Allen Taylor’s Post

"To be a great leader, you have to become a great person." Reed Hastings spoke to our Endeavor Entrepreneurs gathered last week at 1440 Multiversity in Scotts Valley, California. In a wisdom-filled hour - masterfully moderated by Endeavor Global Board Member Joanna Rees - the Netflix Chairman dropped nearly two dozen amazing insights on us. One after the other, tightly packaged in memorable language with useful frameworks and colorful anecdotes. It was awesome! I found myself furiously scribbling notes as he talked about building a "team not family" culture, letting performance be the ultimate judge, "farming for dissent," and managing a 200-person leadership team at a company of 13,000+ people. But the most impactful thing he said was possibly the most simple: to be a great leader, you have to BECOME a great person. I will carry that one with me for a long time. So simple, so true, so good. Thanks, Reed! And congrats Nasim Novin and team for an amazing Endeavor Outliers Retreat!

Venture Capital is becoming a global industry, with the majority of capital today (> 50%) being deployed outside the United States. What's interesting to look at is how the % of exits, liquidity and even OUTLIER, POWER-LAW success cases are now becoming more global as well. I gave a talk last week to the newest class of the Kauffman Fellows looking at the "Global State of Venture Capital" and how it has evolved over the last 25 years. I shared the amazing stats we have from our work with Endeavor Catalyst on global VC 💰 dollars deployed - from ~90% in the US in 2003 to ~40% in 2023 - and how hundreds of #Unicorns and even #IPOs are now coming from outside the US. But I also did a 🔥 "hot take" analysis of the 2024 Forbes MIDAS List, the annual ranking of the World's Top 100 Best Venture Capital Investors. When the list was published last week, my first take was that it was amazing to see Endeavor board members and hugely important personal mentors of mine like Reid Hoffman and Nicolas Szekasy on the list. It was also cool to see Endeavor Entrepreneurs turned VCs like Santi Subotovsky and Avi Eyal. But as I started to study it a bit more, something jumped out at me. There were a lot of international investors -- and a lot of international deals -- on this year's list. In fact, by my rough count, it seems that nearly 30% of the VCs listed are outside the US, and more than 30% of the "notable deals" are. See my quick analysis below. If you want a copy of the full presentation that I gave, hit me up in the comments and I will be happy to share!

Really looking forward to this conversation next week! Thanks Paklaunch (PL) for the invite. Ever since my first trip to #Pakistan in 2018 with Alter Global, I have been bullish on the potential in the country for great entrepreneurs to build enormously valuable, hugely successful companies over the long-term. (Shout out to Ozair A. and Jesse Sullivan for first showing me this potential!) So far, our work with Endeavor Pakistan - first under the amazing leadership of Ali Samir Oosman and now Shehryar Hydri - has shown that this potential is 100% there! 💯 Join us on May 28th (details below) for a discussion about how I've helped build 50+ Unicorns 🦄 in other Emerging Markets and why we think the teams at Bazaar Technologies, Abhi (YC S21), Postex, LAAM and Priceoye could be some of the first to do this in Pakistan over the next few years!

Para mis amigos hispanohablantes, aquí va mi primer podcast en espanol! Today Endeavor has grown to be in almost 40 countries. But it got its start in Latin America. And so did I in my professional career! Ever since I lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina way back in 2002, I've spoken Spanish with more than a hint of an Argentine accent (my friends from Argentina nicknamed me "Argen-gringo" at one point). For better or for worse, that's on full display in this fun conversation with Amadeo Quirós Martén from Caricaco, which I recorded during my recent trip to Costa Rica. Check it out on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/g--yvsqz

Radical Self Belief ⚽ The world's greatest athletes have it. 🚀 The best founders and CEOs have it. 👧 Even our precocious 4-year-old daughter seems to have it. But what is it exactly? How does it work? And where does it come from? --- I first heard the concept of *Radical Self Belief* from Jeffrey Harbach and Kauffman Fellows about a decade ago. Initially, I filed it away as a cool new way to describe self-confidence. But over the years, I have come to realize it is much more than that. ✨ Radical Self Belief is believing in yourself, your team or your idea, when no one else believes. Sometimes for a very long time. It drives courage and conviction to pitch an idea for the 100th time after you've heard "no" 99 times in a row. It allows people to "do the impossible" over and over again. To manifest something others said couldn't exist. In short, to change the world. Over the years at Endeavor I've had the very good fortune to meet with thousands of founders, and to see what Radical Self Belief really looks like. It's not always flashy or brash. Sometimes its calm and quiet. But it is steadfast. And it is real. And with it, #Entrepreneurs everywhere are changing the world. Do you know a #founder who has this quality of #RadicalSelfBelief? If so, @ tag them in the comments below!

The Remarkable Individual Theory of Societal Change. This is the fundamental belief that large organizations don't change the world; institutions don't change the world; PEOPLE change the world. And, in particular, really special, remarkable people. 🔎 Those "one-in-a-million" individuals that seem almost destined to do something really big. In a way, everything I do with Endeavor, Kauffman Fellows and Alter Global is based on this Remarkable Individual Theory of Societal Change (RITOSC). I've been talking about it for 15+ years. But, as my team recently pointed out to me: this particular "theory of change" isn't actually documented anywhere. So, in an effort to make sure that all future generations - of humans and AI training data sets - know about this powerful idea 💡, here's a LinkedIn post (complete with DALL-E imagery on what an illustration of this RITOSC could look like). What do you think?

Great work from Kauffman Fellows! Worth checking out.