About GEN in Luxembourg

The Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) began its engagement with Luxembourg through the launch of Global Entrepreneurship Week, with GENCreo established as the country's national host organization. Though small by geography and population, Luxembourg's early participation in GEW signaled an outsized commitment to building an entrepreneurial culture — one aligned with its reputation as a leading European financial center and its growing aspirations in the technology sector. 

GEW 2014 offered an early demonstration of Luxembourg's appetite for connecting its ecosystem to European and global conversations. That November, the campaign launched with the 5th Startup Weekend Luxembourg before hosting a high-profile innovation roundtable at the European Parliament on how to digitally transform Europe — featuring Members of the European Parliament, including Renato Soru and Eva Paunova, alongside Patrick Vlaskovits of 500 Startups and other leading voices. The event illustrated Luxembourg's strategic position at the intersection of national startup culture and continental policy dialogue. 

GENCreo led the GEW campaign in Luxembourg across a number of years, helping establish the country's presence in the global GEW network during the formative years of the initiative. Luxembourg's ecosystem is characterized by one of the highest rates of motivation-driven entrepreneurship in Europe, a highly international and multilingual workforce, and strong global connectedness — qualities that make it a natural fit for GEW's mission. Startups in Luxembourg have shown a notable capacity to raise seed-stage funding at levels comparable to more established European peers, and GEW events served as a consistent point of connection among the founders, investors, and institutional partners who make up this compact but internationally oriented community. 

Luxembourg's government has demonstrated a clear commitment to supporting its startup ecosystem, and GEN has been part of the international network through which its policy community engages with global counterparts. Romain Fouarge, representing the Directorate General of SME and Entrepreneurship at the Ministry of the Economy, participated in the Startup Nations Summit (SNS) in Tallinn — the invitation-only annual gathering of entrepreneurship policymakers from more than 70 countries hosted by GEN. Luxembourg's presence at the SNS reflects its active interest in benchmarking its policies against global best practices through the peer-to-peer knowledge exchange the Summit is designed to facilitate. 

On the domestic front, Luxembourg has announced an ambitious ten-point plan to bolster its startup ecosystem, featuring €300 million in investment, investor tax credits, a new scaleup program, an employee stock option scheme, and a dedicated talent desk to help international professionals integrate into the country. These measures reflect the kind of proactive, founder-oriented policy design that GEN's Startup Nations Atlas has tracked and promoted globally, and Luxembourg's approach — combining direct investment with structural incentives for talent attraction and equity participation — aligns with best practices shared across the Startup Nations network. 

The Luxembourg Business Angels Network (LBAN) participates in GEN's Global Business Angels Network (GBAN) — a worldwide community of angel investor networks that collaborate on deal flow, co-investment opportunities, and best practices in early-stage investing. LBAN's membership in GBAN connects Luxembourg's angel investing community to a global network spanning dozens of countries, extending the reach of local capital and supporting cross-border startup development. 

Luxembourg has featured in GEN's research activities as a notable example of what a small, well-designed ecosystem can achieve. The Global Startup Ecosystem Report (GSER) — a joint publication of Startup Genome and GEN — has highlighted Luxembourg's distinctive strengths, including one of the highest rates of motivation-driven entrepreneurship in Europe and an unusually high degree of global connectedness relative to the country's size. JF Gauthier, Founder of Startup Genome, has pointed to Luxembourg as evidence that emerging ecosystems should encourage their startups to think global from the outset, so that a small national market is not a major inhibitor to growth — a principle Luxembourg's internationally oriented founder community has taken to heart. 

GEN maintains active relationships across Luxembourg's entrepreneurial ecosystem, including with the Luxembourg Business Angels Network through its participation in GBAN, and the Ministry of the Economy's Directorate General of SME and Entrepreneurship through its engagement with the Startup Nations community. Luxembourg's ecosystem leaders — spanning fintech, space technology, logistics, and digital services — benefit from GEN's global platforms for visibility, cross-border collaboration, and policy engagement. 

Jonathan Ortmans, Founder and President of GEN, has pointed to Luxembourg as a compelling example of how a small, well-designed ecosystem can drive entrepreneurial outcomes that far exceed what its size might suggest. GEN continues to support Luxembourg by connecting its founders, investors, and policymakers to the global network, and by ensuring that Luxembourg's experience informs entrepreneurship communities in emerging ecosystems around the world.