Endeavor

Last weekend I participated as a panelist at Endeavor's 17th Latin American Selection Panel in Saõ Paulo. Endeavor is an NGO that promotes entrepreneurship in emerging markets. It selects high impact entrepreneurs and helps them be succesful so, besides creating jobs and economic wealth, they can become role models and inspire future entrepreneurs. To change the world, this is a lot more than two cents. I was selected by Endeavor when we were still at the very early stages of Core Security Technologies. Endeavor had a huge impact. Equity financing and professional management were foreign concepts for us. Maybe for somebody coming from the US this could sound strange since Americans are born and raised watching the stock exchange performance as we Argentines watch a River vs Boca soccer match. But for us (and many many more in Argentina) that was reality: strong passion for technology and almost zero business knowledge. Endeavor allowed us to learn. It catalyzed our development as a company by giving us access to great people...people who had the ability to make us see and do things differently, people who wanted us to succeed. Thanks to endeavor we discovered words such as venture capital and MBA and thus we took Core sales from $500k to $10M, from Buenos Aires to Boston, from 10 to 400 customers, from 15 to 140 employees. After five years of being an Endeavor entrepreneur, it's my time to help select the Latin American entrepreneurs that are leading the change in our region. Salud!