February 3, 2026 · 7 min read
Where Should You Launch in the USA? A Site Selection Guide
Where should a European company open its first US location?
Choose the region where your category's customers, talent and capital already cluster, not the cheapest or the best-known city. Boston and Cambridge suit biotech, medtech and research-driven B2B; San Diego suits life sciences; New York suits media, finance and consumer brands; Austin suits cost-sensitive software teams; the Bay Area suits deep-tech and venture-led scaling.
Four criteria that decide the answer
Site selection becomes straightforward once you weigh four things honestly: where your customers concentrate, where the talent you need already works, where the capital that funds your category sits, and what the total cost of being there is over three years.
- Customer density — how many target accounts sit within a two-hour drive.
- Talent pool — can you hire your third, fifth and tenth employee locally.
- Capital and ecosystem — investors, accelerators, universities and partners in your field.
- Cost reality — salaries, real estate, state tax and the cost of being wrong.
The short version by category
Biotech, medtech and research-heavy B2B usually land in Boston or Cambridge, Massachusetts — the density of hospitals, universities, venture capital and specialised talent removes years of relationship building. San Diego is the strong alternative for life sciences.
Consumer, media and financial services tend towards New York. Cost-sensitive software teams increasingly choose Austin, Denver or Raleigh. Deep tech that needs venture scale still gravitates to the Bay Area, at the highest cost per employee in the country.
The decision you are actually making
A first location is a commitment to a network, not a lease. The right question is not 'where is cheapest' but 'where would our first ten meaningful relationships be easiest to build'. Answer that and the address follows.
Continue with the book
Get the executive summary by email, or use the five-minute readiness check drawn from the book’s decision framework.