On behalf of the international community I want to acknowledge that:
Our congress is being held on the lands of the Wurundjeri people and we wish to acknowledge them as Traditional Owners.
We would also like to pay our respects to their Elders, past and present, and Aboriginal Elders of other communities who may be here today.
On behalf of the international delegates, thank you to the people of Australia, Minister Husic, and Ministers Carroll and Dimopoulos, from the government of Victoria for hosting us in your beautiful city. As we walk around Melbourne we have all been impressed at what a livable and beautiful home you have. As entrepreneurs we are proud to see what the Global Startup Ecosystem reports as a place with a 43% increase in Ecosystem Value – amounting to $25 billion – with Melbourne rising six places and recording a 50% increase in exits valued over $1 billion. You talk our business.
There are so many others to thank for this week – our sponsors listed in your app, all the ecosystem leaders like Launch Vic, Tech Council, Startup Network and Business Events Australia for the huge amount of support you have all given to this event. Big events - like entrepreneurship itself - are messy creations but you have been patient and kind and GEN looks forward to working with you in the months ahead as we map GEN Australia’s contributions to your work in 2024 and beyond.
Finally, a thank you to MCI Australia and Dr. Chad Renando, Managing Director of recently formed GEN Australia. This wouldn’t be happening without you. Thank you for your hard work and personal sacrifice and commitment to this cause.
We have planned an important journey for you this week. Today we will convene as a Global Assembly, addressing some key common priorities both here and in our government Ministerials upstairs, and hearing how our GEN communities have been helping founders, investors, ecosystem builders and governments across the world.
Tomorrow and Thursday you will get to work on how you want to Transform Our World in small groups with over 100 intensive interactive sessions where we will learn and be empowered. In our GEN Village, the beating heart of the GEC, we will have a steady flow of investor founder match making, pitches, side meetings, and plenty of opportunity to listen, share, eat and meet.
Friday morning we will gather informally, design thinking style, to make sense of it all to leave with purpose and actionable plans.
When we began this work in 2008, the global ecosystem was wildly uneven, with many communities lacking self-belief and feeling overshadowed by giants such as Silicon Valley.
At the time, the notion of uniting the ecosystems of 200 nations into one global system may have seemed naïve to most people. But with each avenue that GEN explored, we found likeminded allies who shared our audacity and vision for a world where entrepreneurship thrives in every community.
Our belief was simple: that the raw talent and ingenuity present in Silicon Valley was no greater than the untapped potential of nascent ecosystems all around the world.
The true gap between these sophisticated innovation-based economic powerhouses and the rest of the world was not genetic or unique to any single political model but instead the result of a unique cocktail of confidence and opportunity not yet available in large parts of the world. So…we set about a plan to change that.
Nation by nation, entrepreneur by entrepreneur, we worked to expand the GEN family across 200 nations. We launched global campaigns like Global Entrepreneurship Week to spread the culture of entrepreneurship and our message of hope to build one global entrepreneurial ecosystem. We started to see decentralized communities collaborating, fueled by years of earned trust and a common “build something” culture that cut across political and cultural divides and countered the destructive forces present around the world.
Since we last all gathered in Riyadh, this work has only gathered in pace. Backed by an incredible team of staff, volunteers and partners, GEN has directly supported 7,130 entrepreneurs over the past 18 months and our work has indirectly impacted 1.23 million entrepreneurs around the world.
This week you will be able to see firsthand how we do this with sessions around all our global workstreams that support policymakers, ecosystem builders, investors and of course, entrepreneurs.
I am especially proud of the growth in our direct support of founders with 350 of our startups flying to this event. For example, the Entrepreneurship World Cup (EWC) delivered support to 29,000 startups from 197 countries. GEN Invest’s Small Business Grants program provided nearly USD $22 million in financial support to founders with special help to those from historically-underrepresented communities. And our GEN Accelerates team got deep into the weeds with thousands of startups from 121 countries.
Take Ole Kristian Sivertsen who founded Desert Control. Their patented Liquid Natural Clay technology combats desertification, soil degradation and water scarcity by converting desert sand into fertile soil. Desert Control gained visibility through their win at the Entrepreneurship World Cup in Riyadh and is now working with the Ministry of Economy and Planning of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
We also have Bronwyn Bridges with us in Melbourne this year. Her company, PragmaCLin, develops digital approaches to managing neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s Disease. She was the winner of the Idea Stage Category last year and we are all incredibly excited about the work they are doing to transform lives.
Entrepreneurs are the true north star for all of us enablers here. And they are more important now than at any point in history. They are central to tackling global crises, spurring social change and improving the way we live and work and care for each other. And as our economists now know, with almost all the net new jobs come from firms less than 5 years old, it is entrepreneurs who build economies. No longer can entrepreneurship be the side ring at the circus but rather must be at the heart of national and global economic policy.
At GEN, helping entrepreneurs is what we do best – either directly or indirectly by empowering and supporting the ecosystems, backers and governments that provide the leadership and resources to power them. Today, Ministers and senior government leaders will gather to share insights and best in class programming examples to address common challenges in removing barriers to entrepreneurship in their communities.
We are deeply grateful to all our Ministers assembled in the front rows here today, not just for flying here to join us this week in Melbourne, but for all you do for your entrepreneurs back home around the clock. You are part of a growing community of startup savvy policymakers around the world that we call the Startup Nations community. You deeply understand innovation ecosystems. You are already transforming your world.
We are documenting your progress in our GEN Atlas, mapping the impact of your policies and working with you on challenges like digitalizing and simplifying your business registration and regulatory single window platforms. We have 6 governments here today for example who will be sharing how they have successfully implemented Startup Acts – something I might note that we have not been able to do in the United States home of Silicon Valley. And throughout this week’s Startup Nations Summit, we will tackle dozens more policies and programs.
Of course the majority of our work happens without government funding – whether startup community programs like Startup Huddle happening in most local communities across the world, our angel investor networks in 80 nations, our industry verticals like GEN Space, or individual projects like GEN’s 22 on Sloane, after 5 years still the largest startup campus in Africa.
And this week, you will be the first to hear about more ways we will be helping entrepreneurs and their ecosystems in 2024. I encourage you to grab your lunch tomorrow and Thursday at 1PM and join us at the GEN Village stage where we will share news about a new scale up research report coming, a new policy platform, a fantastic new GEN program focused on testing very early stage ideas, plans for a new Entrepreneurship World Cup, our new partnership with Hong Kong, and our plans in place for gathering together Africans and our Spanish speaking nations. And then at 5PM on Thursday we will conclude all the official sessions with an exciting announcement of where we will convene for the next global GEC.
In the docufilm about GEN that you just watched, the narrator observes that “part of GEN’s mission is to not engage in a country’s geopolitical activity.” Since the film was released, this notion that to be trusted by all nations GEN must not judge the citizens of any country by what happens at the geopolitical level has stuck with me as particularly relevant for our current work today.
I acknowledge that failing to judge some nations makes some uncomfortable. Each of us has strongly held views on injustices inflicted around the world. But at GEN we have a very long term mission that goes beyond this, that is reliant on building bridges instead of taking stances on issues that – realistically – we lack the tools to influence.
Instead we focus communities on what I call “challenges that matter” – namely challenges that have people rallying behind them to give a sense of purpose and drive people to be bothered to take action. Challenges we where we have a big common goal or incentive – like an xprize or capital . With these characteristics, we can solve any problem from unexpected places to work on issues like food security, climate change, energy, health care and bold new frontiers like new space where we can solve big problems in zero gravity, that are impossible solutions to craft on earth.
The progress we make on these issues in the next decade will determine the success of the next 100 years and beyond. That is what will decide our collective future on this planet, not wars or elections or the daily ups and downs of political life. That is why it is essential that we stay laser focused on our mission to empower innovators in every community across the planet.
In short, this mission is more important than taking a stance on issues that we lack the tools to influence.
Today the problem we have to overcome is radically different to that when we held the first annual GEC in 2009. The world no longer sees just Silicon Valley as the heartbeat of innovation. And entrepreneurship is no longer seen as something that only thrives in certain economies.
Instead, we face a burgeoning battle against geopolitical distrust and ignorance among nations. The rise of nationalism and growing scepticism towards a globalised world makes it more important than ever that we double down and demonstrate the transformational power of human endeavour that transcends borders and artificial divides.
This is why you are here today, to help unleash the full potential of the global ecosystem, the rewards for this community and the planet will be exponential and that’s why I want your help. Whether you are an entrepreneur, an investor, an entrepreneurial support organization, government leader or opinion leader our sessions over the next few days will show you how you get do your part in transforming our world. Host an event during GEW to inspire more dreamers to join your ecosystem, tell more founders about the Entrepreneurship World Cup where they can get help on a global scale, educate other policymakers as to how innovators can help solve more problems your government faces. Reach out to a person or community left behind and help give them confidence and purpose to join us.
Today, I don’t see an ecosystem divided between East and West, nor by rich and poor, not between democracies and non-democracies or political systems of any-kind, and I certainly no longer see a divide between Silicon Valley and the rest of us.
Rather, I see an ecosystem united by the sheer force of our collective determination to fix the world we live in. We are united by the uniquely human capacity to transform our curiosity into technologies that spread around the world and revolutionise the daily lives of all who occupy it. Most of all, our ecosystem is united by the universal value of success and the singular joy that comes from the freedom to create and build something of your own.
So own these next 4 days. Listen. Think. Share. Make notes. Prepare. And when you get home, act. As I have often said, what we do here is no longer something of narrow commercial significance, it represents the possibility of human endeavor for all of us. Let’s get to work.