What Makes a Founder Worth Betting On? Here’s How We Select the 2%.

As of early 2025, Endeavor supports 2,677 entrepreneurs leading 1,634 companies in 45+ countries around the world.

They’re part of the fewer than 2% of companies selected out of the more than 5,000 we speak to each year. But in a world brimming with ambitious founders and bold ideas, how do you identify the ones poised to not only succeed but to inspire, influence, and transform their communities? 

After 30 years of pattern recognition and seeing 85 Endeavor companies (and counting) become $1B unicorns, here’s what’s been working for us.

How we separate signal from noise

In 2024, only 81 companies led by high-impact entrepreneurs were chosen to join Endeavor. Our selection journey is rigorous because its goal is audacious: to pick those best positioned to build successful companies, and become role models and multipliers in their ecosystems.

We look at them from three different angles:

• Entrepreneur: we look for leaders capable of inspiring generations of founders to come – the future Marcos Galperin (of Mercado Libre, the Argentine marketplace worth almost $100B) or Hooi Ling Tan (of the $18B South East Asian superapp Grab). Role models who pave the way for others are the basis for Endeavor’s magic, so it all starts with the human. Ambition, transparency, openness, and capability are non-negotiables.
• Business: Will this business scale fast enough to create large-scale wealth and jobs? Entrepreneurs can put anybody under a spell, so when we find a remarkable individual, we look to pair that with the kind of numbers that carry a company far. Defensibility, scalability, and a clear growth strategy are essential.
• Timing: Is it ready to scale tenfold? Entrepreneurs like to think in the future, whereas panelists (seasoned mentors responsible for evaluating the candidates) often ground themselves in the present. By the time they get to the final step, founders have been thoroughly vetted on the first two sides, so timing plays a much bigger role. Does today’s reality match the vision? Is the market ripe for the growth they’re shooting for? Can the entrepreneur successfully articulate all that and benefit from our support?

The entrepreneur comes first 

The Selection Triangle highlights the three critical dimensions of high-impact entrepreneurs, but it is not always an equilateral shape. That’s because the “who” is at the center. No business survives on charisma and no candidate can hide behind a charming smile.

The journey brings founders face-to-face with mentors and panelists from around the world and is meant to add as much as it evaluates.

Through several panels with the Endeavor team and mentors, entrepreneurs are forced to think critically about their vision, model, strategy, and metrics. 

It all culminates in the International Selection Panel (ISP), where each candidate is individually interviewed by six mentors in our global community with diverse backgrounds that complement the company’s industry, geography, or both. All six must reach a unanimous decision.

Put the right entrepreneur in the right community at the right time, and you spark not only business growth, but a global movement. Month after month, we select high-impact founders from all over the world to make this movement stronger. Meet the most recent Endeavor Entrepreneurs here.