Boris Wertz, founder of version one ventures and board partner at Andreessen Horowitz about the importance of U.S. VCs

In the last speech of this years IdeaLab! Boris Wertz from version one ventures talked about the importance of US-investors. As Boris pointed out U.S.-VCs have several advantages compared with their European counterparts. The american VCs often have more money to invest, because they are bigger and more international. And another huge advantage is that the US-VCs are oftentimes more risk friendly than the European ones. The European investors like it to systematically build up many small opportunities but are afraid of going “all-in“.

Boris explained every company has to raise money from U.S.-VCs at a certain point. Some need to do this at a very early stage and some should take their time and wait for the perfect opportunity, depending on the business model.

But how do you raise money from investors so far away?

Boris mentioned important advices how your company should be when looking for american investors:

1. 1. Get your startup past the seed stage!
2. 2. Get U.S. customers/ be part of the US market. 
3. 3. Build a team with experience doing business in the U.S.
4. 4. Make sure you have U.S. presence!
5. 5. Try to have as much contact to interesting people as possible and build relationships stateside!