#4 Investing Where Others Aren’t Looking
In LatAm, CEE, Southeast Asia, and MENA, AI-native startups are solving real problems at global scale - but most are building in ecosystems that global capital still treats as afterthoughts.
You can hear it in the gaps:
“Do you support Pix?” (Brazil’s real-time payments - now more common than cash)
“Not yet. We support credit and crypto.”
“Do you have a localized support/ content team?”
“No, but our website is automatically translated to Bahasa Indonesia.”
These aren’t rare mistakes. They’re common symptoms of a deeper bias: assuming the rest of the world behaves like the Bay Area.
That’s why we built a 250+ scout network across São Paulo, Warsaw, Bangkok, Riyadh, and beyond - not just to find startups, but to stress-test infrastructure, distribution, and cultural fit from day one.
Regions like Central & Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia host 10 - 15% of global AI-native startups but receive <3% of VC capital.
That mismatch is the arbitrage. Our scouts close the information gap so we can close the funding one.
🧭 Why this matters:
The funding gap is not subtle - it’s systemic.
Regions like Central & Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia host 10 - 15% of global AI-native startups but receive <3% of VC capital.
That mismatch is the arbitrage. Our scouts close the information gap so we can close the funding one.
📡 Scout Sourced, Founder Backed
Our scouts aren’t just sourcing decks - they’re testing assumptions in the wild:- Can this product work without localised onboarding?
- Does it speak the real language of payments, regulation, and UX in-market?
- Is the traction local, or just noise?
- We screened AI-native consumer tools from Cairo to Kraków solving uniquely local pain -real distribution, real revenue, still overlooked.
- One scout-sourced startup, Yavendió, is building for how LatAm actually shops. In a region where most online sales happen over WhatsApp, not websites, Yavendió turns chats into full storefronts. Their AI agents handle discovery, sales, and checkout—inside the thread.
🧭 Thesis in Motion
True localisation isn’t just translation, it’s:- Knowing which payment rails move money (Pix, ShopeePay, PromptPay)
- Navigating bureaucracy, not just UX
- Building around cultural defaults, not global design trends
🧩 Where You Come In
We’re:- Adding scouts in across CEE, LatAm, MENA and SEA — send names our way.
- Reviewing early-stage, AI-native consumer startups across capital-starved regions through July 31.