Subject: 5 Counter-intuitive Insights from Our AGM + AI Easter-egg

The Future of Geographic Alpha Investing

Wide Open Map

Last week, we held our annual LP meeting at Fluent Ventures.

The event included presentations from many of our founders but also our LP base. We are backed by 50+ unicorn founders and exited founders, 20 VC funds or their GPs, and a number of fund of funds, banks, family offices and corporates.

Rather than keep these insights to ourselves, I wanted to share five trends reshaping how we think about venture investing in 2026.

1. What’s old is new: geographic alpha playing out

Fluent’s geographic alpha thesis is simple: replicate proven business models in new markets or industries to create a derisked portfolio – each bet should have best-in-class upside (since we are investing in proven derisked models) and, at the same time, lower downside (since we are investing in proven derisked models).

This year, I had a big IPO in my historical portfolio at a previous firm. Chime’s decacorn IPO is the poster child. They serve 9 million users by eliminating overdraft fees—disrupting a $30 billion annual revenue stream for legacy banks. I was also an investor in Neon (another leading Neobank and unicorn out of Brazil).

The interesting thing about this model is that it does not emanate from either of these markets. Rather, the first (few) came from Europe.

As a moment of reflection, markets change and theses can also be wrong. Originally, I was skeptical about investing in European neobanks – the market was well banked (making CAC theoretically higher), interchange was lower (unlike US which is 100x higher) and credit costs are manageable (making Capital One / Nubank strategy less appealing).

That challenge turned into an opportunity. Players like Revolut became particularly astute at cross-selling products and creating a self-reinforcing ecosystem; and moat.

The result – even more geographic alpha in this category.

2. AI Makes Replication Faster and Cheaper

The playbook of replicating a proven model into a new geography used to take 2-3 years and $10-20 million to execute. Just look at Uber replicators around the world – like Grab, Go-Jek, Ola, DiDi, etc., who were particularly profligate with their spending.

With AI, founders are testing multiple business lines simultaneously for a fraction of that cost and time. And ideas are much more portable than ever.

AI lowers the barrier to MVP development, reduces technical debt (debatably), and accelerates product-market fit discovery. What used to require a full engineering team can now be prototyped by a solo founder with the right AI tools. This fundamentally changes the risk profile of geographic arbitrage – you can test more markets, more models, and more variations before committing serious capital. We may see more compound startup ideas – combining multiple proven models at once.

I also believe we’ll see a new type of model emerge: Camel Seed Strappers. Bootstrapping used to be an option for founders to scale with less VC. AI theoretically allows companies to raise a single round – after having even built some product and demonstrated market need – and never raise again. The result are much less capital intensive and diluted cap tables. I expect this will change venture math for small firms.

3. AI Must Change How VCs Invest

If founders are moving faster, investors need to as well. We’ve rebuilt our deal sourcing around LLM-based search tools that compress market mapping from weeks to minutes. Ask “who are the top 10 companies in X category across Southeast Asia” and get a researched answer in real-time.

But it goes beyond sourcing. We’re using AI to:

• Incubate smarter: Running parallel experiments on business model variations before committing to a geography

• Add value differently: Connecting portfolio companies to lookalikes globally, identifying playbook transferability in minutes rather than months

• Decisioning: This is earlier for us, but we are playing around with feedback mechanisms independent of the team on our ideas, based on our stated preferences

• Create content: like an Easter Egg Fluent theme song we created (with Suno) in the intro – DM me if you want a listen.

The firms that treat AI as a nice-to-have research tool will get outpaced by those rebuilding their entire operating model around it.

4. New Waves Are Emerging Beyond Fintech

Fintech was a once-in-a-decade wave that created massive value, and I had the opportunity to ride as a full-time investor since 2013. We’re now seeing similar dynamics in three new categories:

Healthcare: Tech-enabled primary care, roll-ups and employee ownership are becoming big drivers across multiple markets. We recently announced our investment in Jutro. We have a few more coming soon.

Professional services: We are looking to new models of applying AI into professional services. We have a few replication ideas in legal and compliance (and already incubated one company in the category).

Generational Business Transfers: Across sectors, baby boomer retirements are creating liquidity events. The playbook: buy with debt, improve with technology, scale through roll-ups. It works in healthcare, professional services, and skilled trades. We invested in Baton and Iconic for example, which replicates some lessons from M&A Research Institute in Japan.

Each has the same characteristics that made fintech attractive: operational complexity, regulatory moats, local network effects, and structural inefficiencies ripe for disruption.

5. The Exit Environment Is Globalizing

The Midas List tells the story. In 2013 when I started investing only 4 cities had created a unicorn. 100% of the Midas list made it from investing in Silicon Valley.

Today, 30% of Midas members live and invest outside Silicon Valley. Even in the U.S. the return outcomes are more dispersed. One thing is clear; venture returns are no longer concentrated in Silicon Valley.

Furthermore, the notable deals highlighted — one per investor using Forbes’ methodology — are also more global than ever, including Coupang (South Korea), Flipkart (India) and UiPath (originally from Romania). In fact, the company mentioned more than any other this year — ahead of OpenAI, Coinbase, DoorDash and other Silicon Valley all-stars — is Brazil’s Nubank, responsible for landing six different investors on this year’s list.

Liquidity paths are diversifying too. Regional exchanges like Saudi Arabia’s Tadul are offering viable exit routes for local champions. Multiples are sometimes even higher abroad than they are domestically.

M&A appetite is growing for companies with proven models and regional dominance. Brex just got acquired by Capital One for $5b – a model we’ve backed elsewhere.

And secondaries are becoming a legitimate option earlier in the lifecycle.