62 European Unicorns Left. 50 Went to the US. Here's What the Data Says.

In 2022, Gainsight — a San Francisco-based customer success platform — acquired inSided, the company Robin van Lieshout and I had built in Amsterdam since 2010. We'd spent twelve years growing a community platform for B2B software companies. Hundreds of clients across Europe and the US. A real business.

I don't tell this story to complain. Gainsight was a good outcome. But I've been asked many times since: why an American buyer? Why not a European acquirer, or a European VC round that kept the company independent and here?

The honest answer: no one on this side of the Atlantic showed up with the same speed, the same conviction, or the same willingness to move. The problem wasn't money. It was speed. It was confidence. It was the ability to get to a term sheet before someone else did.

The unicorn problem

Since 1995, 62 European unicorns have relocated abroad. 50 of them went to the United States. One American unicorn made the reverse trip. You read that correctly: a 50-to-1 migration ratio, sustained over three decades.

The result is visible in the stock of unicorns today. More than 55% of all unicorns worldwide are in the US. Less than 8% are in the EU. Less than 1% are in the Netherlands.

This isn't an argument about talent or quality. European founders build extraordinary companies. The problem is what happens next — where the capital comes from, where the headquarters end up, where the value accrues.

American acquisitions of Dutch startups: the trend line

The Baarsma/Upis paper tracks US acquisitions of Dutch startups from 1998 to 2025. The acceleration since 2020 is striking.

The jump from 84 in 2020 to 116 in 2021 isn't noise. Something structurally changed after the pandemic — likely a combination of valuation compression creating buying opportunities, American PE and VC funds becoming more aggressive in European markets, and European companies increasingly unable to access the growth capital needed to stay independent.

Computer software and services is the leading target sector: nearly 250 transactions between 1998 and 2025. It's also the sector where American acquirers are most overrepresented relative to other foreign buyers. If you're a Dutch B2B SaaS company, you are the primary target.

The capital flows tell a cleaner story

Since 2000, the Netherlands has generated and deployed €136.1B in venture capital activity. Of that, only €22.7B stayed in Dutch companies. €34.1B went directly into US companies. The net VC outflow — accounting for inflows of €23.6B against outflows of €113.3B — is €89.7B.

Let that net outflow number land. €89.7 billion. That's capital that left the Dutch startup ecosystem — capital that won't compound here, won't support follow-on rounds here, won't build European institutional knowledge about building software companies.

American parties have invested €14.9B in Dutch companies since 2000, making them the single largest foreign VC investor in the Netherlands — more than half of all foreign VC deployed here. So the US is simultaneously the largest buyer of Dutch startups and the largest foreign investor in them. The relationship is not adversarial; it's asymmetric.

The VC intensity gap

The structural reason behind all of this shows up in one comparison: VC investment as a percentage of GDP.

The US invests 0.21% of GDP in venture capital. The Netherlands invests 0.11%. The EU average is 0.04%. The Netherlands is notably better than the European average — but still only half the US rate. The broader EU is at less than one-fifth.

The paper notes that 1 in 10 US VC investments eventually results in the company relocating. When you're investing at five times the European rate, and a meaningful fraction of those investments end in relocation, the arithmetic is brutal.

What this is actually about

The conventional narrative is that Europe lacks ambition, or lacks talent, or lacks the right incentive structures. Some of that is true. But the Baarsma/Upis data points at something more operational: American capital is faster, more decisive, and more willing to move pre-diligence than European capital.

US PE and VC funds are the fastest-growing buyer category in Dutch startup acquisitions, peaking at 25 fund acquisitions per year in 2023–2024. These aren't strategic acquirers who need months to run integration analyses. These are professional investors who know how to get to a decision quickly.

European funds move slower. Part of that is structural — more fragmented LP bases, more conservative investment mandates, longer IC processes. But part of it is informational: European funds often don't have enough technical conviction at the point where the deal needs to be won.

The moment of maximum leverage in any competitive deal is before the LOI, when conviction — not diligence — determines who gets the allocation. American funds have built processes around reaching that conviction quickly. European funds, broadly, have not.

Back to inSided

Robin and I weren't looking for an exit in 2022. We were looking for a growth partner — someone who understood what we'd built and was willing to back the next phase with real resources. Gainsight showed up with conviction. Nobody in Europe came close to matching it, not in speed and not in terms.

That pattern — the American buyer or investor arriving with a speed and decisiveness that European capital can't match — is what the Baarsma/Upis data quantifies at scale. It's not isolated. It's systemic.

I don't think European VCs are less capable. I think they're operating with less information at the moment it matters most. Technical conviction — knowing what you're actually backing, not just what the CTO told you in a pitch — is the variable most directly under a fund's control.

One thing European funds can change today

X-Ray exists precisely for this problem. A full technical assessment of a company's architecture, security, code quality, and AI readiness — delivered in 1 business day, before the LOI. The part of the deal where most European funds are operating completely in the dark.

If you can validate technical conviction in a day, you can move to terms before the American buyer gets on a plane. That's not a small advantage. Given the data in this paper, it might be one of the few asymmetric edges left in European venture.

Sources

• Baarsma, B. & Upis, G. — "Nederlandse groeibedrijven zoeken laatste vijf jaar vaker kapitaal in de VS", PwC/ESB, 2025
• Barbara Baarsma, Chief Economist PwC NL & Professor University of Amsterdam