Expansion to the USA - insights over dinner

For the last few years, we have had the joy of hosting Daniel Glazer (Head of the London Office for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati) for an evening of delicious dinner and discussion about Business Expansion to the USA. The collaboration, with support from HSBC, is one that delivers some fascinating and actionable insights to all those that attend year on year.

The 2024 event happened on Monday (despite the rain, flooding, and canceled trains) and brought together twenty founders and business leaders. The evening covered a range of topics, fundraising, incorporating, cultural challenges, and much more. The bullet points below offer a sample of the insights that were shared:

• If you’re expanding to the USA only incorporate in Delaware, even more so if you want to raise funding. 
• If you’re fundraising from American investors, don’t do the Delaware Flip unless the US investors tell you it's a requirement.
• Local economic development organisations will help you with finding space, accessing grants, and much more.
• Expect to work with specialist advisors - payroll/benefits, bank, business insurance etc and take advice from’ counsel (don’t ‘instruct’ a lawyer as you would in the UK) 
• There are 13,000 different tax jurisdictions in the USA, so take advice.
• Visas are the slowest part of the expansion process, they can take 3-6 months.
• Build user growth or customer traction first - you need to be pulled into the US rather than taking the leap voluntarily too early.
• 70% of VCs in USA built and scaled startups of their own, and only 8% of UK VC's started the same way. American VCs want to be geographically near their portfolio to help build the business. That’s why it’s so hard to attract US funds to lead your round from the UK
• Having big US investors on your cap table will make all the difference to attracting employees and board members - salaries are the most significant expense when expanding to the USA
• You can have an SEIS/EIS-compliant Delaware Flip - it will cost more and take longer but it is possible and will keep your UK investors happier.
• Don't assume your product market fit will look the same in the USA as it does in the UK.
• The first step is to determine what success looks like in the US market, be as specific as possible.

As you can probably tell, Dan is a real fount of knowledge and was so generous in sharing it with our Bristol and Bath community.

The catering from Bristol-based Fennel and Twine was top notch with guests commenting on the “delicious dinner and canapés.” 

Check out Dan's US Expansion, Fundraising & Exit FAQ: https://medium.com/@daniel.glazer/u-s-expansion-and-fundraising-a-comprehensive-faq-3bf143cd5249