By Olivia Cannell
World Cup fever has had the world glued to the television all month. With each round, the stakes intensify and fandom surges. By absorbing the matches through high definition cameras and a quick-lipped sportscaster, it is easy to see it as a red carpet event, where the individual players carry celebrity cachet. Of course, this isn’t the heart of the World Cup at all — instead each team plays as a unit, a seamless group effort surpassing the importance of soccer stars.
Teamwork means working with a group to achieve a goal, with each individual carrying out specific responsibilities so that the goal is met. Collaboration is about finding new ways of working as a team by generating innovative ideas, acquiring better solutions, and fostering an innovative culture to achieve shared objectives.
Teamwork and collaboration, the foundation of each competing World Cup team, is key to Endeavor’s work supporting high-impact entrepreneurs around the world, and indeed to entrepreneurship itself.
Based on the power of a global network, Endeavor’s five-step model provides a collaborative framework through launch, select, scale up, multiply and reinvest. This approach has enabled incredible success: 1.5 million jobs created, $15 billion in revenues generated, over 1,000 companies with nearly 1,700 high impact entrepreneurs supported in 30 countries. Entrepreneurship is most powerful when it is a collective effort, not an individual one.
“Our goal was — and remains — not to do this alone but create a powerful network of board members, mentors and Endeavor Entrepreneurs who would share this vision — this Endeavor — and make it their own,” says Endeavor Co-founder and CEO Linda Rottenberg.
After selection and once a part of the Endeavor “team,” entrepreneurs gain access to talent, mentorship, partnerships, capital, and education and outreach events. Companies also gain access to a suite of global services to complement the support provided by the local Endeavor team in each country. For example, Endeavor Global vertical communities provide a platform to connect with like-minded entrepreneurs and receive industry-specific services and support. Endeavor’s Mentor Capital Program and Investor network also help entrepreneurs pursuing capital through fundraising and networking.
Successful entrepreneurs reinvest the support the Endeavor “team” provides its “players” back into the Endeavor network and into their local communities and entrepreneurship ecosystems, multiplying their impact. In fact, 90 percent of Endeavor Entrepreneurs go on to serve as angel investors, mentors and active promoters of high-impact entrepreneurship.
“We are collectively creating the future for our children. I have come to learn that we are much more than each of us and by working as a network we could be far more powerful,” says Globant CEO Guibert Englebienne, an Endeavor Entrepreneur who has reinvested his success into both the local ecosystem and the Endeavor network as a mentor and Endeavor board member.
On top of creating valuable results for Endeavor as a whole, teamwork and collaboration also fosters individual development. At Endeavor, it’s not just the entrepreneurs, the investors, the board of directors, or the staff who are the stars. It is precisely the diversity of players working together within the network that enables success. In the end, soccer and entrepreneurship may share more than meets the eye!
