- 6 hours ago
"For decades, the U.S. has been both a key market and a “safe bet” for tech startups looking to scale internationally—a natural next step once product-market fit is secured.
Wonderful took a different route.
Since its founding in 2025, the company has expanded to 36 countries in just 18 months, deliberately prioritizing simultaneous growth across EMEA, LATAM, and APAC, often launching one new market per week.
In this conversation, Bar Winkler, Co-founder and CEO of Wonderful, joins Jimena Nowack, Partner at IVP and early backer, to unpack the thinking behind this unconventional strategy. What does it take to land enterprise clients across multiple regions at once? How do you hire and operate effectively across geographies without a single center of gravity? And what are the trade-offs of bypassing a traditionally “safe” expansion path?"
Wonderful took a different route.
Since its founding in 2025, the company has expanded to 36 countries in just 18 months, deliberately prioritizing simultaneous growth across EMEA, LATAM, and APAC, often launching one new market per week.
In this conversation, Bar Winkler, Co-founder and CEO of Wonderful, joins Jimena Nowack, Partner at IVP and early backer, to unpack the thinking behind this unconventional strategy. What does it take to land enterprise clients across multiple regions at once? How do you hire and operate effectively across geographies without a single center of gravity? And what are the trade-offs of bypassing a traditionally “safe” expansion path?"
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00:00Music
00:08Music
00:09Music
00:10Music
00:11Music
00:35Okay, should we start?
00:37Do we have everybody, I guess, as many people as we're going to have, Bar?
00:42So let me give maybe a quick introduction.
00:45Well, I'll hand it over to Bart to introduce himself, but we're excited to be here to chat
00:51about both Wonderful and what it means in the global scaling journey that they're in.
00:57I'm a partner at IVP.
00:59We invested in their Series A and Series B of Wonderful, and yeah, we're very excited
01:06about this company, about the journey they're in, about what they're doing that's new in
01:11go-to-market, what they're doing that's new in technology, and yeah, we'll let Bar introduce
01:16himself, and then we'd love to dig into a few of the questions we have around the scaling
01:21journey.
01:22So over to you, Bar.
01:23Tell us a bit about yourself and Wonderful.
01:25All right, so thanks for having me, Ximena.
01:28I'm Bar.
01:29I'm the CEO and co-founder of Wonderful.
01:39So, it started Wonderful about a year and a half ago.
01:43Wonderful is an enterprise applied AI company.
01:45We work with enterprises in critical industries, healthcare, insurance, banking, telcos, utilities,
01:53manufacturing.
01:54We work with large companies that have real problems and help them solve them with applied
01:58AI.
01:58In practicality, it means we have a state-of-the-art platform for building agents, building AI
02:04apps, and solving end-to-end workflows with AI.
02:08Our platform is multi-model, so we orchestrate all models from dozens of different LLMs and
02:14labs, and it's multi-model, so whenever there is a new modality that is supported by the technology,
02:20our job and our purpose is to be the first to properly productize it and allow enterprises
02:25to consume it in an efficient, effective, and quick way.
02:29Awesome.
02:30I think we'll dive deeper into the go-to-market journey here, but there'll be some product
02:37here and there.
02:39I think at IVP, we've backed a lot of companies scaling globally.
02:43We're based in San Francisco.
02:44I sit as part of the London team and European office, but we've never really seen someone
02:50do what Barr's doing and the wonderful team are doing in terms of simultaneously scaling
02:55in 30 markets under 18 months and really breaking a lot of the rules of the game in what was
03:04previously established around open one market, expand from there on.
03:08And so, tell us a little bit about what the thesis was and the mission behind this strategy, let's call
03:17it.
03:19All right.
03:20So, maybe a bit of a high-level overview of our strategy as a company, and it's actually
03:25always been our strategy.
03:27For those that met us a year and a half ago, our pitch and purpose for existing has never changed.
03:33It's true.
03:34We have a very puristic view on the world.
03:37We believe that there's a few pillars to our thesis.
03:43Some were consensus and are still consensus.
03:45Some were non-consensus and are now shifting towards being coming consensus.
03:50The ones that are consensus is applied AI is going to be a category of its own.
03:54So, enterprises are going to need to buy some kind of infrastructure to build, test, maintain,
04:01deploy, monitor, integrate AI agents and apps and tools into their ecosystems.
04:08That's one.
04:09It's going to become a huge category, like 10 times bigger than enterprise software, because
04:13the value that is going to be created is at least 10 times bigger.
04:16So, let's say an order of magnitude larger.
04:18This essentially means that the TEM is huge everywhere.
04:22Like, there's no small markets.
04:24In every market where you operate, you need to believe that you can build a unicorn.
04:28Like, you can build a billion or a $10 billion or a $20 billion company by being the most prominent
04:33applied AI player in a given country.
04:37So, this is not going to last forever, right?
04:39This phenomenon is going to exist within some window, right?
04:42At some point, like every economy, it's going to become relatively commoditized.
04:46The tech, the deployment is going to become playbooked.
04:49And the idea of Wonderful is to try and expand effectively to enough markets within this window
04:58of opportunity, which we believe back then was three years.
05:01And guess what?
05:02We haven't changed our belief.
05:03We believe now it's a year and a half away from us.
05:05So, I strongly believe that in a year and a half, it's going to be like applied AI for enterprise.
05:11It's going to be close to as competitive as other standard SaaS markets are today.
05:16So, there's this glitch, right?
05:18This glitch in the transformational period in which you can become a much, much, much bigger
05:26player than you would have become otherwise if you would have taken the standard, let's
05:31say, American software company approach of starting in the U.S., then expanding to the
05:35U.K., then putting some salespeople in Germany, trying to let them serve some more of CE.
05:41So, Wonderful's approach is deeply different.
05:45Like, for once, we don't have sales offices.
05:48Like, we don't believe in having an office of salespeople.
05:52If we don't have a full service team on the ground, we don't sell to customers.
05:55Like, if we don't have a team that is able to sell, deploy, support, we just don't get
06:01into working with local enterprises.
06:03That's one.
06:04And two, we never open offices that are not fully stepped.
06:08So, we don't need to wait for a customer to sign.
06:10For example, if we decide to go after the market in Brazil, then we hire a full service team
06:15on the ground in Brazil.
06:16And I think because we have this deep intentionality in how we operate from the beginning, we build
06:21a lot of muscles that are very unnatural for any other company to build.
06:27For example, we have a talent acquisition machine that is probably at the level of, I don't
06:33know, 15-year-old, $100 billion San Francisco company.
06:36Because we have to have this machine, otherwise we wouldn't be able to scale so much.
06:39We have onboarding and training muscles that are way, way, way more developed than they
06:44would be in another company.
06:46We have the level of communication between different people in the company, the speed
06:53in which we operate.
06:54So, all those things allow us to operate the way we do.
06:57Awesome.
06:57He's actually burned through a lot of my questions already, but we'll go back to some
07:00of those.
07:02Tell us a little bit about the selection logic.
07:05I mean, at this point, 30 markets, there's probably, you know, not many to go still.
07:10But originally and at the beginning, what was the markets that are given priority?
07:15I know you have this concept of winnable versus battlefields.
07:19How did you think about the sequencing of these markets?
07:22And then maybe as a touch point as well, why not the US?
07:27All right.
07:27So, maybe I'll start with the last question.
07:31Like, so, wonderful will operate in the US at some point.
07:37But actually, the US is the only market that we decided to sequence as less because we believe
07:42it's going to...
07:44We believe that the alpha that you can create by being obsessive with the US market is almost
07:50non-existent.
07:50So, if you think about the reason for a company like Wonderful to exist, it's very clear why
07:56we have a right to exist in...
07:59Take the most extreme...
08:01Like, in Greece, right?
08:03Or in the UAE, or in the Czech Republic, or in Brazil.
08:06But it's a sliding bar, right?
08:08The bigger the market is, the less reason you have...
08:11Like, if your job is not to just create enterprise value and you're actually trying to accelerate
08:16AI adoption or, like, do something good for this world, then by operating in the US, I think
08:20there is very little of it.
08:22I don't think that...
08:23If Wonderful operated in the US versus not, the reality would unfold almost identically.
08:28We would have won some market, lost some market, but we operate in markets in which we are
08:33playing to be the prominent applied AI partner for enterprises.
08:36And if we wouldn't do it, then it would take another year or two or three for someone else
08:39to do it.
08:40That's a big alpha.
08:41So, we intentionally decided to focus on expanding to markets we think are winnable, markets where
08:48we think we have a big alpha in, and then expand to the US later on because we
08:51don't think the opportunity there is going anywhere.
08:54Enterprises in the US also tend to buy best of breed versus one platform, so they're not
08:59going to have to make this, like, one big choice anyways per our thesis.
09:03So, we're going to have, like, a second shot at them.
09:06In terms of sequencing, we actually never sequenced markets in Wonderful.
09:11We've been extremely opportunistic in a sense that whenever we find a GM that we believe
09:16can build a unicorn, we hire them.
09:18We do zero sequencing in general.
09:23And in terms of this decision, I think was very smart because what happened was that it
09:28forced us to be a global company from the get-go.
09:32Like, we hired, the first GM we hired in Israel, the second one in Greece, the third one in Italy,
09:38the fourth one in Colombia, the fifth one in Hong Kong.
09:40Like, it became extremely random, which forced us to be a global company from the beginning
09:46and, again, led us to building a lot of muscles that are quite, I think, hard to copy.
09:53Tell us a bit about the modes, just because you've touched on it.
09:56Other than being first to market, are there other modes that you're seeing?
10:00Or, yeah, maybe not long-term modes, but more short-term modes?
10:09So, I think in general, building a broad applied AI platform that can support a hundred billion
10:18dollar enterprise is hard.
10:20Like, you need to raise money.
10:22You need to have top-tier engineers.
10:23You need to invest a lot of resources.
10:25It's not something you can vibe code, right?
10:28You need to have relationships with all the large model providers that allows you to get
10:32access to early models.
10:34You need to be able to fine-tune sometimes when the models...
10:37Like, you need to have a lot of muscles that are hard and expensive to build.
10:41So, by definition, I think that starting this type of company today would be very hard because
10:45top VCs like you guys would probably say, you know, it's a bit late.
10:48Yeah.
10:50So, there is a built-in moat by raising $300 million and investing in a very hard-to-built piece
10:57of software.
10:58So, I'm not so cynical about the technical modes.
11:01There are some technical modes, but I would say, ultimately, the real modes of a product
11:06like Wonderful are going to be, in my opinion, almost identical to the modes of any other
11:12major service and product that enterprises consume.
11:16Integrations, habits, and, like, why change?
11:19So, I mean, you agree with me that the technology is going to be relatively commoditized.
11:24Like, the models themselves are already, to some extent, commoditized.
11:28In some modalities, in other modalities, they're, you know, the best model and the worst models
11:32are 30% apart and nine months apart.
11:36That's racing towards commoditization.
11:42So, at what point will another player come to the enterprise and tell them we have a product
11:46that is 10 times better?
12:16Like, how?
12:17So, you touched on it earlier a little bit.
12:22Talent acquisition has been, you know, just as you've expanded to 30 countries in 18 months,
12:28you've also grown the team to probably now this figure is stale, but, like, somewhere like
12:32500, 600 people, I've seen a little bit of the machinery, it's a, dare I say, wonderful team
12:40of people, but what have you, how have you scaled this, what's the secret sauce, and what's
12:46the guardrails that you've put in place to make sure that delivery and excellence continue
12:51to be very, very high, and the density of it?
12:56All right, so, first of all, I would say that there's, like, there's no magic in what we're
13:02doing in talent acquisition.
13:04We just invest a lot of energy and resources in being great at it.
13:08So, what does it mean in practicality?
13:10We put our best people on talent acquisition, we have a culture in which interviewing is the
13:17most important meeting you have.
13:19I personally still interview every single employee in a go-to-market operations.
13:24Marketing, Rory, my co-founder.
13:26So, between me and my co-founder, we still interview 100% of people that join Wonderful,
13:30and it's very taxing.
13:31It's, like, an expensive in terms of time and energy, and at some point, it will break
13:37because I will not be able to do it anymore, and then, like, I hope that when I get to
13:40this point, my pass rate will be close to 100%, because right now it isn't.
13:44So, the delta between 100 and the pass rate is the value, right?
13:49So, right now it's 60%.
13:51I want to see it increasing.
13:54So, that's one.
13:55Two, we built, like, good AI native apps on Wonderful.
14:00Like, Wonderful Apps is, one of the modalities in Wonderful is Apps.
14:03So, we have an app in Wonderful for recruitment.
14:05We call it Sorcerer.
14:06So, we probably reach, in terms of top of funnel, literally every single relevant candidate.
14:14And when I say reach, I mean, like, we do the, like, we operate at the highest level of aggressiveness
14:21that is legal.
14:22So, in the market where you can send a WhatsApp message to a person, if they're S-tier, we
14:27send them a WhatsApp message, right?
14:28So, we don't let anyone escape our top of funnel.
14:32That's one.
14:32Two, we are extremely fast in hiring.
14:35We have, like, each step has, like, religious KPIs and SLAs they need to meet.
14:42And the only way you can do it is if you don't fake it.
14:45Like, you literally have to indoctrinate inside of your organization that hiring is IP.
14:50Like, the speed in which you hire and the way that you operate is core to our ability to grow.
14:56Applied AI is a very, like, funnily enough, right?
14:59So, we help enterprises reduce their headcount eventually, but we have to hire a lot of people
15:04to do it because it's expensive.
15:06Like, you cannot transform a 20,000 person telco with two people.
15:11Just can't.
15:14So, that's two.
15:15Now, the second question you asked was about how do you, like, retain the quality or the
15:20culture, obviously, when you hire super fast, you're going to, like, you cannot, you have
15:28100%.
15:28So, you shoot for a high enough percentage and you need to be, you need to hold yourself
15:33accountable to mistakes as a company and you need to be very candid with your candidates
15:38on how mistakes look like.
15:41Yeah.
15:42For example, Wonderful has very bad work-life balance.
15:47That's the reality.
15:48Like, we are an applied AI company in 2026 that is growing super fast.
15:52So, if you're optimizing for work-life balance, this is not a good place for you.
15:56And we are very, like, we anti-sell quite a lot.
15:59I think, in general, people tend to respect it.
16:03Even if they join us or not, they tend to respect it.
16:04And many times we had people that said, you know, this is not for me, but I have this friend.
16:09Who's crazy.
16:10He just finished school or he just got divorced.
16:13So, like, he's looking to get into something.
16:16So, that's one.
16:17We have values in the company that we read out and we actually rank the people that we
16:22interview by values.
16:25Do you want to know our values?
16:27Sure.
16:27Go for it.
16:28Yeah.
16:29So...
16:29I should know them, but I don't know that I know them.
16:31So, I'm glad you're going through them.
16:32So, our values are agency.
16:36We look for people that have, like, main character energy.
16:40That have agendas that, like, don't feel like life just happens to them.
16:46Urgency.
16:46So, we like people that are extremely responsive.
16:52Maybe this is not politically correct, but when I interview people, their WhatsApp latency
16:56is one of the huge companies that reply to you in five minutes.
17:00And then you can have, like, an N-5 that says, sorry, I didn't reply to you.
17:04I was busy the last three days.
17:05So, it's highly a personality trait.
17:08So, urgency is important.
17:12Professionalism, obviously.
17:13That's clear.
17:15Independence.
17:16So, we look for people that are good.
17:24So, that's, I think, the most tricky one because independent people in general are,
17:28they tend to not be very collaborative.
17:30And you need to, like, you need to understand that's the price that you're paying.
17:33Like, you cannot hire a super independent person and then expect that he will be, like,
17:36a boy stop.
17:36Like, these are not the type of people we're optimizing to hire, but I want them to be able
17:41to operate as if help is not coming, right?
17:44Like, I want them to be able to operate alone.
17:47Entrepreneurial.
17:48Because otherwise, I would be dragged.
17:50Like, we couldn't, we operate locally in 30 markets.
17:54We have, like, 30, it's like a 30 company portfolio.
17:57We built it in 18 months.
17:58Like, we're not magicians.
18:00We cannot have perfect processes in every place.
18:02So, you want people that are, they have an internal engine.
18:05And the last one is vibe.
18:06Essentially, vibe means that these people, like, don't suck energy out of the room when
18:11they enter it.
18:12That's, I think, the best way to explain it.
18:15Like, people that are at least neutral in terms of their energy addition from a situation.
18:23Awesome.
18:24Perhaps you can, in the last few minutes, turn to customers on the business side of things.
18:29And, you know, you're a company of less than two years old, technically, walking into the
18:35banks that have been around for 150 years in geos that are not your native geos.
18:42Nobody's heard of you.
18:43Maybe now a bit more.
18:46How do you actually get the deal done?
18:48Like, what are some of the stories of the AI transformations that you can share?
18:53How are you managing to convince, enthuse your customers?
19:01So, we hire GMs that should have relative access in their market.
19:07And if not, they need to have a clear plan on how they're going to solve for access.
19:11For example, some GMs we hire are very entrepreneurial, super fast, smart, can hire, can deploy, are not
19:23bad in enterprise sales, but they lack access.
19:27If the market is small, this is usually quite solvable.
19:30Like, just knock on the door enough times and you'll get to the, like, they'll listen to you
19:34eventually.
19:35If the market is very big, like in Brazil, for example, we have an excellent GM, but he doesn't
19:40have sufficient access to the largest, and Brazil is a huge country.
19:44It's like a 300, like, you can't, it's very hard to find someone who's both entrepreneurial,
19:48hungry, fast, wants to work his ass off, and has amazing access.
19:51Like, okay, great.
19:53So, we brought a few strategic advisors there that are, like, the ex-CTO of a large bank,
19:58an ex-senior partner at McKinsey, so that's how you solve for access.
20:02But the gist is that the motions are always top-down.
20:05We try to avoid middle-up or bottom-up motions because we don't believe they can,
20:13they don't have very good energy efficiency.
20:15Like, the amount of time you need to invest to climb all the way up is not worth the efforts
20:19usually.
20:21And I also think, going back to what I started about the thesis, is that, like, within the
20:25window of opportunity, the ears of CEOs and leaders of large enterprises are extremely open.
20:33So, AI is top of mind for them.
20:35It's a problem.
20:36They're trying to zero to one.
20:37It's not yet on the rails.
20:40Like, you cannot get, you cannot expect the CEO of a large bank to meet you if you are another
20:47general consulting firm.
20:48Okay, like, why?
20:50Or if you are a computer screen and IT vendor.
20:54Like, because you're perceived as a commodity.
20:56So, go talk to the person in charge of it.
20:58I think apply.di is not yet perceived as a commodity.
21:00That's part of the value of operating with such urgency in 2026.
21:04At some stage, it will be a commodity.
21:06And then, the answer of the CEO to this guy from Wonderful wanting to meet him will be,
21:12all right, but, like, how are they different from insert company name?
21:16All right?
21:17That's, I think, the biggest gist.
21:21There's a window of opportunity in which you can access those people.
21:25And with that in mind, are you seeing that this local model, like, being local, hiring
21:30Brazilians to sell to Brazil, hiring French people to sell to France, is that proving out?
21:35Like, what does it matter to be local?
21:37Does it matter to your customers?
21:41Yes, I think it's impossible to, if you're trying to be a strategic partner in an unplaybooked,
21:52barely existent category that is huge and is going to determine whether or not the company
21:57will survive or thrive, there is zero chance that you're going to be able to do meaningful
22:02business unless you're on the ground.
22:05No enterprise is going to transform their contact center or back office or replace their apps
22:11with a company that is, they need to wait for six hours until they wake up in San Francisco
22:17to join a Zoom call.
22:18There's no chance.
22:19These companies will have to partner with system integrators that are local, and I think
22:23this brings another problem that system integrators are generally not yet competent when it comes
22:31to complex AI deployments.
22:33That's at least per my experience.
22:34I only talked to 1,000 enterprises in the last two years, so maybe I lack context, but that's
22:40the context I'm getting.
22:42So, in short, yes, being local is our right to exist, and I'm very glad we took this approach
22:51early on.
22:51By the way, it was, as you said, it was not a trivial play.
22:55That's why we also didn't raise money.
22:56In the first six months, we were self-funded until we raised significant funding.
23:00Right, yeah.
23:01I think it's something that, like, I'm myself, I'm Spanish.
23:04I think if you're not US-centric yourself and you've seen how customers and language,
23:10that was part of what drew us in, at least to Wonderful at the beginning, was like, actually,
23:15hold on.
23:15The world doesn't always evolve around Silicon Valley, and there's a very, very large,
23:19underserved market.
23:20So, that local first was really appealing to us as investors, but it's also clearly to
23:25the customer.
23:26And maybe just the last question as we're running out of time, but a year from now,
23:31if Wonderful succeeds, how will it look like?
23:35And if it doesn't succeed, why will it be?
23:42No, you are forcing me to go back to the plan, because the answer is a number.
23:47Like, what will it look like next year, at the end of Q2 next year, we need to be at...
23:53A year from now, yeah.
23:55I think we need to be at, like, 250 million or so.
23:59That's what the plan says.
24:00So, that will be success.
24:01Okay.
24:01Um, everything else, like, it's derived from a lot of, uh, no, but the real answer is that
24:07a year from now, if we, if our thesis is correct, and we, we execute it correctly, and we don't
24:14get distracted, we will be a large applied AI company with global presence and hundreds
24:23of referring customers, that we help them accelerate their, their, their AI adoption.
24:29If we don't succeed, hard to imagine.
24:35But, um, I guess our version of not succeeding probably means that there will be less markets
24:44that are as effective as we expected, like, we will be the main player in a lower percentage
24:53of markets than I currently expect us to be.
24:55I, I, I don't believe wonderful...
24:57Yeah, it goes to zero or it doesn't exist, but it's more to what degree you win it.
25:02Yeah, we have, um, close to a hundred customers in production.
25:06These are almost all large enterprises.
25:08They, they get meaningful value from working with us.
25:12They're expansion, generally, they're expanding.
25:15We hire top talent.
25:17I, I, I don't see some AGI coming.
25:20Like, but let's say if it means that something worse has happened, like alien invasion.
25:24Famous last words.
25:27Awesome.
25:27Well, thank you so much.
25:28Thanks to everyone for listening in.
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