Endeavor CEO Linda Rottenberg: ‘Talent is everywhere. Opportunity and capital are not’

0:02Hello, today on the Sifted Podcast, I'm joined by someone who has a canny knack of spotting many of Europe's top entrepreneurs years before they hit other people's radars. Founders like Luca Ferrari, the CEO of Italian Unicorn Bending Spoons, and Matty Staniszewski, CEO of the Polish-British Unicorn Eleven Labs. My guest is Linda Rottenberg, founder of Global Tech Network Endeavor, which she started almost three decades ago. Endeavor is built on the premise that amazing entrepreneurs can come from anywhere, not just Silicon Valley. There are now over 3 ,000 Endeavor entrepreneurs based in over 50 countries around the world who receive and offer mentoring from one another and count in their ranks over 90 unicorns.

0:47In Europe, alongside 11 labs and bending spoons, Endeavor's network include Isai's Ski, Glovo's Oscar Pierre, Cabify's Juan Antonio and Checkout's Guillaume Poussaz. Endeavor also has an investment arm, Endeavor Catalyst, which is reported to be raising its fifth fund and backs companies at the point at which they're scaling up. Linda, welcome to the show. So great to be here, Amy. Happy New Year. Can we still say how many years is it? We definitely can. Where in the world are you joining us from today? I am in Brooklyn, New York, home for a chain. Nice and early for you, I'm guessing. It's a great time.

1:29So Endeavor has always been about companies and founders from elsewhere, the places that aren't one of the major tech hubs. How do you think that elsewhere places are holding up in the AI era when so much attention feels focused on Silicon Valley? That is such a great question. And as you mentioned in your wonderful introduction. Endeavor, we founded Endeavor 28 years ago with the idea that talent was everywhere, but capital and opportunity were not. And today, Endeavor is doubling down on this notion of elsewhere, as you say, that there's great talent outside Silicon Valley in China. And we believe that's even more true in AI.

2:16And for the following reason, I think in 2025, the focus was on the foundational infrastructure of AI. And those are going to be 10 companies primarily based in Silicon Valley and China. But we believe in 2026 and beyond, we're going to start talking about the application layer. This is solving real world problems at scale using AI. And that's what founders elsewhere do. They have forever found real-world challenges, whether it's the badly dubbed Polish films that convinced Mati and Piotr to found Eleven Labs, or whether it was frustration with apps that got Luca Ferrari and his co-founders of Bending Spoons started.

3:06You're going to hear a lot more about founders elsewhere. I think that's a very good point. But do you feel like we've kind of missed the boat potentially in places like Europe when it comes to making the really, really big bucks in AI? Like, you know, could the application layers ever bring in as much money as an NVIDIA or an open AI? Look, you can always be the backseat driver and looking backwards. But I think if you're in entrepreneurship, if you're in venture capital, if you're doing what you do, what Endeavor does, you have to look forward. And I think the dollar for dollar returns or the euro for euro returns going forward have much more of a chance of being greater in places like Europe, where the valuations are still lower.

3:58The competition is still lower. You're not going to have these mega funds. I mean, A16Z will do some of them, but there's a lot of great European funds. And as you said, Endeavor, we've now 35 percent of our investments last year were in European companies. We're doubling down on Europe elsewhere. And when you look even at our own portfolio of Endeavor Catalyst, Turkey is the place. And I know that Turkey is sometimes part of Europe and sometimes not, but Turkey is really the place where we've seen the best investment returns. And when you're looking at, we'll talk about companies like Bending Spoons, but when you look at Turkey, one of the unknown companies is a company called Codeway, which similarly is using, you know, app development in a deeply technical way to build some of the top consumer apps, you know, in the world.

4:46I think they had three of the top 50 consumer apps, according to the A16Z, you know, top applications in the world. They're so, we're just getting going in Europe and elsewhere. And I also think once, even though we're talking about AI, but when you talk about, you know, we've had the Klarna IPO, when you look at Revolut, when you look at Checkout.com, We've had UiPath come out of Romania, right? When you look at what's next and what's just under the surface, I really think in the next decade, we're going to see an explosion of great companies and great exits for founders and for investors coming out of Europe.

5:24How would you characterize entrepreneurship in Europe in comparison to maybe some of the other sort of rising regions that you know well, like the Middle East or South America? What's kind of particular about Europe, I guess, both in terms of its strengths and also maybe where it falls down in comparison to other areas? Great, great questions. I think, first of all, one of the nice things about Europe, which is similar to some of the countries like Latin America, we saw Mercado Libre come out of Argentina is now the highest valued company on the continent. That's a cross between what eBay had been and Alibaba and Amazon in Latin America.

6:05That's MercadoLibre. And that was because Argentina is a small market. And similarly, I think that we're seeing global first companies coming out of Europe and back to UiPath out of Romania, right? These markets are too small. So if you're building a company out of Poland or Romania or Bulgaria or even Spain or Italy or Greece, you've got to look regionally and globally. That's really exciting. We're seeing extraordinary deep tech talent coming out of Europe. And I think when you look at Central and Eastern Europe, when you look at Poland, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, some technical talent from out of Greece, some in the diaspora, I think that's what's also really interesting, sets Europe apart.

6:56I think focusing on profitability and bootstrapping. I think that Revolut and Checkout have been very vocal about profitability and not growth at all costs. When you look at a company, again, Bending Spoons, these four Italian founders, they fail in their first company. They bootstrap this app development company using deep technical talent. and they realize, wow, we can take these brands that are kind of failing but beloved and fix them. They wait until 2022 to raise their first outside capital. In fact, Endeavor Catalyst was the first non-Italian investor in Bending Spoons. And today, people may have heard that they acquired little companies like AOL, Eventbrite, Evernote.

7:46And I think it was this combination of deep technical talent, building globally from the outset, focus on bootstrapping and profitability. There's kind of no nonsense. And the last thing I'll say is even if you look at, you know, you meant Monty, Stanishevsky, and Pyotr coming out of Eleven Labs, they build product. They every day come out with a new product and they have this platform and they are just so focused on what matters in execution and product. And I think the noise of Silicon Valley, you don't have any of the entitlement in Silicon Valley. So that's a positive thing. On what could be done better, I don't think Europe is a unified whole.

8:29Some of the countries that Endeavor focuses on often don't even get mentioned in Europe, right? You mentioned Germany or France or Finland or London, but not these elsewhere, right, countries. And so I think that people looking at the underserved, underinvested in countries in Europe, including Bulgaria, Poland, Turkey, I would include Turkey, Ukraine, Greece, I think is going to be important. And I also think it's hard, I think for places like the Middle East or Latin America, it may be easier to expand within at least Spanish speaking Latin America. if you take out Brazil or some of the MENA countries, I think sometimes founders in even Italy find it hard to, because of regulatory issues, to expand even to Spain or to France.

9:25So I think that, again, the more Europe, and I know there's been talk about the 28th regime to make a term sheets easier. So the more Europe can do to work together, the last thing I'll say is, now that, back to your first question, Now that AI really is a discussion that for better or for worse, I think for worse, is happening between Silicon Valley and China. No one country is going to find it easy to get a seat at the table. So we've been arguing that Europe banding together as these elsewhere countries deserves a seat at the table. But it's going to take that aggregate. So the more Europe starts working together, I think the better.

10:06And how does Endeff work in terms of, you know, you're covering a lot of markets there, a lot of markets that investors who are, you know, maybe even more focused on a particular geography struggle to get a grasp on. I mean, you've mentioned somewhere like Bulgaria. I'm not sure how many Europe-focused investors could name me that many companies based there. How does it actually work in terms of finding founders, selecting them? What's that scouting process look like? So great. Another great question. So Endeavor has 600 full-time employees. We've boots on the ground in nearly 50 countries. We've selected entrepreneurs from more than 55 countries.

10:55Our aim is to support founders elsewhere in 100 markets. By 2035, we believe that the talent is elsewhere and just not that capital and opportunity. and part of what we do is shine a light on these great companies. I mean, places like Turkey, where we were very early in companies like Yamak Sapata and Peak Games that ended up having had big exits, and suddenly people started paying attention. And so when a company called Insider, led by this fantastic female founder, Honda Schillinger, doing Marcom AdTech, came in, it was a hugely competitive round because Endeavor and others had shone a light on Turkey, which everyone had not really focused on.

11:37So that is what we're trying to do with places, as you said, like Bulgaria, Poland, Ukraine, et cetera, Greece. But I think that back to your earlier question, so Endeavor is this hybrid organization. So we have the nonprofit that's really focused on ecosystem development. And so what we're trying to do there is screen and select. We've screened over 70 ,000 companies at this point to select the 3 ,000 Endeavor entrepreneurs that come through a very rigorous selection process. We're looking at the scale-up phase, so not at the pure startup phase. We're looking where they've gotten some traction.

12:14They've really developed a product. And our question is, can you 10x with Endeavor support? That's one of the questions we ask when you come to one of these Endeavor international selection panels. When people become Endeavor entrepreneurs, they get access, as you mentioned at the top to a peer-to-peer network of the top scale-up founders really in the world operating elsewhere. And then through Endeavor Catalyst, which is the fund, we will co-invest in any company raising rounds with professional lead investors. Our intention is never to crowd out the lead investors. We work alongside them. We're taking small check sizes to build these ecosystems.

12:55And so we believe that Endeavor Catalyst, we are raising our fifth fund, but we will be able to deliver incredible returns. But what's exciting is part of the returns also go to make Endeavor the nonprofit self-sustaining. And it's this reinforcing mechanism where we also talk about what we call the multiplier effect, which is we tell entrepreneurs, we're here to help you. And you, in turn, are here to mentor and invest in the next generation. and the last thing I'll say is one of the people who had been on your podcast Oscar Pierre of Glovo has you know mentored and invested in more than 50 companies coming out of Spain same with Juan D 'Antonio of Cabify that's just in Spain we're seeing the same cycle of the multipliers coming out of all of these countries and that's also what spurs that that long-lasting ecosystem development.

13:53What do you think drives those sort of successful founders to spend heaps of time mentoring, you know, partially clueless up and coming people? You know, people, that's what's great about Europe is it has not been a wash in capital for that long an opportunity. So back to Luca of Vending Spoons, the first company that he and his co-founders created, sailed, and then they took, I think it was$40 ,000 they had to invest in this app development company that became this juggernaut of Vending Spoons, now valued at$12 billion, or$11 or$12 billion, that they remember, start bootstrapping, starting when no one believed.

14:47And they want to make it easier for the next generation. One of the interesting things that Endeavor Greece has done is focus on the diaspora. So while the Greek tech ecosystem is still nascent and small, you have companies like Blue Ground and Newman Health and others coming out, you have incredible founders in the diaspora. So among the Endeavor entrepreneurs are Giannis of Reflection AI and Anastasis of Runway. And they're now going back, mentoring teams, developing some R &D centers in Athens to contribute back to the country. In fact, Vlad of Revolut is joining Endeavor because he wants to pay it forward in Ukraine.

15:31When you look at Mati back to 11 labs, he and Piotr, they were, as you mentioned, partially in London, partially in Poland, partially in New York, and wanted to make sure the Polish tech ecosystem developed. So what's super exciting is this combination of people really wanting to mentor the next generation, but also caring so deeply about these underserved, underinvested in ecosystems. And it's this pride that I think is really wonderful to see. And we've spoken before about this kind of multiplier effect, as you mentioned, and how it can almost get quite competitive amongst those founders of sort of who has had the most impact.

16:17Who is up there in Europe? Who do you think has had, you know, some of the biggest impact on their local ecosystem? Well, it's very funny because Guillaume Poussas, who's a dear friend of Checkout.com, is very proud about his multiplier effect. So he's very humble. He's like, don't score it. It shouldn't be that competitive. But I've told him, oh, Vlad of Revolut is coming. But how wonderful to have the next fintech generation supported by these icons who spend a lot of time, a lot of time. I think early on, I think when you look, it's companies like Cabify and Glovo, actually, or Yemexcept Peak Games out of Turkey.

16:59When you look at the gaming development, you look at Spike Games, which is coming up, and a number of other gaming companies, a lot of them came out of Peak Games, which sold to Zynga. And Turkey is developing some of the greatest games in the world, right, out of that. But I think, so Cabify and Globo out of Spain were early on. And I think you're going to see more of that. I think you're going to see more of the UiPath mafia, like the PayPal mafia, you know, coming out of Central and Eastern Europe. I expect companies like Spotify and Klarna to spawn that next generation, though we haven't seen as many quite yet.

17:41But I think we're just getting going. I think when you look at back to Latin America, you look at companies coming out of Mercado Libre and a company called, you know, Roppy out of Colombia. Hundreds and hundreds were spawned by these, you know, just a few companies. Same with the Middle East, Kareem, a mobile ride sharing company that sold to Uber. Hundreds of companies in the Middle East were born out of this one company. But when you go back to the originator of where we came up with the multiplier effect and this idea of local tech mafias, it really was the PayPal mafia that people talk about.

18:19And PayPal's exit was not the best, if you think about it. But not as many people left Apple. Not as many people even have left, you know, Google or Facebook now maybe over decades they have. But the PayPal mafia was super strong. So that's the other thing we tell people is sometimes even the companies that don't achieve the wildest exits actually do more for the ecosystem in terms of training that next generation. So you've got to take a long term view, which is what Endeavor does. And I guess we're also seeing increasingly, aren't we, founders actively angel invest, even while they're still running their companies and lots of kind of senior operators at companies, whether it's Eleven Labs or Checkout.

19:09You know, Guillaume has set up his own VC firm, Oscar Pierre from Glover, also another one who set up a fund. There's lots who don't have formalized funds but are doing work. Did that overlap at all with Endeavor or do you tap into those networks or, you know, what kind of impact does that evolution have? And we have a company, one of the new AI companies out of Spain, Maisa, came through one of our founders, Pablo of ClickGalia and ClickArs. So he was the one who recommended them. I want to say something here about women. I mentioned Honda Schillinger, one of the top B2B SaaS founders based in Turkey.

19:52and she's incredible. We need more women. And this is not only the CEOs, but as you said, the founding C-suite acting as angel investors. Because I think that we are, so the answer is we love when our founders and other top founders appear on the cap tables. I think this is incredible. We also love, back to Latin America, the C-O-O and C-F-O of MercadoLibre formed a company, a professional venture firm called Kazak that became the first venture firm in all of Latin America to raise over a billion dollars and is one of the top venture firms. We love operator-led venture firms. You have Nikola Zendstrom, right, in Europe as one premier example.

20:37But we need more female founders and female C-suite in Europe acting as angel investors so we can see more female-led companies. And especially this is going to be important when you look at deep tech and tech. One of the exciting unknown stories, and this is not Europe, but it's just a fun fact, is when you look at Saudi Arabia, some over 50 % of the engineers of almost every business are female. Over 50%, which is incredible. So I was just in Riyadh speaking to female engineers and CTOs and telling them you're going to be the next founders. We need this in Europe too, because I do think that that's important for everyone to have role models.

21:27And I think we have not seen as many, we've seen some female co-founders, but we need a lot more. And part of that starts at the angel investing moment. Is that something Endeavor is actively, you know, trying to change in terms of the makeup of your network, which, you know, I don't have the numbers, but from a glance on the website, it does seem that most of the companies I at least knew quite well have male founders. Is that something you would ever take into account or you do take into account in the selection process? Well, one of the things we do is in terms of telling stories. One of my favorite stories, the woman who's now an amazing Endeavor entrepreneur is now chair of Endeavor Spain is Veronica Pascual-Bowey of a company called Oste, which was doing robotics for Tesla and Apple and other top firms.

22:21And she sold to a Japanese conglomerate to create a platform for this deep tech robotics company. And she's actually training a lot of female engineers and folks in robotics. And we want to tell her stories. So I think we need to tell the stories. You know, Endeavor is looking for companies that can 10x and achieve, you know, 100 million plus in revenue and become the big players in these markets. I believe there are many women capable of doing that. I think confidence, I think investing, I think we need to encourage. And the more stories you tell, the more FOMO people have. That is why the insider round in Turkey led by Honda was so competitive.

23:05So I think that that's what we want to do is tell the stories. And I think on the merits, get more female co-founders in there. And I think it can happen. But I think that, again, it starts really early on and endeavors at the scale up phase. This has to start at the startup phase, at the university phase, really when people are young saying, hey, if she can do it, I can too. If he can do it, I can too. We've also spoken previously about the kind of loneliness that comes with being top of your game. If not kind of necessarily, you know, if you're a very successful founder, especially in an ecosystem where there aren't so many really successful entrepreneurs that, you know, who do you turn to when you need to bitch about your investor or ask for advice about a people problem or you're thinking about expansion?

23:57How has that kind of challenge and that dynamic evolved over the time you've been doing Endeavor? I would imagine it's not so challenging anymore or is it just evolved into a different kind of challenge? There's always challenges. Being an entrepreneur is hard. It is lonely. It is hard. Entrepreneurship is still a story of struggle, right? And you've got to embrace the struggle or you can't be an entrepreneur. You know, we have a gathering of our, what we call our Endeavor outliers, who's the top 10 % in terms of growth of companies gather. Actually, this year and last year, we'll be in comfort to Portugal.

24:39Next year, we'll go elsewhere in Europe, likely to Crete. And we gather them, no shop talk, really to open up, to be vulnerable and to talk about the things they can't talk about. And one of the interesting things that happened a few years ago, this was before there were really many secondaries, right? So the IPO markets closed in the last couple of years. There wasn't that much M &A. This is a few years ago. This is now all changing. This is a couple of years ago. And secondaries had not, outside of Silicon Valley, really been tolerated by investors. And so one of the conversations that came up then was, oh, my God, on paper, it looks like I'm worth all this money.

25:25I'm working, you know, 100 hours a week. And then I have to tell my spouse or my partner, we can't afford to go on vacation. And they don't understand. But this is true. I'm really struggling. My investors don't understand this. So one of the things that happened is word of mouth. people started talking about secondaries and the fact that, you know, back to Revolut and Checkout.com and others are doing these secondaries, even Eleven Labs did, I think is wonderful. So that's one thing that's really new and was founder to founder discussion. And then the investors, you know, took note. I think that challenges of when should I step down?

26:07Yesterday, Tony Jamis of Oyster, a wonderful HR tech firm based out of Cyprus, Lebanese founder based out of Cyprus, just announced he was stepping down. And just when is it time to move on? What do you talk about mental health struggles? This is something that is not commonly talked about among entrepreneurs. We have something we call untold stories to get founders to open up. So I think even when the conversation isn't around, oh, my God, it's impossible to raise money because you can raise money. It's still impossible. It's still difficult to raise money in places like Ukraine. We want to change that.

26:46But even when that there's always other struggles. What if I'm hired? Who do I talk to if I, you know, if I'm if I'm scared, I can't talk to my team. what if my co-founder is no longer right for this next stage? How do I have those conversations? How do you fire your co-founder? So I think that those conversations, just having a place of trust, that's why Endeavor really talking about being a trust-based network, I think becomes really, really important. What else would you say is especially on founders' minds at the moment? Is there a kind of newish topic that's been bubbling up over the past while?

27:28Well, I think we got to see some exits. And I think people are starting to talk about that again. I think it was off the table for a few years. And I do think that that matters to show that it's possible so that we're going to be having some stories, hopefully. I know there was Klarna last year, but hopefully some more exits. That is coming up. I personally hope there's more founder to funder in terms of operator-led venture firms. I think this idea, back to the start, application layer AI. I think that everyone has been talking about the LLMs and the foundation layer, but I think the application layer is going to be very important.

28:14We've talked about profitability. The idea of building emotional connections with their users, we just selected a company called Holy Water out of Ukraine that's doing short form, you know, video. And you have, you know, back to Spotify, right, which found how do you develop deep connections with your users, whether it's, you know, consumers or whether it's, you know, in the enterprise space. I think that people are focusing on building companies to last, right? Building companies that aren't going to be a flash in the pan. It's not just going to be who got unicorn status and what your latest funding round is.

28:50It's how do you achieve that lasting impact? And I think, and then back to what we were just discussing with the multiplier effect, your own legacy. And I think your own personal legacy and what does this mean? I think people, founders are talking about that even as they're, you know, ruthlessly focused on their business. And then And the other thing we have to acknowledge is that everyone in the planet is saying, how is AI going to disrupt me? And what does this mean for my company? And maybe even more so for the non-AI first companies, we're hearing, what does this mean? Number one, what's going to have to change?

29:34What jobs are going to be lost or gained? How do I compete in a world of AI? And then the corollary to that is, what's going to be left that's human? Right. So where where does humanity step in? What cannot be improved or replicated by AI? These conversations, we're just getting started, but I'm really excited to be part of them in the coming years. Where do you think those exits, if and when they do come, what form do you think they're likely to take? You know, we just have not seen IPOs for a long time, especially in Europe. Do you really think those are coming or do you think it's more likely companies will sell to, you know, a big corporate or or as you mentioned, you know, why not just keep doing secondaries for a while?