here.”
That’s not just a practical issue. It’s a character signal.
What tourist behavior actually signals
Founders think investors evaluate their deck. In reality, investors primarily evaluate the founders.
When a founder treats San Francisco like Disneyland for startups (a place you visit occasionally to be inspired), it tells you several things: first, that they don’t understand how networks are built; second, that they overestimate the value of one-off exposure and underestimate the value of compounding relationships.
Superficial behavior reveals superficial commitment. If you’re not willing to move your body, your calendar, and your life closer to the people you want money and customers from, why would anyone believe you’re going to grind through the truly hard parts?
Investors may never say this explicitly. They’ll say things like “too early,” or “not sure about the market,” because it’s easier. But under the surface, many passes on European companies that “came to the Valley” are really passes on founders who behaved like tourists.
The correct approach: one-way ticket founders
The founders who actually make the US work for them do something much simpler and much harder: they move. They don’t “spend two weeks here.” They don’t “come every quarter.” They move their default life to the place they want to win.
For European founders aiming at US customers and US investors, that often means buying a one-way ticket to San Francisco (or New York, or wherever your customers are), and accepting that for at least a year, this is home.
A one-way ticket sounds dramatic, but that’s the point. It forces you to flip a switch in your head from “trip” to “transition.”
When you do that, several things change:
You stop optimizing for events and start optimizing for routines. Conferences become optional. What matters is the weekly founder meetup where the same ten people show up. The Tuesday coffee with that one operator who knows everyone. The monthly lunch with your early users. These only become visible and valuable when you’re around long enough.
You let time work for you instead of against you. On a two-week trip, every meeting has to “convert,” or you feel it’s wasted time. When you live somewhere, a first meeting is just the first derivative. You can afford to have people see you again 3 months later with better metrics, and again 6 months later with a US customer list. That arc is what changes minds.
You absorb the local level of ambition. This is fundamental and underrated. Ambition is contagious. The way people talk about what they’re building in SF or NYC is different. When you’re here long enough, your own goalposts move. You stop thinking in terms of “closing a €1M seed” and start thinking in terms of “how do we become default-alive in a $10B market.”
You learn the informal rules. How quickly are intros followed up? What does “we should catch up” actually mean? How much traction is really needed for a seed vs a Series A? These things are never written down. You pick them up by being in the room enough times.
Most importantly: you show the right kind of skin in the game. You’re in the same timezone. You’re available for a last-minute 7 am coffee. You can show up in person tomorrow. That sounds trivial until you contrast it with someone who is always “flying in next month.”
What “all-in” actually looks like in practice
People romanticize the one-way ticket, but day to day, it’s mostly unglamorous.
You rent a small apartment in a non-fancy neighborhood. You share a desk in a coworking space. You spend most of your time doing three things: writing code, talking to users, and meeting people who can introduce you to more users and future investors.
A practical version of “all-in” for a European founder moving to the US:
You move your personal base: your laptop, your clothes, your primary phone number, your calendar. Home is where your calendar defaults to.
You commit to at least 6–12 months. Anything less is tourism in disguise.
You structure your week so that you have repeated touchpoints: the same café in the morning, the same coworking space, the same recurring events. This is how you become a familiar face instead of a visitor.
You actively help others: introduce founders to each other, share your EU knowledge, and show up when someone needs a user, a quote, or a beta tester. The quickest way to build a network is to be useful.
You localize your story: your pitch should make obvious sense to someone who has never lived in your home country. Your pricing, design, and onboarding shouldn’t scream “built for somewhere else.”
Notice what’s missing from this list: “attend as many conferences as possible.” By the time you live somewhere, conferences are a side quest. The real game happens in smaller rooms, more often, with people you now know by first name.
But do you really have to move?
Not every startup needs to move to the US. If your market is primarily in Europe, your regulation is local, and your customers are there, staying might be the rational choice.
The point is not “everyone should move to San Francisco.” The point is: if your customers, competitors, and most natural investors are in the US, half-measures are a bad strategy. Either you build a US-centric company and accept the cost of becoming a US founder, or you don’t. Trying to get US outcomes with tourist behavior is the worst of both worlds.
Investors are very good at reading which side of that line you’re on. They don’t just listen to what you say; they look at where you are, again and again. The founders who end up with the prominent US rounds are usually the ones who quietly moved six months before anyone heard of them.
The simple filter
If you’re a European founder thinking about the US, here’s a useful filter: would you be willing to buy a one-way ticket to San Francisco, stay for at least a year, and treat that time as the default, not an exception?
If the answer is no, that’s fine. You can build a good company in Europe. But then stop pretending that flying in for conferences is a substitute for being there.
If the answer is yes, then act like it. Move. Take the smaller apartment, the coworking desk, the awkward coffees. Let geography and time compound in your favor. Become a local.
Years ago, as a startup founder, I moved to the other side of the Earth — literally: first to Seattle, WA, and then to San Francisco, CA. At that time, venture capital in Central and Eastern Europe was very scarce, and being a startup founder was not cool yet. I did what I had to do to give my company a chance. And moving to the US changed me in ways I never thought possible.
But time passed, and things changed (unfortunately, not always for the better). I wrote this short article for those (many) European founders who talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk.
——
There are two kinds of founders who “move” to another country for their startup: tourists and immigrants.
Tourists buy round-trip tickets, stay in Airbnbs near the conference center, post photos with city skylines, and go home after a week, saying they’ve “tested the market.” Immigrants buy one-way tickets, sign leases, get local SIM cards, and start building a life there.
A surprising number of European founders behave like tourists when they talk about “going to the US.” They fly to San Francisco or New York for a couple of conferences a year, book a few meetings around them, maybe even get on a stage once. Then they’re surprised that nothing material happens: no real term sheets, no meaningful customers, no deep relationships.
They think the problem is bad luck, or timing, or that “US investors don’t understand Europe.” The real problem is that they never actually showed up.
The tourist theory of fundraising
Tourist founders act as if the US startup ecosystem were a vending machine. You put in a flight ticket, a conference badge, a 20-minute pitch, and out comes a $2M seed round and some Fortune 500 logos. When that doesn’t happen, they go home slightly offended. “We flew all the way here, we pitched so many people, and nobody invested. What else are we supposed to do?”
From the outside, this sounds naive. From the inside, it’s worse: it shows a lack of perspective about how the US ecosystem actually works.
The important things in the Valley don’t happen on stage but in the in-between spaces: in repeat coffees, recurring meetups, monthly dinners, the same faces bumping into each other at the same places. The graph that matters is not “who heard your pitch once,” but “who has seen you execute over the last 6–12 months.” You cannot compress that into a long weekend.
Tourist founders underestimate that the US is not just a bigger market, it’s a denser one. The whole system runs on trust, reputation, and shared context. That doesn’t get built by parachuting in twice a year.
Why this hits European founders especially hard
European founders are particularly prone to this mistake. Partly because of distance and cost: a trip to SF from Europe is expensive, so there’s pressure to squeeze in “as much as possible” into a short stay. That leads to conference-hopping instead of embedding. Partly because many European ecosystems are still grant-heavy or event-heavy. You can actually move your company forward at home by winning competitions, pitch days, or government programs. So you internalize the idea that events are where things happen. Then you apply the same model to the US and hit a wall.
But mainly, it’s a mental model problem. Many Europeans, though they loudly declare they are global from day one, still think of the US as “abroad.” Investors don’t. To them, you’re either part of their world, or you’re not. If you fly in, read your slides, and fly out, you’re not.
When a founder says, “We’re expanding to the US,” but their life is still clearly elsewhere, what US investors hear is: “We’d like some of your money and customers, but we’re not willing to take the same risk you took by being here.”
That’s not just a practical issue. It’s a character signal.
What tourist behavior actually signals
Founders think investors evaluate their deck. In reality, investors primarily evaluate the founders.
When a founder treats San Francisco like Disneyland for startups (a place you visit occasionally to be inspired), it tells you several things: first, that they don’t understand how networks are built; second, that they overestimate the value of one-off exposure and underestimate the value of compounding relationships.
Superficial behavior reveals superficial commitment. If you’re not willing to move your body, your calendar, and your life closer to the people you want money and customers from, why would anyone believe you’re going to grind through the truly hard parts?
Investors may never say this explicitly. They’ll say things like “too early,” or “not sure about the market,” because it’s easier. But under the surface, many passes on European companies that “came to the Valley” are really passes on founders who behaved like tourists.
The correct approach: one-way ticket founders
The founders who actually make the US work for them do something much simpler and much harder: they move. They don’t “spend two weeks here.” They don’t “come every quarter.” They move their default life to the place they want to win.
For European founders aiming at US customers and US investors, that often means buying a one-way ticket to San Francisco (or New York, or wherever your customers are), and accepting that for at least a year, this is home.
A one-way ticket sounds dramatic, but that’s the point. It forces you to flip a switch in your head from “trip” to “transition.”
When you do that, several things change:
You stop optimizing for events and start optimizing for routines. Conferences become optional. What matters is the weekly founder meetup where the same ten people show up. The Tuesday coffee with that one operator who knows everyone. The monthly lunch with your early users. These only become visible and valuable when you’re around long enough.
You let time work for you instead of against you. On a two-week trip, every meeting has to “convert,” or you feel it’s wasted time. When you live somewhere, a first meeting is just the first derivative. You can afford to have people see you again 3 months later with better metrics, and again 6 months later with a US customer list. That arc is what changes minds.
You absorb the local level of ambition. This is fundamental and underrated. Ambition is contagious. The way people talk about what they’re building in SF or NYC is different. When you’re here long enough, your own goalposts move. You stop thinking in terms of “closing a €1M seed” and start thinking in terms of “how do we become default-alive in a $10B market.”
You learn the informal rules. How quickly are intros followed up? What does “we should catch up” actually mean? How much traction is really needed for a seed vs a Series A? These things are never written down. You pick them up by being in the room enough times.
Most importantly: you show the right kind of skin in the game. You’re in the same timezone. You’re available for a last-minute 7 am coffee. You can show up in person tomorrow. That sounds trivial until you contrast it with someone who is always “flying in next month.”
What “all-in” actually looks like in practice
People romanticize the one-way ticket, but day to day, it’s mostly unglamorous.
You rent a small apartment in a non-fancy neighborhood. You share a desk in a coworking space. You spend most of your time doing three things: writing code, talking to users, and meeting people who can introduce you to more users and future investors.
A practical version of “all-in” for a European founder moving to the US:
You move your personal base: your laptop, your clothes, your primary phone number, your calendar. Home is where your calendar defaults to.
You commit to at least 6–12 months. Anything less is tourism in disguise.
You structure your week so that you have repeated touchpoints: the same café in the morning, the same coworking space, the same recurring events. This is how you become a familiar face instead of a visitor.
You actively help others: introduce founders to each other, share your EU knowledge, and show up when someone needs a user, a quote, or a beta tester. The quickest way to build a network is to be useful.
You localize your story: your pitch should make obvious sense to someone who has never lived in your home country. Your pricing, design, and onboarding shouldn’t scream “built for somewhere else.”
Notice what’s missing from this list: “attend as many conferences as possible.” By the time you live somewhere, conferences are a side quest. The real game happens in smaller rooms, more often, with people you now know by first name.
But do you really have to move?
Not every startup needs to move to the US. If your market is primarily in Europe, your regulation is local, and your customers are there, staying might be the rational choice.
The point is not “everyone should move to San Francisco.” The point is: if your customers, competitors, and most natural investors are in the US, half-measures are a bad strategy. Either you build a US-centric company and accept the cost of becoming a US founder, or you don’t. Trying to get US outcomes with tourist behavior is the worst of both worlds.
Investors are very good at reading which side of that line you’re on. They don’t just listen to what you say; they look at where you are, again and again. The founders who end up with the prominent US rounds are usually the ones who quietly moved six months before anyone heard of them.
The simple filter
If you’re a European founder thinking about the US, here’s a useful filter: would you be willing to buy a one-way ticket to San Francisco, stay for at least a year, and treat that time as the default, not an exception?
If the answer is no, that’s fine. You can build a good company in Europe. But then stop pretending that flying in for conferences is a substitute for being there.
If the answer is yes, then act like it. Move. Take the smaller apartment, the coworking desk, the awkward coffees. Let geography and time compound in your favor. Become a local.
Years ago, as a startup founder, I moved to the other side of the Earth — literally: first to Seattle, WA, and then to San Francisco, CA. At that time, venture capital in Central and Eastern Europe was very scarce, and being a startup founder was not cool yet. I did what I had to do to give my company a chance. And moving to the US changed me in ways I never thought possible.
But time passed, and things changed (unfortunately, not always for the better). I wrote this short article for those (many) European founders who talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk.
——
There are two kinds of founders who “move” to another country for their startup: tourists and immigrants.
Tourists buy round-trip tickets, stay in Airbnbs near the conference center, post photos with city skylines, and go home after a week, saying they’ve “tested the market.” Immigrants buy one-way tickets, sign leases, get local SIM cards, and start building a life there.
A surprising number of European founders behave like tourists when they talk about “going to the US.” They fly to San Francisco or New York for a couple of conferences a year, book a few meetings around them, maybe even get on a stage once. Then they’re surprised that nothing material happens: no real term sheets, no meaningful customers, no deep relationships.
They think the problem is bad luck, or timing, or that “US investors don’t understand Europe.” The real problem is that they never actually showed up.
The tourist theory of fundraising
Tourist founders act as if the US startup ecosystem were a vending machine. You put in a flight ticket, a conference badge, a 20-minute pitch, and out comes a $2M seed round and some Fortune 500 logos. When that doesn’t happen, they go home slightly offended. “We flew all the way here, we pitched so many people, and nobody invested. What else are we supposed to do?”
From the outside, this sounds naive. From the inside, it’s worse: it shows a lack of perspective about how the US ecosystem actually works.
The important things in the Valley don’t happen on stage but in the in-between spaces: in repeat coffees, recurring meetups, monthly dinners, the same faces bumping into each other at the same places. The graph that matters is not “who heard your pitch once,” but “who has seen you execute over the last 6–12 months.” You cannot compress that into a long weekend.
Tourist founders underestimate that the US is not just a bigger market, it’s a denser one. The whole system runs on trust, reputation, and shared context. That doesn’t get built by parachuting in twice a year.
Why this hits European founders especially hard
European founders are particularly prone to this mistake. Partly because of distance and cost: a trip to SF from Europe is expensive, so there’s pressure to squeeze in “as much as possible” into a short stay. That leads to conference-hopping instead of embedding. Partly because many European ecosystems are still grant-heavy or event-heavy. You can actually move your company forward at home by winning competitions, pitch days, or government programs. So you internalize the idea that events are where things happen. Then you apply the same model to the US and hit a wall.
But mainly, it’s a mental model problem. Many Europeans, though they loudly declare they are global from day one, still think of the US as “abroad.” Investors don’t. To them, you’re either part of their world, or you’re not. If you fly in, read your slides, and fly out, you’re not.
When a founder says, “We’re expanding to the US,” but their life is still clearly elsewhere, what US investors hear is: “We’d like some of your money and customers, but we’re not willing to take the same risk you took by being here.”
That’s not just a practical issue. It’s a character signal.
What tourist behavior actually signals
Founders think investors evaluate their deck. In reality, investors primarily evaluate the founders.
When a founder treats San Francisco like Disneyland for startups (a place you visit occasionally to be inspired), it tells you several things: first, that they don’t understand how networks are built; second, that they overestimate the value of one-off exposure and underestimate the value of compounding relationships.
Superficial behavior reveals superficial commitment. If you’re not willing to move your body, your calendar, and your life closer to the people you want money and customers from, why would anyone believe you’re going to grind through the truly hard parts?
Investors may never say this explicitly. They’ll say things like “too early,” or “not sure about the market,” because it’s easier. But under the surface, many passes on European companies that “came to the Valley” are really passes on founders who behaved like tourists.
The correct approach: one-way ticket founders
The founders who actually make the US work for them do something much simpler and much harder: they move. They don’t “spend two weeks here.” They don’t “come every quarter.” They move their default life to the place they want to win.
For European founders aiming at US customers and US investors, that often means buying a one-way ticket to San Francisco (or New York, or wherever your customers are), and accepting that for at least a year, this is home.
A one-way ticket sounds dramatic, but that’s the point. It forces you to flip a switch in your head from “trip” to “transition.”
When you do that, several things change:
You stop optimizing for events and start optimizing for routines. Conferences become optional. What matters is the weekly founder meetup where the same ten people show up. The Tuesday coffee with that one operator who knows everyone. The monthly lunch with your early users. These only become visible and valuable when you’re around long enough.
You let time work for you instead of against you. On a two-week trip, every meeting has to “convert,” or you feel it’s wasted time. When you live somewhere, a first meeting is just the first derivative. You can afford to have people see you again 3 months later with better metrics, and again 6 months later with a US customer list. That arc is what changes minds.
You absorb the local level of ambition. This is fundamental and underrated. Ambition is contagious. The way people talk about what they’re building in SF or NYC is different. When you’re here long enough, your own goalposts move. You stop thinking in terms of “closing a €1M seed” and start thinking in terms of “how do we become default-alive in a $10B market.”
You learn the informal rules. How quickly are intros followed up? What does “we should catch up” actually mean? How much traction is really needed for a seed vs a Series A? These things are never written down. You pick them up by being in the room enough times.
Most importantly: you show the right kind of skin in the game. You’re in the same timezone. You’re available for a last-minute 7 am coffee. You can show up in person tomorrow. That sounds trivial until you contrast it with someone who is always “flying in next month.”
What “all-in” actually looks like in practice
People romanticize the one-way ticket, but day to day, it’s mostly unglamorous.
You rent a small apartment in a non-fancy neighborhood. You share a desk in a coworking space. You spend most of your time doing three things: writing code, talking to users, and meeting people who can introduce you to more users and future investors.
A practical version of “all-in” for a European founder moving to the US:
You move your personal base: your laptop, your clothes, your primary phone number, your calendar. Home is where your calendar defaults to.
You commit to at least 6–12 months. Anything less is tourism in disguise.
You structure your week so that you have repeated touchpoints: the same café in the morning, the same coworking space, the same recurring events. This is how you become a familiar face instead of a visitor.
You actively help others: introduce founders to each other, share your EU knowledge, and show up when someone needs a user, a quote, or a beta tester. The quickest way to build a network is to be useful.
You localize your story: your pitch should make obvious sense to someone who has never lived in your home country. Your pricing, design, and onboarding shouldn’t scream “built for somewhere else.”
Notice what’s missing from this list: “attend as many conferences as possible.” By the time you live somewhere, conferences are a side quest. The real game happens in smaller rooms, more often, with people you now know by first name.
But do you really have to move?
Not every startup needs to move to the US. If your market is primarily in Europe, your regulation is local, and your customers are there, staying might be the rational choice.
The point is not “everyone should move to San Francisco.” The point is: if your customers, competitors, and most natural investors are in the US, half-measures are a bad strategy. Either you build a US-centric company and accept the cost of becoming a US founder, or you don’t. Trying to get US outcomes with tourist behavior is the worst of both worlds.
Investors are very good at reading which side of that line you’re on. They don’t just listen to what you say; they look at where you are, again and again. The founders who end up with the prominent US rounds are usually the ones who quietly moved six months before anyone heard of them.
The simple filter
If you’re a European founder thinking about the US, here’s a useful filter: would you be willing to buy a one-way ticket to San Francisco, stay for at least a year, and treat that time as the default, not an exception?
If the answer is no, that’s fine. You can build a good company in Europe. But then stop pretending that flying in for conferences is a substitute for being there.
If the answer is yes, then act like it. Move. Take the smaller apartment, the coworking desk, the awkward coffees. Let geography and time compound in your favor. Become a local.
