State of the Global Startup Economy

The global startup economy remains large, creating nearly $3 trillion in value, a figure on par with the GDP of a G7 economy. Seven out of the top 10 largest companies in the world are in technology — the highest concentration of any industry sector among the top global companies — and 2019 saw close to $300 billion in venture capital investments around the world.  

Nonetheless, even at the end of 2019, not all was well. Inclusion remained a fundamental challenge for tech ecosystems, with only 14.1% of founders globally being female, as our Startup Genome research shows. Value creation by ecosystems remains concentrated, with about 74% of all value produced being concentrated in the top 10 performing cities globally. Tech giants like WeWork and the stable of unicorns funded by Softbank began to falter — ranging from major crises, as in the case of WeWork; to a capital crunch for others.

But despite these challenges, we did not expect the major threat of the COVID-19 crisis to global ecosystems. Since the crisis hit:

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