I am writing this at 4:30 am from pre-dawn Santa Monica, where we have just pushed Dex’s latest AI Career Matchmaking product launch live a full four weeks earlier than planned. Right now we’re shipping new features every 48 hours. This is the pace it takes to compete here, and what it has been like ever since I stepped off the plane in Los Angeles as one of the first UK companies to be accepted into a16z’s Speedrun programme.
I thought I understood what building a startup was. After all, we’d been building Dex for close to six months by the time we came out here, and I’ve spent a decade in startups, scaleups and VC. But what I’ve encountered in the US isn’t just another level — it’s another universe.
Here, building isn’t careful or cautious. It’s aggressive. It’s risk-on. It’s the assumption that if you’re not moving at breakneck speed, someone else is about to overtake you.
The contrast with the UK could not be sharper. In London, efficiency, modesty and pragmatism are celebrated. On the West Coast, at the early stage, those virtues barely register. The US default is speed, scale and unabashed ambition.
The programme
Speedrun (the term gamers use to describe the attempt to complete a game in the fastest time possible) seeks to condense years of learning and experience into 12 incredibly intense weeks.
The pace is frightening. Multiple teams in this cohort have hit $1m ARR in less than six weeks, teams of two or three “cracked” engineers revel in how “locked in they are” (996 is cool again), nobody seems to drink alcohol anymore, and founders are rarely more than three feet from their laptops.
Whilst the vibes have been intense, the content has been extraordinary. We’ve had access to some of the most successful founders in the world: Ben Horowitz, Howie Liu (Airtable), Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) and Gil Elbaz (AdSense) have led sessions sharing their experiences and learnings. We’ve also had the chance to sit down multiple times with the GOAT of growth, Andrew Chen, to review our strategies and tactics.
This kind of hands-on support and guidance, from people who have had a front row seat building many of the world's most iconic businesses, is transformational. The range of companies is very broad; there is everything from autonomous mining, AI for security, supply chains and even restaurants. There are several gaming-focused companies which are close to Speedrun’s roots. The most eye-opening to me are the AI Waifus (there are actually two of those doing more than a million ARR!)
This intensity and pace come at a cost. For me personally, it's being away from my family — as one of a handful of ‘founder dads’, missing three months of my young son growing up is a heavy price to pay. Hearing first words over FaceTime isn't quite the same.
The cultural clash
The bigger story, though, isn’t about me or Dex.
It’s about how early-stage venture is changing, and how firms like a16z are increasingly making bold bets earlier, often based on the team and the idea.
Speedrun has found “market fit” over the past couple of years. For this current cohort, more than 14k teams from across the globe signed up, and less than 0.4% made it in.
Drawing talent from all over the world, identifying winning teams and businesses earlier and earlier means that Speedrun is increasingly competing with non-US early-stage funds on their own turf.
In our fundraise, the a16z Speedrun team moved incredibly quickly and with high conviction. First meeting to term sheet took four days, even with the time zone difference.
I haven't seen the same in Europe, where VC tends to be a little bit slower and a bit more cautious. The data supports this; rounds in Europe take longer and are smaller than their US counterparts.
The stakes for Europe
Europe has world-class engineers, scientists and founders.
Where we’re falling behind is culturally. Too often, the conversation is “what if it goes wrong?” instead of “how big could this be?” Investors, regulators, even founders themselves default to caution when what’s needed is speed and audacity.
Meanwhile, bureaucracy and over-regulation slow everything down. Launches are delayed by months, companies burn resources on compliance instead of product and fragmented markets make scaling harder than it should be. The result is that the highest-value companies — and the value they create — end up in the US.
If Europe wants to matter in the next wave, it has to change the terms of the game. Founders need to swing harder, earlier. Investors need to fuel ambition, not temper it. And the ecosystem as a whole has to reward risk, not punish it. Because unless Europe learns to play big, its most ambitious founders will keep getting on planes — and not coming back.
