Why the Next Great Founders Will Be Borderless

Elena Burger is joined by a16z’s Angela Strange and Gabriel Vasquez to discuss the rise of the "borderless founder": entrepreneurs who bring the networks and insights of their home markets together with the talent, capital, and speed of Silicon Valley to build global companies. Angela and Gabriel trace how a16z's international investing efforts grew from early work in Latin America into a broader global network, and why AI has accelerated the flow of founders and talent between Silicon Valley and startup ecosystems around the world. They explore the advantages borderless founders can bring, from differentiated talent networks and early customers to strong local brands and communities that help open doors across markets. They also discuss how founder diasporas can function like powerful alumni networks, why spending time in Silicon Valley can help founders recalibrate around speed and ambition, and how the next generation of global companies may increasingly be built across multiple countries from day one. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 00:54 - Who Borderless Founders Are & the Origins of a16z's Global Strategy 06:35 - What International Founders Bring to the Bay Area 10:26 - Borderless vs Immigrant vs International Founder 18:04 - The Three Native Advantages: Talent, Brand & Customers 23:08 - Do Borderless Founders Have an Edge in Silicon Valley? 27:08 - How a16z Approaches a New Country or Geography 33:15 - Repeat Founders & Building Long-Term Relationships 36:50 - The Journey from Seed to Growth for International Founders 40:30 - Advice for Founders Thinking of Moving to Silicon Valley 42:25 - 10 Years From Now: The Global Topology of Startups Resources: Follow Angela Strange on X: https://x.com/astrange Follow Gabriel Vasquez on X: https://x.com/GEVS94 Follow Elena Burger on X: https://x.com/VirtualElena https://www.a16z.news/p/rise-of-the-borderless-founder Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends! Find a16z on X: https://twitter.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711 Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see http://a16z.com/disclosures.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Angela Strange?

  Anyone international, whether you're building primarily in your home country to start, but that you have global ambitions, you're a borderless founder.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  They tend to have a chip on their folder. It's the desire that they want to become the benchmark and prove something to the world that regardless of where they were born, they can still achieve greatness.

• 0:17Angela Strange?

  Unlike in the US where you can get everything as a service at every layer of the stack, in many other markets, you just can't do that. There's no fraud as a stack, KYC as a stack. So you end up having to build everything. There's this interesting dichotomy in this technology is very democratic. It distributes the ability to get it anywhere in the world. It opens up other markets, but then it also concentrates the kind of epicenter of where things are moving the fastest to the Bay Area.

• 0:43Speaker 02

  10 years from now, what do you hope to see in the global topology of startups everywhere in the world?

• 0:51Angela Strange?

  I think.

• 0:53Erik Torenberg?

  Some of the most interesting companies in Silicon Valley today aren't really from Silicon Valley at all. Their founders may have grown up in Brazil, Sweden, Germany, Poland, or somewhere else entirely. Their engineering teams may span multiple countries. And increasingly, they're using the networks of their home markets alongside the speed and resources of Silicon Valley to build global companies. In this episode, Elena Berger sits down with Angela Strange and Gabriel Vasquez to unpack what they call the borderless founder and why AI is accelerating this shift. They discuss the hidden advantages global founders can bring in talent, customers, and distribution, the power of founder diasporas,

• 1:34Erik Torenberg?

  and why the bridge between Silicon Valley and the rest of the world increasingly runs in both directions.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  Welcome back to the A16Z podcast. Today, we're here with Angela Strange and Gabriel Vasquez, two of the architects of A16Z's global investing strategy. So today, on the day that we're publishing this podcast, we're also running a piece on this idea of borderless founders and who borderless founders are. Just to get to our first question, venture historically has been really, really situated in Silicon Valley. So what makes borderless founders interesting? And what is the story of international investing?

• 2:17Angela Strange?

  I remember when, very early in my career at A16Z, I was investing primarily in financial services or fintech. And one of the first articles I wrote was around just how to get distribution in financial services. It can be very difficult. You need to find a consumer at exactly the right moment in time when they're ready to change from their incumbent services. There's just a lot of inertia.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42Angela Strange?

  And at that same time, my brother had just joined New Bank down in Brazil. And I remember him saying that David had said, yeah, you know, you could compete to be the fifth financial services for every customer in the US, or you could go to a wide open market with five fat happy banks that only serve 20% of the population. And yes, it's much more difficult to get things going because you've got to get licensed. You've got to build all the infrastructure, but there's just these wide, wide open markets. And that is what initially got me interested in looking at Latin America. And the first check I ever wrote at A16Z was actually into Santiago Suarez,

• 3:22Angela Strange?

  the CEO of Adi, which now serves a quarter of the Colombian population for banking and payments. And so that kickstarted our international strategy, which initially focused on LatAm. And not long after, I remember I got a WhatsApp from Gabriel, who had joined A16Z totally on a different team. And he was like, hey, you haven't met me yet, but I just see this huge opportunity in Latin America. I've gone and met 25 of the most important CEOs. I have got them all in a WhatsApp group. We should probably do something here.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  And at the time, Gabriel, were these all fintech founders? Or were they like working in every single industry under the sun?

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Every single industry, but historically in LatAm, you see more fintech founders than you see in other regions. But the premise was, you know, at the time that I did the mapping, I pinged Angela, there were only 30 unicorns in Latin America. So the thesis was like, you can put them all in one room and get them to connect because the Brazilian unicorn founders weren't talking to the Colombian unicorn founders or the Mexican unicorn founders. So there was this opportunity to kind of bring them all together. And we ended up doing that. We created a WhatsApp group with Angela, with Marc Andreessen, Alex Frampell, and a bunch of other people at the firm. And we put them all together. And one of the interesting things is like they were discussing topics about the region,

• 4:43Speaker 01

  but they also started exchanging deal flow in the group because they were all prolific angel investors. So that gave us a great opportunity to not only see early deals, but also be able to participate in that community and kind of help them out.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  And what did early people in this community have? Do you think that a Silicon Valley founder wouldn't have? What kind of insights or what kind of opportunities do you think they had?

• 5:08Angela Strange?

  I think some, and this kind of relates to what we're doing now. Some of the best founders there grew up in their home markets, spent some time in the US, and then came back.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:18Angela Strange?

  Like I'll use Santi from Adi, for instance, grew up in Colombia, went to Yale, spent some time at a bunch of financial services companies, both large and small in the US, and then came back home.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:28Angela Strange?

  And so it's a combination of saw the models that worked in the US, but then deeply understand their home market. And so then he was able to start Adi. He recruited one of his childhood best friends who was very, very technical. And then the other thing you have to know is unlike in the US, where you can get everything as a service at every layer of the stack, in many other markets, including Latin America, you just can't do that. There's no sort of fraud as a stack, KYC as a stack. So you end up having to build everything, which requires a much deeper local market knowledge. But it's very helpful to be able to borrow from around the world.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so it sounds like this finds its origins in a WhatsApp group. And then now suddenly is an entire strategy that you two are really leading at this firm. And I'm curious, kind of what was the moment for you where you were like, oh, okay, this needs to sort of evolve past what we're doing right now?

• 6:20Angela Strange?

  It was interesting. We had very active communities across regions. And then really what happened was AI. And there's this interesting dichotomy in that this technology is very democratic. It distributes the ability to get it anywhere in the world. It opens up other markets. But then it also concentrates the kind of epicenter of where things are moving the fastest to the Bay Area.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:46Angela Strange?

  And so then it changed versus Brazilian founders, Colombian founders, wanting us to come down to Brazil and Colombia and connect. They all wanted to come to the Bay Area.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:54Angela Strange?

  And get integrated a lot faster.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  And when that happens, sort of like what kinds of problems were they negotiating? Or challenges or opportunities? You're an international founder. You come to the Bay Area. Maybe you do have some connections. You know, some investors, you know, some customers, you know, some other founders. But what are the challenges? And also, what are you bringing with you from your home country to the Bay Area? And what kind of learnings are you swabbing?

• 7:24Speaker 01

  I think one of the things that we noticed about these groups is that if you are, for example, from Brazil, you end up mapping the top talent that is in Silicon Valley from Brazil. So we started seeing this trend happening in pretty much in every country. You can extrapolate it to Europe or Asia and it's pretty much the same, which is where are the smartest people from my country? Because they're going to understand where I come from. So the things that you bring in is less about the local knowledge because now you're going to go play at the global stage, but is the connectivity that you can have with somebody that you don't know. And the fact that they're in Silicon Valley, Angela and I discuss this a lot, which is this culture of giving, you know, people help you a lot, you know, before they know you. But there's a closer affinity if you're from that same country

• 8:06Speaker 01

  because people can see themselves through that journey. So that actually ended up leading to us organizing what started as a small community, these borderless dinners. And we call them the borderless dinners because at the beginning was very focused. We tried to focus on the niche. So it was very focused on only Latin Americans at that point in time. So what we did is we mapped out the most successful founders from Latin America. And every time that we had people coming and visit, we will create a dinner for them. And it will be like 20, 30 people at this dinners. But they will get to see what the journey of a person from Latin America was in Silicon Valley and that ended up succeeding, right? So a big part of this strategy was Guillermo Rouse from Brazil.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  It's a persona that obviously has succeeded and has done really well in Silicon Valley, but he was very excited to meet people from Latin America and help them out in that journey. We had people from the founder of Brex do this as well, Pedro Francesi. We also had a lot of other founders that came along. But the other interesting thing about this is that that group also has matured now, where people that were early attendees of that group has now graduated into unicorn founders. And now they're speakers. So we can give the example of Victor Cardenas from Slash or Enor Reyes from Factory. So it has created this amazing connectivity.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:26Angela Strange?

  It's interesting, the very sort of relatable American version of this is if you think of some of the schools, the alumni networks around the top schools are incredibly powerful.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:35Angela Strange?

  I might argue that the international country-specific diasporas are even more powerful. They just often lacked the sort of organization.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:46Angela Strange?

  And now lots of these diasporas are also organizing, right? We're not the only people that help here, but I think what we saw was this opportunity. If you came from a country and you landed in the US, you figured out how to get your visa, you figured out where to live, you sort of made yourself into the network, you got your customers, you have this desire to pay it forward.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:06Angela Strange?

  But there's not really an easy way to do that in the same way that you can just go back and speak at your college.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:13Angela Strange?

  Right? And so we're like, hey, what if we made an easy way to go back and speak at your college? But your college is all of the smartest kids who graduated from college or dropped out of high school or sort of found their way into these different programs who really want to build global companies. And so the power of that is really exciting when you get in the room.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense. I think for someone who's listening to this and they're wondering maybe, what is the difference between a borderless founder and an immigrant founder? Or a borderless founder and somebody who just happens to be an international person who's coming and starting a company in the United States? Like, how do you, how do you help them understand like how we define or how we understand what a borderless founder is?

• 10:56Angela Strange?

  I like to take the most inclusive view ever, which is just anybody who's trying to build a global company. And so, you know, like Americans technically could be borderless founders, but they tend to be connected here anyways. And so, anyone international, whether you're building primarily in your home country to start, but that you have global ambitions, you're a borderless founder.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  And I think that there's something unique about these people as well that like they, you know, not all of them, but they tend to have a chip on their folder. So like they either grew up in a country that was overlooked. So, you know, my, my story is like, I grew up in El Salvador, right? So like a small country, nobody, when you come to the US, nobody's like, hey, I met this other great guy that came from El Salvador. You're kind of like creating the benchmark on your own. And I think a lot of these people either grew up in, you know, we have, we have backed a German founder that grew up in a really, really small town in Germany. In Germany is obviously well known and everybody has respect for the country. But, you know, the fact that he came from this small town is like, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make the most out of this opportunity.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  So like, even in the US, you know, we have seen people that grew up in, in, yeah, like small rural areas and that, that's what drives them. And I think it's the desire that they want to become the benchmark and prove something to the world that regardless of where they were born, they can still achieve greatness, right? And I think that that's, that's the mindset that these people have, that wanna go and create, yeah, dominate globally.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Ben, like I liked what you were saying earlier, Angela, about sort of how, how it does function almost like an alumni network in a college or something like that. How do, how do founders sort of find both like the A16Z borderless founder community? But how do they find other communities and kind of how do we find them even?

• 12:53Angela Strange?

  Yeah, I think it's interesting, maybe a little bit. I'll answer your question, but I think that there is an interesting history of countries doing this. And part of the reason I became so passionate about working on this with Gabriel is, I'm from Ottawa, Canada originally, which is very much not far from Silicon Valley. But it was also a country where lots of companies were started, but very few got to scale. And so, maybe 15 years ago, a group of me and several other Canadians in the Bay Area started this organization called C100. And what it was, was 100 Canadians in the Bay Area who had founded, you know, very large companies or who are in influential positions where they could help.

• 13:36Angela Strange?

  And it was creating this forum for them to give back, but by that, help Canadian companies scale. And it was really two things. It was one, helping them find some design partners. And so, obviously the startups would have to be good enough to, to land the contract, but we would open the door. And then two, helping them find executives that would very much help them scale. Because that I think is one of the tougher things of getting ecosystems going, is you can have very, very smart people, you can land your customers, but then when you look around for who's my sales leader that's gonna take me from 50 million to 500 million, you probably have to find them in another market until your market gets to be a little bit more mature.

• 14:18Angela Strange?

  And I think with the Canadian network, for say, like now there are lots of unicorns around the globe, started by Canadians, Shopify is a big one, but you know, Open Evidence, the founder was, founder was Canadian. And so, these markets start to go and it means that those diasporas become easier to break into and easier to find. And so, what that brings to a kind of our current network, I think those are starting also to get easier to find. Like there are these lighthouse founders that tend to be in those networks. And then they really wanna pay it back. The smartest founders are able to kind of network their way into it. But I also think, and you know, it's very much credit to Gabriel that makes multiple flights to multiple countries around, around, around the globe.

• 15:02Angela Strange?

  Just being on the ground to find the next generation of talent before it's obvious is, is very key.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  I actually have a follow up question there, which is like, are, are there places that, that sort of are where Canada was 15 years ago now? Or has like AI and just sort of the, the promise and the allure of Silicon Valley, has that just like made, made that narrative proliferate a lot faster now? Sort of like, or are there still places where, where they're really like?

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think the maturity of markets is, is very relative. You know, for example, the, some of the markets that we spend the most time is like the UK, Sweden. You know, Israel is very well known for this because historically, on a per capita basis, these countries have produced a lot. So what we've seen is that AI has enabled that, but you know, to grow exponentially in some cases. But there, there are other countries that, you know, because of the dynamics in, in that country, you, you still don't see the, the same flourishing. But this is where we see a lot of the founders actually moving to Silicon Valley. And, you know, it's, it's, it's an interesting tension that you see at times

• 16:15Speaker 01

  because these local ecosystems that are fruitful and, you know, creating a lot of companies, people feel very prideful and they're like, we wanna make, in the case of Sweden, we wanna make Sweden great, right? We want to make the UK like an independent ecosystem. Versus some other ecosystems that might be a little bit earlier, they feel like the best next step for them is, you know, to create an ecosystem and, and drive all that motion is gonna take a lot of time. And there are a lot of founders, to, to be fair, that wanna dedicate their life to build that ecosystem in their own country. So this is one of the things that Angela and I spend a lot of time, which is like this, you know, sometimes we see this, this kind of like this father figure in this earlier ecosystems that build a really, really hard business and all these now AI native founders go to them first.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  And they're kind of like this lighthouse. And then they kind of illuminate them about what Silicon Valley is. And then they kind of direct the path of like, who should they connect? So it, it really depends on how mature the ecosystem is, but there, there's definitely a lot of difference per country.

• 17:15Angela Strange?

  I, I think the really interesting thing that's happening now. So first, I think any ecosystem benefits from their diaspora, building amazing companies anywhere in the world. But the interesting thing that's happening now, and we see this with, we're investors in a company, Taco, which does sort of payroll, HR workflows across Brazil. But their, their bigger mission is really cutting down bureaucracy in Brazil. And one of their founders was previously the founder of Rappi, teamed up with another founder, Fernando, this is his second company. And they've been able to recruit Brazilians back from the US. Who really like, they grew up in Brazil, they understand these bureaucratic problems.

• 17:58Angela Strange?

  They think now with the right talent, with the right AI, with the right companies, they can really help their country. And so, this talent flow has become really interesting.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's, that's super cool. I, that actually, I mean, that, that sort of leads into the next question, which is, I, I wanna talk about the piece you wrote. And you talk about these three native advantages that borderless founders have. As you said, they, they have talent and access to talent and these really deep local talent networks and can even call people back from living internationally. They have brand and then they have a really strong customer base that they can sell into as well. I, I'd love to hear you sort of talk, what, talk about maybe brand and customers, because we've already touched on talent and what you're seeing from, from these kinds of founders there.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I think in term, in terms of brand, you know, an example that is, is in our portfolio is Eleven Labs. So, you know, this is, this is a company that started out of Europe in, in the UK, but it has Polish founders. And one of the things that has happened is that for Poland, Eleven Labs have become such an important name for them to be representatives in, you know, there's a founder that, that we know that calls this the AI Olympics. So every, every country wants to, wants to have their, their own candidates winning medals, right? So like for Poland, Eleven Labs have become that candidate, right? And, and I think, you know, the Polish government just invested in Eleven Labs and it's gonna do a bunch of initiatives with them. So we see this motion happen quite often.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  You know, in, in Sweden, we have seen a lot of happen where the, the Swedish government has supported a lot, Lovable and Nagora. And when, when this happens, it gives you such a jumpstart and validation with all the large enterprise companies that are part of your, of your country. And not even your country, even, even countries that are ancillary to it, because everybody sees the support of the government. They're like, okay, wow, that's, that's, that's a, that's a stamp of validation. I wanna really work with them. So that's on, on the branding side, there's some of the things that are not very obvious when, when you invest internationally. I think on the, on the other point, on, on customers is, you know, we have had several examples of our companies at very early stages

• 20:16Speaker 01

  where there are just a, a design partnership that eventually converts into a multimillion dollar contract, but they start working with the largest enterprises in companies. You know, we invested in, in a company called Factor Labs. They started working with, with the largest conglomerate of all, of all Latin America, which is like the, owned by the Slim family. And, you know, that, that introduction has led them to other type of workflows that they can tackle, so expand within that, that, that corporation. And then we also see this kind of playing out to, from what Angela was describing before. It's like, okay, if I'm a founder, let's say, born in Spain, like the, the case of Supersonic. Who's the smartest person that went to my university?

• 21:00Speaker 01

  And what are they doing now? And in their case was, you know, who used to be the CRO, a salesperson, now is the COO. And they connected with him. And then salesforce actually became the first design partner and eventually converted now into a customer. So this disadvantages is are not very obvious. So it might seem actually at times when you haven't studied quite, quite random. But, but it's all connected to, to the same.

• 21:29Angela Strange?

  The other way that brand can help is eventually, as I mentioned, these, you know, global companies need to recruit global talent. And so I'll use ID as an example, scaled very quickly. And then, okay, how do you find a credit officer that can do billions of dollars of GMV? The best credit people tend to come from Capital One. How do you attract somebody from Capital One in Virginia to want to work down in Bogota? You become the hottest company in Colombia. So versus joining one of 50 companies that kind of look the same in the US. Why don't you join the winner that by brand is very clear? And so I think as you're trying to attract international talent, that can be very interesting.

• 22:11Angela Strange?

  The other element of brand is you can build a little bit, to Gabe's point, relationships with the government. And so Jeeves has done a lot with the central bank in Brazil. And so they are helping corporations move money internationally via stable coins. And so they're starting to get that reputation with enterprises as being sort of the most trusted, compliance, speedy way to do that. And then as a result, they attract more talent and that starts to compound on top of each other.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, this, this compounding loop, I think, is really interesting. So something we talk a lot about at the firm, I think Mark kind of first introduced this idea as the idea of preferential attachment. So the idea that, you know, if you signal very early that you can attract the best talent and the best, you know, the best customers, and you really get kind of that attention and that flywheel going, the next incremental person, the next incremental customer becomes that much easier to attract. Do you think that really, really strong borderless founders or international founders,

• 23:15Speaker 02

  you know, assuming, assuming the company is, you know, strong and, and sort of they're, they're a great startup. Do you think that they have an easier time of this in some way? Or, or just maybe a more differentiated type of this in some way?

• 23:31Angela Strange?

  I think, you know, in some ways you could argue all of A60Z was founded to accelerate our founders preferential attachment.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:39Angela Strange?

  And so how do you get that flywheel moving as quickly as possible? And I would argue borderless founders have more levers at their disposal.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:48Angela Strange?

  To get that going.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:49Angela Strange?

  And so if you start with talent, like this is the fiercest talent market I've seen like in my career as, as an investor and, and also as an operator. They have insight and access to differentiated pools. So we have a insurance, AI insurance company in Brazil. And so you might think, oh, the best talent is at the top, most well-known universities there. Actually, for AI talent, it's at a, you know, university that you haven't heard of. And then how do you find it? Well, you actually go to the scholarship programs that scour the country for the best students and get them there. And it's actually these robotics competitions. And so if you are a company that gets 10 incredibly smart people really early,

• 24:30Angela Strange?

  the 11th that you might be trying to recruit from the US that has 100 other offers meets your team. It's like, holy shit, like, how do they get people that are that good there? And that starts the talent flywheel. On the customer side, anytime you want to land a large customer, the first question they're going to ask is, who else is using you that's in my industry at my size? And there's lots of opportunities in the US to sell into banks and insurance companies. Nobody wants to be the first bank or the first insurance company. But via borderless founder network, you can get a large bank and a large insurance company in another country much more quickly. And that will very much accelerate your thing in the US. And so I think you just have these levers to make things move faster.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  And even to Tendil's point, this is like when you're trying to get started in, in that specific country. But we also see in the cases of really hot companies in Silicon Valley, like Cognition, where their early go-to-market was actually Brazil. And it represented a really high share of the revenue early on because this, this, these companies or these enterprises really desire to adopt AI as quickly as possible. And, and they don't, they don't get as, as many providers to do that. And in the case of, of cognition, they, they, they build a really strong network in, in Brazil to do that.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Interesting, interesting. So by, by that sort of point, does that mean that, you know, you can also pursue a borderless founder or a borderless strategy just by like selling into markets that, that might not necessarily see kind of.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Yes, I think that the best way to think about it is, is like, you know, there's the bridge to Silicon Valley and then there's, that same bridge can be used on the opposite direction.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  And that's the way that we try to position, which is this, this, this borderless founders come to Silicon Valley, but they obviously have global ambitions. They might have a strong network if they're from Germany, in Germany, but they probably have no knowledge about Brazil or Japan. And those are things that we can be very, very helpful to be like, help them dominate.

• 26:33Angela Strange?

  Yeah, no, it's interestingly, we started this by, you know, connecting diasporas amongst themselves. And now almost the bigger power is the, the intra-diaspora, right? Like the German company, first design partner in the largest Spanish conglomerate. Like, that's amazing, but like something that is not super intuitive that would have happened.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  I think there's something that's very unique about us and, you know, I feel pretty confident on what we built here is that there's probably no other investor that can, that can do that for you to, to cross-pollinate across different ecosystems and different countries and different geographies, basically from the get-go.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. At the, at the beginning of the conversation, Gabriel, you mentioned that, you know, your first market map of, of Latin American unicorns was, was 20 companies or something?

• 27:21Speaker 01

  30.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  30, 30 companies. Now, when you go about sort of approaching a new geography or, or a new country, like, like, how do you, how do you even start doing that? Like, what is, what is that process like now?

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we have this term that we use called local luminaires. So it goes back to what we alluded before, but it's like people that are highly respected in the local ecosystem that have built companies. The scale of the company and the success of the company doesn't really matter, but it's people that try really, really hard to make their ecosystem, you know, valid, right? So like they, you know, in the, in the case of Sweden, we, we have a founder that we met, the founder's a boy, which is Fredrik Gjelm and Adam Jaffer. And, you know, from, from, looking from the outside, you wouldn't think that, you know, because what they built was like a, like a company very similar to Lime, which is like a scooter company.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  You wouldn't have thought that they will be in the middle of, of the AI boom in Sweden, right? But, but if you look at all the angel investments that Frederick did, he's pretty much in all the relevant companies.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  That came out of Sweden. And the reason why is because he's very well-connected with the younger groups of founders, but also with, with experienced ones. And he tries to bring them all together and kind of make a case for Sweden on why Sweden should be part of this, going back to the analogy of the AI Olympics. And, you know, you, you kind of see this persona across every different market that, that we mapped out. So our first job is how do we understand who these people are? How do we help these people, right? Because they, they clearly, there are multiple ways that we can help them. And one of them is just validating their message, right? When you have been, you know, an evangelizer and then you get some sort of validation

• 29:14Speaker 01

  from, you know, a firm like us that, that helps them a lot to, to kind of prove their point. So they get closer to us, we start working with them, doing events, helping their companies recruit. And that gives us access to the best people that, that are within the network. And I think the, the second step is, okay, so then once you have mapped out these people, you kind of map out the equivalent. Of the rising stars or who are this, this luminaries in Silicon Valley from that country, right? So, you know, one of these rising stars was in Sweden is Gabriel Peterson. So this was a high school dropout from Sweden, came to the US with no education,

• 29:57Speaker 01

  got a job on Mid Journey, then became one of the youngest researchers at OpenAI. And now he started a company. But every time that there's a Swedish founder that wants to move to Silicon Valley, they want to get in touch with him. Right? So like if you, if you build this, this network where you mapped out when they are in Sweden, and then when they move to Sweden, you kind of help them connect with successful people from their country, you're pretty much in the flow.

• 30:21Angela Strange?

  Yeah.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, that, that's how we, we build each ecosystem. You know, the, the joke, a lot of people usually tell us that like, hey, Gabe, you're so well known in Sweden or in Germany or in Brazil. And I, and I tell the joke that I tell them is like, in every country, I make them feel like it's the only country that I look at. Because, uh, you know, we, we try to derive at a very, very local level.

• 30:44Angela Strange?

  Yeah.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Where these luminaries and this ecosystem.

• 30:47Angela Strange?

  I think the other thing sort of phase three is ecosystems get a little bit more mature. The executives at the sort of rising next set. One of the things that makes it so powerful is that it's really mission driven. So they saw how hard it was. And so they end see sort of heads of sales, like founding engineers that have a little bit of liquidity that now very much want to pay it forward to that next generation of founders. And so we have, uh, we've got a global, you know, scout program that we, you know, recruit kind of the best of the, you know, rising stars at the companies to be part of too. And that helps create the ecosystem. Yeah.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  And the last part that I'll argue to turn to this point is that when we find enough density, we actually even do events just for that community. So about a year ago, we did one with Angela and Ben Horowitz, where he was a speaker and we brought the best Nordic founders all to Silicon Valley for a week. And then we host them at our events. So when we see that density, we try to do very local events to kind of help out that those ecosystems.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. We, we just actually released a podcast with Will Gabrick from Stripe. And it's, it's funny, the parallels between how Stripe works and, and what you're describing, where it's like, you start really early with like, you know, individuals or teams, like very small companies. And then you kind of grow with them and you begin to offer more and you like grow with those companies as they become large enterprises. And you're kind of like there for every single generation or like every single step of the lifecycle. So there is like, it's funny, it's, it's almost like that. You, you kind of see how these kinds of flywheels, especially as they apply to startups,

• 32:33Speaker 02

  kind of have repeatable motions, regardless of whether it's, you know, international investing strategy or, you know, a payments platform. It kind of looks very similar when you actually kind of look at what's happening under the hood.

• 32:49Angela Strange?

  Hundred percent. Yeah. And I think too, like, if you think all of us, we remember the people who helped us when it wasn't obvious. Yeah. And so I think, you know, in our role, like, we've just got to be really passionate about, you know, meeting people, paying it forward, like generally raising, raising up your ecosystem. And some of those will become great founders that you get to invest in. Others will become broader parts of the ecosystem, but you've, you've got to be there early.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  I would love to talk about some of the, the repeat founders who we've identified and, and kind of like spoken to and, and built relationships with. And, and how, how do you guys think about that? Just because it is, it's, it's something that we've now done a couple of times. So, so curious.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, it was pretty much like the continued to execute on the WhatsApp strategy. Funny enough, but, um, you know, we, I, I think these, these local ecosystems had a wave, a first wave of entrepreneurs that got to some sort of scale that was meaningful. Let's say within the one billion to five billion range usually. And, but they didn't get to see the all the way through, right? So there were, there were things because it was the first time around, because the ecosystem itself was really, really hard. There was a lot of lessons that they had that they couldn't see and fulfill their vision. That gets them going and thinking about, okay, I'm going to do a next business.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  But this time around, I'm going to apply all the knowledge that I have, all the network that I build and, and, and go build something even bigger because I know I can, right? So that, that has been, you know, the way that we identify these people because the, the, of their drive to be like, okay, this, this five billion dollar exit or five billion dollar outcome wasn't enough for me. I want to do something greater from my local ecosystem. And the way that we build these relationships is, you know, we, we track them very, very closely. We, we help them to come to events. What these people usually want is they want to reactivate their network at times, right? They, they, especially in AI, they want to get connected with the smartest engineers at Stanford, right?

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Like they want to be in the flow of talent and we give them that, that bridge to them, right? So like we, we map out this, these people, we put them in touch and we, we kind of help them ideate about their ideas as well. And in that came along where like we introduced them to customers so that they can have these advanced conversations and kind of validate what they're thinking through. And then we're very intentional as well when it comes to putting it all together for them, right? So like the, in the case, I'll give an example, we listen in, in Frederick Gilm, he has a new company. When they were, the company name is, is pit.com. So when they were, um, coming to Silicon Valley, we put them in touch with the top execs from DoorDash, the top execs from Lyft,

• 35:48Speaker 01

  the top execs from a bunch of our portfolio companies. And we kind of helped them ideate about the, the idea. And then after they came back from that trip, they, they had a pretty clear vision of what they wanted to do and prosecute. And then they decided to go with us because despite them having pre-existing relationships, because at that point, a lot of, you know, it's not, it's very obvious that a lot of investors want to invest in them. But we kind of, by differentiating ourselves on the ideation side, they, they decided to go with us.

• 36:17Angela Strange?

  I think the other opportunity to close the gap, especially for the repeat founders is, they probably don't have a network of the smartest 18, 19, 20 year olds all in AI. And these are amazing engineers who probably want to be founders, but they might want one job in between. And sometimes these repeat founders are the best, like especially the really hungry, going it again. They've learned so many lessons and it is great CEO school to come work for their companies for two, three, four years. And so this kind of collaboration that we get through the networks ends up being very powerful on both sides.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  If I, if I'm a founder, I'm an early stage, I'm a seed stage founder. What is, what is my experience like as I'm coming into this ecosystem? And how do you sort of grow through with these companies from, you know, series A to growth?

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the first thing that we focus on is visas. This is, this might not sound like a big deal, but it's the, the most stressful process when it, when it comes to moving to, to the US is like, what is the right visa? What do I qualify for? Like, you know, who, who's going to write a recommendation letter for me? And those are things that we can, we help a lot of founders with. We're actually investors in, in a, in a visa company, AI native visa company called Extraordinary. And through Extraordinary, we partner a lot on helping these founders come to, to the US to make sure that they have the right qualifications or help them understand what are the things that they need to, to come to the US as, as fast as possible.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  You know, the other thing is that there's a lot of hacker houses that started abroad, but now they have created campuses to, to use Angela's analogies campuses in the US where, you know, they offer free, free rooms for people to stay for a, a shorter period amount of time. You know, we, we sponsored this one called Palo House. So this company, we, we met them at Slush, which is a big event that happens in, in Finland. And then, you know, there was this really four smart students from CDTM, which is one of the best programs in Germany. And they had this idea of like, hey, we want to have a house in Palo Alto

• 38:33Speaker 01

  and we want to bring the smartest people that we know to stay with us in Palo Alto and help them ideate. So we decided to, to sponsor this house and, you know, over the, over a period of four months. And over four months, they, they crowded the house too much. They, they, they receive, I believe through dinners and everybody that stayed, it was like 1,000, 200 people that ended up staying. You know, through that, we actually ended up, you know, ended up meeting really exceptional people that, that we stay in touch with.

• 39:03Angela Strange?

  Nice. They really were like running a small, small college, small liberal arts college.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  And now they, they actually, it's funny enough, they want to find a way to keep that alive independently. But, but like that, there's, there's so many cases of, of campuses from different countries. So we, we kind of help them connect on, on the way that they say. And then through, through our borderless communities as well is like, hey, you're here for like, uh, you know, a couple of weeks. Why don't you come to this dinner and meet all the really, really smart, uh, founders and operators that, that just went through the, the similar journey. So.

• 39:38Angela Strange?

  And I think as, as, um, you know, the founders start to start their companies, the next step is often, often they're very technical founders have an idea that are looking for which market or which use case should I go after? And one of the things that I think is particularly interesting internationally is there's a lot, like many countries have, you know, several powerful families that control a lot of the enterprises. And the next generation in those families is very, very motivated to become AI native. And we've brought them into our borderless founder group. And so if you want, you know, heads of operations, finances around the world to ideate with, talk about their problems. And they're very willing to talk to the smartest people in our community about what they should build.

• 40:23Angela Strange?

  And so that can be a really interesting kind of connection also. Yeah.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  We have had actual contracts for portfolio companies land from those initiatives.

• 40:31Angela Strange?

  Very cool.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  So if, you know, I'm an international founder right now, listening to this, I'm thinking about moving to Silicon Valley. What, what should I know? What should, what should I keep in mind? And also I'm, should I, should I be thinking about just coming for a month or three months? Should I be thinking about moving altogether? Like, what are the kinds of questions that I should be asking myself?

• 41:00Speaker 01

  I think there's, you know, the answer varies a lot for, for everyone. But I think one of the things that is very common is definitely common to spend time in Silicon Valley. And I, I think this is one of the things that we highly encourage because even if you're gonna go back, you, you go back with a lot of insights and you go back. I never met somebody that came to Silicon Valley and was like, this was such a waste of time. Everybody goes back excited and it helps them calibrate as well on the level of speed. I think this is one of the things that Silicon Valley continues to be ahead of every other ecosystem is the level of speed that people operate. And I think just calibrating on the speed is, is really, really important.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  And, you know, one of the things that, that I personally would recommend is like, at the very least, three to six months, you can kind of emerge. Because a couple of weeks can be, I, I don't think as, as influential because you, you have to go through the depth of the network and kind of realize in, in a couple of weeks. So people get discouraged because sometimes it's really hard to connect with people. But, but I find that people that spend time a little bit longer, they come with the, come back with the right connections, even if they decide to go back or finally decide to move here.

• 42:12Angela Strange?

  Yeah. I'd say lean on your diaspora, like either via us, we've posted about a lot of the things that we can do. Like it is way deeper than probably you think in the Bay Area and very much primed to help you build your company.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  10 years from now, what do you hope to see sort of the, the results of this, not just in A16Z and our portfolio companies, but kind of just in the global topology of, of startups, you know, everywhere, everywhere in the world?

• 42:45Angela Strange?

  I think this trend is just gonna continue. Like we, we actually ran the stats and out of our apps, 40% of our investments were in international founders. You know, half of them were based here, half of them were based in other countries.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 42:58Angela Strange?

  I think, you know, all nationalities, internationalities mix. And so a more diverse set of minds builds bigger and bigger companies. And I think it is great for consumers, it's great for enterprises, and we are just 1% scratching the surface of what we can do with AI.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Totally. I, I would, I would second that. And I, and I think that there's a statistics that a lot of people in Silicon Valley before used to, to, to frame a lot, which is like, you know, 90% of the returns in venture capital come from Silicon Valley companies. I think that if, if that share goes from 10% all the way to 20 to 30%, that's something that I would like to see because that, that builds that case. And I think the, the other thing why that I never really quite liked that statistic is because it doesn't fully tell the story. There's a lot of, of these borderless founders, which is a lot of them are based here, but a lot of the engineering team might be actually back in their home country. And a lot of disadvantages were never really told.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  So there's a lot of these companies that actually are claimed by two different countries.

• 44:01Angela Strange?

  Hmm.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Right? And, and that story was never actually really told. And you have seen that historically and I think it's gonna continue. But hopefully now, from like this, this perspective of like, yeah, like, you know, we're, we're this global company that have headquarters and at, at the very least, it's two different countries.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  Well, Angela Gabriel, thanks so much for, for joining me today. This was a ton of fun. And when this episode releases, everyone will also be able to read your piece on, on the subject. So check it out on Substack and the A16Z blog.

• 44:38Erik Torenberg?

  Thanks for listening to this episode of the A16Z Podcast. If you liked this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or review, and share it with your friends and family. For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Follow us on X at A16Z and subscribe to our Substack at A16Z.substack.com. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you in the next episode.

• 45:03Erik Torenberg?

  As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see A16Z.com/disclosures.