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Happy GSER Day: The #GSER2019 Is Here!

Here are the key findings of the much-anticipated #GSER2019 report, including startup ecosystem and sub-sector rankings.
Dane Stangler
on May 09, 2019

Today, at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam, Startup Genome and the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) have released the 2019 Global Startup Ecosystem Report (GSER). 

The report, which you can download for free here, is based on input from over 10,000 founders globally and data on more than one million companies in 150 cities worldwide. Inside, you'll see the world’s most comprehensive and widely read research on startup ecosystems.

Here are some of the findings we're excited to share in the #GSER2019:

  • Today's top 30 startup ecosystems are not necessarily tomorrow's top 30 ecosystems. For the first time since 2017, we rank the top 30 startup ecosystems in the world. In the past two years, we have seen considerable movement within the top rankings: the Amsterdam-StartupDelta ecosystem, for example, moved up four spots to #15 overall. Yet we have also identified what we call the Next 30, the fast-growing ecosystems that are challenging the dominance of well-established places. These "Challenger" ecosystems include Jakarta, Melbourne, and Greater Helsinki.
  • Deep Tech is where founders and investors see the greatest growth opportunities. Nearly a decade ago, roughly 20% of global startup creation was in Deep Tech sub-sectors. This includes areas such as Advanced Manufacturing & Robotics (AMR), Cleantech, Life Sciences, and more. Today, nearly half of global startup creation is in Deep Tech. The four fastest-growing sub-sectors globally, in terms of early-stage funding deals, are Deep Tech-related, led by AMR.
  • The global startup economy creates lots of wealth, but there's work to be done on sharing that wealth. The size of the global startup economy rose 20% in one year to reach $2.8 trillion. This is larger than the size of many advanced economies. Yet we continue to see uneven geographic distribution of that wealth, with two-thirds of global exit value concentrated in the 10 largest ecosystems. Additionally, only 17% of founders worldwide in our data are female. Some ecosystems are well above average, but there is clearly room for greater demographic participation in the global startup economy.

Much more information can be found in #GSER2019, including the top ecosystems in the world for AI and Blockchain startups and what factors are correlated with startup success and failure. This year's report also includes, for the first time, a separate analysis of Life Sciences ecosystems, done in partnership with Hello Tomorrow.

In addition to our production partner GEN, we are extremely grateful to our Members, founders who spent time to respond to our global survey, and our data partners Crunchbase, Dealroom, and Orb Intelligence.


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