Welcome to ‘The Startup State’ - a weekly bulletin from the GEN Policy and Research team highlighting key entrepreneurship news, reports, commentary and features from around the world.
Happy New Year! This is a slightly longer issue to catch up on several exciting developments and articles since our last newsletter in late December.
GEN Atlas insights
The GEN Atlas is the world’s largest entrepreneurship policy compendium, featuring over 350 case studies from 70 countries. This week, our GEN Atlas deep dive examines policies underpinning France’s entrepreneurial success. Read the deep dive
News
- South Korea’s Ministry of SMEs and Startups has allocated a record-breaking $2.8bn support for startups in 2024, according to its latest ‘Integrated Notice’ - an annual transparency exercise detailing every local and national government startup support project available to entrepreneurs (KoreaTechDesk)
- Pakistan’s caretaker information technology minister has announced a Pakistan Startup Fund that will invest up to Rs2 billion ($7.2m) every year as minority investors in Pakistani VC deals (Arab News)
- Thailand’s Digital Economy Promotion Agency has announced a Digital Startup Fund to invest up to 1m Baht ($29k) into 15 early-stage startups in eight key sectors (AsiaTechDaily)
- Zambia is to use Starlink devices and postal network infrastructure to establish Community Digital Transformation Centres nationwide in an effort to provide free internet, digital literacy training, and entrepreneurship programs (TechPoint Africa) Similarly, Kenya is to build 1,450 ICT hubs as part of its Digital Master Plan (TechPoint Africa)
- Moldova has announced regulatory reforms to reduce barriers to entrepreneurship and support the business environment that aim to save businesses 183 million lei ($10.3m) per year (Government of Moldova)
- India’s health minister has launched the MedTech Mitra platform as part of a strategic initiative to empower medtech innovators and reduce the country’s dependence on imported medical devices (Times of India)
Publications and analysis
- The return of industrial policy in data
This IMF/Global Trade Alert column introduces the new 2,500-strong New Industrial Policy Observatory dataset and documents emergent patterns of policy intervention during 2023. - Dutch Tech Startup Employment 2023
This Dealroom report finds that, in 2023, Dutch startups created 256,000 jobs globally and 151,000 jobs spread across 50 cities in the country - with six in ten outside Amsterdam. (Read summary on TNW)
Comment
- Has the US abdicated global digital leadership? (Fiona Alexander, senior fellow, Center for European Policy Analysis)
- Why we need to ramp up tech diplomacy to harness opportunities of the digital economy (Deemah Al Yahya, secretary-general, Digital Cooperation Organization)
- Africa can take advantage of tax incentives to boost investment (Frejus Lingue, Justin To and Sylvain Eddy, Tony Blair Insitute for Global Change)
- What’s next for AI regulation in 2024? (Tate Ryan-Mosley, Melissa Heikkila and Zeyi Yang, MIT Technology Review)
- Why OpenAI signals the start of the post-Christensen startup world (Patrick Murphy, founding partner, Tapestry VC)
- Tech entrepreneurship still pays dividends (Alex Irwin-Hunt, global markets editor, fDI Intelligence, Financial Times)
- Why Australia is ripe for VC (Rebecca Bellan, reporter, TechCrunch)
- Creating local unicorns (in Pakistan) (Dr Masood Ahmed, lecturer, University of Kotli AJK)
Features
- Politico: When Silicon Valley’s AI warriors came to Washington
- TechCrunch: India widens regulatory grip over tech firms
- IRPP: How sleepy Quebec City became an economic tiger
- Sifted: Inside Bpifrance’s Funds of Funds
- Techpoint Africa: How Peace Itimi tells the story of tech evolution in Nigeria through her 90-minute Innovating Africa documentary
To suggest content for inclusion in future editions of 'The Startup State', please email matt@genglobal.org.
Get updates delivered directly to your inbox
Subscribe by selecting 'The Startup State' under communications permission in the form below.