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Andreessen Horowitz has made headlines for its American dynamism thesis<\/a>, but a U.S. passport is no requirement. According to Gabriel Vasquez, a partner focusing on AI apps and the firm\u2019s global investment strategy, \u201c44% of our investments in the Apps Fund One and Two have an international founder.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Together with general partner Angela Strange, Vasquez is the driving force behind a16z\u2019s Borderless Founder network<\/a>, an initiative to support immigrant and international founders. Their premise is that great companies could be born anywhere, but they now believe foreign entrepreneurs actually have an edge over their American peers.<\/p>\n The U.S. has always attracted foreign founders; but in the current AI-dominated cycle, a16z acknowledges that their roots are more helpful than they used to be. \u201cThere is now an advantage to having one foot in your home country, and one foot in Silicon Valley,\u201d Strange and Vasquez wrote in a post<\/a> to which TechCrunch had early access.\u00a0<\/p>\n Talking to TechCrunch exclusively, Vasquez broke down how this advantage has become significant enough for a16z to \u201cspend more than one million air miles\u201d in order to go after international dealflow \u2014 rather than expecting each and every team to move to the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n This expectation didn\u2019t come out of nowhere, especially for enterprise startups, where there\u2019s been a marked shift in buying patterns from those based outside the U.S. \u201cThe buyers from countries outside the U.S. were not moving rapidly, and their willingness to pay was very low,\u201d Vasquez said of the old pattern. <\/p>\n But this has changed dramatically \u201cin the last three to five years,\u201d with startups now able to secure major companies worldwide as customers, even in less cutting-edge markets.<\/p>\n When a16z started hearing from international seed-stage startups working with Fortune 500 companies, \u201cwe thought this might be an exception, but it was clearly a trend,\u201d Vasquez said. Examples now abound of international AI startups signing major clients early on \u2014 but Vasquez is also right that it was rarely the case even a few years ago.<\/p>\n In Europe, in particular, it used to be that corporations would only engage with startups through open innovation programs and accelerators, but rarely with their main checkbook. Turning them into paid customers was hard enough that France launched a dedicated initiative, \u201cI Choose French Tech.\u201d But according to Vasquez, AI has been the driver in making this shift a reality.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because AI made legacy players realize they would have to buy third-party solutions to remain competitive \u2014 even in areas where human labor is still affordable, like Latin America, Vasquez said. \u201cSoftware never really picked up in the region, because you were competing with cheap labor.\u201d But now that AI agents are \u201calways on\u201d and increasingly accurate, they have become commonplace in customer service and more.<\/p>\n Others could go after these opportunities, too. \u201cThere\u2019s so much appetite at the enterprise level for companies all around the world to consume AI, but American [startups] don\u2019t have the speed yet to go serve the entire market from day zero, so they obviously prioritize U.S. companies,\u201d Vasquez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n This leaves the door open for a local founder to sell an AI solution to companies in their country, while splitting their time between home and the U.S. \u201cThe concept of headquarters is something that is changing a lot; it\u2019s just more fluid,\u201d Vasquez said, noting that even governments seem to take a similar view.\u00a0<\/p>\n Case in point: Poland recently took a stake<\/a> in a16z portfolio company ElevenLabs. The voice AI startup only has a subsidiary in the country, and not its headquarters, but its customers include InPost and LOT Polish Airlines, and its founders are Piotr D\u0105bkowski and Mateusz Staniszewski \u2014 two examples of Polish talent in AI, also strongly present at OpenAI<\/a>.<\/p>\n From Vasquez\u2019s point of view, access to talent is a key differentiator. \u201cRight now, recruiting in Silicon Valley is the hardest thing, because you\u2019re competing with Anthropic and OpenAI that have raised billions and billions of dollars for the best talent.\u201d But international founders are often tapping into the talent pool that exists in many places outside of the U.S.<\/p>\n Talent clusters are also the reason why Vasquez has been spending a lot of time on a plane \u2014 often in Stockholm \u2014 in search of the next unicorn<\/a>. Some of the top AI scaleups are European academic spinouts<\/a>, and VCs are going after them. In a sense, the story goes the other way around; to quote<\/a> Dealroom founder Yoram Wijngaarde: \u201cEuropean talent remains one of America\u2019s biggest startup advantages.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n