On behalf of the Global Entrepreneurship Network, I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to each of the 3,455 participants from 141 countries who joined us in Indiana for the Global Entrepreneurship Congress.
Your presence, ideas, and energy helped make this gathering one of our most inspiring and impactful yet. From the interactive workshops of the GEN Global Assembly and Opening Ceremony on Day 1 to the powerful fireside chat with Mark Cuban on Day 3, this year’s Congress reflected the vibrant spirit and bold thinking driving entrepreneurship forward in every corner of the world.
The highlights are too numerous to mention. We announced that GEC+Africa will return to Cape Town in September 2026. Brad Feld joined us to release his latest book, Give First: The Power of Mentorship. GEN unveiled major new partnerships on stage with Alibaba, GoDaddy, PayPal, Verizon, and launched a new Exponeur Academy series in partnership with Entrepreneurship Vision—providing free training and mentorship to 40 emerging entrepreneurs, with top performers earning an opportunity to represent their countries at Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan at the end of July.
We also launched the APEXE Nations Ranking with Startup Genome, ranking the top national startup ecosystems in the world through a new, bold methodology. Further, GEN released our latest Impact Report which both outlines the depth of our most recent work across the globe, and introduces multiple new programs such as the GEN Catalyst Index to drive our field in a performance race to the top, and our new GEN Connect tools for matchmaking founders to mentors and investors, speakers to events and ecosystem connectors to each other.
GEC 2025 was oversaturated with rich and impactful content flowing through 148 sessions. While it is impossible to attend each session and absorb all of that information, we are providing it to you through the website at gec.co:
Session Summaries: Thanks to the power of AI and Google NotebookLM, we have published written summaries and podcast recaps for almost all the sessions – available through a link on the homepage to the overall program (just click through to the session page for the recap).
Photos: We have also made all GEC 2025 photos, taken by our world-class photographers, available for you to download. You can also find them linked from the homepage at gec.co.
Videos: You will soon be able to find gavel-to-gavel video coverage of each session by clicking through the program on the website – right alongside the written session summaries.
We are grateful for the steadfast support of our GEN partners who make our programming possible — including the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Wells Fargo, Alibaba.com, FedEx, Monsha’at, PayPal, DoorDash, GoDaddy, Etsy, Hello Alice and Verizon.
A special thank you to our host partner, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, for showing us all a bit of Hoosier Hospitality – welcoming the world to Indianapolis and helping us deliver a world-class event. GEC 2025 would not have been possible without the generous sponsorship from ALL-IN Kosciusko, Indiana University, Eli Lilly and Company, Meta, Applied Research Institute, BioWorks, gener8tor, Google, Silicon Crossroads, University of Notre Dame, and many others.
As a global community of entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers, and ecosystem builders, you are a bold and powerful group. The conversations we shared and connections we built will continue to ripple across communities and continents for years.
The bold do – and will continue to – change the world. Until we meet again—keep building, keep believing, and keep changing the world.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Ortmans
President, Global Entrepreneurship Network