The pitch a European founder hears about London has not changed much in a decade: it is the largest startup ecosystem outside the United States, a magnet for capital and talent, the obvious first stop for anyone building something ambitious on this side of the Atlantic.
In fact, London grew nearly 30% in 2025 and now sits third globally, with more than 11,000 startups and over $14 billion USD in funding.
But founders on the ground now describe a market that has gotten harder to break into. In London, they report fundraising cycles six to nine months from pitch to term sheet, with investors fixated on financial metrics over narrative.
Capital is focusing heavily on proven teams: the room is crowded, the checks are slower, and the bar for attention keeps climbing.
Some founders have started doing the math differently, however.
Consider a British deep-tech company building artificial intelligence for wastewater treatment, founded by people who came up through the London scene and knew it well. They did not move to Berlin or Paris; they moved to Birmingham, Alabama.
The company is Nyad, and its co-founder and CEO, Virginia Szepietowski, made that call.
The pull was not a single grant or a tax break, but a harder-to-quantify sense that there was room to be early. Whereas in London the real conversations happen behind closed doors that newcomers cannot find – and the market remains deeply saturated – Birmingham’s doors were open, and the city’s startup ecosystem had only reached critical mass in the past eighteen months.
That timing matters more than the relocation itself. Birmingham is not actively recruiting European founders, and the leaders of its main startup incubator are candid about this: they accept international founders, but are not actively courting them. There is no glossy landing program, or founder visa pipeline dressed up for export.
What exists, instead, is possibility: an ecosystem that has matured to the point where an outsider can arrive, find capital, and point to others who did the same.
The capital is real – and more patient than the metrics-first mood in London. Alabama runs a statewide public-private fund, Innovate Alabama, that backs early companies through programs like Techstars and follows on with state money.
Szepietowski, for example, received an early grant from Birmingham’s incubator Innovation Depot and $25,000 from the state’s innovation arm as first capital. Everything after that – just under $2 million across roughly ten treatment plants in four states – came from private investment. The public money did not carry them; it got them to the line where private money could see them.
This is the detail that should interest a European founder more than any single success story. The city has produced a genuine anchor: Fleetio, a fleet-management software company, raised a $450 million round in 2025 that pushed it past a $1.5 billion valuation.
One unicorn does not make a hub. But events like Sloss.tech, Birmingham’s tech conference, are drawing founders and investors that the city couldn’t have convened five years ago.
Skepticism, too, is warranted. A single large outcome can flatter an ecosystem that is still thin underneath, and the state-backed model that makes Birmingham attractive is, by the admission of the people running it, fragile and not built to last forever.
Innovate Alabama describes its role as speed funding: it comes in for a year or two to give a company breathing room. Funding, as one of its leaders put it, is always the gap. And that gap, between early public support and durable private capital, is where the Birmingham model faces a challenge.
The city has shown it can get founders to the starting line. Whether it can carry them past it is a different question.
For a European founder weighing the move, the calculation is not Birmingham versus London on equal terms. London wins on depth, talent density, and proximity to European markets, and it will keep winning on those for years. But for a specific company at a specific stage trying to get seen, a smaller American city may offer something London has stopped giving away freely: access.
The broader pattern extends beyond Birmingham. As Europe’s flagship hubs grow more disciplined and competitive, founders are increasingly looking outward: some move to other European cities; a few are looking past the obvious U.S. destinations – San Francisco, New York – toward mid-sized cities that weren’t on the founder map five years ago.
Birmingham is one of them now, having reached the point where an outsider can arrive, build something real, and become the reason the next outsider looks twice. Whether that becomes a trend or stays a handful of stories depends on what the city does next.
The founders are already doing the math. The question is whether the city can keep giving them a reason to.
Featured image: Clark Tibbs via Unsplash+
