For startup founders, capital is only the starting point. What truly moves the needle is the guidance from investors who have been there before and have built and scaled companies themselves. Yet in Europe, this kind of support remains the exception rather than the rule. A mere 1.8% of VC partners in Europe have prior operator experience, creating a gap that limits how far founders can go.

The experience gap

Europe has no shortage of technical talent or ambition. What it lacks is an investor base that genuinely understands the founder journey. The reason for this imbalance is historical. Many of Europe’s VC firms were built by financiers, not founders. The traditional path to becoming a partner was through banking, consulting, or institutional investing – careers that promote risk management and analytical rigour, but not necessarily the hands-on understanding of scaling a global company.  

This dynamic has real consequences. European founders often struggle to find partners who can offer actionable operational guidance, relevant networks for capital and customers, and commercial strategies and tactics – rather than capital deployment strategies or board-level oversight. As a result, promising companies fail to achieve global scale, opting for early exits or missing out on their full market potential. Meanwhile, across the pond, the ecosystem has evolved differently, built on the operator-investor model, where deep operational experience is a prerequisite. These firms understand that great founders often need partners who can act as sounding boards, not just shareholders.

The operator-investor super-power  

The real strength of operator-investors lies in the depth of experience, networks, and understanding they bring to every partnership. Having founded and led companies themselves, they understand the challenges and operational and commercial realities of leading a startup. This shared experience builds a kind of trust that purely financial investors often struggle to provide. They can offer the constructive challenge that helps founders grow – rooted in lived understanding, not theory. That authenticity makes their guidance more actionable and more credible for founders navigating uncharted territory. This is particularly important for deeptech founders, where operational investors bring practical experience of moving beyond what works in a lab or concept model, to a cost-competitive, robust product that consistently meets customers’ needs time and time again.

Equally powerful is the network effect that operator-investors bring. Years spent building and scaling companies leave behind deep professional connections across sectors and markets. For founders, access to these networks can accelerate everything from go-to-market partnerships and talent acquisition to later-stage fundraising and international expansion. Operator-investors can tap into their own network of experienced technical and commercial operators, introducing experienced candidates for critical roles such as business development, enterprise sales, or design for manufacturing. Operator-investors can also tap into their advisory network – particularly important for startups, where the right advisor or board director can address specific operational needs more efficiently than full-time hires while opening doors to customers, investors, partners and other high-value relationships.  

These connections can transform investor capital into genuine growth and momentum. Crucially, global networks build global companies, enabling founders to connect with partners and investors across borders. In an increasingly competitive landscape, this international reach often makes the difference between scaling locally and winning globally. In an ecosystem still maturing, this combination of experience, understanding, and access bridges the gap between insight and execution, helping European founders raise money and realise their full potential on the global stage.

Selling the vision  

The final, often overlooked, skill that operator-investors uniquely bring is the ability to sell. This experience is especially critical in deeptech and other highly technical sectors, where founders are typically strong on vision and breakthrough innovation but have had little exposure to go-to-market strategy, commercial planning, or enterprise B2B sales. These gaps can make the difference between achieving traction in months compared to years.

Beyond proving what works in the lab, commercial expertise is essential for turning a concept into a repeatable, customer-ready product. It means understanding how to position a solution, how different go-to-market models function, and how customer service plays an equally vital role in long-term success. Bringing in an operator-investor helps bridge this gap. They can translate vision into reality, bringing together their operational experience, professional networks and sales abilities, so founders can fully apply their strengths and build successful, scalable companies.

The future of European VC

The next decade of European venture capital will belong to firms that are built by founders, for founders, blending capital with capability. Operator-led funds are already starting to reshape the market. They’re faster and more founder-aligned, bringing a new ethos to venture by being grounded in shared experience and empathy.

For European startups to compete on a global scale, they need the kind of partners who can help them translate ambition into global success. The next generation of venture capital will come from those who’ve faced the same challenges and share the same ambition. Europe has the innovation, the talent, and the capital – now it needs partners with the experience to help those strengths scale globally.

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