Belgium is one of those rare ecosystems whose origin can be pinpointed in time.  In 2014 a group of journalists and entrepreneurs published the Startup Manifesto, a list of principles for shaping a thriving ecosystem.  The Manifesto influenced the thinking of Belgium’s Digital Minister, who is now the Prime Minister. Talk about impact!

Jean-Raymond Naveau took up the challenge of curating our first Belgium episode on the Ecosystem show.  He brought us Beatrice de Mahieu, Julie Foulon, and Hugo Hanselmann for a great conversation from the perspective of the backbone organizations and advisors who take responsibility for the health of this ecosystem. 

Enjoy the conversation!

We’ve visited over a dozen entrepreneurial ecosystems on our audio world tour, and we’re always looking for patterns.  

One pattern that has come up again and again is University technology transfer policy and practice.  We heard about it in Berlin, in Chile, in London, in Los Angeles, in Montreal -- the University’s perspective on entrepreneurship seems to have a huge effect on whether an ecosystem thrives or struggles.  

In this episode, we asked Paul Roben of the University of California at San Diego to help us understand what’s possible when tech transfer offices are strategically designed to promote entrepreneurship.  Enjoy!

Montreal’s ecosystem has really taken off in the last few years, fueled by successful entrepreneurs returning their capital and their enthusiasm to the ecosystem.  

Frederic Gaurino, Nectarios Economakis and Annie-Claude Devriese explain how capital, talent and physical space interact to create a self-reinforcing ecosystem.  

We recorded this episode on September 20, 2021 -- the first episode in our second series.  This season we’ll be visiting more regions, and also digging into some powerful tools that we’ve been learning about on our World Tour.  Enjoy Montreal, and come back for more!

Everyone knows that Tel Aviv is an international hotbed of entrepreneurial activity.  

Our guides Itai Green, Benny Shlick, Zohar Pernat, Ofer HaCohen and Adi Mazor Kario helped us understand how government support, army service, and social generosity work together to move from a Startup to a Scaleup Nation.  

Don’t forget about the importance of chutzpah, roughly translated as positive pushiness. Israel is the final episode of Ecosystem Show Season One -- we’ll be back in Fall 2021 with Season Two.  Enjoy!  

We learned about the startup ecosystem in Tanzania on July 19 of 2021, guided by Jumanne Mtambalike,  Paul Makanza, Salum Awadh, and Praygod Japhet.  

The ecosystem in Tanzania is really coming together.  At least in part that’s because the stakeholders are seeing how their needs are interdependent -- for example, investors need seed companies at the same time that talented individuals are looking to entrepreneurship to expand their opportunities beyond the traditional job market. 

Enjoy!

Our Bulgaria episode was recorded on Clubhouse on July 12, 2021.  Our guides were Rosen Dmitrov from Novartis, Milena Stoycheva, the CEO of JA Bulgaria, Alexander Alexiev of SAT Health, and Ivan Lekushev of BGO Software.  

They’re part of a rising data-driven healthcare system in Bulgaria, and they’re betting that an entrepreneurial ecosystem is the way to get there. 

Listen in to hear what inspired them and how they’re thinking about the ecosystem of ecosystems!

Enjoy Bulgaria - Episode 7

We visited Iraq on June 7, 2021, with Alice Bosley and Patricia Letayf.  They are the leaders of Five One Labs, a startup incubator in Iraq, located in Kurdistan.   

We feel really lucky to have found out about Five One — that never would have happened without the innovation and change author Greg Satell who introduced us to these amazing leaders. 

One big idea we took away — there’s real power in founders in or from regions affected by conflict — often we’re talking about talented, highly educated experts who are hungry for entrepreneurship because there are few exciting jobs waiting for them.

In Chile, recorded on May 24 2021, we spoke with Felipe Torrejon, Pamela Lisboa and Maria Belen Munoz.  They told the story of Chile’s move from an extractive economy sending resources out, to a value-added economy bringing resources in.

Mikel:  Even though Chile has the leading startup accelerator in South America, capital is really hard to come by.  For example, Belen had to come up with her first $300,000 in funding through crowdsourcing from 70 different investors.