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
- Luxembourg has proposed a new tax regime for startup employee stock option plans, deferring taxation until shares are sold rather than at grant or exercise. (Luxembourg Times)
- The United Kingdom will put regulatory sandboxes on a statutory footing as part of a 'Regulating for Growth' bill that puts a legal "growth duty" on regulators. The move is billed as making Britain the "world's fastest market to commercialize innovation" (GOV.UK)
- South Korea will create a new "future response fund" to invest windfall tax revenue from its AI-driven chip boom into megaprojects, housing, and startup and employment support for young people. (The Korea Times)
- Germany has recorded 3,053 new startups in the first half of 2026, a record high, with Hamburg overtaking Munich in new company formations for the first time in years. (Tech.eu)
- The United States' Delaware has drafted legislation to create a regulatory sandbox letting AI agents run entire companies while shielding owners from liability. (Spotlight Delaware)
- India's Uttar Pradesh state has approved its Startup Policy 2026, doubling seed funding and prototype grants and creating a ₹1,000 crore ($105m) startup fund as part of its push toward a $1 trillion state economy. (India Today)
- New Zealand's Auckland mayor will wear 100 different local startup t-shirts over 100 days to spotlight the city's founders ahead of Auckland Startup Week in October. (Scoop)
- Senegal has launched a $50 million Catalyst DER/FJ Fund to finance pre-seed and seed-stage startups and close the country's early-stage funding gap. (WeeTracker)
- Haiti has launched AyitiLAB, a new innovation hub backed by its Ministry of Commerce and Industry to support young entrepreneurs and job-creating business ideas. (The St Kitts Nevis Observer)
Ghana has launched an MSME Digital Gateway, a one-stop digital platform connecting entrepreneurs to business registration guidance, financing and market opportunities. (ModernGhana)
Comment and analysis
- Europe's startup boom still needs an exit plan (Juanita González-Uribe, associate professor & co-director, Financial Markets Group, LSE; and Robyn Klingler-Vidra, associate professor in political economy and entrepreneurship & vice dean for global engagement, King's Business School)
- Empowered women entrepreneurs can stimulate growth (Lakshmi Venkataraman Venkeatesan, founder and managing trustee, Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust)
- Singapore already has the ingredients for world-class founders; now we need the culture to match (Sian W Tan, contributor, e27)
- Korea's next startup challenge is not construction but ecosystem coordination (Richard Park, journalist, KoreaTechDesk)
- South Africa risks losing Africa's startup race as policy failures scare capital (Royal Ibeh, senior journalist, BusinessDay NG)
- What should India learn from China's tech rise? Not everything (S. Ramakrishna Velamuri, founding dean, Mahindra University School of Management)
- Economic development programs create jobs — for lobbyists (Michael D. LaFaive, senior director, Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, Mackinac Center for Public Policy)
- Welsh government needs to talk more to entrepreneurs and not just business organizations (Dylan Jones-Evans, co-founder, Ideas Community)
The greatest startup in history: What we can learn from America's founders at today's AI frontier (Ashok N. Srivastava, senior vice president & chief AI officer, Intuit)
Features
- Dubai's new startup campus wants to be the front door for founders (Euronews)
- 'We are acting as pioneers to develop the true capitalism 2.0' – Markus Freiburg, new chair of Impact Europe (Pioneers Post)
- Inside the EU's €63 million race to save AI startups from regulation (150sec)
- Fintech Landscape in the Caribbean: Haiti in 2026 (The Fintech Times)
- China's AI boom is creating a different kind of entrepreneur (Rest of World)
Indonesia gives its best-known entrepreneur a decade in jail (The Economist)
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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.