High-Impact Entrepreneurship

The following is a reprint of a Business Wire press release available in full here.

SAN FRANCISCO — Two Endeavor directors, Allen Taylor (Director, Global Networks, Endeavor Global) and Carmen Saad (Managing Director, Endeavor Jordan), have been admitted to the Kauffman Fellowship – a highly competitive two-year program dedicated to the world of venture capital and the cultivation of new high-tech, high-impact companies. They are the third and fourth members of the program from Endeavor.

“Endeavor is strongly committed to promoting investment in emerging markets and catalyzing local investor communities,” said Endeavor President Fernando Fabre who recently completed the Fellowship along with Rodrigo Teles, Managing Director of Endeavor Brazil. “Endeavor’s strong presence at Kauffman Fellows is an important way to introduce the US venture capital community to the exciting opportunities in developing countries.”

“Endeavor was the first organization to grasp the importance of our mission to bring smart, connected values-driven innovation capital to all entrepreneurs who need it, regardless of region or stage of growth,” says Phil Wickham, President and CEO of the Center for Venture Education (which administers the Kauffman Fellows Program). “While their impact on our success in Latin America in just two years has been remarkable, we think we are just scratching the surface in terms of how we can work together to empower entrepreneurs globally.”

Only thirty Kauffman Fellowships are offered each year. They take the form of “practical apprenticeships” which include professional coaching, mentoring by senior partners, and quarterly sessions of industry and leadership curricula conducted in Palo Alto, California. As lifetime members of the Society of Kauffman Fellows, Taylor and Saad – along with Endeavor itself – join a network that links together hundreds of investment firms collectively deploying $50B in venture capital.

Phil Wickham participated in the recent Endeavor Entrepreneur Summit, speaking on a panel on the “State of Venture Capital.” The Summit also featured a Silicon Valley Trek (Emerging Market Venture Day), hosted by Endeavor’s Investor Network, which brought together investors with over a dozen fast-growing Endeavor companies. The Summit and Silicon Valley Trek marked a milestone for Endeavor’s California office; since opening in 2009, the office has strengthened ties between emerging market entrepreneurs and the Silicon Valley VC community.

“Both Kauffman Fellows and Endeavor Entrepreneurs are now critical human components to the innovation and entrepreneurial engines of the global economy,” asserts Jason Green, a founder of Emergence Capital Partners, who serves on Endeavor’s Global Board and is a member of the Charter Class of Kauffman Fellows. “Seeing them come together is an extremely powerful concept with multiplicative impact for both organizations and the world. I’m most proud to see the give back mentality inherent in both organizations’ values and am incredibly excited to see their impact together for decades to come.”

About The Kauffman Fellows Program

The Kauffman Fellows Program is administered by the Center for Venture Education, a 501(c)(3) post-graduate educational institution dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship throughout society. The mission of the Kauffman Fellows Program is to identify, develop, and network emerging global leaders in venture capital. Success means that entrepreneurs are building stronger, more enduring companies and, correspondingly, venture investors are realizing enhanced returns. To date, Kauffman Fellows have made $6 billion in venture capital investments, sparking growth in hundreds of new enterprises, $15 billion in annually recurring revenues, and the creation of 5

Endeavor South Africa and First National Bank of South Africa have released the second edition of “Entrepreneurial Dialogues: The State of Entrepreneurship in South Africa [PDF].”

Entrepreneurial activity in South Africa still lags significantly behind many comparable countries. South Africa’s Total Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) has dropped to just 5% which is less than half of India, Brazil and Mexico. The newly-released whitepaper, which follows up on the first edition published in May 2010, stemmed from an FNB-Endeavor conference held in November 2010, which was attended by a variety of policy makers, entrepreneurs, academics, and funders. There, the participants discussed key issues facing entrepreneurship in six key sectors of the economy: mining, manufacturing & energy; fashion and clothing; professional services (e.g., finance, insurance); IT & biotech; tourism & hospitality; and agri-business.

Among other insights, the paper highlights a difference in outlooks among VC communities in South Africa and in other markets — for instance, in the U.S., VCs tend to search for companies with the potential for explosive growth, whereas VCs in South Africa tend to search for companies that already show explosive growth. As Endeavor VentureCorps member and Silicon Valley veteran David Frazee points out, in the U.S. the attitude is “the bigger the risk, the bigger the upside.”

The paper also states that if we accept the reality that about 70% of new businesses fail, it is understandable that banks may be wary to lend to these businesses — and thus, funding solutions must be sought outside the traditional banking sector.

Issues such as access to skills and technology are also highlighted. For instance, in the Agri-Business sector, the ‘brain drain’ of experienced farmers is cited as a major challenge: “Farmers with accumulated knowledge are moving to other African countries…and even Eastern European countries.”

South African entrepreneurs in the Mining industry, meanwhile, are urged to focus on increasing and transforming their output. Further, it is asserted that while the country’s large untapped resources are controlled by a few large players, opportunities exist for smaller entrepreneurs to compete at the upstream stages of the value chain.

South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup for soccer is mentioned for its contribution to raising the country’s tourism profile. The paper suggests there is an opportunity for South Africa to further define an authentic national “brand.”

According to Kirsty Davis, CEO of FNB Business Banking, the whitepaper is intended to “not only understand the challenges facing South African entrepreneurs, but also to develop real solutions and support in the various sectors.”

Says Malik Fal, Managing Director of Endeavor South Africa: “Together with FNB, it is our hope that the second edition of this paper will achieve its objectives of creating a useful collaborative platform for South Africans who are interested in enhancing the level of entrepreneurial activity in the country.”

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