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)
- GEN and Youth Business International are hosting a webinar on February 27 that will explore and discuss the joint Youth Entrepreneurship Framework that launched late last year (GEN)
News
- Senegal has laid out an ambitious $1.7bn digital strategy, named “New Deal Technologique”, aiming to transform the country into a regional and international tech hub by 2034. The plan involves achieving digital sovereignty, digitalization of public services, expanding the digital economy and positioning Senegal as a leader in Africa’s tech industry (Broadcast Media Africa)
- Vietnam’s Party General Secretary Tô Lâm has called for the elimination of at least 30% of business conditions to position the country among the top three investment environments in South East Asia (Vietnam News)
- Germany has earmarked a further €200 million ($208m) for impact investments through KfW Capital, the VC arm of the state-owned development bank (IPE)
- Samoa has become the first small island developing state to adopt a national science, technology and innovation policy, with support from UNESCO (UNESCO)
Comment and analysis
- Can governments buy a tech ecosystem? (Eli David, CEO, StartupBlink)
- The unicorn founder myth: Why education actually matters (Ilya Strebulaev, founder, Venture Capital Initiative, Stanford University)
- How business accelerators can boost startup growth (Santiago Reyes Ortega and David Harrison, International Finance Corporation)
- Irish startups are thriving - Government must match their ambition (Mark O’Toole, contributor, Silicon Republic)
- What the <US> federal government can learn from the Mountain West in AI regulation (Nate Karren, policy analyst, American Consumer Institute)
- After the elections, can startups rewrite Germany’s innovation story? Felix Eggert, founder, Frontiers Strategies)
- Entrepreneurship as a way out of poverty? Study in rural Kenya shows why it doesn’t always work (Ralph Hamman, University of Cape Town, Erin Powell, North Carolina State University and Ted Baker, Rutgers University)
- The role of African regulatory sandboxes in the age of AI (Paula Gilbert, editor, Connecting Africa)
Features
- Europe’s leading startup hubs 2025: Interactive ranking (Financial Times)
- Africa’s startup funding crisis deepens as Mastercard Foundation exits top VC firm (Rest of World)
- How Ukraine changed defence tech: ‘The stigma is gone’ (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.