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.
GEN community news
- GEN and Youth Business International have launched a Youth Entrepreneurship Framework that equips policymakers with fresh perspectives and actionable steps to empower a new generation of founders.
- The World Bank has released its new flagship business index, Business Ready (B-READY), which evaluates the business and investment climate worldwide. It replaces and improves upon the Doing Business project and introduces a new analytical framework that benchmarks economies based on three pillars: Regulatory Framework, Public Services, and Operational Efficiency.
News
- The UK has launched a Regulatory Innovation Office aimed at helping speed up approvals for new technologies in fields such as biotechnology and autonomous vehicles. The body will take innovation “by the scruff of its neck” according to Science Secretary Peter Kyle (FT)
- Georgia will introduce special status and a tax break for startups. The government will determine special statuses for innovative startups, small and medium enterprises, and research and development (R&D) companies, which will be eligible for tax benefits to stimulate growth in the technology sector (Commersant)
- Egypt has convened the first meeting of the Entrepreneurship Mindset Committee. Key challenges facing the entrepreneurial community were discussed, including funding gaps and the necessity for improved incentives for foreign investors (Egypt Today)
- Kenya has revived its 2022 Information and Communications (Amendment) Bill, which seeks to split Safaricom, the country’s biggest telco from M-PESA its mobile money unit (TechCabal)
- The European Investment Bank (EIB) is considering new measures to help close the funding gap for European startups and prevent them from relocating across the Atlantic. A key pillar of the plan is to increase support for the EU’s venture capital and private equity markets to enable the scaling up of innovative startups and unicorns (TNW)
Research
- Unleashing Productivity through Firm Financing
This World Bank publication draws upon a newly constructed Orbis data set for 2.5 million private firms and demonstrates that misallocation of finance stifles aggregate productivity. - State of Belgian Tech Report
This inaugural report by Syndicate One, Bain & Company and Sofina combines insights from current data with results from a recent survey of 130+ startup founders, as well as a series of in-depth interviews with leading entrepreneurs and investors from across the country. - Do Makerspaces Affect Entrepreneurship? If So, Who, How, and When?
This journal article demonstrates meaningful broad-based impacts of makerspaces on particular types of entrepreneurship with growth potential. The findings suggest that competitive, prominent accelerators and incubators are not the only avenues for entrepreneurs to achieve commercialization success. - Investing in Women: The Untold Stories of Mothers in VC
This WVC:E report shines a light on the challenges that women in VC face and provides actionable insights for colleagues and workplaces. The research reveals that over two-thirds (71 per cent) of women planning on having children or more children were concerned about returning to work in venture capital. - Innovation Drivers: Tracking Big Tech’s Support For European Startups
This Founders Forum report provides a comprehensive overview of Big Tech’s support for the European startup ecosystem, covering investment activity, media coverage, and founder sentiment to celebrate the successes and identify the gaps. - Enabling the Forgotten Women of Scotland: Potential Entrepreneurs for the Future
This journal article explores whether entrepreneurship can help overcome economic and social barriers for vulnerable women (those leaving the criminal justice system and survivors of abuse) in Scotland. Summary - Boosting SME Finance for Growth: The Case for More Effective Support Policies
This World Bank report offers strategic and actionable guidance to policymakers in strengthening their access to finance policies for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). It emphasizes the need to improve the enabling environment for SME debt and equity financing and offers a roadmap for policymakers. - Coping with Indeterminate Dangers in a Violent Conflict Zone: A Study of Libyan Women Entrepreneurs
This journal article seeks to develop a stronger understanding of women’s entrepreneurial activities in violent conflict zones. Drawing upon qualitative data collected from interviews with 30 women who had launched businesses in Libya following the Arab Spring, the report illuminates the reality women entrepreneurs face in such hostile environments.
Comment and analysis
- The Saboteurs That Threaten Innovation — And How to Handle Them (Steve Blank, entrepreneur/author)
- How Entrepreneurship Is Thriving Across the U.S. (Victor W. Hwang, Founder and CEO, Right to Start)
- Spain’s tech sector offers a view into Draghi’s ‘Innovation Gap crisis’ (Andrew Hak, reporter, TNW)
- Europe’s New Tech Commissioner Actually Likes Tech (Bill Echikson and Oona Lagercrantz, CEPA)
- How Regulations Constrain Education Entrepreneurship and Innovation (Kerry McDonald, Senior Fellow, FEE)
- African startups and tech media must find a common ground in reporting (Ephraim Modise, reporter, TechCabal)
- Sudanese founders face unfair sanctions (Yousif Yahya, founder of Savannah Innovation Labs)
- Europe Might Wrap the Tech Industry in Even More Red Tape (Ash Johnson, Senior Policy Manager, ITIF)
- ‘A constant stream of complicated things:’ Germany-based founders battle bureaucracy (Miriam Partington, senior reporter, Sifted)
- Fintech has outgrown sandboxes. Now it needs airports (Dante Disparte, Chief Strategy Officer; Head, Global Policy, Circle Internet Financial
- How an African approach to financing models can drive growth and inclusion (Edwin Obonyo, Lecturer and Researcher, Strathmore Center of Value Investing at Strathmore University and Alisa Sydow, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, ESCP Business School)
- India regulatory reform could hasten homecoming of IPO-bound startups (Ashwin Manikandan and Haripriya Suresh, reporters, Reuters)
Features
- Europe’s privacy patrol is spoiling Big Tech’s AI party: New leadership in Dublin has put the EU’s privacy regulators on a collision course with Big Tech (Politico)
- A founder walks into a bar - and turns it into a lab. Here’s how startups are converting unusual spaces into scientific offices: Lab space continues to be a barrier for Europe's biotechs — but these founders have found a creative way around the problem (Sifted)
GEN Atlas insights
The GEN Atlas is the world’s largest entrepreneurship policy compendium, featuring over 400 case studies from 70 countries. Using these case studies, we publish Country Deep Dives examining the policies underpinning countries’ entrepreneurial success, Policy Deep Dives comparing different countries’ approaches to common policy challenges, and Atlas Spotlights highlighting the best examples of policies under a broad theme. Recent highlights:
- Policy deep dives: Employee share schemes | Startup visas | Youth entrepreneurship | Supporting ethnic minority entrepreneurs
- Country deep dives: South Africa | France | The Netherlands | Australia | Spain
- Atlas spotlights: Finance
To suggest content for inclusion in future editions of 'The Startup State', please email matt@genglobal.org.
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