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About Endeavor

Founded in 1997, Endeavor fosters economic growth in countries worldwide by selecting, mentoring, and accelerating high-impact entrepreneurs. Endeavor’s entrepreneurs lead fast-growing businesses that generate jobs in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. Endeavor provides its entrepreneurs with a network of seasoned business leaders who provide key ingredients to entrepreneurial success: mentorship, networks, strategic advice, and inspiration. Over the past 17 years, Endeavor Entrepreneurs have created more than 400,000 high quality jobs, directly reaching more than two million people across the world. Endeavor has achieved tangible results, with individuals working for Endeavor companies doubling their income over baseline or previous jobs, and Endeavor companies growing revenue 2.4 times faster than comparable firms over three years.

Current Operations of Endeavor

Endeavor is dedicated to high-impact entrepreneurship. Its main operations focus on identifying and supporting the continued growth of a select group of entrepreneurs, creating jobs, and adding revenues to foster entrepreneurship in those societies. Endeavor currently works in 21 countries across the world. In recent years, Endeavor’s operations have expanded into several countries; Endeavor launched in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Greece in 2012, Miami (US), Malaysia, and Morocco in 2013, and Peru and Spain in 2014.In 2011, Endeavor launched Endeavor Catalyst, a passive co-investment pool that uses donated funds to support Endeavor Entrepreneurs’ professional funding rounds and to provide funding for Endeavor’s growth and financial sustainability. Endeavor Catalyst has raised approximately $15 million to date and has made its first nine investments.

Approach and Distinguishing Features

Endeavor is an organization of, by, and for entrepreneurs. Endeavor believes that entrepreneurship is vital to economic growth and job creation, and recognizes the reality that entrepreneurs in growth markets face obstacles that inhibit successful scaling of businesses, such as limited management expertise, lack of role models, contacts, investors, etc. To this end, Endeavor provides immense support to rising entrepreneurs and acts as a springboard to catalyze their success with business establishment and job creation. Over 80% of Endeavor’s entrepreneurs give back to their local affiliates and commit to mentoring the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Endeavor’s entrepreneurs lead fast-growing, typically for-profit businesses that generate jobs and create revenues in growth markets. Endeavor looks for businesses with the potential to scale and become world-class ventures and industry leaders. Endeavor is distinct from many other organizations in its focus on high-growth, high-impact, for-profit companies that can scale. Academic research demonstrates that high-impact entrepreneurs generate a disproportionate number of jobs over other entrepreneurs.

2015 Kravis Prize

Endeavor

Endeavor fosters economic advancement in growth markets by launching high-impact entrepreneurs.

FAST FACTS

400,000+

high-quality jobs created by Endeavor companies

2 million

people impacted directly by Endeavor companies

97%

of Endeavor companies are still in operation, compared to most entrepreneurial ventures in the same markets, which close within 42 months

Celebrity support for mothers2mothers and Pratham events

by | Mar 28, 2013 | m2m, Pratham

2012 Kravis Prize recipient organization mothers2mothers and 2010 Kravis Prize recipient organization Pratham have recently gained significant support from celebrities in the U.K. in raising attention for two upcoming charity events that will benefit their organizations. In honor of Mother’s Day, mothers2mothers will auction off designer clothing and other items donated by celebrities in order to support the organization’s work to improve the quality of life for thousands of HIV-infected women around the world. Celebrity donors include Annie Lennox, Colin Firth, and former Spice Girl Emma Bunton. “I’m delighted to support mothers2mothers by offering this autographed package of ‘King’s Speech’ memorabilia,” Firth said. “I have enormous respect for the work mothers2mothers is doing to protect babies from HIV, and hope this auction is a great success.” Pratham UK also announced an April 24 Fashion Event in London in order to raise money for the organization’s efforts to boost literacy and arithmetic skills among children in rural and urban India. Numerous Bollywood and local celebrities are expected to attend the event, which will also showcase clothing and jewelry by famous Indian designers (including designer Payal Jain) and feature a performance by the “Got To Dance” TV stars known as “Pulse Collective.” RELATED: “Pratham USA receives Times of India award” “m2m: Mentor Mothers”...

Where’s Right To Play headed next? The United States

by | Mar 27, 2013 | Johann Olav Koss, Kravis Prize, Right 2 Play

Right To Play,  founded in 2000 by Olympian Johann Olav Koss (this year’s recipient of the Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership), has spent the last decade empowering children through play in more than 20 countries all over the world. But the Canadian-based organization has never established a foothold in its neighbor to the South. Until now. In January, Koss and his organization announced the development of Play at the Core:  The Right to Play New York City Play-based Early Learning Program.  This partnership with the New York City Department of Education is Right To Play’s first domestic program in the United States. Soon the program will be addressing the achievement gap among low-income families in the Bronx. Currently, educators are being trained to bring Right To Play’s message of  of building life skills to urban youth through the power of play. Work and play might be treated as mutually exclusive areas for adults, but current research from the child development arena demonstrates how the two are interconnected. Play is crucial to learning and identity development in young children: This offers a channel through which they receive early impressions of teamwork and other people’s responses to them. For Sophia Pappas, executive director of the Office of Early Childhood Education in New York City’s Department of Education, that means that the new partnership with Right 2 Play is nothing less than a golden opportunity to help local children. The partnership will support “strengthening problem-solving skills of young learners,” Pappas says, “so that children at the pre-kindergarten age level are positioned to be successful learners in later years.” According to the organization, Play...

A garden makes a difference: Seattle Times spotlights Landesa’s work with young Indian women

by | Mar 27, 2013 | Community Development, Female Empowerment, Landesa, Poverty Reduction

A garden grows more than vegetables. It also grows opportunities for women in impoverished Indian villages – that’s the message behind a pilot program developed by Landesa that’s the focus of a recent special report in the pages of the Sunday Seattle Times. That special report – titled “Seeds of Hope” – appears on the front-page of the newspaper’s March 16 edition and is devoted to Landesa’s program in West Bengal as well as to profiling Roy Prosterman, founder of the Seattle-based organization devoted to land access for the poor in India, China, Africa and other parts of the world. The Seattle Times visited the region and interviewed families whose lives have been affected by Landesa and Prosterman, the inaugural recipient of the Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership in 2006. In particular, the special coverage examines the impact of teaching young women to garden and how this program’s goal transcends simply providing a useful skill. “The idea,” the article explains, “is that if [young women] are considered assets rather than extra mouths to feed, the girls might complete their educations and break out of the poverty cycle. Even if they do not, they will know how to grow food on even small plots of land, improving their nutrition and that of their future children.” An accompanying profile of Prosterman describes his many years of work as an advocate for land rights, from Central America and Africa to Asia and the Philippines. A law professor at the University of Washington, Prosterman told the Seattle Times reporter that he long ago realized that land ownership was the key to eradicating...