This is not a global warming piece, or on the temperatures players will face during the upcoming World Cup (Vamos Mexico!). And for those of you that have spent meaningful time in San Francisco or the extended Bay Area, the weather is not quite what you imagine when you think of California. I remember my first trip to SF, I packed only shorts, huuuuge mistake. But that is not the focus of this article.
For a few months now, a trend of entrepreneurs (and VCs) spending meaningful time in SF appears to be a thing. Driven by the AI craze we’ve experienced for the last couple of years, it seemed more Latam founders than I could remember were spending meaningful time in San Francisco (or at least that’s what their LinkedIn posts and casual conversations indicated). Not as tourists. As founders trying to plug into the AI moment, looking for capital, talent, or just the sense that they were in the right room.
The cynic in me had doubts. Was this really a thing, or was the LinkedIn algorithm playing tricks on me? And if it was real, was it actually worth it?
The patterns that worried me were familiar. Founders going because other founders are going. Investors pushing them to go. The ambient pressure of “you need to be here” without much clarity on what “here” actually delivers.
So I decided to run a small poll on LinkedIn to test that instinct against my network.
The question was simple, and was targeted to Latam founders: have you spent meaningful time in SF in the last 12 months?
28 responses came in. The breakdown was more revealing than I expected:
If you combine the people who have already gone and the people planning to go, that is 75% of respondents actively participating in or moving toward the SF pilgrimage. This is not a loud minority. Whatever you think of it, it is the dominant pattern in the Latam founder ecosystem right now.
The 25% who are sitting it out are a real minority, but a minority nonetheless. The defaults of the ecosystem have shifted. The question for most founders is no longer “should I go?” but “when do I go and what do I do there?”
Of the 15 respondents who had been to SF, 12 said it was worth it. That is an 80% satisfaction rate, which honestly surprised me. I had expected something closer to 50%, with the other half quietly admitting the trip had not delivered much.
The data does not support the “Latam founders are wasting their time in SF” narrative. At least not in my sample. The people making the trip are mostly returning with the conviction that it served them.
This matters because it complicates the cynical reading. If founders were going to SF and getting nothing back, the pattern would not be sustainable. People would stop going. The data suggests the opposite is happening.
But there is a problem with what the data does not say. The 80% satisfaction rate comes with a sampling problem worth naming.
People who invested time and money in a trip to SF have a psychological incentive to say it was worth it. The mind tends to find value in retrospect even when the trip was mediocre, because the alternative is admitting waste.
This is not a critique of anyone who responded. It is just how humans evaluate sunk costs.
A note on the broader sample: 28 responses is not a representative snapshot of the Latam ecosystem. It is a slice of my LinkedIn network. Take the percentages directionally, not literally.
If you are a Latam founder thinking about spending time in SF, the data offers some encouragement. The trip works for most people who take it, and the satisfaction rate suggests the value is there for most who make it.
But the data still leaves you with the harder question. Before booking the flight, you should be able to answer specifically what you are going to do that you cannot do from where you are. Hiring a senior AI engineer the local talent pool cannot support. Closing a US fund that requires meeting in person. Validating a US enterprise wedge that needs face time with design partners.
If you have a clear answer to that question, go. Your trip will likely fall in the 80% that say it was worth it.
If your answer is vague, the data still says you will probably come back saying it was worth it. But you should ask yourself whether that report would survive scrutiny if someone asked you to be specific about what you got.
The data also has something to say to the investors who are routinely telling their portfolio founders to spend time in SF. The encouragement is mostly landing on receptive ears. Founders are going. They are mostly returning satisfied.
But the investor encouragement comes with responsibility. A founder going because their investor suggested it without a clear thesis will likely return saying it was worth it, because the social and psychological pressure to validate the trip is strong. That does not mean the trip actually served the company.
If you are pushing founders to go, push them to be specific about why. The number one favor you can do for a portfolio founder is help them sharpen the reason for the trip before they take it, not validate the trip after the fact.
What I am more confident about is the directional signal: the SF pilgrimage is real, the satisfaction is high among those who go, and the right next question is what “worth it” actually means in practice.
If you have a strong opinion on that question, I want to hear it. Leave a comment or DM me on LinkedIn. The best Latam VC writing I do is when you talk back to me.
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