For decades, founders believed there was only one road to scale … get to San Francisco, raise from Sand Hill, and pray for product-market fit before the money ran out.

That playbook’s not required anymore.

Today, innovation isn’t a zip code, it’s a signal.
And that signal is loudest in the places most of the world still overlooks.

Across Africa, LATAM, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, a new operating model is forming … small, cross-functional Talent Pods that integrate globally but execute locally.

According to the Outsorcy Global Talent Pods guide, these hubs deliver up to 70% lower cost than U.S. hiring while scoring high on education, English fluency, and domain strength.
When you build the right way, cost isn’t the advantage, execution is.

👉 Download the free playbook — Building Global Talent Pods: A Strategic Guide for Leaders to see how to structure pods, choose markets, and scale without bloat.

1. Pristina, Kosovo

Europe’s youngest country and one of its fastest-rising startup hubs.
Kosovo consistently ranks top-2 globally across sales, AI, marketing, and support roles in Outsorcy’s weighted rankings.
Its secret: a generation that learned to build from scarcity.
English-fluent, EU-aligned, and fiercely entrepreneurial, this is what a modern talent hub looks like.
Small country. Massive signal.

2. Bogotá, Colombia

From conflict to conviction.
Rappi, Treinta, and government-backed academies have transformed Bogotá into LATAM’s most efficient digital economy.
High overlap with U.S. time zones, creative talent, and an ecosystem that rewards output, not optics.

3. Medellín, Colombia

The redemption story of Latin America.
Once infamous, now innovative.
Ruta N and city-backed digital programs have turned Medellín into a regional lab for SaaS, fintech, and impact-driven startups.

4. Lagos, Nigeria

Africa’s capital of hustle.
Flutterwave, Andela, and a generation of founders solving real problems … payments, credit, logistics … not vanity apps.
High potential and growing investor confidence.

5. Tallinn, Estonia

Population < 500 k, > 10 unicorns.
Digital ID, e-residency, and a deep culture of experimentation.
Top ranked for AI and software engineering in Outsorcy’s analysis.

6. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

The quiet tech tiger.
~70% cost savings vs. U.S., strong engineering base, and relentless execution.
Perfect for product and AI pods.

7. Warsaw, Poland

From outsourcing to ownership.
Deep engineering maturity, EU infrastructure, and a rising bench of fractional executives.
Think Berlin’s creativity with Silicon Valley’s ambition.

8. São Paulo, Brazil

LATAM’s powerhouse with discipline.
Post-Nubank founders are building efficient, profitable SaaS.
Great for marketing and revenue pods with real-time U.S. overlap.

9. Nairobi, Kenya

“Silicon Savannah.”
Fintech meets climate tech in a city built on purpose.
Offers ~65 % cost savings and a rapidly evolving dev base.

10. Tbilisi, Georgia

Crypto capital meets creative capital.
Low tax, high freedom, and founders who build first, ask later.

The New Playbook for Global Founders

The new map of entrepreneurship isn’t built on HQs.
It’s built on pods … small, cross-functional teams that own outcomes and scale through connection, not hierarchy.

The Outsorcy Guide calls this the “Follow-the-Sun Model.”
Sales Pods in LATAM.
Engineering Pods in Eastern Europe.
Support Pods in Asia.
AI Pods in hybrid Eastern Europe + Kosovo pods.

Founders who adopt this structure aren’t just cutting cost — they’re compounding speed.

📘 Free Resource for Founders and Leaders

If you’re hiring across markets like these, don’t guess … design it.
👉 Download Building Global Talent Pods: A Strategic Guide for Leaders to access region-by-region benchmarks, cost comparisons, and rollout templates.
Build pods, not layers and scale without losing control.

🎥 Watch the Story Behind the #1 City on the List

Kosovo’s not just a data point, it’s a living case study.
In Episode 1 of Scaling Across Borders, we show how a nation rebuilt from scratch and became a startup hub powering global teams for U.S. companies.

If you want to see what it actually looks like when an entire country becomes a startup, watch it.
👉 Watch Episode 1: Kosovo — Scaling Across Borders on YouTube

Greg Isenberg is one of my favorite tech futurists. This week he dropped his 30-point thread on X last week, it hit like an earthquake in the founder world.

He wrote:

“AI will kill the concept of a 9–5 for millions. MANY get laid off, become freelancers, shift to portfolios of agent-assisted work.”

“AI is collapsing the value chain. Agencies, recruiters, consultants, and project managers disappear while micro-operators running ten-agent stacks take their place.”

“THIS IS THE BEST TIME IN HISTORY TO BUILD.”

He’s right.
But the real story isn’t just about technology.
It’s about agency.

What I see on the ground

I spend my time interviewing founders across the world, from Kosovo to Colombia, Nairobi to Denver, and investing in companies that are rewriting what “work” even means.

And here’s what keeps showing up:
Money isn’t the first thing they’re after.
Agency is.

They want control over their direction.
They want to decide what to build, who to build it with, and how to live while doing it.

We’re living in transformative times.
The uncertainty isn’t just economic anymore … it’s existential.

What do we become in an AI economy?
How do we stay in control when machines are starting to control the inputs?

The founders I meet already have an answer:
Entrepreneurship.

Building something of your own, even something small, is the clearest way to reclaim ownership in an age that’s trying to automate it away.

The value shift

The value of a degree is eroding.
The value of a career ladder is collapsing.
The value of a corporation is shifting faster than most realize.

But the value of ownership is compounding.

That’s why I built Scaling Across Borders.
To tell the stories of people who are doing just that.
Founders building in emerging markets, navigating the same chaos we all feel, but doing it with a sense of direction that’s rare right now.

The borderless founder

AI has flattened geography.
It’s not just the U.S. or Western Europe driving innovation anymore.

A founder in Prishtina can now raise capital from New York, hire a designer in Bogotá, and deploy an AI dev stack overnight.
That’s what we’re building toward with Outsorcy, a decentralized talent network that lets companies tap world-class people anywhere.

These founders don’t see borders, they see bandwidth.
They’re building 24/7 companies that blend human and machine intelligence.
They’re small teams with global reach.
They’re not managing employees, they’re orchestrating intelligence.

Humanity is the moat

Greg Isenberg said:

“Data privacy becomes the new luxury… authenticity becomes a trillion-dollar aesthetic.”

He’s right again.
In a world filled with AI noise, humanity becomes the signal.

People will follow what feels real … founders with stories, scars, and conviction.
Automation can scale production, but it can’t scale soul.

That’s the paradox of this moment:
AI gives us infinite leverage, but it also tests whether we can stay human while using it.

The frontier of sovereignty

AI is becoming the infrastructure of the global economy.
It’s rewiring how value, trust, and identity flow.

In that world, sovereignty isn’t granted by governments or corporations anymore, it’s earned through creation.
Through building.
Through owning something of your own.

That’s why the founder matters more than ever.
Because every time someone builds, whether a company, a product, a creative project, they reclaim a bit of that agency the world keeps trying to outsource.

That’s what Scaling Across Borders is really about.
It’s not just a show about startups.
It’s a chronicle of humanity in an increasingly automated world.
Proof that the instinct to build, to create, to own. That’s what keeps us human.

So yeah, I agree with Isenberg.
This is the best time in history to build.
But it’s also the most important time to build.
Because ownership isn’t just wealth.
It’s freedom.

Greg Isenberg is one of my favorite tech futurists. This week he dropped his 30-point thread on X last week, it hit like an earthquake in the founder world.

He wrote:

“AI will kill the concept of a 9–5 for millions. MANY get laid off, become freelancers, shift to portfolios of agent-assisted work.”

“AI is collapsing the value chain. Agencies, recruiters, consultants, and project managers disappear while micro-operators running ten-agent stacks take their place.”

“THIS IS THE BEST TIME IN HISTORY TO BUILD.”

He’s right.
But the real story isn’t just about technology.
It’s about agency.

What I see on the ground

I spend my time interviewing founders across the world, from Kosovo to Colombia, Nairobi to Denver, and investing in companies that are rewriting what “work” even means.

And here’s what keeps showing up:
Money isn’t the first thing they’re after.
Agency is.

They want control over their direction.
They want to decide what to build, who to build it with, and how to live while doing it.

We’re living in transformative times.
The uncertainty isn’t just economic anymore … it’s existential.

What do we become in an AI economy?
How do we stay in control when machines are starting to control the inputs?

The founders I meet already have an answer:
Entrepreneurship.

Building something of your own, even something small, is the clearest way to reclaim ownership in an age that’s trying to automate it away.

The value shift

The value of a degree is eroding.
The value of a career ladder is collapsing.
The value of a corporation is shifting faster than most realize.

But the value of ownership is compounding.

That’s why I built Scaling Across Borders.
To tell the stories of people who are doing just that.
Founders building in emerging markets, navigating the same chaos we all feel, but doing it with a sense of direction that’s rare right now.

The borderless founder

AI has flattened geography.
It’s not just the U.S. or Western Europe driving innovation anymore.

A founder in Prishtina can now raise capital from New York, hire a designer in Bogotá, and deploy an AI dev stack overnight.
That’s what we’re building toward with Outsorcy, a decentralized talent network that lets companies tap world-class people anywhere.

These founders don’t see borders, they see bandwidth.
They’re building 24/7 companies that blend human and machine intelligence.
They’re small teams with global reach.
They’re not managing employees, they’re orchestrating intelligence.

Humanity is the moat

Greg Isenberg said:

“Data privacy becomes the new luxury… authenticity becomes a trillion-dollar aesthetic.”

He’s right again.
In a world filled with AI noise, humanity becomes the signal.

People will follow what feels real … founders with stories, scars, and conviction.
Automation can scale production, but it can’t scale soul.

That’s the paradox of this moment:
AI gives us infinite leverage, but it also tests whether we can stay human while using it.

The frontier of sovereignty

AI is becoming the infrastructure of the global economy.
It’s rewiring how value, trust, and identity flow.

In that world, sovereignty isn’t granted by governments or corporations anymore, it’s earned through creation.
Through building.
Through owning something of your own.

That’s why the founder matters more than ever.
Because every time someone builds, whether a company, a product, a creative project, they reclaim a bit of that agency the world keeps trying to outsource.

That’s what Scaling Across Borders is really about.
It’s not just a show about startups.
It’s a chronicle of humanity in an increasingly automated world.
Proof that the instinct to build, to create, to own. That’s what keeps us human.

So yeah, I agree with Isenberg.
This is the best time in history to build.
But it’s also the most important time to build.
Because ownership isn’t just wealth.
It’s freedom.

We launch Scaling Across Borders Season 1 on November 6th.
The premiere event will be held that night in Kosovo, the country where this entire project began.

Building this series has been one of the most humbling, uncomfortable, and meaningful things I’ve ever done.
I’ve built companies, teams, and products.
But this… this was different.

Here are three lessons that stuck with me.

1. Don’t be afraid to go way out of your comfort zone.

This project took me way out of mine.

I’ve spent my career as a founder, investor, and builder but I had never produced a documentary.
I didn’t know lighting setups, camera angles, or narrative pacing.

That forced me to adopt a true beginner’s mindset.
It also forced me to cede control and trust people who knew far more than I did.

We rarely get to be beginners again as adults.
It’s humbling.
And it’s liberating.

2. Hire the experts.

We could’ve gone cheap.
Picked a small crew, cut corners, and called it “good enough.”
But we didn’t.

We wanted cinematic quality and storytelling that could hold its own on a global stage.
That meant hiring a world-class team and trusting them to bring their vision to life.

And they did.
The final product is something I’m proud to put my name on.

3. Be different … or get ignored.

My business partner at Outsorcy, Blendrit Elezaj, and I wanted to tell a different kind of story.

Outsorcy isn’t just about lower costs.
It’s about creating opportunity for world-class talent in places the world doesn’t usually look … Kosovo, Albania, Colombia, and beyond.

We could’ve marketed Outsorcy like every other global hiring company through paid ads, funnels, case studies.
Instead, we decided to do something radically different.
We told stories.
Real, human stories of founders and builders creating freedom in overlooked corners of the world.

That’s how Scaling Across Borders was born.
Season 1: Kosovo.
Season 2: Colombia.

There are a dozen more lessons I could write about, but those three are the anchors.

If you haven’t seen the trailer yet, it’s below.

If this project resonates with you … the mission, the mindset, the movement … please share it with a friend.
That’s how stories like this grow.

Thanks for being part of this journey.

– Greg

🎬 Watch the Season 1 Trailer

Subscribe on YouTube

Why I Started Scaling Across Borders

Everywhere I go, I meet founders who remind me why I do this.

They’re not in Silicon Valley or New York.
They’re in Pristina, Bogotá, Nairobi, Manila.

Building from the ground up.
No safety net. No playbook.
Just grit, creativity, and the will to build something that matters.

Scaling Across Borders (SAB) is my way of telling their stories.
It’s a documentary series, a field journal, and a movement for founders building in places the world overlooks.

I’ve been a founder, investor, and operator for two decades. I’ve built and sold companies, led turnarounds, and learned every lesson the hard way. Now I’m traveling to the edges of the global startup world to meet builders who are redefining what entrepreneurship looks like in the 21st century.

This Substack is the companion to that journey.
Here you’ll find:

• Founder stories from the field … raw and unfiltered.

• Playbooks on scaling, leadership, and decentralized talent.

• Reflections from the road … the people, places, and lessons behind each episode.

If you care about how innovation actually happens outside the headlines and beyond the borders you’ll feel at home here.

Subscribe, read, share, and let’s build a global founder movement together.

— Greg Moran
Founder, Scaling Across Border

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