The new era of global expansion: the rise of borderless founders. Nearly half of a16z's app investments in the past two years came from international founders.

Behind the 44%: Founders Linked to Both Home Country and Silicon Valley

The criteria for identifying a Borderless Founder is quite specific: the founder is deeply embedded in two networks — one in their home country and one in Silicon Valley.

The home network might offer familiar engineering talent, first enterprise customers, government and industry connections, local media, and the diaspora. The Silicon Valley network provides access to venture capital, cutting-edge AI talent, startup advisors, global tech clients, and a high-frequency flow of information. The founder's role is to merge these two networks into a system their company can repeatedly tap into.

a16z uses a map showing founders' birthplaces to illustrate the scope of what they've observed. The founders on the map come from various countries across Europe, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, and have gone on to play key roles in high-growth AI and software companies.

Source: a16z internal data. This map shows the distribution of founders' birthplaces.

Another chart lists companies that reached $100 million in ARR within four years — OpenAI, Manus, Lovable, Replit, Anthropic, Cursor, Mistral, Perplexity, Wiz, Ramp, and Harvey — with flags indicating founder backgrounds.

Source: a16z internal data. The page doesn't disclose the sample selection, a standardized ARR definition, or a control group. This chart shows that international founders are common among high-growth companies, but it doesn't prove that an international background causes faster growth.

It's also important to note that the 44% figure only covers a16z's Apps team investments over the past two years. It shouldn't be extrapolated to all of a16z's investments, and it certainly doesn't represent the average for global startups.

For a broader context, consider data from the NFAP. Their 2026 report found that of 775 private US billion-dollar startups, 455 — or 59% — were founded or co-founded by immigrants. It's worth noting that "immigrant founder," a16z's "international founder," and "headquartered overseas" are three different metrics. Taken together, they simply underscore that high-value American startups have long been deeply reliant on cross-border talent.

Being "borderless" doesn't mean frictionless. a16z immediately identifies three hurdles: visas, establishing a presence in San Francisco, and securing credible referrals while still in the home country. While a dual-network structure can bridge geography, gaining entry into both networks still requires long-term relationships and physical presence.

The Home Country Isn't a Liability: It Provides Customers, Talent, and Brand

The scarcest resource for a startup is credibility. When a product is new, revenue is minimal, and the team hasn't been validated by the market, customers are hesitant to take a risk, top talent is reluctant to join, and media and investors lack a reason to pay attention. A founder's home country network can supply a significant amount of this credibility upfront.

The following six case studies illustrate how this works, with startups launching from a foundation of customers, talent, or brand.

Customers: Securing Meaningful First Logos

Stockholm-based AI startup Pit, still in its seed stage, counted H&M and industrial group Stena Metall among its first customers. CEO Adam Jaffer, who previously founded Voi Mobility, already had a reputation in the Swedish tech scene. That local credibility helped the young company land well-known enterprise clients earlier than it might have otherwise.

Supersonik founder Daniel Carmona had limited visibility in the US, but he was able to connect with Salesforce's CRO through the Spanish diaspora. The two had attended the same university in Barcelona, and this trusted referral accelerated the deal. Salesforce subsequently became one of the company's first major enterprise contracts.

The value of an early anchor customer extends far beyond the initial revenue. These clients provide product feedback, procurement validation, sales case studies, and fundraising narratives, making it easier for the next enterprise customer to trust the company.

A supplementary video highlights another, deeper advantage of a home country: an understanding of missing local infrastructure. Addi founder Santiago Suarez grew up in Colombia, worked in US financial services, and then returned to Latin America to start his company. In the US, capabilities like anti-fraud and KYC are often available as off-the-shelf services; in many Latin American markets, teams must build these from scratch. This higher initial barrier to entry results in infrastructure and operational knowledge that's difficult for latecomers to replicate. A founder's background isn't just a contact list — it includes knowing what you have to build yourself.

Talent: Recognizing Signals the Global Market Misses

Brazilian insurance AI company Segura hires from robotics teams at less internationally renowned local universities. These teams consist of highly capable, dedicated students, but global headhunters often don't know which competitions, labs, and advisors actually carry weight.

Pit found six technical leaders who had previously served as CTOs at Swedish unicorns. Tako, meanwhile, identifies high-potential talent living in the US who are interested in working on a meaningful mission in Brazil. This advantage is a blend of information asymmetry, judgment, and trust: the founder knows where to look, understands local resumes, and can more easily convince candidates to believe in the company's mission.

Brand: Becoming a National Champion Before Going Global

ElevenLabs was founded by a team from Poland. According to a16z, the Polish government has become a shareholder and opened an AI Lab in the country, hoping to channel some of the roughly 45,000 tech graduates it produces each year into AI entrepreneurship. This government and industry attention subsequently attracted a wave of international media coverage.

In smaller markets, a representative company can more easily become part of the national tech narrative. Governments, universities, and local media provide the first layer of amplification, while international media, partners, and customers continue to push its influence into larger markets.

How First Customers and Hires Build a Global Growth Flywheel

a16z borrows the economics concept of preferential attachment to explain this mechanism. Think of it as "resources tending to accumulate where resources already exist": recognizable customers attract talent and investment, strong talent improves the product, a better product drives revenue, and that revenue plus media attention makes the next set of customers more willing to sign on.

Customers, talent, and brand can each serve as the entry point for this cycle. Click on any of the three starting points below to compare how different companies set the same flywheel in motion.

The value of the home country network is concentrated at the "startup" phase. A new company without global recognition can first secure a strong customer, a set of scarce talents, or a round of public attention from its home country. The Silicon Valley network then converts that local credibility into funding, global brand recognition, operational talent, and international customers. These new resources, in turn, enhance the company's standing at home, making the next round of hiring and sales even easier.

This also clarifies the true meaning of "Your background is your moat." A birthplace doesn't automatically create a defensible advantage. It's the people, institutions, industry trust, and cultural understanding that a background allows you to mobilize — when transformed through product and organization — that become embedded in a company's competitive system.

How a16z Built a Global Founder Network Over Five Years

This post also serves as a declaration of a16z's global deal-sourcing strategy. It summarizes the advantages of international founders while simultaneously showcasing how the firm builds relationships with these founders before they become famous, and how it continues to connect portfolio companies with customers, media, and talent post-investment.

This playbook consists of five sequential steps:

1. Identify key nodes in each country. In Latin America, that includes Rappi co-founder Sebas Mejia, Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch, and Brex co-founder Pedro Franceschi; in Europe, Voi founder Fredrik Hjelm and Wise founder Kristo Käärmann.
2. Host curated small dinners. Experienced founders share their journeys with the next generation of entrepreneurs and potential key hires; these events also help establish brands and support recruiting at more mature companies.
3. Maintain a consistent local presence. Ben Horowitz has held dinners with entrepreneurs and government representatives in Stockholm. Gabriel Vasquez made nine trips to Sweden in a single year, using frequent face-to-face interaction to build trust.
4. Cultivate the diaspora and early talent. a16z aims to meet individuals before they become well-known, then maintains long-term relationships through scout, mentor, and founder networks.
5. Integrate post-investment networks into growth. Customer referrals, the New Media team, operating advisors, and cross-founder connections continue to drive the customer, brand, and talent flywheel.

Over five years, this dinner series has hosted over 600 founders and founding hires. Slash CEO Victor Cardenas attended his first event three years ago when the company was just getting started; Slash has since achieved unicorn status. After a dinner participant mentioned Swedish student Gabriel Petersson, Vasquez began building a relationship with him early on, making him an a16z scout and connecting him with mentors. Petersson later joined OpenAI.

The accompanying video fills in the generational connection aspect of this network. Serial entrepreneurs bring experience, credibility, and customer relationships, but they may not know the newest generation of AI engineers — often in their late teens or early twenties. Young talent, on the other hand, has cutting-edge skills but might prefer to work for a strong company for two to four years first. a16z bridges this gap, effectively turning early roles at established companies into a "CEO school" for the next generation of founders. When Pit arrived in Silicon Valley, a16z arranged for the team to discuss use cases with executives at DoorDash, Lyft, and several portfolio companies, and to participate in early product ideation.

Post-investment actions are just as specific. a16z introduced ElevenLabs to TelevisaUnivision, helping with Spanish-language content distribution across languages. It connected German team Factor with a major Latin American bank, leading to an early pilot. And it linked Fernando Gadotti with Sebastian Mejia from his Rappi days; the two later co-founded Tako.

These examples also reveal a deliberate selection bias in the material: the post focuses on companies that have already succeeded or that a16z has backed. There are no failure cases and no comparison with average international founders. It's useful for explaining how the network works, but it can't answer the question of what the average success rate for this approach actually is.

Why AI Makes Startups More Global — and Silicon Valley More Important

AI is pushing two opposing forces at once.

Cloud services, AI coding tools, remote collaboration platforms, and mature SaaS have dramatically lowered the cost of building a software company. A small team in Stockholm, Warsaw, São Paulo, or Barcelona can now build a product that once required a much larger engineering organization. R&D capability is therefore spreading to more cities around the world.

Frontier model companies, high-risk capital, research talent, serial entrepreneurs, and large tech customers are still heavily concentrated in the Bay Area. The denser the information environment, the more valuable informal conversations, trusted referrals, and rapid hiring become. Startup capability may be distributed, but frontier networks still exert a powerful gravitational pull.

a16z calls Silicon Valley a "state of mind," but its own actions fill in the practical side of that phrase: nine trips to Sweden a year, small offline dinners, visa sponsorship, a San Francisco base, and in-person introductions all make clear that geography still shapes access to resources. Remote tools lower the cost of distance, but long-term trust still depends on people physically entering the network.

A Borderless company might therefore take a shape like this: R&D in Europe or Latin America, engineering talent from the founder's home country, capital and advisors from Silicon Valley, customers spread across the globe, and the founder moving frequently between San Francisco and home. The company is defined by multiple nodes at once.

The bridge can also be crossed in the other direction. The video notes that Silicon Valley company Cognition built its Brazil market network early and drew a relatively high share of its early revenue from the country, thanks to strong local demand for AI and a thin field of suppliers. A dual network helps international founders enter the U.S., but it can also help U.S. companies reach overseas markets where demand is strong and supply is scarce.

How long does it take to break into Silicon Valley?

Gabriel Vasquez's personal recommendation in the video is to spend at least three to six months in Silicon Valley. A few weeks is usually not enough to get deep into relationships, and the real value isn't just fundraising — it's also recalibrating how fast your company operates. Three to six months isn't a universal threshold; visa constraints, funding, and family circumstances all determine whether a founder can make that commitment at all.

How Chinese AI founders should map their global capability footprint

The following is a China-specific scenario built on a16z's dual-network framework; the original material doesn't systematically study Chinese companies.

A Chinese AI founder could connect several high-density resource clusters: hardware and supply chain around Shenzhen; AI engineering and product teams in Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai; the model ecosystem, capital, and startup networks of the San Francisco Bay Area; and the customers, brands, channels, and localization capabilities of target markets.

Pick a company type and see how these nodes shift in priority.

• AI hardware can keep industrial design, prototyping, manufacturing, and supply chain in Shenzhen while building brand, channel, developer ecosystem, and privacy compliance capabilities overseas.
• Robotics depends on China's component, manufacturing, and engineering density, but also needs real-world deployment scenarios, sales, and after-sales support in target markets; Silicon Valley adds capital, research talent, and frontier model relationships.
• AI video can leverage Chinese teams' speed in engineering and product iteration, but global growth still hinges on creator networks, copyright partnerships, content culture, and distribution channels.
• AI consumer apps, once they have fast experimentation capability, still have to rebuild community trust, cultural understanding, payments, compliance, and user acquisition in each target market.

To assess whether a company actually has a dual-network advantage, run through four questions in sequence:

1. What resource from the home country is hard for competitors to replicate? Supply chain, talent judgment, industry customers, government relationships, or cultural understanding — name at least one concrete node.
2. Which capabilities can only be gained by being in Silicon Valley or the target market? Fundraising is only one of them; model ecosystem, key hiring, brand, channels, and enterprise procurement can all be gaps.
3. Can the founder access both networks? Having offices in two places isn't the same as having trust; the people you can actually reach, sustained relationships, and real deals closed are much more convincing.
4. Can resources on both sides feed each other? Whether China's engineering speed generates overseas customers, and whether those customers in turn strengthen hiring, brand, and product, determines if the setup is an org chart or a growth engine.

Global entrepreneurship is shifting from "moving the company somewhere" to "putting capabilities on the densest nodes." A founder's background provides an initial set of connections; the company's moat comes from converting those connections into customers, talent, product, brand, and revenue — and then letting them keep reinforcing each other.