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.
GEN at VivaTech
GEN will be at Vivatech in Paris next week to launch the Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2026, produced annually by Startup Genome and Global Entrepreneurship Network since 2017, featuring insights from more than 5.5 million companies across 350+ startup ecosystems worldwide. Session details
GEN President Jonathan Ortmans will also join Aldulrahman Al Sowaidi, CEO of Qatar Development Bank, for a discussion on the topic, "From evolving ecosystems to global stages: Building for the AI era", moderated by Lee Howell, former managing director of the World Economic Forum. The session will examine what the AI era demands of the startup ecosystems, the institutions, and partners building alongside new ventures. Session details
If you'll be at VivaTech and want to connect, please email us via vivatech2026@genglobal.org
Startup Genome and GEN are also hosting two online launch events for the Global Startup Ecosystem Report: Thursday, June 18, 5pm CEST and Friday, June 19, 8am CEST
News
- Egypt is launching a standalone government entity dedicated to startups as the country attempts to address longstanding complaints about bureaucracy and stem the flow of founders relocating their businesses to Gulf markets. 'The Entrepreneurship Unit', reporting directly to the prime minister, will coordinate startup policy across ministries, resolve regulatory bottlenecks, and oversee implementation of reforms under Egypt's Startup Charter (LaunchBaseAfrica)
- The Netherlands is significantly tightening its oversight of foreign investments to prevent vital knowledge from leaking to countries that pose a risk to national security. From 2027, companies in the biotech, AI, advanced materials, nanotech, sensor and navigation tech, and nuclear tech sectors will be subject to security screening of investments (IOplus)
- The United Kingdom has announced a new bespoke concierge service for its fastest-growing firms modelled on approaches in France, Singapore and the U.S. The service will help unlock deals, unblock delays, waive visa application fees, and provide support with regulation, finance, and access to global talent, to bring about the UK's first trillion-dollar firm (gov.uk)
- Indonesia is targeting the creation of ten million new entrepreneurs by 2029 as part of efforts to increase the national entrepreneurship ratio and expand employment opportunities (Antara)
- Australia has scrapped its 'Startup Year' program, designed to help university students launch startups through loans of up to USD $15,000, after the pilot attracted only eight participants (Startup Daily)
Comment and analysis
- The agency gap: Why the future belongs to those who act — and why we must build Generation Entrepreneur in response (Jonathan Ortmans, president, Global Entrepreneurship Network)
- When all the capital lands in Singapore and goes nowhere else (Chris Chen, founder, Future 500)
- The 90% collapse: How U.S. tech and infrastructure debt turned African AI into a rounding error (LaunchBaseAfrica)
- The structural flaw in how we support entrepreneurs (Rahat Ahmed, founder and managing director, Anchorless Bangladesh)
- Vertical specialisation: The rise of sector-focused startups (Ajay Modi, director, Piper Serica)
- For Ukraine's mil-tech startups, access to credit remains a battlefield (Luca Lery Moffat, economics reporter, Kyiv Independent)
- A strong shekel is becoming the Startup Nation's next challenge (James Spiro, founder, The Spiro Circle)
- Innovation on ice: How DOGE derailed an SBA tech program (Matt Bracken, editor in chief, FedScoop)
- From funding to deployment: What Asia's investment model gets right (Claudia Ukonu, growth lead, Uplink, World Economic Forum)
- 1,500 Nepalese startups came, took loans and vanished. Now borrowing isn't easy (Krishana Prasain, The Kathmandu Post)
Features
- Only in America: Hoover Institution's new series asks titans, 'Could you have made it anywhere else?' (Hoover Institution)
- Timbuktoo's Joanne Manda on building Africa's innovation engine from within (TechCabal)
- Forbes 250 Immigrants: Celebrating the immigrants shaping America for the past 250 years (Forbes)
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The opinions expressed in the articles above are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Global Entrepreneurship Network.