Interview with Linda Rottenberg

Zachary Karabell (0:01)

What could go right in a world where we are so focused on what could go wrong? Part of the goal of these conversations and what could go right is not to ignore what could go wrong, but to put questions of risk in the context of the world that we're living in. We are talking today on what could go right with Linda Rottenberg. I've known Linda for 15 years, a little more than that, and she has, both before then and over that time, built one of the most incredible global networks called Endeavor, which she co-founded right before the turn of the millennium and has since become perhaps the largest innovator of global entrepreneurship in the world. It's headquartered in New York City. It has 50 worldwide offices structured as a nonprofit, and they select, they mentor, they co-invest to sponsor entrepreneurship throughout the world. They've done about 1300, I think the numbers are now 1400 Endeavor entrepreneurs in country after country. They've screened over 50,000 candidates. Those companies have provided 650,000 jobs and generate more than $10 billion in annual revenue, stretching from Chile to Indonesia, and now from Nigeria to Kenya to Argentina, Lebanon throughout the Middle East. Linda is also the author of Crazy is a Compliment, The Power of Zigging When Everyone Else Zags.

When you started thinking about Endeavor and the world of non-US entrepreneurship, what did it look like then and what does it look like now?

Linda Rottenberg (1:44)

It's interesting how today the idea of entrepreneurs operating outside the United States, including in the emerging markets seems so obvious. And yet, 20 years ago, when Endeavor was launching, no one thought this was a good idea. In fact, no one believed there were entrepreneurs in these markets. Certainly not those who would grow and create scalable businesses. And I was known throughout Latin America where Endeavor started. Today, we're in 30 countries around the globe, in the US., in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in the Middle East, and in Latin America. But when we were starting out in Latin America, I was known for almost a decade as La Chica Loca, the crazy girl.

Zachary Karabell (2:41)

Why?

Linda Rottenberg (2:41)

Because I actually believed that there were these high growth, what Endeavor, my organization, calls high-impact entrepreneurs. And in fact, when we started out, there wasn't even a word in Spanish or Portuguese or Arabic or Turkish, et cetera, for entrepreneur. And one of my favorite moments in the Endeavor story came five years after we launched when the editor of the Brazilian-Portuguese dictionary called up our team and said in part because of Endeavor's work, he was adding the words emprendedor and emprendedorismo for entrepreneur and entrepreneurship into the lexicon.

Zachary Karabell (3:22)

Well, I mean, that's a good thing that we now have a word to describe a phenomenon. Was that phenomenon in place? I mean, there's a little bit of that sort of chicken and egg, or if you build it, they will come. I mean, how much do you think is a product of creating organizations that then help sponsor that, and how much of it was sort of an untapped thing that has just developed critical mass around the world?

Linda Rottenberg (3:44)

Well, a little bit of both. I mean, I co-founded Endeavor now 20 years ago because I believed there was talent, there were people with great ideas, and there frankly was capital in almost every market in the world. The problem was that that talent and that capital and that mentorship or know-how was not accessing one another. And when I was living in emerging markets before starting Endeavor, there would be about 10 families that controlled most of the resources, controlled most of the networks, and there was a perception that if you weren't part of those 10 families, that your best bet was to get a government job. And I thought that was, that's what I thought was crazy. You know, why if you could, would you only want to work for the government? And yet somehow people perceived that anything that started outside of those families was going to be worthy of microcredit, because it was going to be a one person organization. And I was out there saying, not microcredit, Microsoft, you know, Apple. Why can't those things start in places like Brazil or Egypt or Indonesia? And again, today, that seems so obvious, but it really wasn't. It wasn't just unobvious to people in Silicon Valley who told me then that they were in the middle of Florence in the Renaissance and why would they look outside of their windows. But it really was not obvious either to people living in a lot of these countries. And I think that Endeavor's insights were, number one, the power of mentorship and networks.