Welcome to ‘The Startup State’ - a weekly bulletin from the GEN Policy and Research team highlighting key entrepreneurship announcements, reports, commentary and features from around the world.
News
- Canada has suspended its Start-Up Visa program due to misuse. The visa offered a path to permanent residency for founders hoping to move to Canada, but by late last year, its wait times had ballooned to more than 10 years. The government plans to introduce a replacement scheme in 2026 (Betakit)
- Germany and the European Investment Fund are pooling resources to offer 1.6bn EUR ($1.8bn) to technology-based startups (BMWE)
- Greece has introduced a new golden visa for investors. In return for investing 250,000 EUR ($291,000) into a startup listed on the national registry, Elevate Greece, investors will receive a five-year residence permit (MSN)
- Tamil Nadu has become the first Indian state to roll out a dedicated policy for deeptech startups. The policy commits to supporting 100 deeptech startups with $1.3bn in public and private capital (AsiaTechDaily)
Research and publications
- Business Ready 2025 (World Bank)
- Addressing gaps to unlock entrepreneurial potential in Italy (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor)
- Public policy implications of entrepreneurship research (Herman Aguinis, Soren H Jensen, Sascha Kraus, Jasna Pocek, Michele Pinelli)
- Which entrepreneurs boost productivity? (Ufuk Akcigit, Harun Alp, Jeremny Pearce, Marta Prato)
- What a decade of research reveals about institutions and social entrepreneurship (Ute Stephan, Lorraine M Uhlaner, Christopher Stride)
- International investment in the digital economy: A toolkit for policymakers (UNCTAD)
Comment and analysis
- If Canada is truly open for business, it can't slam the door on incoming innovators (Mariam Jammal, associate business immigration lawyer, Sobirovs Law Firm)
- The California tech tax is a kill switch. Texas keeps innovation compounding (Paul O'Brien, author, Startup Economist)
- Korea's startup playbook for 2026: AI expansion, policy reform, and a venture identity reset (Richard Park, Korea Tech Desk)
- Tax breaks and 'theatrical' reforms: Can article 35 finally unlock Ivorian tech? (Launch Base Africa)
- Did the pandemic break the generosity of startup ecosystems? (Christopher Wink, editor, Technical.ly)
- Asia's startup ecosystem in 2025: From unicorn chasing to survival mode (Asia Tech Daily)
- From ambition to action: Supporting Rwanda's digital entrepreneurs to scale (Justine White, senior digital specialist, World Bank)
- Building islands of innovation: The nascent yet promising Caribbean startup ecosystems (Stephan Kuester, managing partner, Startup Ecosystem)
- The quiet unravelling of Australia's startup culture: When a nation loses sight of the rewards from risk (Jim Cooper, contributor, Startup Daily)
Features
- The sandbox worked. The system didn't: The fallout of Lucentblock and Korea's policy maturity (Korea Tech Desk)
- Fragile but forming: The reality of Francophone Africa's angel investing landscape of 2025 (Launch Base Africa)
- ESA at 50: What Europe's space agency means for startups today (tech.eu)
- University venture fund launches accelerate in 2025 (Global Corporate Venturing)
- Inside Denmark's struggle to break up with Silicon Valley (Politico)
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The opinions expressed in the articles above are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Global Entrepreneurship Network.