Finishing Strong by Connor Doyle (A’21)

by jtijssen
Nov 22

By mid-July, I felt fully integrated as a part of the Endeavor team in the UAE. As a result, I was given more complex projects to make servicing Endeavor UAE’s entrepreneurs more straightforward and efficient.

I spent a considerable amount of time verifying active investors in the region. I updated investor headquarters’ locations, average ticket sizes, desired investment verticals. After this information is uploaded to the Endeavor Open platform, portfolio companies will be able to find investors most likely to provide them with growth capital and request an introduction from our team.

Perhaps the most interesting project I worked on was solidifying the long-term servicing proposition for Endeavor UAE. I spoke with the longest-tenured and most developed offices in Central and South America to gain insight into what servicing looks like for entrepreneurs four to ten years down the line. With the help of the teams in Latin America, I constructed best practices for the growing UAE office to service entrepreneurs in the long run, which will be presented to the Endeavor UAE board this September.

At Endeavor I was always attending meetings, learning about different verticals and hearing from inspiring entrepreneurs. On my last day, I had the opportunity to reflect on my time at Endeavor and speak with my coworkers about their experiences.

Safi remarked on the bonds formed by the team working in the UAE as well as how much you learn on the job: “My favorite thing about Endeavor is my team; Endeavor has given me friends for life,” and “In the space of almost the year that I have been working here, I feel like my brain capacity has increased by terabytes. You learn so much on the job here.”

I can only echo Safi’s experience. In the short nine weeks I spent at the Endeavor office as part of my Empower fellowship, I learned far more than I can articulate in three blog posts and met so many incredible people. All the best and thank you to the entire team at Endeavor! Also, I would like to extend the largest possible thank you to the IGL at Tufts for making this all possible!