Issue link: http://endeavor.uberflip.com/i/414924
KEY Track the connections between members of Endeavor's network throughout this story. Mentorship Inspiration Investment Founder On the morning of July 18, 2014, Martín Migoya , the co-founder & ceo of a Latin American software development firm, rang the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange. In the 11 years since Martín and his three co-founders — all Endeavor Entrepreneurs — had pooled $5,000 in savings to launch Globant, the company had grown into an employer of 3,300 people, with offices in seven countries and clients like Electronic Arts and Google. The Initial Public Offering of any com- pany is remarkable. But Martín will tell you that Globant is just the latest in a series of spectacular success stories to emerge from the tech network of Buenos Aires. When asked who inspired them to think big, Globant's founders name fellow Argentine and Endeavor Entrepreneur Marcos Galperin . In the late 1990s — a few years before Globant came on the scene — Marcos Galperin wrote the business plan for his startup, MercadoLibre, while attending Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Having seen the meteoric rise of eBay, he believed that a similar but localized e-commerce site would do well in Argentina. After graduating, Marcos and his schoolmate Hernán Kazah returned to Buenos Aires with the business plan and a round of angel funding. Within a month of launching, MercadoLibre had expanded to Mexico and Brazil. The pair soon met Linda Rottenberg , a spirited American who was spending a lot of time in Buenos Aires, evangelizing her theory of high-impact entrepreneur- ship. Linda and her friend Peter Kellner had recently co-founded a non-profit named Endeavor. The organization's mission was to find challenged markets' most promis- ing entrepreneurs and help them scale their companies to create new jobs and spur eco- nomic growth. When these entrepreneurs became successful, Endeavor would show them how to mentor and reinvest in the next generation of founders — kick-starting a cycle of new business creation. Marcos and Hernán became Endeavor Entrepreneurs and joined the organization's new but flourishing network of entrepre- neurs and volunteer mentors in Buenos Aires. In 2001, when eBay purchased a 19.5% stake in MercadoLibre, Endeavor mentors helped Marcos and Hernán negotiate fair and favorable terms. Throughout the early 2000s, the company continued to scale, and, in 2005, MercadoLibre cemented its status as the market leader when it acquired its long-time rival DeRemate. Two years later, MercadoLibre went public on the nasdaq in a $400m ipo. 3 THE NETWORK AT WORK