GEN has a long history of working with the Dutch entrepreneurial ecosystem that began with an innovative idea from its universities to collectively host Global Entrepreneurship Week, but invite a different university to take the lead each year. This approach has since been adopted by several other countries.
Utrecht University academic and ecosystem leader Dr. Hein Roelfsema has been a long-term advocate for GEN in the Kingdom and was instrumental in the development of the national Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) campaign. The GEW campaign has attracted prominent speakers over the years, including Princess (now Queen) Máxima, and was recognized as the best national GEW campaign in 2011, thanks in part to the efforts of 825 partner organizations. The campaign is strongly embraced by universities and regional innovation ecosystems, including the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship, Delft, and organizations across the Brabant province.
Many other innovations within the global entrepreneurial ecosystem communities GEN manages have been launched from the Netherlands. One prominent example is “Get in the Ring”, a global startup competition that was founded in 2012 by leading GEN voice in the Netherlands, Hendrick Halbe and five Dutch entrepreneurs. Developed in collaboration with GEN and the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship in Rotterdam, it was created to shake up traditional pitch competitions. GEN President Jonathan Ortmans judged the first international final featuring 12 countries in Rotterdam in 2012, and it became a mainstay of Global Entrepreneurship Week each November. The 2015 pitch battle, for example, featured six regional finalists from the Netherlands, demonstrating the local startup scene's growth. The competition, now run by the Unknown Company, headquartered in the Hague, has matured as a major global force for startups.
Dutch policymakers have played a central role in GEN’s Startup Nations policy community over the years. In 2015, former European Union Vice President Neelie Kroes received an award from GEN for her role in championing entrepreneurship policies. Neelie Kroes served as Vice President of the European Union for the Digital Agenda from 2010 to 2014, where she put startups high on the European agenda. She went on to serve as Special Envoy for Startups in the Netherlands, leading StartupDelta (now Techleap). Neelie was awarded the Startup Nations Award for Groundbreaking Policy Thinking.
Theodore Klouvas, who founded the award-winning Orange Corners international development program within the Netherlands Enterprise & Development Agency, was a regular in Startup Nations, and team lead within GEN policy hackathons. More recently, the latest Orange Corners program coordinator, Erik Parigger and his team contributed extensively to the GEN & Youth Business International ‘Youth Entrepreneurship Framework’. Juuriann Middelhoff, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Ambassador for Youth, Education and Employment, wrote the foreword for the framework.
Amsterdam’s leading tech entrepreneurship event, The Next Web (which drew to a close in 2025) provided an important global platform for the 2019 and 2023 launches of the Global Startup Ecosystem Report, the flagship annual report published by Startup Genome and GEN. The Dutch entrepreneurial policy environment has also been profiled in a GEN Atlas Deep Dive on the country.
In 2019, at the request of the Trump Administration, GEN implemented the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in The Hague. Organized on behalf of the U.S. Department of State, Global Entrepreneurship Summits aimed to showcase inspiring entrepreneurs and investors from around the world creating new opportunities for investment, partnership, and collaboration; connect American entrepreneurs and investors with international counterparts to form lasting relationships; and highlight entrepreneurship as a means to address some of the most intractable global challenges.
“The American story has been written, in no small part, by entrepreneurs, risk-takers: the likes of Edison, Forbes, and Ford and Jobs. The history isn’t unique to us in the United States. All throughout the free world, the progress of nations is driven by those who are willing to take a big risk, to put their own capital out there, to fail sometimes and then to fail again until one day success follows you”.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressing the Global Entrepreneurship Summit at The Hague, Netherlands, 2019.
Utrecht University academic Prof. Erik Stam has also contributed extensively to the Global Entrepreneurship Research Network, particularly in respect to his role as Extraordinary Professor at Stellenbosch University. In this role, working with Dr Phumlani Nkontwana, founding director of the Allan Gray Centre for African Entrepreneurship (AGCAE) at Stellenbosch University, Erik launched the inaugural AGCAE African Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Index at GEC+Africa in Cape Town, March 2024.
GEN maintains extensive relationships with key Dutch ecosystem stakeholders, including the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Techleap, the Netherlands Enterprise & Development Agency, Yes!Delft, the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship, ACE Incubator, Forward Inc, and The Next Web. Business Angels Network Netherlands (BANN) is a member of GEN’s Global Business Angels Network.
Many Dutch startups have used GEN programs to speed their growth over the years. For example, five Dutch startups have made their way to the finals of the Entrepreneurship World Cup, run by GEN and Monsha’at, where they had access to free training resources, mentorship and exposure to potential investors. ChatLicense, Kumasi, Pal, 123Carbon, and GraphenePioneer all reached the EWC 100 and pitched for a share of $1 million at the EWC Global Finals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
GEN President Jonathan Ortmans has been a regular visitor to the Netherlands and provided counsel on the global dimensions of developing its innovation ecosystems.