Endeavor Colombia Partners With Medellin’s Ruta N To Promote Paisa Entrepreneurship
Endeavor Colombia has launched its regional operations in Medellín along with the city’s flagship business incubator, Ruta N. Endeavor Colombia, a nonprofit organization promoting high impact entrepreneurship, hopes to compliment Ruta N’s business incubation ecosystem and contribute to the city’s economic development. Endeavor Colombia is affiliated with the worldwide Endeavor Global, Inc.
The objective of this new initiative is to provide entrepreneurs the support they need to scale from the startup phase, where most businesses die in their infancy, to flourishing enterprises generating economic contributions and employment to their communities. Endeavor employs a methodology that has been replicated in 46 cities across 23 countries. The model is focused on identifying the best ventures with high growth potential, and bringing to them a portfolio of services based on three pillars: Getting them to think big, helping the entrepreneurs to make the best business decisions, and incentivizing them to inspire others and replicate their success throughout the incubation ecosystem. The services offered include connections with local and global mentors, implementation of advisory committees, field projects with specialized consultants, and preparation for investment finance offerings.
“Ruta N has, as one of its strategic objectives, consolidating the network of the most relevant business development centers in the country. For that, we need to count on excellent entrepreneurs and projects, and on the capabilities of experts in business development across distinct markets and technologies with the necessary experience to bring to each project what it needs to facilitate accelerated and sustained growth,” said Eduardo Quiroz, Ruta N’s manager of knowledge business. “Today, Ruta N’s network of business development centers has specialized centers in ICT (Information and Communications Technology), creative digital, and biotechnology, and we hope by the end of 2015 to have health and energy sectors. Endeavor’s arrival is strategic to the city, and compliments the offerings that we are consolidating with the proposition of growing high impact entrepreneurship on a large scale here in Medellín.”
Endeavor will be a member of the “Network of Business Development Centers” for Ruta N, focused on high impact entrepreneurship to bring together entrepreneurs meeting a minimum of requirements, then evaluated and validated by a rigorous selection process consisting of both national and international stages. During the past nine years of operating in Colombia, Endeavor has evaluated 1500 companies, and selected 27 of them: names such as Refinancia, PayU, Widetech, Ecoflora, Gluky, Enmedio, and Bodytech.
When an entrepreneur passes the selection process, he or she is dubbed an “Endeavor Entrepreneur” to recognize their business model as being both innovative and disruptive, that the rate of growth for revenues and employees is exceeding 15% annually, and their revenues are between $1 million and $25 million US Dollars annually. Still, according to Endeavor, the most important requirement is that the entrepreneurs are people who think big: dreamers who will inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs with success stories, and the belief that their business can change the world.
According to Adriana Suarez, Executive Director of Endeavor Colombia: “Our dream is to demonstrate throughout Colombia that high impact entrepreneurship is a detonator in the transformation of economies. This year, we proposed to augment the impact of our organization in this country, strengthening the entrepreneurial fabric, and we are doing so successfully. It is a great achievement to share that just days after announcing Endeavor Colombia’s establishment in the Caribbean region of the country, that we have the opportunity to unite with the Paisas, making them too, Endeavor Entrepreneurs. In the past nine years of operation, we have brought into our portfolio successful Medellin companies such as Ecoflora, Gluky Group, Enmedio, SFA Cebar, Agrofuturo, and others. With our experience, we have identified great Paisa (meaning someone from Medellín’s Antioquia region) companies that need to break barriers to growth, converting them into high impact entrepreneurs. For that reason, we have come to Medellin. We are convinced that working with Ruta N, the Endeavor model will benefit these companies with the scaling that they need, and with our help, in the future they will be standard bearers for entrepreneurship in the region, the country, and why not the world!?”