The U.S. Shortcut Myth
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Why accelerators can help, why most don’t, and what actually gets European startups across the pond.
The new promise land pitch
If you’re a European founder, you’ve heard the pitch in one form or another. The U.S. needs you. The U.S. is waiting. The U.S. market is basically a welcome party with a term sheet on the table and a partner channel already pre-heated.
It’s an attractive story because it offers something founders crave when they’re exhausted: a shortcut. If you join the right accelerator, the story goes, you won’t have to fight the local learning curve the hard way. You’ll “plug in” to an ecosystem, get investor access, get customers, and—depending on how bold the website copy is—get a near-guarantee of success.
Reality is less cinematic. There are accelerators that are genuinely valuable. There are also many programs that sell certainty when they really offer structure, community, and templates that might fit someone else’s business better than yours.
The practical question isn’t whether accelerators are “good” or “bad.” It’s whether the accelerator model matches the actual problem European startups face when they try to win in the U.S. And in 2026, that problem is less about learning startup basics and more about execution in a market that punishes hesitation and rewards local credibility.
The accelerator world in one breath
A serious accelerator does three things well. It creates velocity. It compresses learning. It lends credibility through its network.
That’s why the top tier matters. The “big three” shorthand is common for a reason: Y Combinator, Techstars, and 500 Global have real deal flow, real alumni networks, and real investor attention. They also have clear, published terms and repeatable operating models, which is not a small thing in a world where “accelerator” can mean anything from a venture program to a paid workshop series with a demo day and a photographer.
If you’re looking for a simple litmus test, start here. The serious programs are transparent about what they invest and how. Y Combinator spells out its standard deal. Techstars publishes its investment terms. 500 Global presents its flagship program as an investment-backed accelerator, not a “guaranteed market entry” product.
Now for the part founders quietly ignore when they’re intoxicated by the unicorn mythology. A data-driven analysis of 9,749 startups that went through the big three found that unicorn outcomes are rare: only about 1.5% of companies reached unicorn status. The “at least $100M valuation” bucket wasn’t exactly raining confetti either: roughly 3.8%. These are not bad odds compared to doing nothing, but they are a cold shower for anyone who believes accelerators manufacture unicorns at scale. An accelerator can increase your surface area for luck. It does not mass-produce nine-figure outcomes.
This is also where the warnings matter, because founders get burned less by “evil accelerators” and more by misaligned ones. If a program sells “investor access” as a product, treats introductions like a commodity, discourages diligence, pressures you to pay to pitch, or promises outcomes it cannot control, you’re not buying acceleration. You’re buying optimism with invoices attached. The marketing language is often designed to make you believe the U.S. is a vending machine, with the accelerator being the coin.
Even when you join a reputable accelerator, the outcomes are still probabilistic. The brand helps, the network helps, the intensity helps, but it does not replace product-market fit, nor does it build your U.S. customer relationships for you. The strongest accelerators increase your surface area for luck. They do not remove the need for execution.
What the best accelerators get right
There is one part of the accelerator value proposition that deserves respect, and it’s the part most founders describe the same way after the fact: a credible network that behaves like a filter.
Top accelerators don’t introduce you to “investors.” They introduce you to investors who already trust the accelerator’s selection process, have pattern recognition for the stage, and are prepared to move quickly when they see something real. The accelerator’s judgment becomes a shorthand for quality, and that shorthand reduces friction.
The same is true on the partner side. Good programs create collisions with operators and companies that can accelerate distribution, hiring, and learning. Not because the accelerator has a magic rolodex, but because it has maintained relationships over time and can make introductions that come with context.
This is the part that matters for European startups. Not the workshops. Not the cohort energy. The trust layer.
The customized route that accelerators don’t deliver
If the U.S. expansion problem were primarily an education problem, accelerators would win more often. But the U.S. expansion problem is usually an execution problem, under conditions of cultural difference and time pressure.
A hands-on market entry approach is built around that reality. It does not try to compress your business into a cohort timeline. It aims to give you credible traction in a market where being unknown is often worse than being wrong.
The model SEIKOURI has used for years is a useful example because it forces a discipline that many advisory models avoid. Responsibility is temporary by design. The work is not to “support” a U.S. expansion indefinitely. The work is to assume operational responsibility for a defined period, establish the foundation, and then hand the keys back to executives who can run it. In practice, that transfer window is about six months on average and is intentionally capped. If leaders aren’t enabled to stand on their own feet within twelve months, the expansion is at risk, no matter how polished the strategy deck looks.
That time-box has an important side effect. It filters out theater. When responsibility has an end date, every action has to answer one question: Does this make the client self-sufficient in the U.S., or does it just make everyone feel busy?
In this model, value is not measured by the number of sessions or the volume of advice. It’s the set of relationships established and the operating cadence created: early customer conversations that don’t die after the first polite call, a pipeline that exists in a CRM and in real human memory, a hiring plan that matches U.S. expectations, and messaging that doesn’t sound like it was translated from a European pitch deck.
The two things that decide US expansion in the real world
There are many moving parts in U.S. entry, but two are consistently decisive because they compound.
The first is capital access when capital is part of the plan. Investors don’t just fund companies. They fund narratives they can defend to their partners, and they fund teams they believe can execute in the U.S. environment. Warm introductions matter, but not in the lazy sense of “here’s a VC.” They matter in the disciplined sense of “this investor has seen this kind of company succeed, understands the operating model, and trusts the person making the introduction because that person has been right before.” Long-running collaboration creates that trust layer. It’s one of the few scalable substitutes for being personally known in the U.S. ecosystem.
The second is strategic alliances and partnerships. In a new market with a different business culture, partnerships aren’t a nice-to-have. They are often the fastest way to borrow credibility, compress distribution, and reduce the odds that you spend a year “building awareness” while your runway evaporates. The hard part is that partnerships are relational. They are built through repeated interaction, reputation, and alignment. A well-kept network of U.S. operators and tech companies can dramatically shorten the time it takes to find real partners, but only if that network is curated, maintained, and used with judgment. Random introductions don’t help. The right introductions do.
This is the overlap between what serious accelerators and hands-on market-entry firms provide. Both can supply a trust layer. The difference is what happens after the introduction. Accelerators typically hand you the room and expect you to perform. A hands-on model can build the room with you, show you how it works, and ensure you can return without training wheels.
The American reality check in 2026
Now to the part that founders often avoid until it becomes unavoidable: the policy and operational environment you’re walking into.
SelectUSA is a useful lens because it reflects the U.S. government’s official posture on foreign direct investment. It exists to attract and facilitate investment into the U.S., and it publishes large cumulative figures about investment facilitated and jobs supported. Those numbers are real in the sense that they are published by government entities and framed as “client-verified.” But that phrasing matters. “Client-verified” is not the same as independently audited, and “since inception” is not the same as “this year” or “next year.” It can be both a meaningful indicator of intent and a misleading proxy for near-term ease.
At minimum, SelectUSA signals that parts of the U.S. government still want inbound investment and still host high-profile convenings to connect investors, companies, and state-level economic development organizations. It is an ecosystem-building function, and ecosystems help.
What it does not guarantee is that your operational reality will be frictionless. In 2026, founders should assume friction in two places, even if the investment promotion messaging remains upbeat.
The first is work authorization. Even if your business is welcomed, the people required to build it may face bottlenecks. U.S. policy discussions and recent federal actions around nonimmigrant worker entry and H-1B mechanics reflect a more restrictive posture and a stronger emphasis on prioritizing U.S. workers. Regardless of where anyone stands politically, this increases planning complexity for foreign-founded teams. It also raises the premium on structuring: which roles must be in the U.S., which can remain in Europe, which can be staffed locally, and how leadership presence is managed without betting the entire plan on a single visa pathway.
The second is messaging versus execution. “America First” rhetoric does not automatically translate into “America closed.” But it does tend to translate into more scrutiny, more process, and less patience for foreign teams that assume entitlement to market attention. Your product can still win. Your company can still rise. But the bar for local credibility goes up, and the cost of naïveté rises with it.
This is why the best expansion strategies treat government programs as one input, not as a thesis. SelectUSA can be a helpful connector and information source. It should not be treated as proof that the U.S. is collectively waiting to welcome your startup with open arms.
The reverse scenario that almost nobody sells
Founders often ask the natural follow-up: if Europe has programs to help startups reach the U.S., do U.S. accelerators do the mirror image and send American startups into Europe?
Not really, at least not at scale in the way the “go-to-U.S.” industry markets itself. The U.S. is a massive domestic market that can absorb years of growth before a startup is forced to internationalize. Europe, by contrast, is commercially important but operationally fragmented, which tends to push U.S. startups toward market-by-market expansion later in their lifecycle rather than early, cohort-based “go-to-Europe” acceleration.
What exists instead is a patchwork of European pull mechanisms and practical export support. The European Innovation Council’s accelerator framework is designed around EU and associated-country eligibility, with pathways for third-country applicants depending on structure and location. Countries such as France have introduced visa frameworks specifically designed to attract founders and tech talent. Meanwhile, the U.S. Commercial Service operates on the outbound side to help American companies navigate export markets, including Europe, but that is not the same as a venture accelerator model designed to manufacture European success.
The asymmetry persists. The U.S. remains the global “must master” market for many European tech companies. Europe remains a major opportunity for U.S. companies, but not one that generates the same level of standardized accelerator marketing.
What founders should do in 2026
In 2026, the playbook that works is not new, trendy, or particularly Instagrammable. It’s the same playbook that has quietly worked for more than a decade, especially for European companies that are serious about building a durable U.S. business.
Treat accelerators as a tool, not a plan. If you get into a serious one, use it for what it’s best at: credibility, network compression, and learning speed. Then get back to the work that actually moves the needle.
Build the trust layer on purpose. Investors and partners in the U.S. do not behave like a public utility that you can tap on demand. Access is relational. Warm introductions that come with judgment, context, and history change outcomes because they change friction.
Execute with a time-box and a handover. The goal is not to become dependent on external help. The goal is to stand up a U.S. operation that your team can run without training wheels. When responsibility is taken on temporarily, transferred deliberately, and capped, you avoid the slow trap that kills expansions: “advice forever, traction never.”
And above all, respect the market. The U.S. rewards speed, clarity, and local credibility. It punishes wishful thinking. If you treat the U.S. as a shortcut, it will become an expensive lesson. If you treat it like an execution problem with cultural constraints, it can become your largest growth lever.