Many UK founders believe success is a plane ride away. Gordon Bateman explores why this perception isn’t always true and how learning from overseas ecosystems can elevate the UK’s.
Every founder has heard the story: a 22-year-old Stanford dropout raises $20 million on a pitch deck, scales to a billion in two years, and exits before turning 30. The media feeds us a steady stream of these high-octane success stories, creating a distorted lens about the US investment scene. One where abundance and acceleration are the norm, and capital flows freely to anyone who asks the right way.
Yes, the US venture market is bigger. Yes, exits are louder. Yes, capital seems simpler to access. In reality, what looks like ease from the outside is often just a different environment, with its own opportunities, challenges, and trade-offs to consider. And where UK founders see geography as their glass ceiling, there’s a genuinely empowering lesson that can change the course of success even closer to home.
Bridging the mindset gap
Confidence is one of the most consistent cultural gaps between the UK and the US – not only in how it’s carried, but how it’s interpreted too. In the UK, being bold in your self-belief can be misread as arrogance. Founders often feel they need to stay modest, grounded, and even understated in the face of a potential investor to be more ‘likeable’.
But in US boardrooms, confident storytelling is seen as a proxy for competence and vision. The ability to project a market-changing idea, and make others believe it’s inevitable, can be as powerful as the product itself. This doesn’t mean UK founders need to fake bravado. However, by understanding what investors are actually evaluating, it becomes easier to reach them in more resonating ways. Belief systems supersede business models any day.
Funds beyond their face value
In the US, funding often comes earlier, and more flexibly, than it does in the UK. Founders can raise meaningful sums without needing a formal valuation, and there’s more space for belief-based investing. This makes early capital feel more accessible compared to the UK’s often slower, stage-gated approach – especially for pre-MVP and early-stage organisations.
Add to that larger fund sizes, generous tax incentives, and a more fluid investor appetite for pre-seed and seed deals, and it’s not hard to see why the US is so alluring. But faster money doesn’t always mean easier growth. While this access can feel liberating for ambitious entrepreneurs, it also brings higher stakes and heavier investor expectations.
US funds usually deploy capital on behalf of LPs with aggressive return expectations. This means higher pressure, faster decision cycles, and less tolerance for sideways steps. And with a series of often overlooked costs and criteria to account for – from legal fees to local hires – it’s often far more complex to make a reality than it seems.
It’s not easier, it’s just different
This isn’t about pretending the US isn’t a strong investment scene. It is. But so is the UK. We have the third-largest VC ecosystem in the world, yet a growing number of founders are convinced that overseas is somehow ‘easier’. It’s not – it’s simply different. Both ecosystems offer immense value, but to varying kinds of founders at different stages, with different needs.
When Angus Young, the founder of a great early-stage business in the talent space, connected with us at Climb24, he had already received feedback from UK investors suggesting his idea “wasn’t strong enough”. But we saw something different – a spark, a hunger, and a clear use case that needed a different lens.
Through Climb’s network, we helped him reach out to the right people. Soon, he was in conversations with the ex-senior vice president for VR in Sony, ex-Hollywood actor turned lawyer, investor, and entrepreneur, Jeff Cohen, and a board of backers who could help him unlock traction, while his R&D base remained in the UK. Now, UK investors are leaning back in – and the value is returning home.
That’s a crucial point. There’s a lingering fear that when founders head abroad, we’re haemorrhaging talent, IP, and long-term value. But in reality, it often circles back. Overseas capital becomes part of the UK story, networks expand, and confidence compounds significantly.
Ex-Microsoft CTO Jennifer Byrne, a speaker at our 2025 Climb25 business festival, says founders need to change the playbook – and she’s right. If you’re seeking scale, mentorship, market access, or heavyweight board members, investment alone won’t cut it, no matter which territory you’re searching in. The smartest founders borrow the best of both ecosystems and build something greater than either alone.
Gordon Bateman is the founder of Investor Ladder and the ClimbUK Festival of Business Growth, taking place on 2nd and 3rd July 2025 in Leeds
Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and MarioGuti