I want to give you something different this week. Not a signal. A pattern.
Only 15% of European climate tech startups graduate from seed to Series B. In the US, it's 25%. European climate tech raised €17 billion in 2025, down from €27 billion the year before, while US investment in the sector grew 27% in the same period.
The capital gap gets most of the attention. I want to talk about something less discussed: the companies that had the capital and still failed to establish themselves.
I've watched this pattern up close, on both sides of the Atlantic and across three continents. Here's what actually separates the ones who make it from the ones who don't.
Mistake one: they lead with an expatriate who knows the product, not the market.
A European tech executive sent to run US expansion, or a US founder sent to open Europe, spends the first six months learning things a local hire would already know. Research this year found this remains the norm despite clear evidence it slows growth. The failure rate for European companies entering the US sits around 70%. The pattern reverses just as often the other way.
Knowing your technology deeply is not the same as knowing how procurement decisions actually get made in a market you've never operated in.
Mistake two: they mistake a big-name partner for market access.
Founders regularly assume a signed relationship with a major OEM, bank, or agency will carry them through the hard part. It rarely does. A logo on a slide is not a distribution channel. The companies that scale build direct commercial relationships, buyer by buyer, market by market, rather than betting the strategy on one flagship name.
Mistake three: they build the infrastructure before they have the customer.
Northvolt raised nearly $16 billion and still collapsed. The pattern repeats at smaller scale constantly: hire aggressively, lock in long-lead equipment, build what looks impressive on a pitch deck, before revenue validates any of it. When the market tightens, as it always eventually does, these companies are the ones with no room left to maneuver.
What the companies that do make it share.
They enter a new market with someone who already has standing there, existing relationships, existing credibility, someone who can get a meeting in week one instead of month six. They validate commercial demand before they scale operational cost. And they treat market entry as a structured process with a plan and a timeline, not an improvised expansion led by whoever happens to be available.
That is precisely the function I provide for climate tech companies entering Europe or the Americas.
A structured market-entry sprint: a real map of your niche, a prioritised list of targets and partners, and the first qualified meetings already booked, so you're not learning the market from zero, you're starting from where I already stand in it.
If you're planning to enter a new region in the next two quarters, reply directly. I'll tell you honestly what it would take.
— André
Sources: Sifted, March 2026 · World Fund Report 2026 · Foothold America, February 2026 · Net Zero Investor, August 2025