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
- Entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist Mark Cuban will headline the Global Entrepreneurship Congress, which 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)
News
- India’s commerce & industry minister Piyush Goyal used last week’s Startup Mahakumbh event to announce a second Fund of Funds for Startups with $1.1bn of funding, alongside a ‘dedicated Startup India desk’ in the ministry to act as a national helpline for startups. The minister sparked much debate after telling startups to emulate China by focusing on deep tech and not grocery deliveries or fancy ice cream (TICE)
- South Korea has announced a government-wide public data utilization startup competition. The aim is to discover and foster ideas and innovative business models that solve national and social issues using public data. Since the first competition in 2013, over 18,000 teams have participated and 82 teams about the 137 award-winning entries have successfully launched startups (ChosunBiz)
- Pakistan’s startups have attracted over $1bn in funding through 386 deals over the last decade, according to research from Invest2Innovate (MSN)
Comment and analysis
- Can India’s startups match China’s deep tech muscle? (Brijesh Singh, contributor, The Sunday Guardian)
- If you’re asking if you can start a startup, we know how likely you are to fail - and it’s a lot worse than the average (Paul O’Brien, author, Startup Economist)
- Creating a US innovation accelerator modeled on In-Q-Tel (Luis Alvarez, Geoffrey Ling and Michael Stebbins, Day One Project contributors, Federation of American Scientists)
- Japan’s succession problem: How the country is safeguarding heritage through business (Naoko Tochibayashi, comms lead, Japan, World Economic Forum)
- How AI is fundamentally changing the operational needs of startups (Marc Penzel, founder and president, Startup Genome)
- To attract business, cities should focus less on tax credits and more on making people feel safe (Kaithlyn DeGhetto, University of Dayton and Zachary Russell, Xavier University)
- Entrepreneurship in Cuba: Uncertainty, transaction costs and stifled potential (Gregory Caskey, assistant professor of economics, Tommy and Victoria Baker School of Business, The Citadel)
Features
- SF mayor Daniel Lurie to tech CEOs: ‘How can we get you back?’ (TechCrunch)
- German tech leaders cautiously optimistic about new coalition agreement’s startup measures: ‘A good starting point, but we need action’ (Sifted)
- Trump’s tariffs test Vietnam’s role as manufacturing alternative to China (RestOfWorld)
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.