18 April 2018

Published also in Business Mirror

AS part of its effort to help promote and scale up Philippine start-ups, the Department of Trade and Industry-Export Marketing Bureau (DTI-EMB) facilitates the country’s first-time participation in the Startup Genome project, which released the 2018 Global Startup Ecosystem Report (GSER).

Recently released at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Istanbul, GSER 2018 features strategic start-up, investment and policy insights from over 10,000 founders in 45 cities, including Manila. Two more major Philippine cities—Cebu and Davao—will be covered in future reports.

“We are keen on supporting the growing start-up ecosystem in the Philippines as we implement programs that will create high-growth and high-impact start-ups that would contribute to sustainable economic growth and generate more employment opportunities,” DTI Undersecretary for Trade and Investments Promotion Group Nora K. Terrado said.

Startup Genome’s mission is to empower cities all over the world to capture their fair share of the new economy by accelerating the economic growth of start-up ecosystems through benchmarking, networking  and exposure. Fueled by primary research with over 10,000 start-ups annually—the Voice of the Entrepreneur—Startup Genome supports local ecosystem leaders with building consensus for action on key challenges.

Produced in partnership between Startup Genome and the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN), this year’s GSER signals a strong commitment to advancing a greater understanding of start-up ecosystems and the global network of capital and connections that drive them.

“We’ve now entered the third wave of innovation—where our global start-up community is disrupting industries by combining technology with deep industry expertise. This is creating a potentially game-changing opportunity for smaller, less mature start-up ecosystems that can now build out competitive advantage at a global level by focusing on their DNA and legacy strengths,” Startup Genome CEO and Cofounder JF Gauthier said.

A fitting occasion for the launch of this collaborative report, the Global Entrepreneurship Congress gathered thousands of entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, policy-makers and other start-up champions from more than 170 countries to identify new ways of helping founders start and scale new ventures around the world.

“Research in the field is vital to shaping the interventions necessary to empower entrepreneurs around the world,” said Jonathan Ortmans, president of the GEN. “As thousands of start-up champions gather this week to explore innovative approaches, efforts such as the Global Startup Ecosystem Report help us become better informed about what is needed.”

Incorporating data from Crunchbase and Orb Intelligence, as well as the voices of over 10,000 founders from 24 countries worldwide and counting—including some of Manila’s start-ups like Serve Happy Jobs and Qwikwire Billing Systems—GSER 2018 presents an incisive look at over 60 ecosystems. Through an analysis of start-up output and legacy traits, it identifies the industries where each ecosystem has the most potential to build the vibrant economy for which it is uniquely positioned.

This year GSER takes a close look at key subsectors, such as advanced  manufacturing and robotics, agriculture  technology, artificial intelligence (AI), big data and analytics, life sciences and cybersecurity, as well as new technologies in education, health, advertising  and finance. The subsectors in focus point toward imminent entrepreneurial revolutions.

Thanks to SpaceX, we may already have a car in space—but will we have greater diversity and value distribution on the ground and in our start-up ecosystems? These are among key qualitative issues that GSER 2018 also looks at.

In the Manila ecosystem in particular, GSER provides a detailed look at the following subsectors: fintech, enterprise solutions  and AI/machine learning.

To download the full report, visit  www.startupgenome.com/report2018.