April 23, 2024
RISING ABOVE:
Meet the 2024 Endeavor Outliers
Our 2024 Endeavor Outliers class is composed of the Endeavor Entrepreneurs leading the fastest growing scaleups in our community, as well as those who have led their companies to meaningful exits and are now seeking to multiply their own impact as role models to the next generation of founders. Meet the 2024 class below.
Ten years ago, Tunisian-born Karim Beguir dreamed of building an AI company in Africa that would rival Deep Mind, the London-based AI business that Google had recently purchased for $400M. In July 2023, he sold his company InstaDeep for $680M.
In Indonesia, Gibran Huzaifah got started in aquaculture to fund his education with his own fish ponds. Now his company, eFishery helps 70,000 farmers earn a better living and is worth more than $1 billion.
Meanwhile, over in Brazil a team of four co-founders worked hard for 15 years building their payment processing unicorn Pismo, selling to VISA for $1 billion last year.
What do all these companies have in common? They all prove that world-changing innovation can come from anywhere. And they are all 2024 Endeavor Outliers.
Left to right: Karim Beguir, Founder & CEO of InstaDeep, Daniela Binatti, Co-founder & CEO of Pismo, and Gibran Huzaifah, Founder & CEO of eFishery.
Each year Endeavor recognizes the best performing, fastest-growing companies from the Endeavor community as Endeavor Outliers. The aim is both to shine a spotlight on exceptional companies being built in unexpected places and to curate an exclusive community where founders can connect, support each other, and inspire the next generation through a series of in-person events and online programming.
Karim, Gibran, and the Pismo team founded just a few of the companies qualified this year. Despite the VC downturn, economic turmoil, challenging conditions, and political instability in many regions, they and the other founders of this year’s Outliers are growing huge businesses, solving systemic problems, and positively impacting their countries.
More than just growing their companies, they are also paying it forward, investing, mentoring, and inspiring the next generation of entrepreneurs. We call this, The Multiplier Effect.
Read on to learn more about the 2024 Outliers, how exactly they qualify, and what their stories can tell us about the trends shaping entrepreneurship in emerging markets around the world. in-person events and online programming.
Outliers: Transforming Ecosystems Despite Immense Challenges
While many of the companies in our portfolio are successful, only a few are able to achieve a level of success that can transform an entire ecosystem. This is at the core of Endeavor’s theory of change: just a few successful entrepreneurs can jumpstart an ecosystem when they become Multipliers.
However, the road to scaling and exiting a high-growth business is a long and lonely one. And that’s only more true in frontier markets, where founders must often contend with economic and political turmoil. Building at scale is infinitely harder for Middle Eastern companies facing the disruption of war, African startups in an ecosystem where VC funding has fallen by half, or Latin American founders operating amidst a sluggish economic recovery.
That’s why at Endeavor, we created Outliers — a year-long program designed for Endeavor Entrepreneurs leading the fastest growing scaleup companies. We also include founders who have led their companies to meaningful exits and are now seeking to multiply their own impact as role models to those coming up behind them.
Now in its seventh year, the Outliers program brings this exceptional community of founders together to share experiences, and learn and support one another through the ups and downs of their entrepreneurial journeys.
“The goal of the Outliers program is to foster a strong peer community, built on a network of trust, that can support founders in scaling their companies AND scaling themselves as leaders.”
ALLEN TAYLOR
Managing Partner of Endeavor Catalyst
& Head of Entrepreneur Experience
& Head of Entrepreneur Experience
Endeavor Outliers at a Glance
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Endeavor Outliers Paying It Forward
Most importantly, Endeavor Outliers are our best examples of the Multiplier Effect in action. They embody the Endeavor spirit of dreaming big, scaling up, and are paying it forward at the highest levels.
Outliers have spent nearly 2,000 hours over the past two years providing mentorship and advice to other Endeavor Entrepreneurs. They have also invested more than $40M in the next generation of Endeavor Entrepreneurs via Endeavor Catalyst, our rules based co-investment fund. A small group of 40 Outliers have gone above and beyond, joining the board of their local Endeavor chapter.
Bridging Borders for Greater Impact
What happens when a founder from Argentina meets a Brazilian serial entrepreneur in San Francisco? When founders ignore borders, their impact is global.
When BREX founder Henrique Dubugras joined Endeavor in December 2020, he connected with a new and influential mentor — Mercado Libre co-founder Marcos Galperín. In 2021, Marco invited Henrique to join Mercado Libre’s board.
MAPAN founder Aldi Haryopratomo met eFishery’s Gibran Huzaifah in 2014 when the company was just starting out. Impressed with eFishery’s culture and commitment to helping farmers, Aldi joined the eFishery board in 2020.
Jason Wenk, a serial founder and current CEO of Altruist, and Luca Ferrari, founder of Italian company Bending Spoons, met through Endeavor. After connecting deeply as fellow Outliers, each invested in the other’s company.
“Endeavor Entrepreneurs are doing something amazing. They’re not only building their companies, they’re building their communities, their cities and frankly the future of their countries.
ALLEN TAYLOR
Managing Partner of Endeavor Catalyst
& Head of Entrepreneur Experience
& Head of Entrepreneur Experience
Seeding Impact Through Investing
One of the most powerful ways Outliers become Multipliers is by paying it forward financially and investing in newer founders, either as angel investors or through their own local funds.
- Kaszek Ventures, established by Mercado Libre co-founder Hernan Kazah and former CFO Nicolás Szekasy has already invested in more than 100 companies in Latin America.
- Init-6 was created by Achmad Zaky, founder of e-commerce giant Bukalapak, to invest in Indonesia’s next big tech companies.
- Canary VC, established by two of the co-founders of Brazilian startup Loft, Mate Pencz and Florian Hagenbuch, has been writing the first check to Latin American companies since 2017.
- Yemeksepeti.com co-founders Melih Ödemis and Nevzat Aydın have emerged as two of the most prolific angel investors in Turkey, each investing in over 50 companies.
The 3 Ways to Qualify as an Outlier
We are committed to supporting founders across all stages of the entrepreneurial journey. As such, there are three ways to qualify to be an Endeavor Outlier, depending on the stage of each company. Many Endeavor Entrepreneurs qualify as Outliers across multiple stages over time, joining the community for multiple years. In fact, since the program’s inception seven years ago, 25 companies have qualified every year.
While growth is an important factor when evaluating companies, it is important to note that companies in emerging ecosystems often must prioritize profitability to withstand instability in their countries and markets. That means that while many Outliers are growing fast, they also reach profitability faster than startups in more developed markets, making their growth all the more impressive.
Hover over each image to learn more about the qualifications.
Click each image to learn more about the qualifications.
SCALING UP
Endeavor Entrepreneurs leading our fastest growing companies ($20-$100M in revenue)
SCALED UP & GROWING
Endeavor Entrepreneurs who have built large companies (100M+ in revenue) that are still growing quickly
MULTIPLIERS
Endeavor Entrepreneurs whose companies have gone public or been acquired for $500M+ and are now paying it forward to the next generation of entrepreneurs
This year’s Outlier class includes 99 companies in the “Scaling Up” category ($20M-100M in revenue), 77 companies that have “Scaled-up and are still growing”, and 30 “Multipliers” — a category for founders that have gone public or been acquired.
“Outliers are not only outperforming their competitors — they are redefining what exceptional means. Their revenues and three-year Compound Annual Growth Rates (CAGR) are, on average, six times higher than those of similar private companies. Understanding their success not only highlights their extraordinary nature but also gives us valuable insights for our analysis.”
ENRICO ROBLES DEL RIO
Director of Data Analytics and
Platform at Endeavor Global
Platform at Endeavor Global
Investors take note, these 99 companies in the first category (“scaling up”) have a median revenue of $39M and median three-year CAGR of 155%. More than a dozen of them have recorded three-year CAGR rates greater than 500%. This group includes Latin American fintech companies Nomad, Cora, Clara and Pomelo; the a16z-backed South African gaming company Carry1st; and global HR tech platform Oyster.
Carry1st: Helping Africa’s Game Developers Get Paid
Cordel Robbin-Coker and Lucy Hoffman, co-founders of South Africa’s Carry1st, met while working at Morgan Stanley. Born in Sierra Leone, Cordel lived much of his life in the US, before moving back to Africa to join an Africa-focused investment fund. Lucy had previously worked at several South Africa startups. Launched in 2018, Carry1st offers a fintech platform that helps game developers monetize mobile games on a continent with its own distinct payment infrastructure, languages, and gaming communities. Carry1st has also published six games that have been downloaded 20M+ times.
Growth rates at most companies — even really good companies — tend to slow down dramatically as those companies scale. Not so for Endeavor Outliers! Perhaps most impressively, the 77 companies in the “scaled up” group ($100M+ revenue) have a median revenue of $202M and median three-year CAGR of 129%. This includes more than two dozen companies with revenues of $100M+ still growing over 100% every year! This impressive group includes Middle Eastern Buy-Now-Pay-Later companies Tamara and Tabby; B2B marketplace companies Chari, Yassir and Sary Saudi; Latin American real-estate platform Habi; and Indonesian aquaculture startup eFishery.
Chari: Reinventing Retail in North Africa
Across Morocco mom-and-pop shops are the economic heart of rural communities, but when inventory becomes low, many are forced to temporarily shut down. In 2020, married couple Sophia Alj and Ismael Belkhayat founded Chari to disrupt the traditional distribution model for these small merchants. A B2B e-commerce platform, Chari lets small shops order consumer goods and have them delivered for free within 24 hours. The company now serves 25,000 merchants in Morocco, Tunisia, and Cote d’Ivoire, and is transforming retail in the region.
This year’s Multipliers include an impressive 16 acquired companies that represent a combined enterprise value (i.e. acquisition price) of $18B.This group includes the founders of Careem (acquired for $3.1B by Uber in 2019), Auth0 (acquired for $6.5B by Okta in 2021), and Peak Games (acquired by Zynga for $1.8B in 2020). The most recent additions are the founders of Brazilian fintech Pismo (acquired for $1B by Visa in June 2023) and Tunisia’s InstaDeep, which represented the largest ever acquisition for a tech start-up on the African continent when it was acquired for $680M by BioNTech in January 2023.
Careem: The Middle East’s Top Multiplier
Mudassir Sheikha is best known for co-founding Careem in 2012 and then selling the ridesharing business turned everything app to Uber for +$3B in early 2020, becoming the first unicorn in the Middle East. But behind the scenes Mudassir and his co-founders Magnus Olsson and Abdulla Elyas are also hugely successful Multipliers. They have invested in 91 companies, mentored founders at 32 startups, and former Careem staffers have started 124 businesses throughout South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa.
This year’s Multipliers also includes 14 publicly listed businesses, including Mercado Libre (NASDAQ: MELI), Globant (NYSE:GLOB), and dLocal (NASDAQ: DLO), as well as a dozen businesses that have plans to go public in the coming years like Brazilian fintechs Creditas and Ebanx, and Southeast Asian used-car marketplaces Carsome and Carro. The largest company in this year’s Outliers class is Mercado Libre (NYSE: MELI), selected by Endeavor more than 25 years ago, MELI — led by Endeavor Entrepreneur Marcos Galperin — has grown to a market capitalization of $84B.
Mercado Libre: LATAM’s First Nasdaq Company
In 1999, Marcos Galperin and Hernan Kazah were fascinated by the ecommerce blitz in Silicon Valley. They didn’t want to buy on eBay. They wanted to become eBay. So they built Mercado Libre, a similar online marketplace for Argentina. They have comes a long way since — ’MELI’ became the first Latin American company to IPO on the Nasdaq stock exchange in 2007, and today is worth more than $80B. The co-founders are paying their success forward, Marcos as an Endeavor Mentor and Hernan as co-founder of VC firm Kaszek Ventures.
This Year's Outliers Visualized
This cohort reflects the global reach of our network, spanning over 30 countries. Nearly 50% of the class comes from our top seven markets: Brazil, Spain, Indonesia, Mexico, Argentina, UAE, and Italy.
This class is also diverse in terms of industry representation, from Italian app developer Bending Spoons to the Latin American renewable energy investment platform Solfácil.
Fintech is the number one represented segment for the second year in a row, comprising over a quarter of the class. This segment includes decacorns like global payments company Checkout.com (valued at $11B+) and expense management platform Brex (valued at $12B+), as well as digital banks Papara, Neon, and Moniepoint that are making financial services more accessible to millions of underbanked consumers in emerging markets.
The marketplace segment has some of the fastest growing companies. Companies in this segment boast a median revenue of $122M and median three-year CAGR of 207%. This segment features prop-techs like Casavo, Clikalia, and PropertyFinder that are revolutionizing the real estate market; B2B marketplaces like MaxAB, GrowSari, and Chiper that are digitizing corner shops around the world; and auto marketplaces Carro, Carsome, and Kavak that are making car ownership more accessible to thousands of consumers.
Community is the antidote to founder loneliness
Entrepreneurs in emerging markets are rightfully celebrated for reshaping entire industries, and in some cases even entire economies. Headlines trumpet the first unicorn in a country and local editions of Forbes feature founders on lists of upcoming movers and shakers. But there is more to the story of being a high-impact entrepreneur in an underserved market than magazine profiles can capture.
Growing a business that doubles its size every four months comes with exceptional challenges. Many of our Endeavor Entrepreneurs tell us that as the valuation goes up, so does the pressure. According to a recent study from Endeavor Brazil, 69% of entrepreneurs feel lonely along the way. Despite being surrounded by a trusted team, experienced investors, and long-term partners, there are parts of building a high-growth business that only other high-growth founders can understand.
This is true around the world, but it’s a particular challenge for founders in emerging markets. Since many are the first ones to take this path in their countries, they don’t have others at home to look up to or with whom they can discuss their triumphs and challenges. That’s why meeting other founders on a similar trajectory but from other markets is so important and so valuable.
Through Outliers, Endeavor aims to bring together an exceptional community of founders on a regular basis (both in person and virtually) to share experiences, learn from one another, hear from world-class speakers, and ultimately support one another. If anything can make the founder’s journey a little less hard and lonely, it’s having a community of peers you can turn to.
This year’s program will officially kick off in June with the annual Outliers Retreat in California. A cornerstone of the Outliers experience, this is a unique opportunity for founders to take a step back from their day to day and reflect, learn from peers who have “been there,” build lasting friendships through shared experiences, and to ultimately be recharged and reinspired to continue on their entrepreneurial journey.
“Being an entrepreneur can be lonely. But being an Endeavor Entrepreneur should never be. The Outliers community provides a safe space for our top founders to share their challenges and setbacks, swap stories of inspiration, and dig deeper into their hopes for the future. In doing so, they support one another in making the founder journey a little less hard, and a little less lonely. This is the magic of Endeavor.”
Linda Rottenberg
Founder & CEO of Endeavor
