How Borderless Founders Build Global Companies Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 anyone international whether you're building primarily in your home country to start but that you have global ambitions you're a borderless founder >> they tend to have a chip on their shoulder is 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 >> 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

00:24 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. 10 years from now, what do you hope to see in the global topology of startups everywhere in the world?

00:50 Um, I think Welcome back to the A16Z podcast. Today we're here with Angela Strange and Gabriel Vasquez, two of the architects of A16C's global investing strategy. So, uh, today on the day that we're publishing this podcast, uh, we're also running a piece on this idea of borderless founders and and who borderless founders are. Just to get to our first question, venture historically has been really really situated in Silicon Valley.

01:21 So what makes Borderless Founders interesting and um sort of what is the story of international investing? >> Yeah, I remember when uh very early in my career at A16Z, I was investing primarily in financial services or 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.

01:47 you need to find a consumer at exactly the right moment in time when they're ready to change from from their incumbent services. Like there's just a lot of inertia. >> Yeah. >> And at that same time, uh my brother had just joined New Bank down in Brazil. And I remember him saying that uh that Devid had said, "Yeah, you know, you could compete to be the fifth financial services for every customer in the US."

02:11 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.

02:33 And the the first check I ever wrote at A16DZD was actually into Santiago Suarez, the CEO of AI, which now serves a quarter of the Colombian population for banking and payments. Um, and so that kickstarted our international strategy which initially focused on >> Latam. >> And not long after I remember I get a WhatsApp from Gabriel who had joined A6Z totally on a different team.

02:56 and he's 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've like got them all in a WhatsApp group. Like, we should probably do something here." >> That's And at the time, Gabriel, were these all fintech founders or were they like working in every single, you know, industry under the sun?

03:19 >> Every single industry, but historically in LATAM, you see more fintech founders than than you see in other regions. But that was the premise was, you know, at the time that I did the mapping, I ping Angela, there were only 30 unicorns in Latin America. >> No. >> 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.

03:44 So there was this opportunity to kind of bring them all together. >> And you know, we ended up doing that. We created a WhatsApp group with Angela, with Mark Andre, Alec Rmpelle 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 but they also started exchanging deal flow.

04:05 Yeah. >> In the group because they were all prolific angel investors. So that gave us a a great opportunity to not only >> see early deal flows early deals but also be able to participate in that community and kind of help them out. And what did early people in this community have do you think that you know a Silicon Valley founder wouldn't have? What kind of insights or what kind of opportunities do you think they had?

04:30 >> I think some and this kind of relates to what we're doing now. Some of the best founders there um you know grew up in their home markets, >> spent some time in the US and then came back. Yeah. >> Like I'll use Santi from Audi for instance. um you know grew up in in Colia uh 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 >> and so it's a combination of saw the models that worked in the US but then deeply understand their home market and

04:58 so then he was able to start Audi he recruited you know one of his childhood best friends who was you know 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 uh fraud as a stack, KYC is a stack.

05:19 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. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um and so it sounds like, you know, the this finds its origins in a WhatsApp group and then, you know, now suddenly is an entire strategy that you two are are really leading at this firm.

05:41 And I'm curious kind of what was the moment for you where you were like, "Oh, okay. This is this needs to sort of evolve past, you know, what we're doing right now." >> So, it was interesting. We had um very active communities across regions and then really what happened was AI >> and there's this interesting dichotomy in that, you know, this technology is very democratic.

06:04 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. >> Yeah. >> 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.

06:26 >> Yeah. >> And get integrated a lot faster. >> Mhm. And when that happens, sort of like what kinds of problems were they negotiating or challenges or opportunities? Like you're an international founder, you come to the Bay Area, you know, maybe you do have some connections, you know some investors, you know some customers, you know some other founders, but what are 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 are you swabbing?

06:55 I think you know one of the things that we noticed about these groups is that if you are for example from Brazil you end up mapping like the top talent that is in Silicon Valley from Brazil. >> So we started seeing this trend happening in pretty much in every country you know you can extrapolate it to Europe or or Asia and it's pretty much the same which is like >> where are where are the smartest people from my country because they're going to understand where I come from.

07:21 So the things that that you bring in is is less about the the local knowledge because now you're going to go play at the global stage, but is the connectivity that you can have with some somebody that you don't know. And the fact that they're in Silicon Valley, you know, Angela and I discussed this a lot, which is is is this culture of giving. You know, people people help you a lot even before they know you, but there's an a closer affinity if you're from that same country because people >> can see themselves through

07:46 that journey. So that actually ended up uh leading to us organizing this this what started as a small community this borderless dinners and we call them the borderless dinners because uh at the beginning it 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 that con 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

08:17 people at this dinners but they will get to see what the journey of a of a person from Latin America was in Silicon Valley and that ended up succeeding right so a big part of this strategy was uh GMO Rou from Versell >> it's a it's a persona that obviously has succeeded and has done really well in Silicon Valley but he was very excited excited to meet people from Latin America and help them out in that journey.

08:39 We had uh people from the founder of Brex do this as well uh Pedro Franchesci. We we also had you know a lot of other founders that came along. Um but the other interesting thing about this is that um that group also has mature now >> where people that were early attendees of that of that group has now graduated into unicorn founders and now they're speakers.

09:04 So like we can give the example of Victor Cardinas from slash or and Oreos from factories. So he has created this this this amazing uh connectivity. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> It's interesting the very um sort of relatable American version of this is if you think of like some of the schools the alumni networks around the top schools are incredibly powerful.

09:25 >> Yeah. >> I might argue that the international country specific diasporas are even more powerful. they just often lacked the sort of organization. Yeah. And now lots of these diasporas are are also organizing, right? Like we're not we're not the only people that uh that help here. But I think what we saw was this opportunity like 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,

09:53 you have this desire to pay it forward. Yeah. 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. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> And so like 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 uh into these different programs who really want to build global companies."

10:21 And so the power of that is really uh it's it's really it's really exciting when you get in the room. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, that that makes a a ton of sense. I I think for for someone who's like listening to this and they're wondering maybe what is what is the difference between, you know, 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

10:50 like how we define or how we understand what a borderless founder is? 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, um, anyone international, whether you're building primarily in your home country to start, but that you have global ambitions, you're a borderless founder.

11:15 >> Yeah. >> Yeah. And I think that 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 a chip on their shoulder. 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."

11:38 You're kind of like >> creating the the benchmark on your own. And I think a lot of these people either grew up in, you know, we 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, it's like, you know, I'm going to I'm going to make the most out of this opportunity.

11:58 So like even in the US, you know, we have seen people that grew up in in yeah, like small rural areas and 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 they can still achieve greatness, right? And and I think that that's that's the the the mindset that these people have that want to go and create uh yeah dominate globally.

12:27 >> Yeah. Yeah. when like I I like what you were saying earlier, Angela, about sort of how how it it does function almost like an alumni network in a college or 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? Yeah, I think um it's interesting maybe a little bit um I'll answer your question, but um I think that there is a interesting history of countries doing this and and part of the

13:03 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. Mhm. >> And so maybe 15 years ago, a group of me and several other Canadians in the Bay Area started this organization called C 100.

13:24 And what it was was hundred Canadians in the Bay Area who had founded, you know, very large companies or who are in influential positions where they could help. 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.

13:50 Um, 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 going to 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.

14:14 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 uh 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 kind of our current network, I think those are starting also to get easier to find.

14:41 Like there are these lighthouse founders that tend to be in those networks. Yeah. >> And then they really want to pay it back. Um the smartest founders are able to kind of network their way into it. But I also think and you know this is very much credit to to Gabriel that makes multiple flights to multiple countries around around around the globe um just being on the ground to find the next generation of talent before it's obvious is is very key.

15:05 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 that narrative proliferate a lot faster now? Sort of like or are there still places where where they're really like >> Yeah, I think I think the maturity of markets is is very relative.

15:32 Um you know for example the some of the markets that we spend the most time is like the UK, Sweden um 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 still don't see the the and flourishing.

16:04 But this is where we see a lot of this founder actually moving to Silicon Valley >> and you know it's is is it's an interesting tension that you see at times because these local ecosystems that are fruitful and you know are creating a lot of companies people feel very prideful and they're like we want to make you in the case of Sweden we want to 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

16:30 for them is you know to create an ecosystem and and drive all the motion is going to take a lot of time and there are a lot of founders to to be fair that want to dedicate their life to build that ecosystem in their own countries. So this is one of the things that Angela and I spent 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 and they kind of

16:59 like this lighthouse and then they kind of illuminate them about what Silicon Valley is and and then they kind of direct the path of like who should they connect. So it really depends on on how mature the the ecosystem is, but there there's definitely a lot of difference per country. >> I I think the really interesting thing that's happening now um so first I think any ecosystem benefits from their diaspora of building amazing companies anywhere in the world.

17:24 Um but the interesting thing that's happening now and we see this with we're investors in uh 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 RPI uh teamed up with another Fernando uh 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

17:57 problems. 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. >> 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 want to talk about the piece you wrote and you talk about these three native advantages that borderless founders have.

18:18 uh as you said, they they have talent and access to talent and these really deep local talent networks um 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. Um 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 and what you're seeing from from these kinds of founders there.

18:47 Yeah, I I think in term in terms of brand, you know, an example that is is in our portfolio is 11 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, 11 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.

19:12 So every every country wants to wants to have their their own candidates winning medals, right? So like for Poland, 11 Labs has become that candidate, right? And and I think you know the Polish government just invested in 11 Labs and is going to do a bunch of initiatives with them. So we see this motion happen uh quite often. Um you know in in Sweden we have seen a lot of happen where the the Swedish government has supported a lot uh lovable and the Gora and when when this happens it gives you such a jump start in

19:43 validation with uh 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. and they're like, "Okay, wow, that's that's that's a that's a stamp of validation. I want to really work with them." Um, so that's on on on the branding side.

20:00 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 where there are just a a design partnership that eventually converts into a multi-million dollar contract but they start working with the largest enterprises in companies you know we invested in in in a company called factor labs they started working with with the largest conglomerate of all of all Latin

20:32 America which is like the owned by the slim family and um 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, um, who who's the smartest person that went to my university and what are they doing now?

21:00 And in their case was, you know, who used to be the CRO of Salesforce, now is the COO and they connected with him and then Salesforce actually became their first design partner and eventually converted now into a customer. So this disadvantages is is are are not very obvious. So it might seem actually at times when when you haven't studied quite quite uh random but but it's it's all connected to to the same route.

21:25 The other way that brand can help is eventually as I mentioned these um you know global companies need to recruit global talent and so I'll use ADI 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 credit best credit people tend to come from Capital 1 how do you attract somebody from Capital 1 in Virginia to want to work down in Bogota you become the hottest company in Colombia Mhm.

21:57 >> 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. The other element of brand is you can build a little bit to Gab's point relationships with the government. And so Jeeves has done um a lot with a central bank in Brazil.

22:19 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. >> Yeah. This this compounding loop I think is really interesting.

22:38 So something we talk a lot about at the firm. I think Mark kind of first introduced this idea is 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.

23:06 Do you think that really really strong borderless founders or international founders um 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 time of this in some way? I think um you know in some ways you could argue all of A6Z was founded to accelerate our founders preferential attachment.

23:37 Yeah. >> 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 to get that going. Yeah. >> 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 um and and also as an operator. They have insight and access to differentiated pools.

24:00 So we have a insurance uh 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.

24:21 And it's actually these robotics competitions. And so if you are a company that gets 10 incredibly smart people really early, the 11th that you might be trying to recruit from the US that has a hundred other offers meets your team is like, "Holy 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?"

24:48 Um, 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.

25:10 >> Yeah. And even to Tendula's point, this is like when you're trying to get started in in that specific country. But we also seen the cases of really hot companies in Silicon Valley like Cognition where their early go to market was actually Brazil and it represent their really high share of their 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 and in the case of of Cognition

25:40 they they they they build a really strong network in in Brazil to do that. >> Interesting. Interesting. So by by that sort of point, does that mean that you know you can also pursue a borderless founder or borderless strategy just by like selling into markets that that might not necessarily see kind of >> Yeah. Like 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 as well.

26:11 >> Yeah. Yeah. And and that's the way that we try to position which is this this the this borderless founders come to Silicon Valley but they obviously have global ambitions. They might have a strong network if they're from Germany and 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 uh dominate.

26:31 >> Yeah. >> Yeah. You know 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.

26:52 Yeah, >> I think that something is very unique about us and you know feel pretty confident of 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. >> Yeah. Yeah. Uh, 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 30 30 companies.

27:22 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? >> Yeah. So, we have this term that we use uh called local luminires. 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.

27:47 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 uh 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 founders of boy which is Frederick Yel and 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 a like a company very similar to Lime which is like a scooter company you wouldn't have

28:17 thought that they will be in the middle of of the AI boom in Sweden right but but if you look at at all the angel investments that that Frederick did. He's pretty much in all the relevant companies. Yeah. >> 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 the experienced ones.

28:38 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?

29:00 Right? Because they 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 um you know an evangelizer and then you get some sort of validation 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 their network.

29:30 And I think the the second step is okay. So once you have map out these people, you kind of map out the equivalent of the rising stars or who are this this uh luminires in Silicon Valley from that country, right? So you know, one of these rising stars was u in Sweden is is Gabriel Peterson, right? So this was a high school dropout from Sweden, came to the US with no education, got a job at Mid Journey, then became one of the youngest researchers at OpenAI and now he started a company.

29:59 But every time that um there's a Swedish founder that wants to move to Silicon Valley, they want to get in touch with him. >> Mhm. >> 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.

30:19 Yeah. Yeah. >> 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 right because uh you know we we try to derive a very very local level where this luminaries and this ecosystem.

30:45 M >> I think the other thing sort of phase three as ecosystems get a little bit more mature the executives at the sort of rising next set um one of the things that makes it so powerful is that it's really missiondriven so they saw how hard it was and so they then 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.

31:10 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. >> And the last part that I'll to 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

31:40 our event. So when we see that density, we try to do very local uh events to kind of help out that those ecosystem. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. We we just actually released a podcast with uh Will Gabri 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

32:15 become large enterprises and you're kind of like there for every single generation or like every single step of the life cycle. 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 kind of have repeatable motions regardless of whether it's you know uh international investing strategy or you know a payments platform.

32:40 It kind of looks very similar when you actually kind of look at what's happening under the hood. >> 100%. 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 >> you've just got to be really passionate about you know meeting people paying it forward like generally raising raising up your ecosystem.

33:08 And some of those will become great founders that you get to uh invest in. Others will become broader parts of the ecosystem. But you've you've got to be there early. 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?

33:27 Um just because it is it's it's something that we've now done a couple of times. So so curious. >> Yeah. So you know it was pretty much like the continue to execute on the WhatsApp strategy funny enough. But um you know we I I think this 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 1 billion to 5 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

34:04 first time around because the ecosystem itself was really really hard there was a lot of lessons that they had that they couldn't them see and fulfill their vision. That gets them going and thinking about, okay, I'm going to do a next business, but this time around, I'm going to apply all all the knowledge that I have, all the network that I built and and and go build something even bigger because I know I can, right?

34:28 So, that that has been, you know, the way that we identify these people because the the of of their drive to be like, okay, this this $5 billion exit or $5 billion outcome wasn't enough for me. I want to do something greater from my local ecosystem. And the way that we build this relationships is, you know, we we track them very very closely. We we help them to come to events.

34:52 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 uh engineers at Stanford, right? 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 in that games along where like we introduced them to customers so that they can have these unbalanced

35:20 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 invested in in in Frederick GM he has a new company when they were the company named name is is pip.com. So when they were um coming to Silicon Valley, we put them in touch with the top XX from Door Dash, the top XX from Lyft, the top XX from bunch of our portfolio companies and we kind of helped them ideate about

35:53 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.

36:16 >> Yeah. I think the other opportunity to close the gap especially for the repeat founders is um 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 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 2 three four years and so this kind of collaboration

36:46 that we get through the networks ends up being very powerful on both sides. >> If I if I'm a founder, I'm an early stage, I'm a seedstage 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. >> Yeah. So the first thing that we focus on is visas.

37:11 >> Mhm. 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. Uh we're actually investors in in a in a visa company, a native visa uh company called Extraordinary.

37:36 Mhm. >> 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. Um 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 uh Angela's analogies campuses in the US where you know they offer free free uh rooms for people to stay for a short period of amount of

38:11 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 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 and we want to bring the smartest people that we know to stay with us in Pal and help them ideulate.

38:38 So we decided to to sponsor this house and you know over the over a period of 4 months and over four months they they they crowded the house too much. They they they receive I believe through dinners and everybody that stayed is it was like 1,200 people that end up staying there. You know through that we actually ended up you know ended up meeting really exceptional people that that that we stay in touch with.

39:02 >> Nice. They really were like running a small small college, >> small liberal arts college. >> And 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 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 stay and then through through our borderless communities as well.

39:23 It's like, hey, you're here for like, you know, a couple weeks. why didn't you come to this dinner and meet other really really smart uh uh founders and operators that that just went through the the similar journey. So >> yeah 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 uh which market or which use case should I go after and one of the things that I think is pretty particularly interesting

39:52 internationally is there's a lot like many countries have um 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 ideulate with talk about their problems and they're very willing to talk to the smartest people in our community about what they should build and so that can be a really

40:23 interesting kind of connection also >> we have had actual contracts for portfolio companies land from those initiatives >> very cool >> so if you know I'm an international founder right now listening to this, I'm thinking about moving to Silicon Valley. Um, 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 3 months?

40:52 Should I be thinking about moving altogether? Like, what are the kinds of questions that I should be asking myself? I think there's there's you know the answer varies a lot for for for everyone but um I think one of the things that is very common is definitely come and spend time in Silicon Valley and I I I think this is one of the things that we highly encourage because >> even if you're going to 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

41:19 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 a speed is is really really important. And you know, one of the things that that I personally would recommend is like at the very least 3 to 6 months to you can kind of emerge because a couple weeks can be I don't think as as

41:51 influential because you have to go through the depth of the network and kind of realize and in a couple weeks some 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 finally decide to move here.

42:11 >> 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 >> 10 years from now. Um 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 >> I think this trend is just going to continue like we we actually

42:46 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 Um I think you know all nationalities internationalized mix um and so a more diverse set of minds builds bigger and bigger companies and I think it is great for consumers is great for enterprises and we are just 1% scratching the surface of what we can do with AI.

43:11 Totally I I would I would second that and I and I think that there's a statistics that a lot of people in in Silicon Valley before uh 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.

43:36 And I think the the other thing why that I never really quite like that statistic is because it doesn't fully tell the story there's a lot of of this 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 these advantages were never really told. So there's a lot of these companies that actually are claimed by two different countries, >> right?

44:00 And and that story was never actually really told and you have seen that historically and I think it's going to 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 in at the very least it's two different countries. >> Well Angela Gabriel thanks so much for for joining me today.

44:20 This was a ton of fun. Um, 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 A6Z blog.