Allen Taylor:

There is still today, a level of skepticism, or a level of belief that, well, if they're really amazing entrepreneurs, they'll just move here, or these are just kind of copycat business models. And frankly, I think that view is just kind of uninformed.

Incredible entrepreneurs come from everywhere. And frankly, they don't always follow the traditional path you might assume. You don't have to go to Stanford Business School, you can build a billion dollar company from Argentina or from Nigeria or from Detroit.

(INTRO) Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Hey folks, I'm super excited about this week's episode, which features Allen Taylor, managing partner at Endeavor Catalyst, one of our earliest supporters at the Billion Dollar Fund for Women (now Beyond The Billion) and a pledge fund of our firm. Allen also sits on the global leadership team at Endeavor, a mission driven organization focused on supporting high growth companies in emerging and underserved markets.

Based in Northern California, Allen leads Endeavor’s Co-investment Fund with just about $500 million in assets under management across four funds with 51 unicorns to date from Careem, Carsome, Insider to MercadoLibre. And today is recognized as not just one of the most active global venture investors, but beloved ecosystem builders in emerging markets. We discuss everything from how Reid Hoffman inspired the design of a rules-based fund that in its better already made LPs eight times their money on an 8.5x DPI to his personal journey with Endeavor to have grown to support over 2,000 high impact entrepreneurs all over the world. And yes, that secret formula for what Endeavor entrepreneurs have in common. You do not want to miss this one.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Allen has been a collaborator with us at Beyond the Billion, really about investing into the unexpected entrepreneur is definitely everything that Allen is about and Endeavor as well. So Allen, just to get started here, tell us a little bit about a crucible moment, what you think was a really formative time in your life that brought you to where you are today.

Allen Taylor:

Wow, that's a great way to start. Well, thanks for having me. And, you know, I think as listeners will be able to tell, I'm American. But I have spent most of my career working on emerging markets in Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East.

And I'd say the crucible moment that led me here was actually living in Buenos Aires, Argentina when I was 19. I was still in college. That was a semester abroad initially but then I ended up starting an NGO and going back to Latin America after that. And honestly, having grown up here in California near Silicon Valley, if you got to think about when did the trajectory change, it was then, right? 19, 20, 21 years old, living in Argentina in the middle of a pretty real economic crisis.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

And sort of unpack that a little bit. I mean, I understand that time was something like, when Argentina was really going through sort of five presidents.It was really a tumultuous time. How did that frame your thinking that the future for you in entrepreneurship and emerging markets?

Allen Taylor:

I think it's where I became really interested in economic development and frankly, just in how economies work and where change comes from and where growth comes from and in the most simple terms thinking about, okay, if you have a big ambition that you want to put a dent in the universe, and change the world, where should you spend your time and energy. On a later trip back in 2002, Argentina was one of the very early Endeavor countries.

And so I learned about kind of some of those first stories, Patagon.com, MercadoLibre, some of the businesses being built back then. I didn't end up coming to work at Endeavor until 2006. So I used to say like, I had a crush on the model for like three or four years before joining the team. And then now, of course, I've been here on the team for 17 years, long time.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

So talking about the model and how you had a crush on that model, interesting use of words there. Endeavor is a 501(c)(3) that also has a series of funds that are tagged onto it with Catalyst that you are running as well. But of course I believe it happened sort of 10 years ago, the fund added on. Yalk to us a little bit about the model for those of us that are not familiar and why you particularly had a crush on it.

Allen Taylor:

Yeah. So look, Endeavor is a mission driven organization that at its heart believes entrepreneurs change the world. That's what we kind of think about when you think about the fundamental theory of change. The way that manifests, the way we do the work, we actually end up setting up nonprofit chapters. So 501(c)(3) in the US but kind of NGO operations in every country where we work in emerging and underserved ecosystems. And so the two parts of it today that you mentioned that I think are relevant are, for 26 years now, we've been running this process around finding the best entrepreneurs. And then trying to surround them with mentors and networks and open doors and bring the best people that can help them scale their companies and build billion-dollar businesses. For the first 15 years we did that work, we never invested in the companies ourselves.

And so that's the more recent chapter that started in 2012, 2013. And one I lead today, we call it Endeavor Catalyst. But that is a co-investment fund, kind of layered on top of Endeavor, where now we do invest in the companies but a small amount, right? We're not trying to be the lead investor.

We're trying to send a signal to all the best investors in the world that, hey, you can do this in Latin America. You can do this in Indonesia. You can do this in Nigeria and Egypt and Pakistan. So that's really what I've spent the last decade focused on with an amazing team is kind of building and scaling our Catalyst fund. Which I'm sure we can talk more about to where it is today.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah, and what sort of prompted that focus on the use of capital to continue to leverage impact? Arguably a 501(c)(3) model that is now looking to seek venture type returns. Talk to us a little bit about that and how the thinking came about as a team, to decide this was indeed the next step.

Allen Taylor:

Yeah, so look, it's a great story because it's both top down and bottom up. Top down, we were very lucky to have Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, actually joined the board of Endeavor, of the nonprofit 12 years ago. And in one of his first board meetings, Reid, together with Joanna Rees, Nick Beim, Jason Green, some of these other folks on Endeavor's board, again, of the nonprofit, kind of challenged the assumption we'd always had, which is Endeavor shouldn't be an investor.

And Reed basically said to us, if you're backing these amazing entrepreneurs, and you know them really well, and you're really close to them, and you know, you're their ally, wouldn't it be beneficial to just chip in a little bit of money when they raise money, and then use the proceeds of that to fund the nonprofit’s work, right? You wouldn't have to raise as much philanthropic capital. So that's the top down part.

The bottom up part is, I was working at Endeavor back then, connecting a lot of our entrepreneurs to funders. So we're making introductions to the best funds in Silicon Valley or London or Singapore. And the founders were coming to us and saying, hey, thanks for the intro to Accel or Sequoia or whomever.

It would really help if when you made the intro, you actually told them you guys were investing right from a signal perspective. And so there was this interesting thing where those things were both happening at the same time. And it led us honestly to question that assumption we'd always had, which was Endeavor shouldn't be an investor.

And in fact, fast forward to today, I think the choice to change and to add this part to the business model and to say, yes, we are a mission driven organization, but we can absolutely run a for profit, high growth venture fund on top of it, has actually been really key to Endeavor becoming even more relevant in these ecosystems over time.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

This is amazing. I mean, I was just flipping through in preparation for this, your multiple impact reports and in terms of the scale of capital that has been deployed, the number of unicorns, and we'll get into that a little bit later. But what was unexpected in this journey of ultimately moving from over the 17 years, from a nonprofit community builder to become a venture capital investor?

Allen Taylor:

I should say on the Endeavor level, we're still a very much a mission driven organization. I like to say we haven't become a fund, right? We have a fund. But in my own personal journey, yeah it was unexpected for sure to go from, the early work I was doing with Endeavor on selecting the companies and supporting them and mentoring them to now, helping to lead a $500 million, I think a key moment there for me was probably, joining the Kauffman Fellows, which I was able to do in 2011, 12 and 13 around the time frame we were starting this.

That's proven to be a really valuable network in terms of learning the venture business, and really understanding what it means to build a firm and a franchise. Three years ago, I ended up joining the board of the Kauffman Fellows, because I really believe that building the next great generation of GPs and venture leaders in markets is also a key part of our long term mission.

But I'll tell you, Sarah, it's actually been very, in a way, kind of surprising how fast we've been able to make progress on this. When we were first having those whiteboard conversations around Endeavor Catalyst, we were talking about, hey, could we essentially mentor, support, invest in a company that would grow up to be a billion dollar business in Brazil or in Mexico or in Vietnam, right?

It was one. Like, could we do that once or twice? and the fact that now you fast forward 11 years, we have 51 companies valued at a billion dollars or more, some of them public, some of them acquired, many of them still private. I think it's honestly exceeded my expectations on what was possible.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

When you look at, talking about building an enduring franchise, we just had Lisa Edgar from Top Tier Capital Partners. One of our favorite LP friends, on the show as well. And she talked about building an enduring franchise, and you used that similar terminology. I'm curious, from your observation, what does it take, and how have you implemented that as the leader of what has now become a, as you said, $500 million AUM firm?

Allen Taylor:

I fundamentally believe venture is a people business. and so that's how it starts out and that's what matters, right? You're talking about people for the founders, for your co investors, for the teams you build, obviously for the LP community, you can build. But over time you have to be more than just people in relationships. You have to also kind of build the fabric of, of the venture firm.

We're extremely lucky, Endeavor is today, 42 markets, 63 offices, like almost 600 full time employees. So there's a big franchise already kind of built, that the Catalyst Fund is built on top of. What we've had to do, with my partner, Jackie Carmel, who's been with us nine years, and with this awesome team we've built, we've really had to think about, well, what do we need to have as Endeavor Catalyst that Endeavor didn't already have. And that's meant really building those muscles around financial management and to operate a very large venture capital fund on top of what Endeavor had already built.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

And of course, we just heard the news that, Foundry is shutting its doors after 20 years and many more firms are starting to realize that this might be, it for them. Why do the people who are seeking to do what you do fail in building an enduring firm and a good VC practice?

Allen Taylor:

So it's interesting. I think that allocating capital, investing capital early stages is, is certainly not an easy business, right?

It might've seemed easy for a minute in 2021, when everybody was raising a fund in the syndicate, et cetera. But it's a very long-term business, right? And in fact, I remember a conversation with Reid and Nick and Joanna, the folks on our board, when we were starting, they basically said, hey, look, if we build this, this is like a 15 year commitment minimum, right?

Because they were thinking about at least three funds and how do you kind of do all this over time and the 10 to 12 year lives of each fund. And I think at the time I was like, 6 years into my career at Endeavor, I think I was 31 years old, and I thought, whoa, 15 years! That's a big commitment, right?

But in reality, we're 11 years into that today and I can easily see what the next 11 years will look like, right? I'm building this really big franchise. So I think it's important to highlight, that there is a difference between being an investor in a company or two and like building a venture fund for sure.

But also not all venture funds need to exist forever. I think you mentioned that the guys at Foundry, they're like a tremendous success story of how you do this and you add tremendous value for a long time. And then you just say, actually, we're done. And we're not going to have a succession plan and bring in tons of new people.

So I think it's a really interesting case because it's not my default assumption that every fund has to exist forever. But certainly it's, it's interesting business to, to get into.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah, and being real about those expectations. So let's talk a little bit about the founders. You have 51 unicorns. So that's one up from the last podcast I tuned into when I think you were in Kenya. So that was quick. Talk to us a little bit about the winners and what makes a winner from your observation in particular with the nuanced lens of the emerging markets that you see.

Allen Taylor:

Yeah, so I would say that, first of all, I feel very very lucky to be able to sit where I sit in these ecosystems, right?

Because Endeavor screens tens of thousands of companies, and only the, you know, very top ones actually get selected into Endeavor, and then we get a chance to partner with those entrepreneurs, and bring hopefully great, smart, connected capital to them in their regions, and then also co investors.

I guess for the listeners, we've done at this point, it's about 310 co-investments over the last 11 years. And that's where of those 350-351 have grown up to be billion dollar businesses. Focusing on the founders themselves, I think they're all tremendously talented people and the difference between your typical talented founder in Silicon Valley and your typical talented founder in an emerging market, I think has mostly to do with the level of resilience that you need to build in some of these more emerging and frontier places. And what I mean is just the obstacles are tremendous, especially when the ecosystems are new and you're first generation doing it. I think there's just so many more things to overcome.

Including, frankly, in a lot of places, not great access to smart connected capital, right? So that's one of the things we actually work on. But if I had to zoom out and kind of look at the several hundred entrepreneurs we've been lucky enough to partner with Endeavor Catalyst, or the few thousand that we've been lucky enough to partner with Endeavor, I'd say they really are amazing, incredible people, incredible leaders, incredible human beings, and have really just kind of an order of magnitude, more resilience, when it comes to overcoming all the challenges that come their way.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah, so let's zoom into that a little bit with the unicorn founders pathway chart that you just released, really really interesting. Of course, we are recording this at a time that Aileen Lee, I don't know if you saw that one, just released her 10-year review of the unicorn as well.

I'd love to hear a little bit in terms of how you're thinking about it, what surprised you from this, with from elite universities to immigration and all this, a lot of really interesting findings here. Talk to us a little bit about this, the trends that you're seeing and where you see the term unicorn moving forward in this market.

Allen Taylor:

Yeah. I think that's a very fun one. I did see Aileen's new work, which was cool to see, 10 years in, kind of reflecting on unicorns. I would say, shout out to Leah and our Endeavor Insight team. We have this kind of internal think tank that does this great work and put up a recent report on these founder pathways.

They were able to show with data what I think we've felt for a long time. Which is this idea that incredible entrepreneurs come from everywhere. And frankly, they don't always follow, the traditional path you might assume. And I think that's kind of core to Endeavor's entire belief, is that we believe there are really amazing entrepreneurs everywhere in the world.

That's kind of globally distributed, right? The thing that's not as well distributed are the networks of mentorship and knowledge and know how and capital that can support those founders. And so the founder pathway shows something similar, which is you don't have to go to Stanford Business School, you don't have to grow up in a certain place.

Like, you can build a billion-dollar company from Argentina or from Nigeria or from Detroit, right? Like, you can do this from a lot of different places around the world. And I think that, if listeners haven't seen it, checking out that Founder Pathways work, it's really cool to see some of the things that they're able to show in the data.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah, and of course, we will do a deep dive. And in particular with the female founder journey as well. I understand Leah is doing some work there. But if we were to zoom in and look at some of your investments, using some real case studies here that come to mind.

Can you talk to us a little bit about, if there's a founder that's working on 1 to 10 problems today, thinking hard about building their business in this environment. I know you've talked a little bit about this, the shift of the pendulum from growth and profitability and all these little elements.

How should a founder be thinking about building their businesses today and maybe using a case study to walk through some of that?

Allen Taylor:

Yeah, sure. I think there, there are so many great stories and case studies in Endeavor. I would kind of divide our portfolio into two major categories, which is, we have a lot of investments in what I would call regional leaders, right?

So the best company doing something in Latin America or in Southeast Asia, et cetera. And frankly, about 70% of the companies we backed our regional leaders in one category or another. But we are seeing more and more right. and it's about 30% of the portfolio today, but kind of global leaders, right?

So global innovation that can come from anywhere. I'll highlight, I guess, as one case study, a business called Insider, which is a marketing automation software born in Istanbul, Turkey. Eventually, after raising local funding in Turkey and joining Endeavor's network there, they brought in HQ to Singapore.

The incredible, actually female founder, Hande, who leads the business with her other co-founders. It’s just a force of nature to say, we're not a Turkish success story; we're not a Singapore success story; we're a global success story, right? And they really are on that 1 to 10 stage of the journey where they clicked their product market fit for what they're doing.

And so now it's about really scaling it to as many companies and as many markets and as many places as they can in the world. We're really proud to have been on that journey with them already for seven or eight years, and I think last year they crossed $100 million in ARR. You tell that to investors in Silicon Valley, and they say, where is this company from?

And you say, well, it started out in Istanbul, right? Because that incredible talent in Turkey we've seen over time in the ecosystem there. So, obviously the challenges are different when you're at that scale. This is not about the early stages of being a startup, but really the challenges of being a scale up. But I would say, when I think ahead to the next few decades, I think we're going to see more and more of this kind of born global, like truly global winners, but that can come out of any market.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah. And so you talked a little bit about some of the characteristics, right? In terms of grit and resilience. But when I look at sort of your portfolio, the Careem, Clip and Insiders, what made you decide beyond just the resilience?

What else has really stood out to you in terms of how they're approaching the problem, to decide that, yes, this is one that even at a catalyst, or Endeavor Catalyst level, you want to double down on?

Allen Taylor:

Yeah, good questions. Endeavor Catalyst is a rules-based fund so essentially the way it works is we do a ton of due diligence on selecting companies into Endeavor. And that really is kind of the top one or two percent of founders or businesses in the markets where we operate. And then we make a pledge and a commitment actually to every single one of those founders that says, hey, if you need to raise equity capital, we want to help you get the best partner you can. And we will help try to go out and see if you can attract. world class regional or global venture capital and growth equity investors, and if you can do that, we're in, right?

And so that's where this, the kind of subset of the portfolio we end up investing in has to do with when we can bring a really great top tier investor to the company, then we will co invest in the business. Just to clarify that we're not doing any additional picking and choosing at the catalyst level, we're really saying like, we believe in all the Endeavor companies. And now we're trying to get great investment partners for them. And when we can do that, we'll always invest. But to your question, which is really about what else do we see in these founders?

Sometimes I use this language of, this is the remarkable individual theory of societal change, right? These people are just special. When you talk to Hande, Insider, when you talk to Adolfo at Clip, when you talk to Mudassir and Magnus and Abdullah, the guys who started Careem. They're special people, right?

You know it in five or 10 minutes. Like they're just really, there's something about them. They have a quality that you want to follow them. That's going to help raise capital, it's also going to bring great people to come work at the business. Sometimes we talk about this idea of CEOs or founders needing to be kind of visionaries.

They see a different world somewhere into the future and they see a way to get there. Frankly, that seems impossible to a lot of people. or maybe seems crazy. I can remember actually Adolfo is a good example from Clip, in Mexico. He worked in Silicon Valley for like 10 years. And when he left PayPal and start a company in Palo Alto. He said, I am going to start a company, but I'm going to go back to Mexico and do it. And all the folks here really, truly thought that was crazy, you know, and I think, you can see what he's been able to build in the last decade. But it certainly wasn't easy.

And I remember we invested in the Series A of Clip. It was not an easy round to raise. Like we spent a ton of time with investors trying to get people to believe in Mexico, right? Even if they believed in Adolfo, and the vision for what he wanted to build.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah, fascinating. Another actually global investor that I started this podcast early on with was Chris Schroeder and also Kalsoom and Misbah from i2i. And one thing that stood out to me in those two interviews as I was reflecting on what we should focus on is the fact that, there's a criticism right or cynicism in Silicon Valley that these global entrepreneurs are not really innovating, they're just copycat models. What do you say to that?

Allen Taylor:

I guess to give some context to, I worked at Endeavor first in the headquarters in New York for six years, and then 11 years ago, I moved out here to Silicon Valley and set up an office for us. So I've had at this point, thousands of conversations with Silicon Valley insiders about emerging markets, and about why they should believe in Brazil, or Indonesia, or Malaysia, or any of these places where we're operating.

And you're right, there is still today, a level of skepticism, or a level of belief that, well, if they're really amazing entrepreneurs, they'll just move here, or these are just kind of copycat business models.

And frankly, I think that view is just kind of uninformed. They haven't seen the things that are happening on the ground in these different places. I will acknowledge something that's very true, which is in every emerging market, you can map this for China, for India, for Latin America, for all the places Endeavor works.

There's a first wave of companies that get built that do tend to be what I would call geographic innovators. But they're borrowing business models from other places and adapting them locally. That first wave of businesses is oftentimes consumer, and then digital infrastructure to support consumer. Right, you see payments and logistics get built.

But really when you get into wave two, five or ten years into the kind of ecosystem being built. Then you start to see some really interesting innovative companies, right? Because they're bringing tech to disrupt health care, to disrupt transportation, to disrupt financial services beyond just payments.

And those businesses are not copycats, right? They are very, very innovative locally in what they solve. And when you move through that wave to the next one, then you really do start to see what I was mentioning before of kind of global innovation coming from anywhere. I remember when I started this work at Endeavor, going back 17 years, there was kind of one example of a globally known brand that had come out of an ecosystem other than Silicon Valley, right?

It was Skype. Skype was from Estonia, people talked about that story. Today there's hundreds of them, right? Businesses that get built, you name them, Canva, Spotify, MercadoLibre, Careem. There's literally hundreds of businesses, we're very lucky to be partners in a few dozen of them, that are multibillion dollar businesses born in these other places.

And so, I frankly, today, think that the view that, all the best founders are just going to move to Silicon Valley, is just kind of an outdated viewpoint, right? And Chris Schroeder, I'm sure, talked about this. I think it's also worthwhile to acknowledge the markets where we're already on the kind of second or third generation of entrepreneurial success, like in India or like Brazil and the ones where we're still on the first generation, right?

Like where i2i is investing in Pakistan, right? Or like Egypt, where they're just in a different place on this journey and that has implications for availability of capital and how hard it is to build a kind of a scale up business or a unicorn. But you know, I have a very long term view of it, and I'm a big advocate for these more frontier markets because I really believe like, hey, look, we saw this story happen in Brazil. We saw it happen in Indonesia. We were part of it. It's going to happen in Pakistan, Nigeria, Vietnam, etcetera.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah. So using Pakistan, actually, that may come as a little bit of a sore spot for some people after the Airlift incident. What are your thoughts here? What's your advice as a global emerging markets investor, to investors who are looking to do more in that space?

And yet hearing all these harrowing stories sometimes of losing money here and there and when you don't know the market like. What's the formula that works?

Allen Taylor:

It's a great question and I believe that we did, we the venture capital community did, maybe lose our mind for a minute there in 2021 in in peak zero interest rate and zoom investing where frankly people were writing checks around the world which was a good thing. But oftentimes into companies and markets where they didn't actually know that much about the local context.

And so I think there are no shortcuts. I think it really is a long-term game. Uh, it's a people business. And so if you want to invest in Pakistan, I think you actually have to go spend time in Karachi and Lahore and Islamabad and get to know the founders and get to know the great local co investors and get to know the market.

And then you can and should invest in it, right? Because it's the fifth most populous country, and it's really undercapitalized if you think about the potential for tech and venture. But I wouldn't recommend doing it without knowing the ecosystem. You talked about Airlift as a high profile failure. There are gonna be failures, right?

I think that's part of what this is about. We shouldn't use an example of one company not working and say, oh, well then I can't invest in that country. But it does mean there's no shortcut to doing it and you really do have to put in the work and get to know the people and get to know the market.

And maybe it's a good commercial for Endeavor. We'd like to help, right? Like anybody listening. If you want to invest in Pakistan or Egypt or one of these frontier places, call us, right? We have local teams. We have people. We want to bring more smart, connected capital to these places.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Talking about being resilient, something that your wife said, as I was chatting with Tanya was that what she really thinks people should learn from you is the fact that you can choose to focus your energy elsewhere and always find positivity in whatever circumstance, right?

The phrase is “I'm choosing to focus my energy elsewhere”. Talk to us a little bit about where this comes from, and what you think entrepreneurs in terms of a framework for them as they're now listening to this and thinking about their journey how can they take a little bit of the learning there from you.

Allen Taylor:

Yeah. And Sarah, I love this. I've done a lot of podcasts. I've never actually had someone call my wife as part of the due diligence before. But look, I am a big believer in this. This is how I lead my own life. And I think it's something I talked to a lot of founders about, which is you can't really control what happens to you in life, but you can absolutely control how you react to it and what you give energy to.

I really do think when you're doing emerging markets, when you're doing, something that is frankly, incredibly hard, you get a lot of opportunity to decide where you're going to focus your time, where you're going to focus your energy. I think the people who ultimately kind of channel that energy into, okay, overcome that obstacle, turn the page next thing looking forward, they're going to build things. And they're going to be very successful.

And the people who spend too much time feeling frustrated, talking about why they're frustrated, focusing on the challenges and why they haven't gotten there yet. They're not going to move as fast and they're not going to make as much as much progress. So I feel very lucky to be surrounded by founders and entrepreneurs who largely, I think, share this same mentality or the same mindset.

Since you mentioned Tanya, I think one of the things she teases me about is, we live here in California. I go on these trips to places and spend time with, probably the 7 to 10 most talented people in the country when I get to show up in, let's say Beirut. And then I come home and I say, like, man, can you believe how well things are going in Lebanon? And she's like, do you even read the news? Like, things are not going well. Like, there's a lot of challenges and problems.

And I acknowledge all those things are true, but I think for the work we're doing, focusing my energy and attention on the 10 best founders in Lebanon and the companies they're building and how to help them. It's kind of my choice of what I want to do with my career and with my life.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah, absolutely love that. And I know we're coming up to time here. So very quickly, predictions for 2024. Are we in another year of a market downturn? Are we going to see startups shut? What's the emerging markets landscape for 2024?

Allen Taylor:

So my view here is informed by our global fund, which is investing again across a lot of regions, but almost 40 percent of what we do is in Latin America.

We have a lot of things in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa, and then these parts of underserved Europe, mostly Southern and Eastern Europe, and in the US. And my view on it is, there is still more pain to come. Meaning like, more companies are going to go out of business, more business models that got funded at kind of peaked zero interest rate are going to realize you can't actually make zero, you can't make unit economics work, and there will be failures.

I say that because the more fragile kind of emerging, nascent ecosystems, the tech media is gonna write about like, oh my gosh, this company failed, we should never do entrepreneurship. And so my real view is there are going to be more failures, but we as the ecosystem need to be resilient and go through that because there are also a lot more success stories to come on the other side. But we have to play a longer term game of how we think about it.

And this is my probably my number one takeaway from doing this now for 17 years is, most overnight success stories are 10 or 15 years in the making. Like they really are. You can point to every single successful Endeavor company where we've had an IPO, we've had a big exit. They just it takes a very long time.

And so I think 2024 for the best entrepreneurs is a building year. It's heads down and building and growing. I do think investors and capital allocators will be back to the market, deploying capital in these emerging ecosystems. I think it's going to be hardest on the frontier ecosystems we've talked about, right, where the capital stack is sort of the least developed.

We will have a lot to celebrate the next time there's a real liquidity window. There are IPOs happening. There are a few dozen companies from Latin America and elsewhere ready to be US public listed companies when the market is ready for them. It'll be the biggest crop ever. But that's probably not coming in 2024. My hunch is that's in 2025 or 2026.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Cautious optimism from Allen Taylor. Very quickly, billion dollar questions. First thing that comes to mind. Fill in the blank, Allen. Success is?

Allen Taylor: Surrounding yourself with amazing people.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Failure is?

Allen Taylor:

Not focusing your energy on the right thing.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Good one. What's your most used app on your phone right now?

Allen Taylor:

Oh my gosh, WhatsApp. I live in WhatsApp because that's where all our founders are and everybody is.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

First job you got paid for.

Allen Taylor:

Bussing tables at a restaurant when I was 15.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Money or power?

Allen Taylor:

Neither. Uh, people.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

What keeps you up at night still?

Allen Taylor:

Well, we have an 11-week-old, so very literally a little bit of that. but I would say the real answer is, a healthy amount of paranoia around where the world is today and wanting to continue to see us move in the right direction.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

And this can't be focus your energy elsewhere, but one mantra. Like, this is your final word to a funder or a founder that's in the rough right now. What's the mantra?

Allen Taylor:

Never give up. That one actually comes from my dad. He has a foundation called the Never Give Up Foundation. That doesn't mean don't close your company, right? You might need to close your company, things come to an end, but never give up on kind of your dream of what you really want to be in the world and what you want to do.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Love it. And with that, Allen Taylor, thank you so much for your time and the work that you're doing globally to continue to inspire and lift entrepreneurs everywhere. And keep making billion dollar moves.

Allen Taylor:

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.