One hundred and seventy-six of the 190 funds in this database invest only in the United States.
That is 93%. If you are building outside America, most of this list is closed to you before you write a single word, and no fund page says so on the homepage.
Knowing which 7% is left is worth more than any pitch advice.
US VCs - Seed + Series A is a free, ungated database of 190 American venture funds, with 13 fields per row: name, full description, domain, LinkedIn, rounds covered, investment locations, portfolio link, focus markets, general email, check size, HQ address, and state.
Below: how concentrated American venture really is, what these funds write, what they fund, and what the 93% figure means if you are not American.
What you will find in this article
- How concentrated US venture capital is, and how that compares to Europe
- Which stages these funds actually cover
- Check sizes, and why a third of the file will not tell you theirs
- The sector that beats AI in this dataset
- What to do if you are a non-US founder
- How to get from 190 funds to a shortlist you can work
California holds nearly half the funds in this database. Add New York and Massachusetts and three states cover 66%.
At city level it tightens further. San Francisco has 37 funds, New York 23, Menlo Park 12, Palo Alto 11, and Boston 11.
Group the Bay Area properly and the picture is stark: San Francisco, Menlo Park, and Palo Alto together hold 60 of 190 funds, or 32%. Roughly a third of American seed and Series A capital sits inside a 40-mile stretch of one state.
Twenty-five states appear in total, which sounds broad until you notice that fourteen of them hold one or two funds each.
The contrast with Europe is the whole story
We built the European equivalent of this database, covering 2,555 funds across 35 countries. Setting the two side by side explains most of what founders find confusing about raising on each continent.
In Europe, the largest single country holds 22% of funds. In the US, a single state holds 46%. Europe's top five cities cover roughly a fifth of the market; three American towns cover a third.
American venture has a capital and Europe does not. That has consequences beyond trivia.
Proximity is a real advantage in the US and much less so in Europe. Being in the Bay Area puts you within driving distance of a third of the market. There is no European city where that is true.
Network effects are tighter. In a market this concentrated, partners know each other, deals get discussed informally, and a reference travels fast in both directions.
European founders are geographically disadvantaged in a way that has nothing to do with company quality. Which brings us back to the 93%.
Eighty-eight percent do seed. Thirty-five percent do pre-seed, which is a meaningful share of firms willing to write a first institutional check into something that barely exists.
Compare that with the corporate venture market, where our Corporate Ventures database found only 6% of funds doing pre-seed. If you are very early, traditional US venture is a far more realistic door than corporate strategic capital.
Twenty firms in this file describe themselves in first-check language: first partner, first check, day one, inception. Greylock states plainly that over 80% of its investments are the first check in. That framing is worth searching the description column for, because those firms are structurally more open to companies without traction.
What they write
Check size is filled for 125 of the 190 funds, or 66%. Among those, the median entry ticket is $500,000 and the median ceiling sits near $5 million.
The distribution of entry tickets is genuinely wide:
Twenty-five funds start below $250,000. Twenty start between $250,000 and $500,000. Twenty-three between $500,000 and $1 million. Twenty between $1 million and $2 million. And 32 start at $2 million or above.
That top group matters. A quarter of the funds that disclose will not write a first check under $2 million, which means they are not seed investors in any practical sense regardless of how they label themselves. Filtering on the rounds column alone will put them on your list incorrectly.
A caution on this column: some entries record fund size rather than per-deal check, with one value reaching into the billions. Read the raw text before you filter.
The remaining third publish nothing. For those, the check size is a first-call question, not a research question.
Health and bio beat AI
Grouping the focus markets across all 190 funds:
Health, biotech, medtech, and life sciences lead at 34%. Artificial intelligence follows at 26%, fintech at 23%, consumer and marketplaces at 22%, climate and energy at 14%, then SaaS and enterprise software at 13% alongside deep tech and hardware at 13%. Cybersecurity sits at 9%, crypto and web3 at 8%, industrial and supply chain at 8%, space and defense at 6%.
Health leading AI by eight points runs against the prevailing narrative, and there is a structural reason. Life sciences investing requires specialist funds with specialist diligence, so the category supports a large number of dedicated firms. AI shows up inside almost every other category rather than only as its own.
The median fund lists four sectors, which is tighter than the five to seven typical of European funds. American venture specializes more, and generalist positioning is less common than the brand names suggest.
If you are not an American founder
Back to the number at the top. One hundred and seventy-six of 190 funds list their investment location as the United States only.
The fourteen that do not are the ones worth finding, and the investment locations column names them directly. Some list combinations like the US plus LatAm, India, and EMEA. Others are explicitly regional within America, covering the Pacific Northwest or the Southwest, which narrows rather than widens their scope.
Three practical routes if you are outside the US.
Filter the investment locations column first, before anything else. It takes one sort and removes 93% of wasted effort.
Consider US incorporation. Many funds that say "US only" mean US-domiciled rather than US-founded. A Delaware entity with American operations changes the answer for a meaningful share of them. This is a real decision with tax and legal consequences, so take proper advice rather than doing it on a spreadsheet's say-so.
Build the American proof first. US funds back companies with US customers far more readily than companies with only domestic traction. Landing three American logos changes the conversation more than any warm introduction.
For European founders, our European seed and Series A analysis covers the domestic alternative, including why European rounds typically price 20 to 40% below comparable American ones.
Getting from 190 to a working list
Investment locations first if you are outside the US. Everything else is secondary until that filter runs.
Stage second, and read the check size alongside it. A fund listing "Seed" with a $2 million minimum is not a seed fund for a company raising $800,000.
Sector third. Median four sectors per fund means the focus markets column is a real signal rather than a hedge. If you are not in it, you are not a fit.
Then read the descriptions. Every one of the 190 has a full description, and this is the field most people skip. It tells you whether a fund leads, whether it writes first checks, what it has backed, and how it talks about itself. Four minutes per fund here saves weeks.
Then find the warm path. Portfolio links are present for 97% of funds. Find the company closest to your space and ask that founder for the introduction. Warm introductions convert at several times the rate of cold contact, and this column is how you find them.
General email is available for 57% of funds, which makes it a fallback rather than a plan.
Five ways to waste this file
Ignoring the investment locations column. The single most expensive mistake available here for a non-US founder.
Trusting the rounds column alone. Read it together with check size. Thirty-two funds will not write below $2 million.
Filtering check size without cleaning it. The column mixes per-deal ranges with fund-level figures.
Skipping the descriptions. They are complete for all 190 and carry more signal than any other field, including which firms lead and which write first checks.
Emailing the general inbox as a first move. It exists for 57% of funds and works as a last resort. The portfolio link and a warm introduction beat it consistently.
FAQ
Is the database free? Yes. No form, no email, no gate. Open the sheet and make a copy. It contains three identical tabs, so deduplicate before importing.
How many funds does it include? 190 unique US venture funds across 25 states.
What stages do US VCs invest at? Seed for 88% of funds and Series A for 72%. Thirty-five percent also do pre-seed, and 30% continue into Series B.
What is a typical US seed check? Among the 125 funds that disclose, the median entry ticket is $500,000 and the median ceiling is around $5 million. A third of disclosing funds start at $2 million or above.
Which state has the most VC funds? California, with 88 of 190. San Francisco, Menlo Park, and Palo Alto together hold 32% of the entire database.
Can non-US startups raise from these funds? Most will not invest outside the US. One hundred and seventy-six of 190 list the United States as their only investment location, so filter that column before doing anything else.
What sectors do US VCs focus on? Health and life sciences lead at 34%, ahead of AI at 26%, fintech at 23%, and consumer at 22%. The median fund lists four sectors.
How complete is the data? Descriptions, domains, LinkedIn URLs, and investment locations are complete for all 190. Portfolio links cover 97%, focus markets 95%, check sizes 66%, and general emails 57%.
What to take away
Ninety-three percent of these funds invest in the US only. If you are building elsewhere, that column decides your list before any other consideration.
California holds 46% of American seed and Series A funds, and three Bay Area towns hold 32%. US venture has a geographic center in a way European venture does not.
Eighty-eight percent do seed and 35% do pre-seed. Traditional venture goes considerably earlier than corporate venture, where only 6% touch pre-seed.
Health and life sciences lead the sector mix at 34%, ahead of AI. Specialist categories support specialist funds.
Read the descriptions. They are complete for every fund in the file and tell you what the structured columns cannot, starting with who actually writes first checks.
We build research and outreach systems at exactly this scale, whether the targets are investors, their portfolios, or your customers. If that is the work you need done, book a free consultation.
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