The survey for the 2015 Startup Ecosystem Report kicks off today — in a partnership by CrunchBase and Compass. Participate here.

San Francisco, CA, 4 February 2015—CrunchBase, the world’s most comprehensive dataset of startup activity, and Compass, creator of the most extensive benchmark data for startup performance, announce the kickoff of a collaborative project that is as critical to the global economy as it is ambitious. Since the groundbreaking results of the Kauffman Study, which demonstrated that “Startups that develop organically are almost solely the drivers of job growth,” there has been an increasing demand for information about how to create thriving local ecosystems.

Beginning today, startups around the globe may access the Startup Ecosystem 2015 Survey to provide their data to help measure the health and growth of their ecosystem relative to as many as 40 others. They will also be able to benchmark their individual results with their relevant peers, providing a highly useful perspective that enhances decision-making.

Three years ago, the Startup Ecosystem Report 2012—researched, analyzed and published by Compass—was the world’s first map of the global expansion of high growth technology businesses. The impact of the report can barely be underestimated—it was downloaded directly more than 100,000 times, referenced by the Obama administration, Chancellor Merkel, Israel’s UN Ambassador and the Mayors of Los Angeles and Boston, studied by hundreds of universities, consulting firms and startup accelerators and referenced in thousands of press articles worldwide. In all, the results were viewed by an estimated 10 million people.

And yet there is already evidence that this report is already out of date, as the pace of technology has driven change at internet speed and has resulted in what the Economist has termed the Cambrian moment of exploding startups. Dow Jones VentureSource has recently reported that venture capital investment in the U.S. has jumped 47% in the past year alone.

“There is almost nothing more important to the global economy,” said Bjoern Lasse Herrmann, CEO of Compass. “As the Industrial Economy falls away with increasing speed and half the world’s current jobs will be replaced by software, it becomes critical to build thoughtful programs to nurture the entrepreneurial renaissance that will take its place. Entrepreneurs need to benchmark their performance against their relevant peers around the world as competition will be increasingly global. And governments need to benchmark their ecosystems. Many leaders are happy to see growth, but don’t realize they’re falling further and further behind their peers. Seeing the trends of winners and losers will be especially enlightening.”

“Collaborating on this project is a perfect fit with our mission is to index the world’s startups,” said CrunchBase President Matt Kaufman. “But we were also moved to participate by knowing how important the Startup Ecosystem Report will be to helping support startup communities and entrepreneurs around the world. This, in turn, helps us all.”

The 2012 Startup Ecosystem Report included information on Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York City, Boston, London, Toronto, Vancouver, Chicago, Paris, Sydney, Sao Paulo, Moscow, Berlin, Waterloo, Singapore, Melbourne, Bangalore and Santiago. The 2015 report will explore these areas and more. In addition to the data collection, qualitative deeper dives into several specific landscapes are also being conducted with the help of both government and private enterprise partners. Many of these efforts are already underway.

The report is expected to be published in May of 2015.