Endeavor Selects Ten Entrepreneurs from Six Countries at the 12th Virtual International Selection Panel

Endeavor selected ten entrepreneurs leading six companies at the Twelfth Virtual International Selection Panel (vISP) held February 22-24, 2021. Endeavor now supports 2,141 entrepreneurs leading 1,338 companies in nearly 40 markets around the world (read more about the newly selected entrepreneurs below).

The virtual ISP was presented by General Atlantic, with additional support from AXA, Bain, Cooley, EY, HSBC, Silicon Valley Bank, and Zoom.

The ISP is the culmination of a rigorous multi-step selection process to identify high-impact entrepreneurs who demonstrate the potential to leverage Endeavor’s resources and mentorship to create large-scale wealth and jobs, and are committed to reinvesting their time and money in their local entrepreneurship ecosystems to help others take off.

During the vISP panelists utilized Zoom breakout rooms to interview a small group of high-caliber entrepreneur candidates leading four companies about their businesses. In “deliberation rooms” — private Zoom meetings with only Endeavor staff and panelists — panelists evaluated the entrepreneurs on their potential for high-impact growth, discussed which candidates should be selected to become Endeavor Entrepreneurs, then voted unanimously to select the newest Endeavor Entrepreneurs.

Panelists at the ISP included: Bob Lord, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Ecosystems and Blockchain, IBM; Bruce Hack, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, BLH Venture; Chris Zook, Former Partner, Bain & Company; Drew McElroy, Co-Founder & Chairman, Transfix; Elaine Coughlan, Managing Co-Founder and Partner, Atlantic Bridge (Endeavor Ireland Board Member), Ernest Bachrach, Former Managing Partner, Advent International (Co-Chair of Endeavor Miami Board); Mike Fries, Chief Executive Officer & Vice Chairman, Liberty Global (Endeavor Colorado Board Member); Rob Reid, CEO, RipCam Media; Serio Furio, Founder & CEO, Creditas (Endeavor Entrepreneur; Endeavor Brazil Board Member); Steve Frazier, Senior Advisor, McKinsey & Co., Fmr. VP, Amazon; Steven Mail, Founder & Managing Partner, Mail Capital; and Vu Lam, Chief Executive Officer, KMS Technology (Endeavor Vietnam Board Member).

As part of Endeavor’s network, the newly selected entrepreneurs will gain access to comprehensive, strategic, global support services, including introductions to local and international business mentors, investors, and volunteers from Fortune 500 consulting firms who will help them address key needs.

Endeavor Entrepreneurs have had a significant track record of impact. Endeavor Entrepreneurs have created 4.1 million jobs, generated $26.8 billion in revenues in 2019, and help build sustainable growth models in their home countries.

Learn more about the companies selected below:

BRAZIL

Entrepreneurs: Alber Guedes & Maurício Schneider
Company: Solubio
Description: Agriculture pesticides are not just bad for the environment, but also expensive as a result of distribution and supply chain intermediaries. Solubio is changing this in Brazil by providing on-farm biological management via its capsule, machine, and technical assistance, enabling farmers to produce their own biological pesticides on site and reduce costs by up to 40% on crops such as soy, wheat, cotton, sugar cane, coffee, and vegetables and fruits. Since 2017, Solubio has gone from serving 120K hectares to over 2M hectares in 2020, paving the way to taking on the biological pesticides market.

COLORADO

Entrepreneur: Mario Ciabarra
Company: Quantum Metric
Description: Quantum Metric is a SaaS platform that consolidates the point solutions used by marketing, product, engineering, and IT teams by gathering real-time customer data into a single version of truth and enabling a process called Continuous Product Design (CPD) a $20B market. With one comprehensive set of data about the customer journey, teams gain insight into how they are able to improve their customer experience in real time, helping organizations build better digital products faster. Having recently closed its $200M Series B valuing it at $1B, Quantum Metric has seen rapid adoption, now serving over 100 enterprise customers, including four of the Fortune Top10.

GREECE

Entrepreneurs: Charis Arvanitis
Company: Spotawheel
Description: Like many markets, European consumers know the pains of buying used cars. To change this paradigm, Spotawheel started as a mobile mechanic to give buyers peace of mind right outside the dealer lot. Over the years, the company evolved into a full-stack e-commerce platform for used cars. The company offers quality inventory and a transparent customer experience to typically underserved, value-sensitive customers. To date, Spotawheel has sold thousands of vehicles in Greece and Poland, with plans to expand into a pan-European platform, capitalizing on a massive $540B second hand vehicle market with over 35M annual end-user transactions.

KENYA

Entrepreneurs: Greg Murray & Sagun Saxena
Company: KOKO Networks
Description: KOKO Networks is a venture-backed climate-tech platform based in Kenya and India, delivering carbon-negative cooking fuel to the urban mass-market. Urban Africans spend $40B per year on cooking fuel, most of which is deforestation-based charcoal. Annually, the African charcoal industry drives 1B tons of CO2e, 5M acres of deforestation and 600,000 deaths from indoor air pollution. KOKO’s hardware and software technologies enable clean bioethanol cooking fuel to be accessible at low cost within a short walk of homes, undercutting demand for charcoal and enabling a material quality of life upgrade for low-income households. Founded in 2014, KOKO’s 700-strong team is scaling rapidly in Kenya and investing in geographic expansion. 

MEXICO

Entrepreneur: Ángel Sahagún
Company: albo
Description: albo is the leading Mexican challenger bank, offering mobile banking, virtual/physical cards, peer-to-peer transactions, bill pay, cash advance loans, and budgeting tools and services for customers. albo focuses on the largest segment of Mexico’s market — lower and middle income — and since launch in 2016 has acquired 500K MAU. albo has raised $71M from Valar Ventures and Mountain Nazca as it scales its user base and increases its credit and other product offerings, including expanding into servicing SMEs. albo’s goal is to develop financial technology to transform people’s relationship with money and to become the top neobank in the region.  

SPAIN

Entrepreneurs: Christian Hense, Juan Martinez-Barea & Marko Bitenc
Company: Universal DX
Description: Early detection is one of the most powerful weapons we have in the battle against cancer. While traditional options are expensive, ineffective, and have low compliance rates, UDX is creating a cancer platform consisting of minimally invasive, blood-based solutions for early cancer detection. As colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most deadly cancer worldwide, the founders decided that CRC early detection would be their starting point. With $44M in funding from top tech entrepreneurs, family offices, and biotech funds and 2 approved and 6 filed patents, Universal DX is poised to tackle the $20B CRC screening test market before expanding to a broader panel of cancers on its mission to win the fight against cancer.