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.
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News
- South Korea has committed 310bn Won ($223m) to a fund of funds for the 'NEXT UNICORN Project', a program that aims to move beyond fragmented, small-scale investments to provide large-scale, concentrated funding tailored to each stage of growth for promising AI and deep-tech startups. The investment will form VC funding of $396m (MSS)
- Ethiopia has passed a Startup Proclamation, which aims to transform the country's fragmented startup sector into a more formalized and supported part of the national economy. The proclamation was passed five years after it was first proposed (Launch Base Africa)
- The Netherlands has set out a package of nine measures to increase research and development investment from 2.2% to 3% of GDP by 2030. Measures include exploring the need for a 'National Agency for Disruptive Innovation', efforts to mobilize pension fund investment into startups, and efforts to boost the commercialization of academic research (IO Plus)
- Bermuda is the latest country to develop a comprehensive national entrepreneurship strategy using UNCTAD's entrepreneurship policy framework. Minister of Economy, The Hon. Jason Hayward MP, has called on Bermudians to participate in the process, noting that "this..is not merely a policy document; it is a blueprint for a future where Bermudian businesses cannot only survive but truly thrive" (Royal Gazette)
Comment and analysis
- The new internationalists: How founders are uniting a divided world (Ranny Rimer, partner, Index Ventures, echoes GEN President Jonathan Ortman's key message of his opening speech at GEC Indiana last month)
- Europe needs more investment and less bureaucracy to survive in global competition (Lars Klingbeil, German finance minister and Eric Lombard, French finance minister - written in German)
- A new deal for American entrepreneurship (Ro Khanna, member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California, and Joe Dalia, member of the Nevada Assembly, set out their proposed Homegrown Opportunity Act, which would help low-income entrepreneurs realize their American Dream by providing two years of housing, food, and essential services)
- Why venture capital avoids your startup ecosystem (Paul O'Brien, author, Startup Economist)
- Mission-oriented innovation or mission-enabled innovation? (Robert D Atkinson, president, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation)
- Unlock America's hidden entrepreneurs: Congress must pass the New Start Act now (Mary Graham, CEO, Persevere writes in support of draft U.S.legislation to fund programs training currently and formerly incarcerated individuals in entrepreneurship)
- Stemming the rise of destructive entrepreneurship in Indonesia (Andree Surianta, senior research and policy specialist, Center for Indonesian Policy Studies)
Features
- EU's dream of 1 startup regime risks shattering into 27 pieces (Politico)
- From startup bill to crypto deadlines: Ghana's innovation engine is running on ticking clocks (Launch Base Africa)
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.
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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.