The obvious move for any UK founder is expansion into the US Doing so unlocks access to the US market, abundant sources of capital, and increased enterprise buyers per square mile compared to elsewhere. What might not be so obvious is how exactly to get there.
Most founders underestimate how long the process of moving to the US actually takes. The founder’s product itself usually translates fine, but what slows the move is the immigration process itself. The legal system, tax rules, hiring norms, and work culture function in totally unfamiliar ways compared to the UK, and each deserves attention.
Why the US keeps pulling UK companies across the pond
Part of the appeal of the US for founders is the funding available to early-stage start-ups compared to most European rounds. The US seed and Series A round sizes consistently outpace both the UK and European equivalents (see: NVCA Yearbook). Enterprise buyers in the US are also more willing to experiment with newer vendors than their European counterparts, where the paperwork is pristine. And since the US provides access to one large, unified market that can easily spread across states, products can scale more quickly than in Europe, which is why the dominant players in many industries are American. Usually, the questions facing UK startups are not whether to scale to the US, but exactly when and how.
Why US expansion is more complex than most founders expect
Most founders understand why they should expand, but many underestimate the work required to do so. Going to the US is not a mere branch office decision; it requires starting a second company that shares the initial brand in the UK, while occupying a different legal system, tax regime, labour market, and commercial norms.
Founders who have spent years navigating the UK’s Companies House, PAYE, and HMRC arrive expecting something broadly comparable; the US provides totally new systems. Payroll runs state by state, with separate withholding, unemployment insurance, and reporting requirements in each jurisdiction (see: IRS Employer’s Tax Guide, Publication 15). Health insurance is private, not a public good. Either side can end the employment relationship at any time, thereby replacing notice periods and tribunals (see: US Department of Labor). In the US, contracts are longer, procurement cycles are slower, and legal bills arrive monthly rather than at the year’s-end. These reasons are why expanding to the US needs to be planned as its own project, rather than as a mere extension of what is already working in London.
Legal and operational setup
The default set-up is a Delaware C-Corp. It uses the structure that US investors expect, avoiding any later restructuring that can be expensive and create tax problems later. For a UK company with an existing Ltd, the usual approach is to establish a US company owned by the UK parent, often in the form of a Delaware subsidiary. Founders who raise serious money from US funds typically restructure later, with the Delaware company becoming the parent and the UK Ltd becoming its subsidiary. Each path has tax and IP consequences, including how the IP migrates, what gets taxed on transfer, and how future US fundraising will be treated; all this should be modelled before the first filing to ensure the structure aligns with the expectations and needs of US investors.
Beyond establishing the entity itself, there is a longer list of required setups. EIN registration with the IRS, state foreign qualifications for employees, a US bank account, sales tax registrations in certain states (see: Supreme Court of the United States, South Dakota v. Wayfair), and US-style employment documentation that may be beyond the typical London lawyer. Together, these become months-long work requiring a real plan.
The importance of visa status
This is worth a dedicated discussion.
Plenty of UK founders discover too late that one cannot simply arrive in New York and begin running operations. A business visitor entry, via the B-1 or the visa waiver program for UK passport holders, does not permit activities necessary for scaling a business: hiring staff, managing a team, signing contracts with customers, attending board meetings with US investors. The moment that work becomes operational rather than merely exploratory, having the wrong status becomes a material problem that is not easily resolved.
Many senior hires prefer meeting the founder face-to-face before accepting an offer. When the founder is not in the US, hiring may stall. Sales cycles may also stretch when face-to-face meetings are not available. Serious business development often takes place in physical proximity, not over Zoom. A UK founder trying to run a US launch remotely from Shoreditch can lose months of progress due to these structural frictions before realizing the issue is one of scheduling.
This is why conversations around planning must begin early, in the immigration planning stage. Depending on the founder’s circumstances, several immigration pathways may be available. Common options include the O-1 visa for individuals with extraordinary ability, the E-2 treaty investor visa, and the L-1 visa for intracompany transfers. The most suitable route depends on factors such as company structure, nationality, funding stage, and long-term expansion plans.
Many founders therefore begin organizing their immigration documentation and administrative workflows early, often working with independent immigration attorneys and platforms such as PassRight to align visa planning with broader expansion goals.
Approaching expansion as one project, not four
Founders who consider the move and expansion to the US as a single, integrated project, including legal structuring, taxation, hiring, fundraising, and securing the right visa from the outset, instead of separate tracks that will sort themselves out in sequence, tend to have the most success. Their calendars are built backward, from the first serious US sales quarter to the present. The corporate entity, bank account, first US hire, and founder visa status are ready before the quarter begins. Founders who treat each step as a distinctive problem to solve-as-they-go usually find their planned launches come and go before they are ready to operate. Preparedness is the decisive factor here, not the strength of the product, founder ability, capital, or other material considerations.
In short, UK founders planning their US expansion should solidify their immigration strategy and legal structuring early in the process.
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