Summer Archives

Shreya Rekapalli - Endeavor Global

 

For 9 weeks this past summer, I worked remotely as a Research Intern for Endeavor Global. Endeavor Global was founded to support high-growth entrepreneurs in underserved, under-resourced emerging growth markets. They currently have 39 established affiliates globally, and given its economic size and diversity, the U.S. is the only region based affiliate model in the Endeavor footprint.

 

My summer project with Endeavor had 2 main guiding questions: How can Endeavor scale selection and services to meet increasing demand without sacrificing the quality of their entrepreneurs? And,when would an Endeavor affiliate’s ecosystem mature “beyond Endeavor” and how should Endeavor’s operating model evolve within those markets? To answer these questions my project was broken into 2 separate parts. I focused on the first guiding question for the first half of my project and proceeded to pivot into the second one for the latter half.

 

The first part of the project was heavily research-based and data-driven. I used Endeavor salesforce data to determine how Endeavor’s affiliates have performed in years past and used that growth rate as a metric to forecast the number of candidate slots. Additionally, I researched each affiliate’s entrepreneurial ecosystem by looking at various factors such as access to funding, startup exits and their value/frequency, market connectedness and reach, quality and quantity of startups, ease of doing business score, and more. This allowed me to show that Endeavor needed to prepare to scale even further than anticipated.

 

The second part of the project dealt with using what was developed to measure an ecosystem to place all Endeavor affiliates in 1 of 3 categories: emerging, maturing, or mature. As a result, we wanted to tweak the value proposition of a mature ecosystem, I specifically focused my efforts on researching the United States. I made recommendations on how this could be approached, such as shifting to a focus on underserved demographics or transitioning the office  to independent hubs focused on servicing other affiliates. This project is ongoing, therefore my research focused on the initial recommendations. Long term, Endeavor leadership will select a few recommendations from both decks and decide how to move forward.

 

Overall, my time at Endeavor was a great learning experience. Since Endeavor is a global nonprofit, it was incredible to see how Endeavor could help entrepreneurs drive economic growth and development in their communities all over the world. I am so thankful for the experience I had this summer with the Atlanta and Global office and I am looking forward to seeing what they do in coming years!