Key takeaways
- Forty-four percent of a16z's Apps Fund investments now have international founders, with the firm spending over one million air miles pursuing global dealflow.
- Enterprise buyers outside the U.S. rapidly adopted AI solutions over the past three to five years, driven by competition and the need to acquire third-party capabilities.
- International founders gain advantages through access to local talent, ability to serve regional markets faster than American startups, and flexible geographic presence.
- Poland's government stake in ElevenLabs demonstrates that top-tier AI companies can emerge from anywhere, reshaping venture capital's geographic assumptions.
Andreessen Horowitz’s investment thesis has long centered on American founders and Silicon Valley‘s dominance, but the venture firm now sees a competitive advantage in the opposite direction. According to Gabriel Vasquez, a partner at a16z focused on AI applications and global investment strategy, international founders are increasingly well-positioned to win in the current AI cycle—so much so that the firm is investing significant resources to pursue them globally rather than wait for them to relocate to California.
International Founders Reshape a16z’s Investment Strategy
The Borderless Founder Initiative
The shift reflects a fundamental change in how enterprise software buyers operate worldwide. Forty-four percent of the investments in a16z’s Apps Fund One and Two have international founders at the helm, a figure Vasquez shared alongside general partner Angela Strange, who together lead the firm’s Borderless Founder network dedicated to immigrant and international founders. Their collaboration signals a deliberate strategic pivot: “There is now an advantage to having one foot in your home country, and one foot in Silicon Valley,” they wrote in describing this reorientation.
Pursuing Global Dealflow
To capture this opportunity, a16z is spending more than one million air miles pursuing international dealflow rather than assuming every founding team must move to the U.S. Vasquez confirmed this unconventional commitment in describing how the firm’s strategy has evolved as international startups began closing deals with Fortune 500 companies.
The Three-to-Five-Year Inflection in Enterprise Buying
Enterprise buying patterns outside the U.S. have transformed dramatically. Historically, international corporations moved slowly and negotiated aggressively on price. “The buyers from countries outside the U.S. were not moving rapidly, and their willingness to pay was very low,” Vasquez said of the old dynamic. That pattern held particularly in Europe, where companies traditionally engaged startups only through open innovation programs and accelerators, rarely writing actual checks.
France’s government even launched “I Choose French Tech” as a dedicated effort to help domestic startups overcome this structural disadvantage. All of that changed in the last three to five years, Vasquez said, driven largely by AI. When legacy enterprises realized they needed third-party AI solutions to remain competitive—even in regions where labor remained cheap—the entire calculus shifted.
Latin America exemplified this dynamic. Software adoption historically lagged in the region because corporations could hire human workers at a fraction of the cost, making custom development uneconomical. AI agents, now increasingly accurate and operating around the clock, upended that equation. Companies across Latin America that once had no reason to buy software now have pressing reasons to acquire AI capabilities.
The evidence of this shift appeared when a16z began hearing from seed-stage international startups that had already signed major enterprise customers. Initially, the firm attributed these wins to exceptions in the market. “We thought this might be an exception, but it was clearly a trend,” Vasquez said. Examples now abound of early-stage international AI startups securing Fortune 500 clients, a development that would have been extraordinarily rare even a few years prior.
Why Local Founders Have the Advantage
Speed and Market Coverage
The geographic and structural advantages fall into multiple categories. American AI startups, many well-funded and capable, still face constraints in serving the entire global market simultaneously. “There’s so much appetite at the enterprise level for companies all around the world to consume AI, but American [startups] don’t have the speed yet to go serve the entire market from day zero, so they obviously prioritize U.S. companies,” Vasquez explained. This narrow focus creates a vacuum that local founders are filling by focusing on their home regions first.
Flexible Geography
An international founder can sell AI solutions to companies in their home country while maintaining a dual presence—one foot at home, one in Silicon Valley—without relocating entirely. The headquarters concept itself is becoming more fluid, Vasquez noted, with even governments reconsidering their expectations around where a company’s command center should be located. This flexibility allows founders to build relationships with local buyers who prefer working with teams that understand regional dynamics, language nuances, and regulatory environments.
Talent as the Decisive Factor
The deeper advantage lies in talent access. Silicon Valley’s recruiting environment has become brutally competitive, with Anthropic, OpenAI, and other AI leaders spending billions to attract top researchers and engineers. “Right now, recruiting in Silicon Valley is the hardest thing, because you’re competing with Anthropic and OpenAI that have raised billions and billions of dollars for the best talent,” Vasquez said.
International founders, by contrast, often tap into deep talent pools outside the U.S., giving them recruiting advantages their American counterparts no longer possess. This reality has sent a16z’s investment team chasing talent clusters across the globe. Stockholm, in particular, has become a frequent destination for Vasquez as the firm hunts for potential unicorns emerging from European academic institutions. Many of the most advanced AI scaling operations are spinouts from European universities, creating regional advantages in hiring and institutional knowledge.
The paradox underlying a16z’s investment thesis came from Dealroom founder Yoram Wijngaarde: “European talent remains one of America’s biggest startup advantages.”
Case Study: ElevenLabs and Poland’s Emergence
The ElevenLabs story illustrates how this dynamic plays out in practice. The voice AI startup, founded by Piotr Dąbkowski and Mateusz Staniszewski—both Polish—emerged from the European talent ecosystem. While ElevenLabs maintains only a subsidiary in Poland rather than its headquarters, the country’s government took a financial stake in the company, signaling confidence in both the founders and the broader AI ecosystem.
The company’s customer base reflects its ability to win deals locally: InPost and LOT Polish Airlines both rely on ElevenLabs’ technology. Poland’s investment in the startup goes beyond traditional venture capital dynamics. It represents a government’s recognition that top-tier AI talent and viable AI companies can emerge from anywhere, not just the Bay Area. ElevenLabs’ presence in a16z’s portfolio reinforces how international founders are now competing for partnership from top-tier U.S. venture firms—and winning.
The Shifting Geography of Venture Capital
The broader implication of a16z’s Borderless Founder initiative is that geography is no longer destiny in venture capital. Founders no longer need to choose between building their company at home and accessing world-class capital. They can do both, leveraging local customer relationships and talent while maintaining ties to Silicon Valley’s institutional knowledge and capital sources.
Vasquez’s willingness to spend more than one million air miles signals that a16z believes this trend will persist and deepen. Rather than waiting for international founders to relocate, the firm is going to them, recognizing that the best companies—especially in AI—may be built where the talent is densest and the customer problems are most urgent, regardless of geography. This shift also reflects a larger realization within Silicon Valley itself: the competitive advantage that long flowed from proximity to the Valley is now sharing the stage with access to specialized talent, customer relationships, and regional expertise.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does a16z believe international founders have an advantage in AI?
International founders access local talent pools unavailable in Silicon Valley, can sell to customers in their home countries before American startups arrive, and can split time between home and the U.S. without relocating entirely. American startups lack the speed to serve entire global markets from day one, creating opportunities for local competitors.
How have enterprise buying patterns changed outside the U.S.?
Over the last three to five years, companies worldwide—even in regions with cheap labor like Latin America—now rapidly purchase AI solutions to remain competitive. Historically, corporations outside the U.S. moved slowly and negotiated aggressively on price, but AI made legacy systems obsolete, forcing them to buy third-party solutions.
What does ElevenLabs' success reveal about international founders?
The Polish voice AI startup with founders Piotr Dąbkowski and Mateusz Staniszewski signed major customers like InPost and LOT Polish Airlines while attracting Polish government investment. This demonstrates that top-tier AI companies can succeed outside Silicon Valley and that governments now recognize AI talent can emerge from anywhere.
