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
- Global Entrepreneurship Congress returns to the U.S. for the first time in 15 years this summer. Join thousands of founders, investors, ecosystem builders and policymakers from 200 countries in Indianapolis, June 2-5 (GEN)
- Engine has launched its 2025 Startup Policy Agenda (setting out “how policymakers can help power the machine of innovation”) and its 2025 Startup Policy Playbook (setting out “how startups can navigate the policymaking machine”)
News
- The European Union has launched the “Competitiveness Compass” - a growth strategy to “regain competitiveness and secure sustainable prosperity. (European Commission | Politico summary)
- Egypt’s Ministerial Group for Entrepreneurship has finalized its plans for a forthcoming ‘Startup Charter’, which will include a new financial package and a unified definition of startups (Daily New Egypt)
- Iraq has announced a series of measures to empower young entrepreneurs, including the launch of youth enterprise hubs nationwide, a 500-strong youth entrepreneurship forum, expanding the national youth climate change team, and support for youth with disabilities (Iraqi News)
- The Inter-American Development Bank has inaugurated a new TechLab - an emerging technology laboratory hub for the Caribbean - in Trinidad and Tobago. The initiative is designed to advance the region’s digital transformation agenda, fostering innovation and long-term growth (IABD)
Comment and analysis
- Will AI regulation “avoid past mistakes” or just make different ones? (Ash Johnson, senior policy manager, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation)
- Tech schizophrenia: Who makes US policy? (Fiona Alexander, non-resident senior fellow, Center for European Policy Analysis)
- The great reset: From startups to what’s next (Nicholas Colin, publisher, Drift Signal - formerly European Straits)
- New Zealand universities need to up their game on teaching entrepreneurship (Rod McNaughton, professor of entrepreneurship, University of Auckland)
- Social entrepreneurship and innovation has moved from the margins to mainstream (Hilde Schwab, chair and co-founder and Francois Bonnici, director, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship)
- How Malmo developed a thriving startup community: Lessons from Minc’s journey (Daniel Persson, CEO, Minc)
Features
- The global struggle over how to regulate AI (Rest of World)
- Reviving the Syrian startup scene (The Realistic Optimist - $)
- Builders Live: Introducing a new podcast on ecosystem building (Technical.ly)
- VCs seek relief from UK’s incoming carried interest tax: “It’s a massive jump” (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
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The opinions expressed in the articles above are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Global Entrepreneurship Network.