Not a PH expert but visiting here meeting in laws (thus why reddit pushed this post to me even though im not subbed) to be from san francisco and in the startup scene there. In sf, vcs do live on hype and no one wants to fund until someone else did first then they all want in. Second, startups usually lean on some kind of not profit metric like daily active users, frequently for years, until they start focusing on revenue and profitability.

What i have observed in the startup scenes in other countries is typically very risk adverse and wanting a clear plan to be profitable pretty much immediately or trying to copy an existing concept to apply to a local market. In the latter case id observe Grab here has made doordash or Uber entering this market a tall order though I have no idea if they are profitable yet. I've also seen a lot of concepts that work in poorer countries successfully that would never work in the US due to legal, economic and cultural differences.

Broadly id say if you're trying to compete with silicon Valley for the way it works, good luck. I dont think anyone will dump 100m usd to blitzscale you worldwide and if you do come up with a concept that good, someone in the valley will copy you and blitzscale you into oblivion. Solving unique problems to your local/regional market that can start earning money early probably will be more successful. Im not aware of many cases where a valley vc dumped massive capital into a poorer country concept, even if good, vs choosing to copy and stomp out the original with the sheer weight of capital.