Successful entrepreneurs create environments where others can do great things, Peter Kellner said in an Oct. 11 workshop at Princeton.October 15, 2007 by Hilary Parker (permalink) (watch the video)
Successful entrepreneurs create environments where others can do great things, Peter Kellner said in an Oct. 11 workshop at Princeton.
Kellner, a 1991 graduate of the University, is the co-founder of Endeavor, a non-profit organization that funds "high-impact entrepreneurs" in emerging markets. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he also is the founder and managing director of the New York City-based financial firm Richmond Management.
Kellner's appearance at Princeton was the second event in the "Harnessing the Power of Entrepreneurship" series, sponsored by the Center for Innovation in Engineering Education. The five-event series features guest speakers from a variety of settings not traditionally associated with entrepreneurship, including non-profit organizations, government and higher education.
Series organizer Julian Lange, the Dean's Visiting Professor for Entrepreneurship, introduced Kellner as a "visionary leader" who has taken a concept and made it a resounding success.
This success didn't always come easily, Kellner said, admitting that a failure early in his career taught him an all-important lesson in entrepreneurship: "You have to enable others to lead," he said.
After graduating from Princeton with a degree from the Woodrow Wilson School, he headed to Hungary on a Fulbright scholarship to study political transformation. Shortly after his arrival, he was overwhelmed by the state of the environment, which led him to establish the Environmental Law and Management Association of Hungary. Modeled after the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council, the association brought together academic leaders from a variety of disciplines to address the environmental crisis.
Having assured the association's members that funding was in the bag, Kellner was stunned when the Rockefeller Brothers Fund flatly rejected his initial application for support. The fund's leaders said they would not back a Hungarian organization led by a young American, Kellner recalled, but would likely provide support with a change in the association's leadership to help ensure longevity. Kellner took their advice and, a mere 24 hours later, the fund backed EMLA under the direction of a Hungarian lawyer, Sandor Fulop. Fulop remains the executive director of the organization to this day.
This anecdote illustrated the importance of what Kellner dubbed "opportunity correspondence" -- essentially, the fact that all of the people and organizations relevant to a given mission have to see the opportunity as a "win-win situation."
Endeavor, which Kellner co-founded in 1997 with Linda Rottenberg, is built on a solid understanding of this principle. Every time an affiliate is opened in a new country -- there are now 11 affiliates located in Latin America, Europe, Southeast Asia and Africa -- the first priority is to gain the support of the local business and university communities. Only with the trust and backing of the local community will the Endeavor affiliates seek nominations for entrepreneurs to support, Kellner said.
The ventures backed by Endeavor in the past decade include businesses in wide-ranging industries, from fashion to airline travel. The key, according to Kellner, is to find "high impact entrepreneurs" who inspire others to follow. As an example, he cited Rodrigo Jordan of Chile -- a hugely admired "local star" who founded Vertical, a company that provides leadership training through outdoor experiences.
"Entrepreneurship doesn't require inventing something altogether new," Kellner said, telling the audience that many ventures borrow best practices from other successes.
Endeavor itself is modeled after Ashoka, a global association for social entrepreneurship founded by Bill Drayton. With Drayton's bidding, Kellner and Rottenberg modified Ashoka's approach to supporting non-profit ventures for the private sector.
Kellner is currently a member of Ashoka's North American Council. In addition to his bachelor's from Princeton, he holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a law degree from Yale.
Since Endeavor's founding a decade ago, the organization has provided support to 264 entrepreneurs, selected from 17,000 nominations. Ninety-six percent of the ventures backed are still in business, and they have created around 80,000 jobs around the globe. The companies backed by Endeavor generate roughly $2 billion in revenue annually.
Kellner's entrepreneurial career began against a backdrop of world-changing events, particularly the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and he encouraged current Princeton undergraduates to take advantage of a similarly momentous time in history. Particularly exciting, he said, is the convergence of the non-profit and private sectors, which presents a unique opportunity to make the world a better place.
"I can't imagine a more exciting world than today," he said. "The opportunities are so significant to go out and make a difference."
Future guest speakers in the series include Francis P. Pandolfi '65, Consultant to NGOs/Non-Profit Organizations and Former Chief Operating Officer, U.S. Forest Service; Walter Skowronski, president of Boeing Capital Corp. and senior vice president of Boeing Co.; Edward Felten, Princeton computer scientist and director of the Center for Information Technology Policy; Princeton professor of genomics, David Botstein and director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics; and Nancy Malkiel, Princeton's dean of the college.