Nine Flights to Stockholm Tell a Story

Nine flights. That's how many times Andreessen Horowitz partner Gabriel Vasquez traveled from NYC to Stockholm in a single year. He wasn't just visiting portfolio companies like Lovable—he was hunting for Sweden's next unicorns before they crossed the Atlantic.

His persistence paid off. News broke that a16z led a $2.3 million pre-seed round in Dentio, a Swedish startup using AI to handle dental practice admin work. While that's pocket change for a firm that just announced $15 billion in new funds, it signals something bigger: U.S. VCs are aggressively sourcing deals abroad, even without local offices.

The Scout Network Strategy

Stockholm wasn't a random choice for a16z. They'd previously scored big returns backing Skype, co-founded by Swedish entrepreneur Niklas Zennström. Since then, the Swedish capital has produced a steady stream of breakouts: fintech giant Klarna, e-scooter company Voi, and legal AI startup Legora.

Dentio shares the same DNA. The company emerged from SSE Business Lab—the Stockholm School of Economics' startup incubator that's become a unicorn factory. Three former high school classmates reconnected as students and tackled a problem close to home: co-founder Anton Li's mother, a dentist, complained that admin work was stealing time from patient care.

"We spend a lot of time developing a deep understanding of specific markets and knowing where innovation is emerging," Vasquez told TechCrunch. But here's the twist: a16z doesn't rely on boots on the ground. Instead, they've turned successful founders like Voi's Fredrik Hjelm and Kry's Johannes Schildt into scouts, mapping local talent.

The Commoditization Race

Dentio started with AI-powered clinical note generation from voice recordings. But founder Elias Afrasiabi knows that AI scribes will become commodity products soon enough. The real challenge? Proving value to dentists so they won't switch when cheaper alternatives emerge.

Competition is already heating up. Fellow Swedish startup Tandem Health raised a $50 million Series A last year to support clinicians across multiple medical specialties. Dentio is betting that dental-focused specialization plus international expansion can reach VC-scale returns.

"Now we're a team of seven people, and we think that it's possible to build a unified way of handling administration all over Europe, and maybe even all over the world," Afrasiabi said.

The Anti-Silicon Valley Playbook

Dentio's approach defies conventional wisdom. "We went to zero meetups. I reached out to zero investors," Afrasiabi revealed. Instead of the typical Silicon Valley hustle, word spread through referrals and organic network effects. "I think it was mostly through referrals and people talking to each other that the news got all the way over to the U.S."

This wasn't luck—it was strategy. a16z has systematically built eyes around the world to spot companies as early as local funds might. For Vasquez, who focuses on AI application investments, this reflects "a pattern of great global companies being born abroad and scaling quickly."

Born and raised in El Salvador, Vasquez has also been spending time in São Paulo. "I'm really excited about what's brewing in Brazil and across Latin America in AI," he wrote on LinkedIn. "I believe AI is the great equalizer. Most people now have access to PhD-level intelligence on a phone, and ultimately, Silicon Valley is a state of mind."

The European Privacy Advantage

Dentio prominently features its "Made in Sweden" branding and emphasizes that "all relevant data is processed in Sweden and Finland in compliance with Swedish and EU law." This isn't just marketing—it's strategic positioning. European healthcare customers are increasingly privacy-conscious, and U.S. competitors face regulatory headwinds in data-sensitive sectors.

But the "Made in Sweden" label also signals something else to VCs: a callback to Sweden's track record of producing breakout companies. It's a form of geographic branding that carries weight in investor circles.