Sometimes, it’s only when one person achieves something incredible that others find achievement within reach.
For most of sporting history, sprinting 100 meters in under 10 seconds was the realm of superheroes. Clark Kent, yes; humans, not so much. But when American athlete Jim Hines ran a race in 9.95 seconds in 1968, his astonishing feat was just the beginning. More and more runners broke the 10-second barrier until today’s most successful athletes like Usain Bolt see this once-impossible ceiling as “barely an obstacle”.
Back in 2012, General Atlantic entered Türkiye’s tech scene with a $44M Series B investment in Yemeksepeti, signaling that Turkish startups could compete globally. Last year, General Atlantic returned to Türkiye, leading a $500M Series E round for Insider, a Turkish unicorn with global ambitions. With each new success, the bar gets higher.
Insider and Yemeksepeti are part of the 2025 Endeavor Outliers class. Each year, Endeavor chooses a cohort of companies that, by a variety of measures, are the top performers of our community. They’re redefining what success looks like in emerging markets.
While Endeavor has been actively supporting founders in emerging and underserved markets for nearly three decades, our first publicly recognized Outliers class was published in 2020.
Those early pioneers — founders of companies like Rappi, Colombia’s first unicorn; Kavak, Mexico’s first unicorn; and Careem, which Uber acquired for $3.1B in the largest tech exit in the Middle East — paved the way for the next generation of entrepreneurs. They broke the mental barriers that held entire markets back.
As a result, the 2025 Outliers cohort is raising the bar for what’s possible in emerging markets. This class has a median revenue three times higher than the 2020 cohort. There are four times more companies making over $100M in revenue, nearly six times the number of companies valued at more than $1B, and six times as many publicly listed companies.
2025’s Outliers at a Glance
(Last 3 Years)
(2024)
valued at $1B*
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(Last 3 Years)
(Last 3 Years)
(2024)
valued at $1B*
companies
(Last 3 Years)
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valued at $1B*
companies
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All these incredible companies were chosen across three criteria:
SCALING UP
($25-50M in revenue)
SCALED UP & GROWING
($100M+ in revenue)
MULTIPLIERS
($500M+ exit)
Companies who have gone public or been acquired for $500M+ and are now paying it forward to the next generation of entrepreneurs.
The criteria for qualifying evolve, as Nasim Novin, who leads our Outliers program, explains. “Every year, we see our Outliers raise the bar — not just for their own companies, but for entire markets,” she says.
The top-performing countries represented in this cohort are Brazil, Indonesia, Spain, and Mexico. While Silicon Valley or large emerging markets like China and India tend to get the most global attention, Endeavor looks elsewhere — and every year, we see new players from these “elsewhere” markets driving change. In 2025, we have two new countries represented for the first time; edtech company Headway became the first Ukrainian Outlier while Indie Campers set a new bar for Portugal.
After launching Endeavor offices in both countries in 2023 and 2024, we’ve begun selecting and supporting the founders behind these outlier companies, on their pathways to becoming role models for their ecosystems.
Fintech makes up 26% of the Outliers class, significantly higher than the 19% share in our overall portfolio, highlighting its outsized presence and strong performance. Financial technology innovation shows no sign of slowing down. Almost half of investments from Endeavor Catalyst, our rules-based investment fund, go to fintech companies. Two of those, Brazil’s QITech and Nigeria-based Moniepoint, are our newest unicorns, transforming financial systems in their home countries.
Neon, a Brazilian neobank, is another star Outlier, which became a unicorn in February 2022 and has nearly tripled in size since. Founder Pedro Conrade has also become a familiar stalwart in Endeavor’s Brazilian network and beyond. He leads mentorship sessions on scaling and managing C-suite executives, as well as on growth strategy and market expansion, advising Brazilian fintech Trinus on their recent $7M Series B extension and South African fintech companies Ozow and TymeBank. He frequently serves on Endeavor’s International Selection Panels, evaluating and providing feedback to high-impact entrepreneurs and shaping the next generation of Endeavor Entrepreneurs.
The five-year boom
We’ve been tracking our top 10% of companies for five years now, which offers the chance to see how these businesses have scaled and redefined what’s possible in their markets. And just as Jim Hines showed back in 1968, one company’s achievement breaks the barrier for the companies that follow it.
That’s why 2025 Outliers are consistently performing higher and achieving more than the 2020 Outliers. Earlier companies paved the way for their successors, so let’s take a look at the pathways they’ve forged.
Over the past five years, top-performing companies haven’t just grown — they’ve soared. Their median annual revenue has nearly tripled, jumping from $36M to $100M, while still maintaining strong momentum, with a median CAGR of 66% in 2025 (down from 87% in 2020, but very impressive at this scale). This growth is reflected in the number of companies crossing the $100M revenue mark — 87 in 2025, a fourfold jump from just 22 in 2020.
Across the board, there’s been incredible performance metrics. Turkish mobile games startup Spyke Games is one of the fastest growing companies among the cohort, having multiplied their revenue by 50x over the past two years — par for the course for a company that had a record-breaking seed round of $55M.
In Pakistan, fintech Abhi has grown their revenue 10x since 2022 while delivery platform Toters, based in Lebanon, faced down war and uncertainty while still doubling it’s revenue every year for the past four years.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen a strategic shift towards profitability among outlier companies. The graph illustrating median EBITDA vs. three-year CAGR provides a clear picture of our outlier companies’ evolving growth trajectory. While the median three-year CAGR has declined from ~175% to ~100%, this isn’t a slowdown — it’s evidence of a maturing portfolio. Even at this rate, these companies are still doubling revenue annually.
At the same time, EBITDA recovery has been remarkable, improving from -$7M in 2022 to nearly +$2M in 2024. This trend highlights a broader evolution: as these companies scale, they are proving that high growth and financial discipline can go hand in hand.
Enrico Robles del Rio, Senior Director of Data Analytics and Platform at Endeavor Global, sees a clear shift in how high-growth companies are navigating today’s market.
“Compared to 2021, there are 89% more profitable outliers in 2024, signaling a deliberate pivot toward financial discipline.” Even more striking, the number of companies reaching $100M+ in revenue while maintaining a 30% 3-year CAGR has more than doubled in the profitable category. “This isn’t just adapting to market conditions — it’s mastering them,” he adds.
Since 2020, the number of companies valued at over $1B has increased nearly sixfold, rising from 13 to 80 in 2025. This rapid expansion has been fueled by the increasing flow of international capital into markets beyond the US, India, and China. Late-stage investors have played a crucial role, helping scaleups in emerging markets accelerate growth, achieve unicorn status, and, in turn, attract even more investment into their ecosystems.
Those founders are now paying it forward–reinvesting their success to empower the next generation. At the 2023 Endeavor Gala, South African digital bank Tyme Group’s co-founders, Tjaart van der Walt and Coen Jonker, met David Vélez, founder of Latin America’s largest fintech, Nubank. What began as a conversation turned into mentorship, which ultimately led to investment — Nubank led Tyme Group’s $250M Series D round, officially cementing Tyme’s unicorn status. This is the power of top-performing companies: they’re not just scaling, they’re changing the entrepreneurial landscape globally.
Along the way, these companies are redrawing the map of global VC. Property Finder, now a unicorn backed by General Atlantic in the UAE, proved the region could deliver billion-dollar outcomes. Others like Hala (TPG in Saudi Arabia) and Carry1st (Andreessen Horowitz in Africa) aren’t unicorns yet — but they’ve become the first launchpads for top-tier investors in their markets, and are racing toward that milestone.
As the saying goes, every overnight success takes about ten years — and the 2025 Outliers cohort is proof. This year, the average age of Outliers companies has risen to nine years, up from six in 2020, underscoring the maturation of high-growth ventures in Endeavor’s markets. Take Brazilian fintech giant Pismo: founded in 2016, it spent years operating under the radar before its $1B acquisition by Visa in 2024.
And Pismo is far from the only one — several companies in this year’s cohort have been building for even longer. Take Cubic Telecom: founded by Irish entrepreneur Barry Napier in 2008, it only made global headlines when it sold a majority stake to SoftBank in 2023 — one of the largest tech transactions in Ireland’s history, accounting for 80% of all dollars invested into the country’s tech startups that year. Similarly, Blueground, founded in Greece in 2013, became a unicorn last year after years of steady growth. While it had long been a household name in its local ecosystem, its latest fundraising round cemented its global recognition as a leader in flexible housing.
Fifty Outliers are consistent high performers
Some familiar faces appear in both the 2020 and 2025 classes. A core group of 50 companies has earned Outlier status for six consecutive years, making up over 20% of this year’s cohort.
Among them are standout names like Mexican online lender Kueski, Dubai-based cloud kitchen platform Kitopi, Italy’s Bending Spoons, and Saudi Arabia’s top beauty e-commerce platform, Nice One.
Few companies sustain top-tier performance year after year, but Kueski has done just that. The Mexican online consumer lender has been an Outlier for six years running—proof that scaling responsibly is just as critical as growing fast. Co-founder and CEO Adalberto Flores Ochoa has built one of the most admired leadership teams in the region, known for high retention and a strong company culture.
Nice One is redefining e-commerce in Saudi Arabia. Founded by Omar and Abdulrahman Al-Olayan, the beauty retailer has built a logistics engine that enables same-day delivery in Riyadh and nationwide fulfillment in under 48 hours. In its latest financial year, Nice One reported $250M in revenue and over $20M in net profit — more than double the previous year. This momentum culminated in its January 2025 IPO on the Saudi Stock Exchange, marking a major milestone in its journey.
When Bending Spoons, another recurring Outlier for the past six years, acquired apps like Evernote, WeTransfer, and Meetup, it didn’t just expand its portfolio. It reversed the usual script of global acquisitions — where well-known giants acquire smaller players from emerging markets. This time, it was an Italian holding company buying household names, proving that ambitious moves can come from unexpected places.
Cloud kitchens surged and stumbled after the pandemic, but Kitopi never slowed down. Co-founder and CEO Mohamad Ballout has led the company far beyond its original model, transforming it into the world’s leading multi-brand restaurant. While many in the space struggled, Kitopi scaled aggressively — executing 18 acquisitions and growing to over 200 locations across five markets. By constantly evolving its playbook, Kitopi has proven that adaptability is the real key to sustainable growth.
“What sets Outliers apart isn’t just their business growth — it’s their commitment to growing as leaders and building a community,” says Nasim.
The 2025 Outliers show just how much has changed in five years–goals that once seemed out of reach are now reality. How much farther will the bar be raised in the next five years? For those on the ground and for us at Endeavor, it’s clear that if you want to be part of the action, you need to get involved — yesterday.
For founders, the ceiling of what’s possible is rising; what once felt like the ultimate goal will soon be viewed as just an early milestone. For investors, the takeaway is urgent. If you don’t want to be missing out in 2030, it’s time to look elsewhere now.