🎙️Disrupting the Status Quo & Building Global Entrepreneurial Ecosystems w/ Linda Rottenberg, Co-Founder & CEO, Endeavor
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On this episode of Outsider Inc., host Ian Hathaway interviews Linda Rottenberg, co-founder and CEO of Endeavor, the global organization supporting high-impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Linda shares her unique insights on the benefits of chaos over stability for entrepreneurship, her journey from an unlikely start in Latin America to creating a global network that has redefined entrepreneurship in over 45 countries, and the impact of fostering local role models and ecosystems. They discuss key success stories, the rise of unicorns from unexpected places, and the vital role of mentorship and reinvestment in sustaining entrepreneurial ecosystems. Linda also opens up about her personal journey, navigating male-dominated industries, and balancing professional and personal life. The episode wraps up with Linda’s bold predictions for the next 30 years of global entrepreneurship and her vision for Endeavor's future.
Show Notes:
(00:41) Introducing Linda Rottenberg: The Unstoppable Force
(04:25) Linda's Journey: From Harvard to Latin America
(06:59) The Birth of Endeavor: A Vision for Global Entrepreneurship
(10:04) Early Success Stories: Building Role Models
(21:00) The Multiplier Effect: Creating Sustainable Ecosystems
(27:32) Global Innovations: Outsiders Becoming Pioneers
(36:59) Balancing Personal and Professional Life
(40:18) Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
(44:16) Future Vision for Endeavor
(48:38) Beyond The Bio with Linda Rottenberg
✅ Host: Ian Hathway - Co-Founder & Managing Partner, FOVC
✅ Guest: Linda Rottenberg - Co-Founder & CEO, Endeavor
Produced by Spellbinder Media. Executive Produced by Bridge Five Ventures. Copyright ©️2025, Bridge Five Ventures, LLC, All rights reserved.
Listen & subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or at outsiderinc.substack.com.
AI-Generated Transcript
[00:00:00] Linda Rottenberg: I think people overvalue stability as a necessary precondition for entrepreneurship, and I think that chaos is more of a precondition for entrepreneurship, and I actually think emerging market founders. Have a leg up because they're used to their currencies fluctuating, different regimes coming in and out, and they've had to somehow adapt around that because if entrepreneurship is about disrupting the status quo, if the external situation is already lending itself to disruption that kind of favors you.
[00:00:41] Ian Hathaway: Welcome to another episode of Outsider Inc. I'm your host, Ian Hathaway. Today's guest is Linda Rottenberg, the Unstoppable Force behind Endeavor. The global organization dedicated to identifying and supporting high impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets dubbed La Chica Loca For her audacious [00:01:00] vision and leadership, Linda spent nearly three decades showing the world that game-changing ventures can emerge from anywhere.
As co-founder and CEO Linda led endeavor from a scrappy napkin plan into an international powerhouse spanning more than 40 countries and supporting more than 2,500 entrepreneurs worldwide. Along the way, she catalyzed new ecosystems in places like Buenos RAs, Istanbul, and Lagos, proving that with the right mentorship network and funding opportunities, entrepreneurs anywhere can scale world-class businesses.
Linda champion outsider innovators long before the term unicorn became the buzzword it is today through endeavor programming and investment vehicles. She's backed billion dollar successes like Mercado Libre, Rappi, Kareem Kava, and de Local among others. But at the heart of Linda's mission is a deeper focus on economic impact, job creation, and shifting cultural mindsets around what's [00:02:00] possible.
Linda's bold approach has drawn admiration and the occasional raised eyebrow from investors, pundits, and even her parents. She's famously claimed that if people don't think you're a little bit crazy, you're not thinking big enough. A mantra she encapsulated in her bestselling book crazy is a compliment.
Outside the boardroom. Linda also leads by example in showing how authenticity and vulnerability can strengthen teams and entire communities. I'm excited to dive into Linda's extraordinary journey from discovering a missing middle in Latin American entrepreneurship to changing the very language used to describe founders in emerging markets, to igniting new tech hubs that are reshaping the global innovation landscape.
Linda Rotenberg, welcome to the show.
[00:02:44] Linda Rottenberg: What a pleasure to be here. What an awesome introduction. I've been introduced a lot. That was the best.
[00:02:50] Ian Hathaway: This was written from the heart.
[00:02:51] Linda Rottenberg: It soon from the heart.
[00:02:53] Ian Hathaway: So look, Linda, I'm really excited to have you here. You have such a unique story, one [00:03:00] that. I might describe as an unlikely pathway into building startups, having a truly visionary perspective on tech, entrepreneurship, and emerging markets.
And finally, that not only has your mission been one of supporting outsider entrepreneurs, but you yourself are an outsider who broke the mold and have achieved wild success. So. I'm hopeful that we can traverse those two themes, what you've accomplished as a professional and who you are as a person and and a leader.
So with that, you're quoted as saying that entrepreneurship is not limited to boys in hoodies in Silicon Valley. And you've spent your entire career lifting up founders from Overlooked Places and backgrounds, which is a noble mission that resonates deeply with me and is the inspiration for this platform Outsider, Inc.
Could you take us back maybe to an early aha moment you had where you first realized that [00:04:00] entrepreneurship could and should look different?
[00:04:03] Linda Rottenberg: Sure. And yes. I know today Endeavor operates in 45 countries. We're going to a hundred. And it seems so obvious to say there's entrepreneurs outside Silicon Valley and even outside Silicon Valley and China and the, the top three countries where venture capital invest.
But 27 years ago, this was not obvious. So my story is I grew up in Newton, mass. My parents were the first generation, first in their families to go to college, and I, I went to publish school in Newton. I went to Harvard and went straight through to Yale Law School. I didn't get the memo my classmates got.
I thought you went to Yale Law School because you did not want to practice law. I was the only one in my class without a job, and the professors at Yale Law School literally took pity on me and sent me down to Latin America because I had edited the law policy review and they said, oh, there's this opportunity first in Chile, then in Argentina [00:05:00] to do some work.
And so I went off. My parents said it was my. Sabbatical, they did not understand why I was not, after all the schooling, I was not getting a proper job. But they thought that a year later I'd come back and what happened was I ended up staying in Latin America. Working on a variety of projects. And then for an organization called Ashoka, which was the first venture capital firm for nonprofits, right?
It was social venture capital. Before that was impact investing And social ventures were in the norm and it was wonderful. And Bill Drayton, who founded that was a mentor. And yeah, I was confused that there wasn't Ashoka for the private sector as I called it. There was no zero venture dollars going into Latin America where I was living.
And not only that, no one really was starting businesses. And so here it's the mid nineties Yahoo and Netscape are going public. Steve Jobs is coming back to Apple, and no one is starting businesses. And I'm traveling around Latin America and people start saying things like, you know, yeah, that's Steve Jobs.
Steve Wozniak story, you keep [00:06:00] telling Linda is interesting, but how does it relate to my life? No one's giving me money for my idea and I don't even have a garage. So this idea of the Silicon Valley garage startups that did not resonate. One day, my aha moment, back to your question, came in a taxi ride in 1996.
In Winters Aires and my driver has an engineering degree, and so I'm like, oh my God, why aren't you a, and I couldn't think of the word for entrepreneur and he informed me after back and forth. There is no word for entrepreneur at that point in Spanish. Then Rio meant who had government connections, one of the oligarchs of business.
And I thought, wow, no wonder no one's starting their companies. They can't even tell their parents. You know what it is they wanna do. There's talent in these markets. There's capital in these markets. There is no trust. And the endeavor started out and we've since become a hybrid model where we have the nonprofit ecosystem builder and we have the Endeavor catalyst funds that we can talk about later that do invest in entrepreneurs.
But at the [00:07:00] time I. There was no money for investment, but we said, why don't we just try to identify promising high potential? We called high impact entrepreneurs. It was always about growth and introduce them to capital providers and maybe we can tell a couple of stories. And the one thing I will say that I'm most proud of, and then we can get to what happens in the interim.
But about five years later, endeavor at that point we started in Argentina and Chile. We then moved to Brazil and then Uruguay, Mexico. And then sent to beyond Latin America, all across the globe. But in about 2004 in Brazil, the editor of the Brazilian Portuguese dictionary, Aurel called up our team and said they were adding the words and Pendo and Impend ismo, entrepreneur and entrepreneurship into the lexicon, and it got promoted, and that's what it is in Spanish as well.
So we went from not having a word to having word.
[00:07:52] Ian Hathaway: That's incredible. Literally changing the vocabulary. Yeah, and I'm reminded of the impresario term, our [00:08:00] mutual friend Chris Schroeder. I recall his book, he wrote about this term wasta in Arabic, which means essentially the same thing, which is you can't get ahead unless you know somebody.
And so, yeah. Entrepreneurship while, you know, kind of defining of the American culture is somewhat of a relatively new thing in in other countries, especially in this way. And so if we could just stick with that for a moment. It's obvious why that moment had such an impact on you and how it shaped your vision for what you were gonna do next.
So how did you go from this realization to sitting around your. Parents' kitchen table sketching out with your co-founder, Peter Kelner, the vision for Endeavor.
[00:08:44] Linda Rottenberg: Yeah, and we had Peter and me and then Jason Green, who became one of the great investors in New York, and then Silicon Valley just retired from US Venture Partners and Gary Mueller, a serial entrepreneur where our original board and.
We said, wow, you know, [00:09:00] maybe one day we'll have a hundred entrepreneurs in these markets outside of Silicon Valley. It's actually 2,900 as of today, right? And Jason says, you know, like many founders, we overestimated what we could do in a year, but we underestimated what we could do in 10. I remember at the beginning we just said, let's just find a few good stories.
I believed initially, and I still do in the role model effect, we've expanded this, we'll talk later about the multiplier effect that's become the heart and soul of what Endeavor does in these ecosystems. But at the time, the role model effect, this story that I told earlier where it wasn't just the lack of the word entrepreneur that was the taxi driver, but it was those kids who said to me, Steve Jobs and Steve.
Wozniak and the Apple story itself doesn't resonate with me, nor does Netscape, nor does Yahoo, because no one is giving me money for my idea. I don't have the right last name. I don't know where to begin. I don't have the right contacts. And so we thought if we can create some homegrown role models who are able to scale, who are able to maybe [00:10:00] exit.
That was the theory, that it would have a ripple effect. And in fact, that is what happened. So our first entrepreneurs from Argentina were two founders who were building Office Net, the staples of Latin America, and we got them a meeting with Tom Stenberg, the CEO founder of Staples, had to convince him as a friend to take a 20 minute meeting with these crazy kids from Latin America.
Were doing something. And so he grudgingly comes in for a 20 minute meeting. Ends up canceling all his meetings of the day, and by the end, convincing Andy and Sandi that he should buy Staples, which he later does. So that was literally our first entrepreneur. Okay. The Staples founder goes from taking a grudging meeting to canceling the meetings and selling them.
The second entrepreneur was Wences Cas, grew up in a sheep farm in Patagonia, is starting the E-Trade of Latin America. Every single investor in Latin America, and even the guys who started the Office Net company turned him down, said, you're really crazy kid. No way. What is E-Trade? There's not even a function in [00:11:00] stock market.
And you grew up in a sheep farm and we introduced him to Fred Wilson then of Flatiron Partners. Now, of course, union Square Ventures help him raise his first $4 million. We help him find a chief operating officer. 18 months later, he sells the company paton.com to Baco Santander for $750 million. And what's interesting is that catapults the whole ecosystem, suddenly people knew of Wences, people knew of the kid from the sheep farm who had been turned down by everybody.
And the fact that he can actually raise capital and then sell to Santander starts opening the floodgates. And the, the last company I'll tell about this early story. And then what happens after is that two of the people who wind up hearing the story are Marco Scalper and Annan Kaza, who are at Stanford Business School.
They were going to stay and work for eBay or do something in Silicon Valley, and they said, wait a minute, why don't we bring the eBay model to Argentina and to Latin America because Wences did it so we can too. So the idea that if Wees can do it, [00:12:00] we can too, became kind of a rallying cry. So we find them, literally, they're just starting out, but today.
Mercado Libre is the first company on the continent of Latin America to reach a hundred billion dollar valuation. It's not only the only. Centor in Latin America, in the tech world. But what's really interesting and important and where we go is that beyond this role model effect, beyond this idea that if Wences can do it, if Marcos can do it, if all these people can do it, I can too.
These folks really supported one another. They mentored one another. They brought that next generation up. They end up starting investing in the next generation. We're seeing in every ecosystem. That's really what makes the difference. It's if these initial success stories end up paying their success forward, that's where you start to have lasting success in a city and a and a country.
[00:12:50] Ian Hathaway: Yeah, I agree with that 100%. Of course. Nan went on to found Kazak, which is yeah, the preeminent venture capital firm in the [00:13:00] region. You talked about storytelling, inspiration. The living example is what people needed to see. Also, access to opportunity. I know that in today's world tech entrepreneurship is synonymous too often with access to venture capital.
In the mid nineties, it was essentially a US phenomenon. A study I did a few years ago with Richard Florida, we showed that in the mid nineties, 95% of global VC activity was in the us. Basically, the other 5% was in Europe. So you know, you're operating in a capital desert. I'm assuming that maybe was a challenge and an opportunity.
You've talked about some of the things that worked, but what were some of the core challenges as you were getting this initiative going?
[00:13:47] Linda Rottenberg: I would say, given that this is about outsiders, let me answer this in a few different ways. One is I do believe that the idea of the role model effect and storytelling is especially important for [00:14:00] outsiders.
One of the things we've done is made sure I. That everywhere we go, it's not just telling sort of local stories, it's sort of sharing examples of people who are unexpected from the mold. That's why I sort of talked about the boys in Silicon Valley, in the hoodies or in the black turtlenecks, right? If that's your image of what an entrepreneur is, how do you parse out when someone who looks different, who sounds different, comes to you asking for, in this case, venture capital.
And so that's what we found really effective. And this is happening now with female founders. We said we need to prove that there are female founders that can create high growth hyperscale companies, not just in consumer goods, not just in sort of the traditional sectors where women entrepreneurs, it's acceptable, right.
In beauty or in fashion. But in the hardcore tech, one of our companies that sold for a billion dollars to Visa this year, Pismo, the CTO is a female engineer, uh, Daniella, and we brought her actually to Saudi Arabia. [00:15:00] We were finding that many of the engineers behind the tech companies in Saudi Arabia today are women, but we wanted them to see a woman who'd exited.
So the first principle, if you're an outsider, if you're the first, tell your story. If you're different, you're gonna give permission to somebody else who can say, okay, if Daniela can do it, I can too. And that is hugely important. But the second thing I'll say is, and it relates to the venture capital in two ways.
One is we, we, we do have bootstrapped entrepreneurs. And I think part of the other aspect of entrepreneurship is to be able to say, you can grow something really high growth and you can bootstrap it and you don't have to take venture capital. And there's not just. One type of entrepreneur. I think if we too narrowly define what the trajectory is of an entrepreneur, we do that a disservice.
When the term unicorn was created in 2013 by an endeavor mentor in Silicon Valley Venture capitalist Aileen Lee, the first welcome to the Unicorn and Club cohort. Had 39 [00:16:00] members. These were 39 companies that had gone public at a billion dollar valuation. 'cause back then there weren't even private rounds.
Now it's also private rounds at a billion dollars. There were none. So it was, it's either private rounds at a billion or if you go public at a billion dollars and there were only 39 unicorns back in 2013. 100% were in the United States. 95% of those were in Silicon Valley. Today there are somewhere between 13 and 1500 unicorns Endeavor.
There are 82 in the Endeavor Network. 50% are from the us so already it's gone from a hundred to 50. Another quarter are from China. And then there's about 12% from the top four other markets, which I believe are India, Germany, France, and Israel. And excluding those, those six markets, there's 13% coming from the rest of the world.
And that's really what Endeavor focuses on. But what's interesting is if you play this out in the next five to 10 years, the number of. [00:17:00] Companies, the number of unicorns and decacorns, the number of outsized innovations coming from these markets elsewhere that no one thought possible is suddenly gonna begin to overtake these other more traditional places.
And so it's, it's a really fascinating story to watch when you not only project what happened two and a half decades ago, but where will be a decade from now.
[00:17:21] Ian Hathaway: It feels to me it's a little bit about access to opportunity, which I guess going back to that point about outsiders, I feel like you were backing outsiders before.
It was cool. What is your kind of overarching view of that? What is it that you see in these founders that maybe too many other people seem to miss?
[00:17:42] Linda Rottenberg: First we looked at the context. Of markets like Argentina and Brazil and Mexico and Turkey and Nigeria, and I would say Egypt and Vietnam and Pakistan, these emerging and frontier markets.
And [00:18:00] rather than being scared by them, we were enticed by the opportunity because. I think people overvalue stability as a necessary precondition for entrepreneurship, and I think that chaos is more of a precondition for entrepreneurship. And I actually think emerging market founders have a leg up because they're used to their currencies, fluctuating, different regimes coming in and out, and they've had to somehow.
Adapt around that, because if entrepreneurship is about disrupting the status quo, if the external situation is already lending itself to disruption, that kind of favors you. So first we had to see not only the entrepreneurs, but the context they were in is something that we were excited by. And I think people miss that.
I think the second thing is that I've talked to our mutual friend, Chris Schroeder, about this a lot. What I love about entrepreneurs coming from elsewhere, coming from these emerging and growth [00:19:00] markets, is they're really focused on solving real world problems at scale. I, I meet founders here in the US and a lot of them are reverse engineering their IPO already on day one.
Right. And in these markets, these are companies that will become the, you know, a hundred million dollar revenue, billion dollar valuation plus companies, but their focus is on financial inclusion or the fact that you can't get access to credit period, or the fact that you can't get access to healthcare.
So they're using technology to solve these real world pain points at scale. And I find that fascinating. People also underestimate how hard entrepreneurship is. And so one of the things I look for in a founder is. Are you the right person to do this idea? Is the idea in the market big enough? But are you committed for the right reasons?
So when it gets hard, you're gonna stick with it. And so understanding the reasons why people are choosing a specific company, I find it's so much more [00:20:00] likely they're gonna stick with it if it comes from a real place of solving a need or a problem they saw versus creating a PowerPoint while they were working at McKinsey.
[00:20:09] Ian Hathaway: Yeah, people who are on a mission or like Brad Feld always talks about it. He says Passion is not enough. I need people who are obsessed with solving a problem. So, you know, you talked about market size and structure, maybe resilience of founders and this kind of commitment to the cause. Maybe looking at culture at a systems level.
Ecosystems around the US and around the world have different appetites for the culture of entrepreneurship. At a system level, at a community level, it can take time, sometimes 10 years or a generation or more. I guess, first of all, do you agree with that assessment and secondly, just looking at the endeavor model, it is about creating systems change.
So what have been some of the things that have been successful for you?
[00:20:56] Linda Rottenberg: I definitely believe in that, and I would say [00:21:00] there's two things. One is what we call the endeavor multiplier effect, and we've done a lot of data-driven research into how entrepreneurs pay their success forward to build an entire ecosystem.
Because for us, we want success around entrepreneurship, not just to be about reaching a billion dollar valuation or exiting and replenishing your bank account. Needs to be about more. We literally are measuring how much entrepreneurs are investing in other founders. How much they're mentoring other founders, whether other founders have been inspired by their stories and the spinouts and employees who go on to create the quote tech mafias, like the PayPal Mafia.
We have the Kareem Mafia all through Middle East and Africa. I was just in Dubai last week with Mad Sheika, the founder of Kareem that sold to Uber for $3.1 billion and just recently spun out again as Kareem technology. It's, it's an amazing story. And the same with [00:22:00] Robbie. You mentioned in Latin America, the inverse is also true, which is that if you have a few successful scale ups go public and they don't reinvest in the ecosystem.
That ecosystem stops. And I always say that a unicorn that doesn't breed more unicorns is just in an endangered species. And the example I always cite is, is actually personally close to my literal home, which is Route 1 28 in Boston where I, I grew up five minutes from Route 1 28 and. In the 1980s, there were more tech workers on this strip in the outskirts of Boston than in Silicon Valley, and it had all the early success stories, and today no one knows of it.
Why? Why does no one, no one ever hears somebody, you say, 1 28, they look at you like, what are you talking about? And I said, that's the point. It had, by [00:23:00] definition, it should have overpowered Silicon Valley. But what did they do? They made people sign non-disclosure agreements, non-competes. Literally networking was forbidden.
If you left a company, you were like dead to the founder. Whereas in Silicon Valley, no NDAs, no non-competes. You're starting a new company. You go tell your boss. They ask if they can angel invest, right? And so I think that that's the culture that we wanted to. Still of, it's not enough to build one company.
Yes, you have to do that. Great. If you give employment, great. If you build a great company culture, but it's what you do outside. It's sharing your story, sharing your knowledge, sharing your resources to the, actually we see the growth over time of these individual cities in in tech ecosystems.
[00:23:45] Ian Hathaway: I could not underline this enough.
What you're talking about is the most important concept in ecosystem building. People are trying to create these startup communities all around the country, around the world. They're getting the sequencing wrong, right? It's, it's not [00:24:00] about the amount of things happening, it's can the big event happen, right?
Can we find the most high potential founders and companies and do everything we can to make sure they succeed? After the event, what happens next? We had Scott Dorsey from Indianapolis on earlier. Not only did he create this two and a half billion dollar outcome, but he didn't write off into the sunset.
He doubled down and created this, uh, venture firm and in Indianapolis with the ambition of making it the greatest place on earth for, for software startups. And so that is absolutely necessary. Agree with that. A million percent. Maybe shifting gears a little bit, talking about talent. You mentioned some of the things that are important, this resilience, thriving in chaos, being familiar with that.
I have a two part question here. What might be some additional strengths that you didn't already mention, and maybe conversely, if I'm an outsider today building a company, a second or third tier ecosystem, what are the things that I need to be aware of that [00:25:00] may not be obvious to me right now?
[00:25:03] Linda Rottenberg: It's a great point and it is harder for the first generation.
It just is today one of the unexpected places where we see a lot of venture dollars, where we've had a lot of Endeavor Catalyst exits, and where Endeavor Global, the nonprofit has been involved 20 years, is Turkey is Istanbul. And you wouldn't expect that today given. The volatility in that political situation and economic situation, but we've had some of the best companies come out of there.
But what happened was once you had the first food delivery company that sells for, at that point $685 million almost a decade ago to Delivery Hero, and people think, oh, that's interesting. There's some something happening in Istanbul. And then you have. Peak games, one of the top gaming companies sell to Zynga for $2.1 billion.
And this is why the numbers do matter. What happens afterwards with the multiplier effect matters more. But you've gotta have success first. 'cause that's what people anchor onto, is it's possible. And what starts happening is, even though Turkey is volatile, they do two [00:26:00] things. One is they look at the diaspora because then what happened is people said, okay, even if you're moving your headquarters out of Istanbul for a certain amount of time, they said, why don't you create.
Some tech center, some r and d center, there's enough talent brewing here that you've gotta do something and it'll be cheaper. Let's use what we have. And then it started getting more and more interesting that people said, no, I do actually wanna headquarter in Turkey. And then we have a company that bootstrapped papa.
A FinTech company that buys a Pakistani company and says, okay, we're gonna take the next frontier market. And Istanbul now has, has climbed up the ladder in terms of the talent pool, in terms of the investability, vis-a-vis other, uh, markets. But you've gotta start somewhere. And how do you leverage what's unique here?
And we can offer and then combine it with best in class talent around the world. And then each subsequent generation gets easier. Right. So the pioneers have it hardest 'cause they're building without the local talent, but they're creating the local talent. And so I think also knowing [00:27:00] that gives people that missionary zeal.
But the second thing I'll say is that when you look at those early models I was talking about back in 19 97, 1 of the things they have in common is. The innovation had come from Silicon Valley and was being imported, the eBay of Latin America, the E-Trade of Latin America. Then we started seeing a decade later, okay, you'd take something from China, right?
The Baidu of this, the didi of that, right? The Alibaba of this place, that model is being completely thrown out. So outsiders today in unexpected places are not only adapting. Innovations created in the first generation markets to their local markets, but they're actually innovating from scratch. So one of our more recent companies, it's a Polish company that's also headquartered in, in Finland.
It's called 11 Labs. And if you talk about voice [00:28:00] AI company, it's with anyone in Silicon Valley, anyone in the world, they'll cite 11 labs as the number one company in the world. We just selected our first. Ukrainian company Endeavor has operations in Kyiv and the founder Anton of Headway. This is a, an app that has created microlearning.
It's a 200 million revenue company, and it's a founder that's been based in kyiv with generators on, because the bombs were falling and they had to retool the entire office to make sure that they wouldn't have outage on their app. So these are things that I don't think the world has yet processed. That innovation doesn't just start and get copycatted.
And the last thing I'll say is look at Newbank. Newbank created really the best and first neobank at scale that is now being replicated in every market in the world. And the fact that it started in an emerging market actually makes a lot of sense. And so I think that's the other thing we have to prepare ourselves for, that [00:29:00] outsiders are gonna become, if not the insiders, the first round pioneers rather than the the ones who come later.
I.
[00:29:07] Ian Hathaway: You made a number of amazing points there. I feel like you're setting a new standard. The lessons are actually simple, but not easy, and it goes against like a lot of preconceived notions that people have. But one of the things that you touch on at the, in there, in the old days, the way to create on-ramps into a tech ecosystem was to be the eBay of.
Turkey or whatever. Do you feel like that time has passed where if I'm building in a place that hasn't had that success, that we don't have to necessarily replicate that model, we can go global from day one, or do you think that's something that needs to happen first?
[00:29:50] Linda Rottenberg: I think there are two different things going on.
There are going to be innovations now that start elsewhere and get [00:30:00] replicated in places like China and India and the US at scale versus the other way. It used to be. That the goal was to get to the US market, or the goal was to take what had worked in Silicon Valley or China and bring it to your market.
Right. And we're in a multipolar era, so what we see is Brazilian companies saying, we are gonna take our model and export it to Kenya because we actually see. Similar situations. We had a company that started in Nigeria that said their next market was gonna be Mexico. We were just in Dubai and there was Indian entrepreneur that had launched in Dubai and a Nigerian founder that had launched their in Dubai 'cause they thought the Middle East was right for their markets.
We had a South African company moved to Singapore and the Philippines. Right. People are bypassing some of the innovations and activity in the US and China and going directly. The emerging market to emerging market, that is fascinating because they see the same pain points, the same challenges that you can [00:31:00] unlock.
Uh, as someone said who is from Brazil, he said, I don't like operating in simple environments. The more complexity, the better. So it doesn't behoove me to go from Brazil where there are so many regulations as paint to the US where everything's easy. That does, I, I, I don't have a competitive advantage, but I can take my model to Africa where it's equally painful in terms of regulatory environment and that's where I'm gonna thrive.
I thought that was. Fascinating.
[00:31:27] Ian Hathaway: In the US we're complaining about three plus percent inflation. You talk to someone in Argentina and they're like, oh, okay. Welcome to the club. So look, last point on Endeavor, and then I wanna talk about you. You've talked about a lot of companies that have come through, so I'm gonna ask this question a little differently.
Startups are like children. You never pick a favorite. You've highlighted a bunch of success stories, but who's a company that we haven't talked about yet that you just really wanna put on people's radar? I.
[00:31:55] Linda Rottenberg: A founder and company that I've not spoken of, and it gets to all these themes of [00:32:00] new world innovations that can come from anywhere.
There is, uh, a Tunisian founder named Kareem Bagge, and Kareem was a self-taught engineer. And went to school in France and was working, I believe in New York, and decided to go back to Tunisia and started before anyone was talking about ai, started using artificial intelligence around the mRNA and health outcomes.
And it turns out that back when before we had a vaccine and BioNTech and Pfizer. Realize that this one little company, which Kareem had founded Insta Deep, has detected all the SARS Covid variants. Ahead of time, correctly before anyone else in the world. And so they end up partnering with Inst Deep to create the Pfizer [00:33:00] BioNTech vaccine.
And then they realize that what Kareem and InDEEP are doing in terms of just Genomics is also kind of ahead of the game using ai. So BioNTech buys this Tunisian company for $700 million. Again, like out of nowhere in Tuni. Right. What does Kareem do? So Kareem now is running genomics. Inside BioNTech ins is maintaining its own, you know, sort of integrity there.
And then what's he doing? He is working both with the Tunisia government and the Randan government to create AI development centers so that Africa doesn't miss out on the AI revolution and that you can actually train the engineers. To come to actually populate these companies. And then in his spare time as his philanthropy, he has teamed up to use AI to detect different crop issues and know when something is gonna infect the crops, and being able to ahead of time, be able to [00:34:00] determine how you should replant or reseed or move things around so you avoid some major crises.
[00:34:06] Ian Hathaway: Wow.
[00:34:07] Linda Rottenberg: Tunisian Self-taught entrepreneur. Pretty good story.
[00:34:11] Ian Hathaway: I want to shift gears to you, Linda, the leader. Let's start with Laika Loca. I know there's a great story behind that. Tell us about it.
[00:34:20] Linda Rottenberg: Well, I always tell founders, not only do I say that if you're not being called crazy, you're not thinking big enough.
But the other thing I tell early stage founders is that stalking is an underrated startup strategy. And I deployed this myself. I would stalk people at the beginning of Endeavor, where here we are. There's no venture capital. So we say, all right, we have to start as a nonprofit, but we're supporting the for-profit, high growth entrepreneurs.
The next, you know, future Steve Jobs. And so this makes no sense to anyone. And so we had to get philanthropic investment right early on that would carry us over till, you know, now we have these, uh, endeavor catalyst funds too. But we said we, we needed philanthropy at the beginning, but people who [00:35:00] wanted it.
To support private sector, fast growing entrepreneurs, right? And there was no word, as we know. So this was a small subset of people who we could approach with this idea that we thought would work and doing research. One of the people we identified was this guy named Eduardo Alstein, who at that point was known from, he took $10 million of SO'S money and made.
Source at that point, the largest landowner in Argentina and was one of the only kind of entrepreneurs. Um, he also happens to be an Orthodox Jew, and I got a meeting with him at like two o'clock on a Friday afternoon
[00:35:34] Ian Hathaway: right before So sundown? Yeah. Good.
[00:35:37] Linda Rottenberg: Yeah, so I, I had a 10 minute meeting and it was right before, it might've even been three o'clock, it was late Friday afternoon.
He was not staying. And five minutes into our meeting, I, I managed to get in the door. I, after stalking Eduardo, he says, okay, I get it. You want an intro to George Soros? That's why you're here, Linda. I'll see what I can do. And I said to him, no, Eduardo, [00:36:00] I'm an entrepreneur. You're an entrepreneur. This is an organization of buy four entrepreneurs.
I want your time, your passion, and $200,000. And that's when he turns to his right hand guy and says, ES. So I said in Spanish, you know, Eduardo, I'm disappointed this from the guy who famously walked into Ros's office and came out with a $10 million check. You're lucky I only asked you for 200,000. And Eduardo walks out of the room.
It's now almost Shabbat. He doesn't even say goodbye. Or like, that was rude, I don't think. And Oscar, the guy is a right hand guy, and I are looking at each other like, am I supposed to leave? What supposed to do? He's trying to figure out if he's supposed to throw me out. And Eduardo walks back in with his checkbook and writes the $200,000 check on the spot.
And to this day it says it's the best, you know, what investment he made. Um, but he gave me more than that $200,000 he gave me my chi uh, nickname. So, yeah, I'm very grateful.
[00:36:59] Ian Hathaway: So, [00:37:00] sticking with that, I mean, I, I have to ask, it's like reconciling these two worlds, right? The La Chica loca on the one hand, and then kind of growing up in this risk averse family in the Boston suburbs, you excelled academically, Harvard, Yale, the world was your oyster.
You could have done anything, and you instead choose to go to Argentina and figure things out, and ultimately did what you did. Was La Chica loca, was that a coming out party for you or what? Were there signs early on that you were not going to walk the traditional path?
[00:37:33] Linda Rottenberg: That's funny. And you mentioned the kitchen table moment, but it is true.
I had my kitchen table moment when I had to tell my parents that, you know, this, uh, sabbatical that you've been talking about, when my law professor signed me up for one year, no, actually I think I'm gonna go start this thing and it's a
Latin. My dad literally pulled me over and said, Linda, you don't have a trust fund. Like what are you doing? Like [00:38:00] you have to get a job and I understand you don't wanna work at the law, but maybe you can work at Goldman Sachs. I dunno that. And I thought, no. And true story. They made me take the bar exam, which somehow I managed to squeak by and pass and.
My parents paid my bar exam dues for over a decade, and it was only after my dad, maybe a decade into Endeavor, said, Linda, do you think if it's okay if I stop paying this $150 a year or whatever it was, and I thought, oh my God, you finally think this thing gonna last.
My parents definitely thought this was something I'd get outta my system and it was a backup plan. But you know what? I actually channeled that moment, that scary kitchen table moment where I had to tell my parents that I was taking the unknown, unsafe, risky plan versus the safe and known plan they had fought out [00:39:00] for me.
And when I met entrepreneurs who not only were going through the same thing, but they were doing so in a context where no one had been an entrepreneur before, there was no word, as I mentioned, I was like, wow, what they're doing is 10 times harder. And then they inspired me. Every year I would touch base and say, can we keep going?
Can we keep going? And every year it pointed to, yes. And I just continue, today, I meet almost all the entrepreneurs who come through our selection panels, and so it's been a like a continuous refounding moment. So I guess to answer your question. I, I stopped. I know it sounds like it's crazy and risk averse, but I just, I kept taking little wins and said, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give myself the next three months if I can raise this capital.
So we don't go out of business. And if I can continue to be inspired and we continue to get one, one investor to pay attention to one story, one other person to say, Hey, they're starting a company because they've heard of Endeavor. And so I would give myself these little milestones so I wasn't gonna completely bankrupt.
Endeavor and myself, [00:40:00] but it just sort of com started compounding. And so I, I, I guess I stopped thinking about it in the macro risk I was taking and more day-to-day, month to month, year to year. Were these my superpowers? Was I obsessed as you and Brad would say, could I make it work at least financially?
And that's, that's sort of how I thought about it.
[00:40:18] Ian Hathaway: Speaking of superpowers, I feel like one of yours is not being afraid of the unknown. You were the first through the wall in so many ways in building this amazing organization, and it's obviously not lost on me that you're a woman and you're operating not only in very male dominated industries, entrepreneurship, tech, but also in these.
Business cultures in emerging markets that are especially male dominated. So what were maybe some of the ways that you navigated that, what worked for you and most importantly, for aspiring entrepreneurs, women who are out there listening today, what advice would you have for them? [00:41:00]
[00:41:00] Linda Rottenberg: Hmm. Great. So lemme talk about it vis-a-vis the benefactors, the board members, the billionaires, right?
'cause we would raise. Anywhere from two to $5 million upfront. Right? And then to, to start operations. And I have to convince them. And then let's talk about the entrepreneurs. And now the third piece is we have the funds, right? We have the 540 million assets under management and we're raising a A fund five, which will be about $300 million in the coming years.
So suddenly we're also real venture capitalists investing in these companies. But when I was starting out, so first I would have to convince the billionaires. I remember walking into Mexico and literally it was me and probably. 40% of Mexico's GDP with like 10 people in the room, and I had to convince them to take a bet on endeavor and, and I just sort of.
I can say things that are unexpected, partly because they didn't fit me into a mold. I could say things like, well, you're the big fish, and entrepreneurship is about, you know, little fish growing, so why don't you think instead about eating the, the little [00:42:00] fish, feeding the little fish? And, and they didn't know what to make of me, but they knew that I had a story, that we had done some things that were real in places that like Argentina at that point for Brazil.
And so they're like, all right, this sounds a little bit. Off, but, uh, we were gonna go with it. And in fact, then a decade later, Amelia Oga, who was then share of Endeavor, Mexico, who ran all of the media, right, Televisa, but also all the magazines, did a headline on 10 years of entrepreneurship in Mexico. And the headline was.
Big fish, feeding the little fish. So, but it was like these weird quirky things that I felt, let me use it to my advantage, right? Do the unexpected thing. I remember also in Mexico, there was one woman, I was told one woman, Maria Ascio, and I was gonna meet her at this event where Steve Balmer of Microsoft was coming to speak and there were gonna be hundreds of people in this very elite sort of club.
And I asked her beforehand, I said, oh, well we will meet after bomber speech, but how will I find you? And she said. Oh, you'll [00:43:00] find me. And I walked into this room. I'm sitting in a, uh, kind of a, a orange pinkish outfit, and there's a sea of blue suits, and then there's a woman in a canary yellow suit, and I found her.
And that would be, you know, me in the Middle East too. And now, you know, I, I go into the Middle East and we're talking about entrepreneurship. But you know what, if you look at. The tech companies in Saudi Arabia, 40 to 60% of the engineers are women. Like no one knows this story. I can find out the story and highlight it.
One of my advice to women is like, to any outsider, use the fact that you're coming with a different perspective and, and do things that are unexpected. Know your stuff come with data, you've gotta be serious and you've gotta be data driven. And yet, if you have an unexpected observation. People are hearing the same people in the same rooms and some of the observations get very samey.
And so doing something that is [00:44:00] unexpected, I think is an asset. And I've, I, I've just always believed that.
[00:44:04] Ian Hathaway: I think that's incredible advice in general. I. Especially now people are looking for something different. So I couldn't have said it better myself. I know we're coming up on time. We have one final short segment, but before we do that, I want to ask you kind of one big question, which is, look, you're 30, almost three decades into this journey.
What do you want to see happen over the next 30 years and what do you want people to be able to say? About the impact that you have had in that endeavor has had?
[00:44:40] Linda Rottenberg: Yeah, it's a great question. And this gets also back to the, the, the second half of the last question, which wasn't just convincing the oligarchs, the billionaires, you know, take, take a be.
It was convincing entrepreneurs and at, at its heart endeavor is a network of trust, of buy and for entrepreneurs. So the fact that entrepreneurs saw me [00:45:00] as a fellow entrepreneur. I wasn't this now hybrid leader, then a nonprofit leader. I was a fellow entrepreneur. They saw my struggles, they saw people calling me crazy, doubting me.
My board, when we started our fund saying, wait a minute, is this mission creep? So they, they were comfortable sharing their challenges and vulnerabilities. 'cause I had shared mine and I was someone they could trust and I was always on the side. Even now, when Endeavor catalysts Invest, we're always on the side of the entrepreneurs.
So building up that trust. And that authentic kind of shared vulnerability, shared empathy, shared pain points, I think is something that is really important. And so I think when we think of Endeavor 30 years from now, the three related things are number one, I. There will be these decacorns and at that point, centor, the a hundred billion dollar companies coming from markets all around the world that would've been previously called emerging or frontier markets, or back when I was growing up third world [00:46:00] countries, and now they're going have right decacorns in Centor.
I think that's really important, number one. Number two. They're gonna pay their success forward rate, and they're gonna build these ecosystems that you and I have talked about here and create these sustainable pathways where people can have the role models, have the access to the networks and the information and the guidance and the smart capital that just a couple generations was not available.
Right. And that's just gonna become no brainer. It's gonna be obvious back to, you know, of course you can start companies here. Of course there's words for entrepreneur and entrepreneurship and venture capital. But what Endeavor needs to become, and it has become, is this global network of trust. I. That's of buy and for entrepreneurs.
So we have boards in E in every country. There are 87 endeavor entrepreneurs. We're now board members of the $540 million assets under management. We have about about 300 or so LPs. A third of our LPs are endeavor entrepreneurs. Paying it forward. So this idea of buy for entrepreneurs [00:47:00] I think is really important.
I think global networks of trust are going to become more and more important as we move from this unipolar or bipolar world to a multipolar world. There is by definition, more volatility instability. We see this now in the United States on a daily basis. And so I think that networks of trust where diaspora entrepreneurs we're creating a global endeavor hub in London.
For the 50 diaspora entrepreneurs, we have diaspora entrepreneurs moving to Dubai and Singapore and Miami. It's so these global centers of excellence. And then the home countries and the home cities where people pay their success forward are going to need to interact. And so that's what I hope, I hope Endeavor becomes truly.
The biggest global network of trust of by four entrepreneurs. And then I wanna be one of the only organizations in the world where what started as a nonprofit is fully funded by the returns of the funds. The entire carried interest of the funds goes to scale, endeavor, the [00:48:00] nonprofit, and we will be completely self-sustaining over time by the returns of the Endeavor Catalyst funds.
That's my dream too, of doing something unexpected and hybrid and you can do well and do good in a way that's kind of fun rather than finger wagging.
[00:48:15] Ian Hathaway: Well, that sounds like an inspiring goal. Certainly one that I would love to get behind. So El Chico
[00:48:21] Linda Rottenberg: Loco still
[00:48:23] Ian Hathaway: El Chico Loco. I'm Sign me up. So let me know how I can help you fulfill that vision and let's get together.
30 years from now. Awesome. And see how you did. Um, so look, so, yeah, exactly.
[00:48:36] Linda Rottenberg: Okay.
[00:48:36] Ian Hathaway: Yeah. Well look Linda, we're almost out of time, but here on Outsider Inc. We like to finish by going beyond the bio. These are just a couple of light, you know, quick hit questions that go beyond your resume and let us learn a little bit more about what makes you you.
Is that okay? Of course. Okay. So what's a quick piece of advice that a mentor has given [00:49:00] you that stuck with you throughout your journey?
[00:49:03] Linda Rottenberg: I was having a real horrible year and I couldn't understand why things were still difficult. 'cause I was no longer in startup phase. This was like seven years in. It was supposed to get easier.
And I went to this mentor and I said, I don't understand. Why isn't it easier? And what he said to me is. Being a pioneer is always hard. Expect it to be hard because if you expect it to be easy, then you're no longer a pioneer. It means that someone else probably has done your idea before and that reframing, oh, it's supposed to be hard.
I think when people go in thinking, what am I doing to screw up? 'cause it's should be easy and it's hard. And instead of, you look at this as it's supposed to suck, it's supposed to be hard. I'm a hell.
[00:49:50] Ian Hathaway: Who is an unsung hero in your life and what has been the impact they've had on you?
[00:49:56] Linda Rottenberg: I have twin daughters.
They are [00:50:00] 19, going on 20 they're, they're now sophomores in college and I will never forget when they were five. I was going off on a business trip around the world and one of them pulled on my leg and said, just remember, you can be an entrepreneur for a short time, but you are a mommy forever. Oh, and I'm now an empty nester, and I'm now flying around the world because I stopped for a while and it took really short trips and I decided that, you know what?
Actually it's the opposite. I'm a mommy for a short time. I need to be a mommy. And I, I can be an entrepreneur forever. I mean, I sort of inverted in my mind, but I thought that was so profound that just stuck with me. And I just think you can reroute what you do, but you want those kids at the end of the day to be able to say, not that endeavor was great, or whatever your company is, that my mommy or my daddy was there for me.
And that's the unsung hero. A combination of Eden and Ty.
[00:50:57] Ian Hathaway: I love that. It's something I. Relate [00:51:00] with as the father of three young boys, and yeah. A job that requires me to get on planes. So I, I feel you. Thanks for sharing that.
[00:51:08] Linda Rottenberg: And it's both that you're a daddy forever, but that you're a daddy for a short time in that period.
It's like both.
[00:51:12] Ian Hathaway: It's both. Yeah.
[00:51:13] Linda Rottenberg: It's both. Right. Wow. Like, it's what will last at the end of your life. But if you think the window, you have 18 years, like it's not that long. Right.
[00:51:21] Ian Hathaway: That's an amazing insight. Tell us something most people don't know about you. Something outside of work, like a hobby, a favorite travel spot, a guilty pleasure, or maybe even a hidden talent.
[00:51:35] Linda Rottenberg: My girls will definitely say I have no hidden talent, though. I used to do tango pretty well, but that's over. Oh, at one point I served as a translator for the Argentine, uh, world Cup Soccer. Team when they were in Boston. Wow. I was like Chick Day Boston. I wasn't just Chico loca, I was like Chick Day Boston, who would tour around?
And so I've watched FIFA and World Cup religiously. I was one of [00:52:00] the first Americans of my, that I knew on WhatsApp and World Cup. Now it's so dumb and obvious, but like this is not obvious for an American women to like know all the soccer players and all the teams. So that was my. Then lost Hidden Talent.
[00:52:14] Ian Hathaway: Ah, love that. I'm gonna build off the first thing you said, tango, because the next question's about music. So we are building a Spotify founder's playlist, and what might be one or two songs that you want to add to that, that kind of fuels your workday or inspired you on your journey as an entrepreneur?
[00:52:33] Linda Rottenberg: Oh, well first of all, our chairman of Endeavor Ireland is the edge of U2, so Wow. Gotta plug those U2 songs, you know, still haven't found what I'm looking for. People building companies pretty good.
[00:52:50] Ian Hathaway: Not bad.
[00:52:51] Linda Rottenberg: DAW Tree Home, I love that. I, I love home. Okay. Because that's the other one, right? It's sort of like that's, those are the two sides.
You gotta keep [00:53:00] dreaming big sell and phone looking for, still dreaming and then gotta go home. So those are the two.
[00:53:04] Ian Hathaway: Oh, perfect. Okay. Last question. If you could give one piece of advice for someone who's about to start on their founder's journey, particularly someone who's an outsider like you. What would it be?
[00:53:19] Linda Rottenberg: One is, and it particularly relates to outsiders and in this case women, and that's as a le a leadership issue. So maybe not day one, but certainly as you scale, I thought that I. A leader had to be invincible and not show any vulnerabilities and kind of like Jack Welch of ge or, you know, really strong, especially if you were a woman, especially if you're an outsider, don't let them see you cry or sweat.
And so I, I, I was trying to, I guess, be superhuman and when my girls were three, so this is now, um, 17 years ago, but my husband who. Uh, was young at the time, but got a bone cancer, which [00:54:00] only a hundred adults get, and he had to spend a year getting chemotherapy and having his entire femur replaced by a titanium rod.
And I. Really spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital with him and then being there for the girls. So that year in Endeavor Sisters 2008 did not barely traveled at all. When I came back to work, I was determined, you know, to be very tough and my team asked me how I was doing and I broke down and I went into my office thinking, oh my God, now they're not gonna know what to do.
It's gonna be so awkward. And instead these female team members came to me and said, Linda. We used to think you were super human and we couldn't relate to you, and now that you're vulnerable, we'll follow you anywhere. And so the lesson I took is be less super, more human. I. That is my number one lesson, especially if you weren't an outsider.
[00:54:54] Ian Hathaway: Thank you for sharing that story. My heart goes out to you and I'll take you over Jack Welch any day, [00:55:00] so I, I can't think of a better way to end. That was an amazing conversation, Linda. Thank you so much for joining me.
[00:55:09] Linda Rottenberg: Really congrats on what you're building. I, I think that more podcasts like yours are needed.
I, I think everyone hears from the same people and it becomes very insular and, you know, nothing wrong with the besties, but I think that outsiders need, need a little plug too. So, so congrats for doing this.
[00:55:29] Ian Hathaway: Well, hopefully we don't need more of them. Hopefully this is the one and only but the best.
[00:55:34] Linda Rottenberg: Exactly, exactly. Only come here.
[00:55:37] Ian Hathaway: Yeah, exactly. Thank you, Linda. Appreciate it. That's a wrap for today's episode of Outsider Inc. A big thank you to Linda Rottenberg for joining us to share her amazing story and insight. Linda rejected the conventional path in front of her instead doing what any great entrepreneur does.
Following her curiosity to solve big problems, [00:56:00] she defined a new way to uplift entrepreneurs from the forgotten corners of the world and started a movement around ecosystem building to make success repeatable and lasting. Her bold vision and leadership set the example for anyone who's breaking barriers around antiquated business cultures and what she's created with Endeavor will pay dividends for years to come.
If you want more from outsider, inc, don't forget to subscribe to the platform@outsiderinc.substack.com. It's packed with highlights from today's episode and bonus insights you won't wanna miss. You can follow Outsider Inc on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn at Outsider Inc. Pod. You can also follow me on X at Ian Hathaway Outsider, Inc.
Is produced by Spellbinder Media. We'll be back soon with another fascinating outsider conversation. Until then, thank you so much for listening, and remember, great entrepreneurs can come from anywhere. See you next [00:57:00] time.
Excellent Podcast, Ian!