Endeavor

Endeavor is a non-profit network that selects, supports and co-invests in founders of high-growth companies, concentrating on markets outside the largest established startup hubs. It reports more than 2,900 entrepreneurs across over 45 markets, and states that as of 2024 those entrepreneurs had generated US$88.5 billion in revenue and created more than four million jobs. Selection runs through local Endeavor offices, moves through mentorship panels, and concludes at an International Selection Panel where a group of business leaders interview candidates and vote. Selected founders receive a dedicated point person, access to a global mentor and investor network, sector-based groupings Endeavor calls Verticals, and peer programming including Endeavor Outliers, a year-long cohort for its highest-growth founders. Endeavor also runs a rules-based co-investment fund, Endeavor Catalyst, which takes an allocation in eligible financing rounds of selected companies and funds the organisation's operations. Existing Endeavor Entrepreneurs mentor candidates and sit as selection panellists.

How it works

A founder applies through a local Endeavor office. Candidates who advance go through one-on-one mentorship and screening sessions, then an International Selection Panel where global business leaders interview them and deliberate. Selected founders join local and regional communities based on the office that selected them, plus sector Verticals and the Endeavor Outliers cohort. Endeavor Catalyst may invest alongside institutional investors in eligible rounds.

Typical member

Endeavor Entrepreneurs are founders of companies that have found product-market fit and are scaling. Endeavor states that most entrepreneurs entering its selection process have between US$500,000 and US$10 million in annual revenue, and that the average three-year compound annual growth rate across its entrepreneurs exceeds 100 per cent.

Endeavor is unusual among selective networks in that it does not charge founders and does not take a direct fee for support; its economics run through Endeavor Catalyst, a rules-based fund that can take an allocation in a selected company's later financing rounds. That alignment is the main thing to weigh: joining is free but Endeavor's model anticipates a future investment relationship. The selection process is long and demanding, reported elsewhere as taking twelve to eighteen months, and the practical filter is the market, not just the company: an applicant's headquarters must sit in an Endeavor market, which excludes founders in many large developed hubs. The published revenue band is a description of the typical candidate rather than a hard threshold, and Endeavor does not publish an acceptance rate, so selectivity has to be inferred from cohort sizes announced by each office.

Editorial analysis by Peer Group Guide editors. It is separated from the record above and follows the editorial policy.