Endeavor Highlights Impact of Scale-Ups and Networks at the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Congress

Endeavor representatives from five offices worldwide and affiliates including board members and Endeavor Entrepreneurs attended the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC), which convened more than 8,400 delegates representing 173 countries around entrepreneurship, growth and human innovation. During the conference, held March 13-17, 2017, in Johannesburg, South Africa, Endeavor team members from Argentina, South Africa, Turkey, Uruguay and the U.S. had the opportunity to showcase the organization’s unique research and model to the world’s leading policymakers, researchers and practitioners.

This year’s conference was co-hosted by Endeavor partners the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) and the Kauffman Foundation, as well as SEA Africa and the city of Johannesburg. Over the course of the week, the GEC featured 96 sessions with 212 speakers and panelists covering a wide range of requested topics like digital disruption, strengthening entrepreneurship ecosystems, the scale-up movement, the rise of the rest looking beyond Silicon Valley for solutions, creating an entrepreneurial mindset and more.

During a “Strategies for Scaling a Startup” panel, Endeavor Turkey Managing Director Didem Altop presented Endeavor’s model to a packed room, speaking to the importance of working with mentors and the benefits of a global network like Endeavor has built, and answering a myriad of questions from an audience of entrepreneurs seeking to grow their ideas and businesses internationally.

“Mentorship is about what you know you don’t know. But it’s also about what you don’t know you don’t know. It’s also about what you know but you need to learn more. And it’s also about what you don’t know but you need to face … At the end of that day that connectedness is what makes Silicon Valley Silicon Valley for the most part, and that’s what we need to be able to create in our own local ecosystems,” said Didem, explaining to the audience why Endeavor places such an emphasis on helping entrepreneurs cultivate these key networks and relationships.

An official partner of the 2018 Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Istanbul, Endeavor Turkey team members also joined GEN leaders on the conference’s main stage, where Didem spoke about Istanbul’s entrepreneurship ecosystem and the vision for the upcoming 10th annual conference.

“We have one common goal: Building healthy and robust ecosystems in our respective countries,” Didem emphasized. “We are one super tribe.”

Other Endeavor network members who spoke at GEC included Discovery Group Chief Executive and Endeavor South Africa Chairman Adrian Gore, as well as Startup Rising author and Endeavor panelist Chris Schroeder.

Following the GEC, Endeavor Insight Director Rhett Morris participated in a Global Entrepreneurship Research Network (GERN) event, where he presented Endeavor Insight’s latest findings on mapping global entrepreneurship ecosystems to a convention of leading researchers from around the world.

Endeavor has been an active supporter of the GEC since it launched nearly a decade ago, and has co-hosted several of the conferences throughout the years. To learn more about this year’s conference, including summaries of the events and video highlights, click here.