Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2016
United States To Host 7th Annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit
When we connect global entrepreneurs with the access and exchange needed to create and innovate, we unleash their power to change the world.
A clear example of this is found in Silicon Valley where thousands of firms have achieved success. With that in mind, what better place to gather entrepreneurs at all stages of business development for the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES)? This Summit will be the 7th installment in a series previously hosted by the United States and the governments of Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Morocco, and Kenya. In bringing the Summit back to the United States, President Obama highlights his commitment to building bridges that help us tackle global challenges together.
Releases
The world has shrunk. It is interconnected. All of you represent that interconnection. Many of you are catalyzing it and accelerating it. It promises to bring extraordinary benefits. But it also has challenges. And it also evokes concerns and fears. And so part of why this Global Entrepreneurship Summit has been so close to my heart, something that I’ve been so committed to, because I believe all of you represent all the upside of an interconnected world, all the optimism and the hope and the opportunity that that interconnected world represents.
President Obama hosted the seventh annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, on June 22-24, 2016. Over 700 entrepreneurs and more than 300 investors attended the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit, held June 22-24, 2016 at Stanford University, in Palo Alto, California. GES has become a preeminent annual gathering that provides emerging entrepreneurs with exceptional networking, insight, and investment opportunities. During Indian Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the White House on June 7, President Obama and Prime Minister Modi were pleased to announce India as the host of the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit, becoming the seventh country to host the event.
President Obama today will take part in the 7th annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) at Stanford University in Silicon Valley, California, which will feature new commitments to promote entrepreneurship as a driver for economic growth, social inclusion, and secure communities. Following his historic 2009 Cairo speech, President Obama elevated innovation and entrepreneurship in the U.S. engagement agenda and hosted the first GES at the White House in 2010. The United States has made significant strides in supporting entrepreneurship around the world by developing innovative ecosystems; advocating for stronger business climates through rule of law and transparent business conduct...
We are excited to welcome you to the GES Community Network hosted by the Global Innovation Exchange. The networking platform was created to allow all GES applicants to connect with the greater GES community. Together, GES and the Global Innovation Exchange are working to seek out impactful solutions to change the world. We believe that great ideas can come from anywhere, and we believe that those ideas can lead to something incredible. Connect with fellow entrepreneurs and investors. Collaborate with the global community of change agents. The Global Innovation Exchange is a global marketplace to connect entrepreneurs and innovators with resources, funding, and experts. Search over 4,200 innovations, $72M in available funding opportunities, and over 9,000 expert collaborators to accelerate innovation to impact.
With the eyes of the world on Silicon Valley, today the Obama Administration is announcing new commitments to advance inclusive entrepreneurship and innovation here at home. These announcements build on a week where the Administration has highlighted a powerful record of progress in fueling American innovation over the last seven and a half years and announcing new steps to build on those efforts—including supporting advanced manufacturing and making, publishing a new rule to enable non-recreational use of unmanned aircraft, and supporting next-generation technologies.
On June 22 at 5:00 PM PT, the Spark the Fire Pitch Competition will take place during GES+, a special day-long program focused on top global youth and women entrepreneurs at the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit, hosted at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Organized by the Global Entrepreneurship Network, Spark the Fire is designed to help emerging entrepreneurs from around the world seek investment and start and scale their venture. Six distinguished finalists from around the world will present a three-minute pitch followed by a four-minute Q&A from a panel of expert judges.
BLOGS
It is no secret, I’m a firm believer that impact investing is a movement that is taking off and here to stay. In the U.S. and around the world we’ve seen segments of the market start to move from informed, to educated, to activated. We’ve seen private capital unleashed with a focus on impact across sectors, geographies and asset classes. As an investor and a philanthropist, I’m encouraged by the good news I’ve seen, highlighting growth in the number of successful social enterprises.
For 15 years, the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation has pioneered venture philanthropy as a unique approach to finding, funding and supporting social entrepreneurs who are changing the world.
We do this by making three-year, unrestricted grants to leaders who have the vision and capacity to build strong organizations that, at scale, can have a significant impact.
Impact Investing is now front and center for many people and institutions, and is no longer a choice of either/or. That is, a trade-off no longer exists between changing the world and making compelling financial returns. Look for Impact Investing to continue staking out its turf on the investment landscape, with a proven track record of impact and economic benefits.
Seven years ago this week, President Obama delivered a landmark speech in Cairo in which he underscored the transformative power of entrepreneurship. In his remarks, he described the need to “...deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social entrepreneurs in the United States and…around the world.”
I was raised in an American farm town. My perceptions of Africa were a mix between the gruesomeness of Hotel Rwanda and the fantastical backdrop of Disney’s Lion King. To me it was a wild land without structure and organization, and it scared me enough to want to stay far away. Then one day a funny thing happened: I moved there.
Nearly four years ago, when Accion Venture Lab made its first investment, we set out to fill a seed-stage funding gap for innovative financial inclusion startups around the world. Venture Lab was a new initiative of Accion, our parent organization that has worked for 50 years to build a financially inclusive world. We believed then (as we do now) that those startups could play a significant role in leveraging technology to improve the quality of and access to financial services for the underserved.
When we think about the world of entrepreneurship and its application in education, the innovations in education technology are often top of mind as a tool for disrupting the space, and rightfully so given the growth in the sector in the past decade. With a rich tradition of supporting both entrepreneurship and education at the Kauffman Foundation, we are beginning to ask big questions about the future of edtech and its role in our own local strategy for building and sustaining a robust ecosystem for education innovation.
Who doesn’t want to start their own business? It’s easy to get restless in your job, to feel so bored and sick of following someone else’s playbook that youknow it has to be better on the other side. As an entrepreneur, you dictate your own work schedule, set your daily goals, and pursue your passion 24/7. Sounds perfect, right?
Talent is universal. Access to capital is concentrated.
We are lucky to be surrounded by some of the best and the brightest in the Valley. We also acknowledge that good ideas can come from anywhere and there’s a rising tide of entrepreneurs around the world getting attention. When the first Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) kicked off in spring 2010, Uber hadn’t launched yet. Neither had Instagram. Airbnb wouldn’t raise its first venture capital round of $7 million for another six months.
The Critical Relationship Between Connectivity & Entrepreneurship in Africa
I was on my way to GES in Nairobi last year, browsing my News Feed, when I came across this infographic that used red dots to plot the location of all the Fortune 500 companies in world. The first thing that struck me was how many of Fortune 500 emerged from just three areas of the world: the US, Europe and East Asia.