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.
News
- Dubai has announced a package of projects and initiatives aimed at fostering the growth of startups, supporting national talent, and driving innovation and entrepreneurship. They include a government venture building program, a national tech skills enhancement program, IGNYTE - a digital platform to connect founders with investors and supporters, and a smart city initiative (Government of Dubai)
- The United States has announced record lending to small businesses in 2024, with the Small Business Administration backing over 100,000 small businesses - the most in 15 years (The White House)
- Rwanda has published a new fintech strategy that aims to attract $200m of investment into the industry by 2029, creating 7,500 jobs and positioning the country among the top 30 globally and the best in Africa (The New Times)
- Malaysia’s latest budget placed a strong emphasis on accelerating digitalization, fostering artificial intelligence adoption, and promoting inclusive growth. It featured RM 1bn ($235m) for the National Fund-of-Funds, $235m for the Pioneer Fund, $15.4m for the Cradle Fund, and $3.5m for encouraging corporate venture capital (Open Gov Asia)
Comment and analysis
- A proclamation on Minority Enterprise Development Week (President Joseph R Biden Jr)
- Investing in youth entrepreneurship is a strategic necessity (Jonathan Ortmans, founder & president, Global Entrepreneurship Network)
- Introducing IGL’s data and technology unit (George Richardson, head of data science and technology, Innovation Growth Lab)
- UK capital gains tax raid could create one of the world’s most ‘anti-growth’ tax systems (Paul Jones, editor, Business Matters)
- The global AI talent race: How Europe compares to the U.S. (Forrest Wright, research assessment lead, Startup Genome)
- How Scale-ups: How to turn big ideas into big business (Rian Newton-Smith, CEO, Confederation of British Industry)
Features
- ‘It’s more inspiring than the Bay Area’: Why European founders are choosing NYC over Silicon Valley (Sifted)
- Changing the world through innovation: Celebrating and empowering people with disabilities (USPTO)
- Why tech and startups flourish in the Washington DMV region (technical.ly)
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
Get updates delivered directly to your inbox
Subscribe by selecting 'The Startup State' under communications permission in the form below.
The opinions expressed in the articles above are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Global Entrepreneurship Network.