Cross‑Border Entrepreneurship: Turning Regions into Hubs

I think what we tend to find is that a city or a country or the founders tend to approach working cross-border from the standpoint of, here's what I need, here's what we need. And they do that while neglecting— neglecting is the answer to the bottleneck answer, in my opinion— neglecting this is how things work there. I'm thinking of the US, a lot of people don't appreciate that the US is not one monolithic country like where most of you are. The United States is 50 states. Those states have their own laws and their own rules, their own tax policies. And if you don't appreciate how things work wherever you might be trying to develop a relationship, you can easily fall short of not even meeting expectations, but actually just things aren't going to work there because you're not doing what is necessary for the way things are in that other part of the world. To Founder Institute's event for the week with regard to economic development and international development. My name is Paul O'Brien. I'm very pleased to have you all here. I'm the head of government relations and public affairs for Founder Institute. For those of you not familiar with that kind of work, but perhaps familiar with something like lobbying or how laws get made and passed, I work with governments throughout the world to help focus their attention and their resources and the regulations, frankly, on entrepreneurship and venture capital and other considerations that are most meaningful and valuable to founders throughout the world. We have these kind of talks, and so I'm grateful that you're here. We have these kind of talks, not about how an accelerator works or how an incubator works, not about how to mentor. I'm not the guy to tell you how to do Lean Startup or grow your startup. The kind of talks that I host with Founder Institute are meant to help ecosystems throughout the world perform better. And we do that by exploring different ways that you could operate, by exploring different policy that might make more sense, by exploring different opportunities for public resources such as funding to get involved in a way that it might make your community a lot more beneficial for startup founders. Today we're gonna talk about cross-border entrepreneurship. And the reason I wanted to have that conversation with a couple of wonderful guests, I know Alberto is here, ready to join us. We're having a little technical difficulty with my other guests. So just to give you a heads up, he may or may not join us properly. But the reason I wanna have this conversation with a couple of guests is we've been talking internationally in Founder Institute and with my connections in local and national governments, we've been talking rather frequently about the challenge and the fact that most cities and most regions throughout the world develop a generically applicable startup ecosystem or generically applicable tech ecosystem. I'm sure you're familiar with the fact that a lot of places want to say they want to be like Silicon Valley. We've learned through economic research, we've learned through even psychology and sociological research about how ecosystems and cultures work, we've learned that trying to be like Silicon Valley just doesn't make any sense. We've learned that we can't all be just a tech ecosystem, we can't all have a startup ecosystem similar to Silicon Valley or Austin. And so I wanted to have this conversation because what we can do is we can reinforce our strengths as part of the world. We can acknowledge our weaknesses as part of the world. And we can use those strengths and weaknesses to figure out whether or not we should be doing more on behalf of our entrepreneurs and investors in country, let alone in your city, or if it makes more sense to find the other ecosystems that are most like yours. And we're going to talk about that today, cross-border entrepreneurship and what it looks like to build those ecosystems. A couple of housekeeping notes. By all means, use chat. We love having chat active. You're going to see Sana having some conversations with you all and giving you some tips and resources and other things to connect with. Go ahead and also use the Q&A that's there. There's a Q&A button. So if something comes up that you want to ask about, drop that there. I'll weave it into my conversation with Alberto and Richard as we continue through the hour. We will stop at the top of the hour. And we'll open it up to a little bit of networking afterward. If you wanna stay out after and just have some conversations, we can do that for a touch. Yes, I just saw that, Christine, thank you for asking. Not only is the session recorded, we're gonna publish it as a recording. I also do a write-up as well. And so the write-up of what we have to talk about and some other ideas will be available on Founder Institute as well as on my newsletter Startup Economist, which is on Substack and LinkedIn. Let me leave it there for now and introduce my guests. If it looks like Richard made it, wonderful. If Alberto and Richard are ready to come up, Sana, let's say hello and bring them to the stage. Both of them are not based in the US. I'll let them introduce themselves and give us a sense for why they're here and their experience. And while we do that, Alberto and Richard, give us a little perspective too on why you think cross-border entrepreneurship working with different countries is important. Let's set the stage properly with why we're here. Are we live with everybody else, Sonny? Did we get everybody up?

Hear you loud and clear, Paul. Thank you.

Wonderful. Good to see you, Richard. Kick it off. Tell us about yourself and what has you here and what kind of work you've been doing across different countries on behalf of entrepreneurs.

Yeah, well, thank you very much, first of all, for having me. And good evening, everyone. Good morning, wherever you are in the world. I'm Richard, UK-born. I spent 20 years of my life in Japan. I've lived also in France for a year, in Singapore 5 years, and recently in Germany for 5 years and counting. So I think I have a pretty good understanding of different worlds of business and life. And Japan is a special case, as many of you probably know, and it was a good grounding. I always think that Japan sets the bar very high, and if you can cope with Japan and thrive for 20 years there, you can do anything. So Germany is a different kind of challenge, but I work as a strategic consultant working between Europe and Japan. I live in Düsseldorf, which is often called Little Tokyo because we have about 400 or 500 Japanese companies here. And yeah, it feels like a piece of Japan in Europe. So I work between the ecosystems. I have a Japanese wife and kids, and yeah, I consider myself a bridge between the two. So looking forward to sharing views, and thank you for having me.

Brilliant. We could almost end the conversation there because you just made the perfect point about why and how cities could do a better job of finding the different countries that they're working with. If Düsseldorf is known as Little Japan, obviously that's the perfect relationship for that part of the world. Thank you for kicking us off that way. Alberto, how are you? Why don't you join us as well? Give us a little bit of a sense for yourself and what you think about the importance of cross-border entrepreneurship.

Absolutely. Well, thanks, Paul, and hello everyone, and so amazing to hear Richard's story. I'm actually on the other side of the pond today, so I'm normally based in the UK, but today I'm in Florida, so it's quite sunny over here. Very excited to talk about the topic, I mean, to be part of this conversation. I start with a very brief provocation, because in my experience being based in Europe, considering UK obviously parts of Europe, I think the The problem in Europe is not about the capabilities, it's more about the connectivity and the connectivity layer. So I'm sure this is the topic we can discuss today as part of the cross-border innovation. Something more about myself. So I'm originally from Italy. I moved to the UK about 21 years ago and I worked most of my career for an American corporation. So I traveled quite a bit. I'm still based in the UK, but I also come back to Italy quite a lot, and I actually have the opportunity to work with the Founder Institute on a program in Italy, and that's helped me understand more about the ecosystem innovation. So I set up my also business, my growth advisory, which is called Founder Advisor, not particularly very sexy name, to be honest, but I think it well encapsulates what I'm trying to do. So basically focusing on the demand side, talking to investors in the broader sense, which could be as well corporate, private investors, funds, etc., and in connecting them to innovation. And I think one, one of the perspectives here is that how important is to bring into local ecosystem that connectivity with international cross-border stakeholders. So that's a bit, that's a bit about myself. And as I said, I think Europe represents a very interesting use case for the cross-border because despite we are one market now, we're still about 27 countries with different languages, different cultures, with different systems. So it's really about the cross-border effort and the connectivity layer, which is probably missing.

Yeah, it's probably the region of the world where this kind of conversation is most meaningful because it feels like the EU, it tends to operate as the EU, and yet the countries still have to a great extent, their own regulations and their own policies, certainly their own cultures that make things challenging. I've worked with some startups in Croatia that wanted to expand throughout the EU and then pretty quickly realized how difficult that might actually be. So great to have you here, Alberto, as well. Thank you. Quick reminder, as folks are joining us, use the Q&A for any questions. We'll weave in questions as best we can, and certainly use the chat because some folks from Founder Institute are there to keep an eye on any questions you have there or any conversations you wanna have there. I'm looking at as best as I can as well. So like Safia, hi, nice to have you here. And certainly Africa is another perfect example of why we're having this conversation today. Gentlemen, let me start with perhaps the most familiar way that startup programs and startup communities tend to work cross-border and overseas, and that's with what's called a soft landing program. But I actually want to be a little critical of soft landing programs. I like having a little bit more critical conversation for people because My experience— and I'm so curious what your experience is— my experience with soft landing programs tends to be that you end up with startups seeking either funding or customers. I've got a startup in— let's pick somewhere else. I've got a startup in Israel, and I want a soft landing relationship with Miami, since you're in Florida. Out of that soft landing program relationship, what I'm looking for are connections with investors. Connections to customers. Do you think that soft landing programs are the best that we can do? Do you think that there's something evident, uh, something else evident that's missing when we have startups that are struggling to find investors and to find customers? It almost seems to me like a soft landing program is an easy solution to a problem that shouldn't even exist, if that makes sense. I'm curious what you both think. Alberto, since I alluded to Florin, you're there, you want to share a thought first?

Yeah, sure. I think before actually responding to your question, I think when I start working the ecosystem building capabilities, one of the things I try to define is what is an ecosystem. And one definition I found which clarified my mind was from an MIT framework, which very simply said connect the two sides of the ecosystem. One is about the innovation capacity, which is basically the universities, the R&D, the deep tech, and the e-capacity, which is about entrepreneurship capacity. So investors, the market, the legal landscape of that ecosystem. And I think the attempt to— the important thing is that there's no place in the world, probably maybe Silicon Valley is one exception where you can have both. So there's a need for connecting the two in order to make innovation successful. And with regards to this soft landing proposition, I think it's not really about the capabilities. It's more about— it's not actually about the founder's capability of expectation. It's about that kind of ecosystem connectivity we discussed briefly before. So I think that the program or the focus should be on building these pathways where, for example, if you have an Italian startup with very strong technical innovation and they have to connect with the capital markets or a customer, the real focus should be on what they're trying to achieve, not just about, you know, finding investment or finding customers in general sense. Where exactly they should be focusing, what their scope of that what the particular pathway should be. So I think the soft landing is an interesting way to define it, but it's again, it's not about failure of the founder, rather is an ecosystem that needs to be reinforced on that particular goals and expectations, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I think it makes perfect sense. It's my— it's the characterization that I'm trying to encourage. That when you're seeking investors or customers, frankly, you want to find the market where you're more likely to find investors and customers that are interested in what you're doing. And that's frankly a lot of the reason for the challenge of trying to just connect with Silicon Valley, because Silicon Valley investors indeed are a certain kind of investors as well. They don't just invest in everything and anything. So it is a development of the ecosystem, I think. Richard, any thoughts on your part? Have you had some experience with soft landing programs? Are they successful? Do you have some some tips or some encouragement about how they might operate better?

Yeah, well, uh, thanks, Paul. I, as I said, I lived in a few countries, the longest of which was Japan, and I always think I gave my best years to Japan. Hopefully not over yet. But, um, Japan is, uh, in, in many ways a special case. So when you talk about soft landing, we're talking about introductions a lot of the time between customers, investors, and so on. Now, in Japan, um, more than most countries, I would say the introduction is crucial. And if you don't get introduced in the right way by the right person or the right entity, then it's worse than not having an introduction at all. I would say the wrong kind of intro in Japan is, you know, you would be better off not having one because trust is everything and de-risking is everything. There is an obsession with de-risking. Risk is a dirty word, you know, basically. I wrote an article once about this. I said the most important word in Japanese is not konnichiwa, it's enshin, which means reassurance. So any program which promises a soft landing also has to have this component of trust and reassurance and social proof and so on, which is not easy, but it's, I would say, more needed in Japan than maybe some other places. Yeah. Although it's changing slightly because obviously geopolitical pressures and the fastest aging, fastest shrinking population, Japan is bending. It's like a ship. It's turning slowly, but these things still apply, I would say. Yeah.

Well, you bring up a great point that I'd reinforce about the United States. I'm in Texas, everyone, in Austin. I've done a lot of work with New York and we've alluded to Silicon Valley a bit. Since I see so many of you in the chat from other parts of the world, I love, Richard, the point you're exposing that a lot of it comes down to even local culture and whether or not you understand the local culture and the way people behave and operate. My point being, investors have very, very different expectations in New York than Silicon Valley, and indeed even in Texas with regard to what's expected of a startup and how to get connected and how to get introduced. One of the things these programs can best do is probably find a better fit in that regard. Let's keep talking about investors for a second. The real question that comes to mind in this regard is that, do you think Have you found that getting cross-border, that if I'm a founder and I can get into a startup development organization, I can get into a program, I can get into Founders Institute, and I can get to this other country, have you found that that actually meaningfully does result in more funding or better investor connections? I guess I'm almost wondering if it's a if it's an unfulfilled promise, that do we actually see folks are getting funded more from other countries? Do we find that investors appreciate these kind of programs? What kind of experience do you have with the venture community in general and share some thoughts about that? I'll let you both just take it away, whoever wants to chime in first, if you've got a thought.

Well, just a quick stats maybe from the European markets and They're only 23% within Europe, right? We're not talking about cross-region, just within the boundaries of Europe. There's only 23% of cross-border VCs. And the reality is that 40, about 40 unicorns relocated recently in the last few years. So mostly to the US, right? So that's kind of a trend. So I think there's an expectation, and what we see as well in the local in the local programs that are run in Italy, there's expectations that investors should be from the US and ideally from the Silicon Valley. And again, I think that's kind of back to what I was trying to make the point before, is that this needs to be focused on the goals you have as a startup and the nature of the startup you're building. And based on that and based on those objectives, that's where You need to try and maybe with their help, whether it's an accelerator or advisor, trying to help what is the region or the type of investor and the regions where they can unlock most of your value as a startup. So I think that's kind of clarity on the goals, because if you just, you know, want to put a name on your fundraising campaign as a Silicon Valley-driven and you want maybe to go to Silicon Valley for tourism, maybe that's the right approach. But what I've seen working, it's really about sitting down and trying to rationalize with your goals, with, you know, with your expectations and work possibly with advisors or accelerators that have local, global reach, understanding where your fundraising strategy should should go. So that's my takeaway. And sure, Richard, that's some very interesting experience as well to share.

Thank you, Alberto. Thank you, Paul. Well, going back to Japan, as I said, it's my main example. I do, or I have been in the last few years, to many events around Europe. I went to Slush last year, I went to Web Summit, and I actually went to Davos about 10 days ago. So I do see Japanese investors and top CEOs traveling to Europe. They are aware they need to travel, need to— the capital needs to go outside Japan. But for me, the problem in a way is the last mile. It's the will is there, the capital is there, but the actual, the nitty-gritty of how, you know, the last part of the flow takes place is still a challenge. And there are, for example, I went to Helsinki to Slush there are a few niche boutique companies who do operate in this kind of Nordic Japan ecosystem, and they do well because they have Japanese who have lived in Europe a long time, like myself living in Japan a long time. They are kind of proven bridges, they know both systems, and although there's not many of them, they kind of tap into a lot of resources because the fact there's not a lot of them means they're quite compelling because they are trusted channels. And if you can be part— excuse me— if you can be part of that channel, then I think it's a really good place to be. It's just hard, you know, getting into that world is quite hard. Once you're in, you're in, you know, once the trust is there, it's there. It's just getting it is the hard thing, I think.

Yeah, I really like this point, Richard, you raised, because— and probably the Japanese culture is similar to to the Italian culture in a way, you need to build the trust. And sometimes when you work in innovation, you know, that the speed of change and the speed of things is, doesn't allow the time to obviously build as a founder, the right level of trust in order to get to your investors or to your clients. So I think that that's, that last mile is extremely important. And that's where I think that advisors that can nurture relationship or ecosystems that that can nurture relationships with those local players can play a huge role. They don't have to do the work for you as a founder, but they can help you understanding, you know, how you, you, you, you can reach out in the most effective way and use that connections. So I think that, that's it. That's extremely interesting point that you raised.

Let me bring it back to Richard, did you have a thought? All right, let me bring it back. Go.

Sorry to go in there. No, Alberto, thank you. No, it just occurred to me what you said there. Thank you very much. Yeah. For example, everyone knows the sales cycles in Japan are very long. They're kind of uncomfortably long for many people. Decision-making cycles are also— can be agonizing. And, you know, the so-called ringi system where something has to go through the whole middle layer and senior layer and get a stamp on it before, you know, you get the green light. The thing is, from the Japanese perspective, they see this as necessary because if this process of, as far as possible, de-risking takes place, then you don't get pushback later because everyone has already got past, you know, the elephant in the room, which is the initial green light. So in other, in other, you know, ecosystems, you might well get pushback or questions later. In Japan, I'm not saying you'll never get questions, but the progress from then on will be smooth. It's just a bit at the start, which is a big, you know, the bump in the road. And yeah.

So, so wonderful the way I've framed a couple of these questions that I feel like I'm leading the witness. And what I mean is that we've, we've gone quite, quite extensive. You know, I shared with the audience, welcome everyone, if you've joined us a little bit late, we're talking about the implications of cross-border programs and cross-border entrepreneurs, and whether or not there are ways to do that more effectively, or if they are effective. And I started talking about generic tech ecosystems and generic startup ecosystems. We touched on Silicon Valley a little bit. And then you both, thankfully, you both brought it to Europe and Asia. And we mentioned Africa because some of the folks in chat— by the way, Aditya too. Thank you for sharing that you work with emerging funds. Y'all, one of the reasons Founder Institute is having these kind of talks and doing this kind of work is you might, might not be familiar with the fact that we're also very closely affiliated with something called VC Lab, where we actually develop emerging funds and fund managers. And so we're seeing investors emerge all over the world and have an interest in entrepreneurship throughout the world. So let me, let me bring it back home, but in two ways. First, I'd love to send everyone a poll. If, Sana, you got that poll queued up, I want to ask everybody in the audience— this is just kind of an opinion poll. I want to find out why you think these programs exist, to get a sense for not just why you think they exist, but perhaps what you hope they help accomplish. So go ahead and take that poll. And while I'm doing that, I want to remind you, if y'all have any questions at all, Drop that in the Q&A. We're keeping an eye on it. We could answer those questions there, or I might weave them into the conversation. Here's what I mean by bringing the conversation home though. I want to take it back to Silicon Valley. All right? What I find in being in the US, what I find is that most foreign partners, foreign to the US, most foreign partners always put Silicon Valley at the top of the list. We need to connect with Silicon Valley. That's where the investors are. That's where tech is. And you both have kind of touched on the fact that that isn't entirely accurate. So let's drill into that a little bit more. Can you illuminate your experience, your perspective on the mistakes made in favoring or preferring Silicon Valley or any risks in doing that? Or can you help illuminate perhaps in a more positive way some examples of why it doesn't necessarily make sense to be there? I'm hearing them in the thoughts that you've shared so far. I just want to bring it back home because again, I find most foreign participants focus on Silicon Valley, and I'd like to better illuminate why that's not necessarily the right approach. Any thoughts?

Yeah, I will give a thought there. Thank you, Paul.

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Sanna, give me a thumbs up again because I see that my audio is working, but not necessarily my camera. I hope I can all see you. Welcome.

So you mentioned Silicon Valley, which needs no introduction. And obviously we grow up with Silicon Valley as an iconic place where, you know, money is made and business is done. But basically, as I said, I was in Lisbon and Slush last year, and both of these events, Anton from Lovable, the famous company from Stockholm, was there speaking. And as many of you probably know, his company now has 200 million ARR. In a very short time. I'm not sure, 1 or 2 years. And he made a conscious decision to base Lovable in Stockholm because he wanted to kind of— I'm not sure if I'm quoting him right or not, but he wants to prove or, you know, show that success on this scale is possible even if you're not based in California and Silicon Valley. So, you know, he's not the only one, but that's the most obvious company that comes to mind. And I think it's an interesting narrative that success does not depend on geography, but the product and the fit in the market. So yeah, that just came to mind.

Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, my experience is that when we talk to founders and they show their strategies, they actually go into Silicon Valley and we challenge them. And we actually had a webinar recently before, in December, We challenge that that is actually not a strategy, right? This is kind of more dream. The strategy is really about connecting, you know, their commercial investment objectives. And I guess for Richard, I can see a lot of— and I would add Italy as well as a market, potential market where you have a strong industrial land sector with German and Japanese manufacturing. So I think that's a lot of good opportunity for customers, for suppliers, nurturing that relationship, getting the traction. So I think that that's kind of what we're trying to do with our founders and help them realizing what the goals are and drive a bit of clarity on those goals to make that connections. I think it's, again, I don't think this is a failure of the founder, eventually it's the failure of ecosystem because ecosystem functions when they are able as well to create those connections. Open ecosystems that have connections by design and they can quickly offer those connection to their innovation community, actually thrive. The problem is when you don't have those connections. And that's where I think is the ecosystem, the failure of the ecosystem rather than the founder. So I don't want to be critical with founders who want to go to Silicon Valley. I think that's, that's, you know, a great thing to do for some of them, but at the same time, they need to realize that there must be a plan and there must be thinking behind the reason why they want to go there.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw us a curveball. This isn't a a conversation the three of us had previously. I'm curious, how, how have you found you could advise other startup programs or economic development professionals or local leaders or even founders? How would you advise them to best figure out where else is ideal to be? Because I agree with you, Alberto, it's not the fault of the founder. Yet, it still begs the question, how do we figure this out? That you're right too, some startups are ideal for and appropriate to a place like Silicon Valley, and yet it seems like everyone thinks they need to be there or that's the only ideal place, and that's certainly not true. How would you encourage folks to figure out what makes a good match as a different ecosystem or a different country or different city to participate or work with? Any thoughts?

I like this question, uh, Paul, because, um, you noticed me because I did the article on Founders Institute in the first place to a quite forensic level. It's kind of my hobby to go down rabbit holes and research things to death, to the ends of the earth, you could say. A lot of people don't like that. I actually enjoy it. It's maybe a guilty pleasure. I, uh, I mean, one, one quick example would be, um, if I'm— if I have a product which is compelling and I, and I don't think think I'm still looking for, you know, an investor or destination or market for this product, then obviously it's never been easy to research in a way, you know, with generative AI. But the thing is, it's never been easier to research in a mediocre level to go to a really high level. You can also use AI in a different way. One example being when I researched, for example, now it could be a Japanese company or any company, you may go to the website, you may, you know, look at the blog pages, you may, you you know, look at LinkedIn. But then, for example, Slush and these major events, Davos and so on, they have libraries of videos on YouTube. And someone actually— I read today that the biggest source of intelligence for AI is not Reddit anymore, it's YouTube, which is very interesting. Now, when you go to the library of these events, normally the videos only have, you know, 100 or 200 views. And these are major events where people spend thousands on So I often thought, and I wrote some articles about this, there's so much value locked up in these videos which could be, you know, gold for research purposes or whatever. So I did. I literally, you know, I found a way to download the videos into one big, you know, mountain of data. I transcribed it. I analyzed what came out. I wrote an article because I feel that, you know, getting that which no one else would do, probably no one else would do that, but I feel it had value, and you're getting information which wouldn't normally be available easily. And it has never been easier to do that. It's just a question of using the tools properly or being willing to sit down for 2 hours and find a way, which I am. But for me, the rewards are really worth it. I mean, I wouldn't be at Davos without that kind of attitude. I kind of reverse engineered the whole WEF program, all the articles they had. I was expecting half to get a cease and desist letter from the WEF, but I actually got a very well done. You know, from the head of communication, because I think they were blindsided in a positive way that someone would have gone to that much trouble to go to their products and, you know, bring out the value in it and communicate it. But for me, it's part of, you know, combining, bridging ecosystems is about communicating value. And I enjoy that process. So yeah, that's just a few thoughts.

Yeah, but that the research is being done, that people know the answers to these questions, that it's a matter of either finding the content or making some connections that might not seem like the right person to get the relationship going with, but they're in fact the right person to ask because they're familiar with where else you might want to work. Alberto, you have some other thoughts to add on that question? How do we help people figure out where best to collaborate.

Yeah. And I think this is more from an ecosystem builder perspective than a founder perspective, but—

Please, yeah.

The way, for example, yeah, the way we did for the Italian ecosystem in this example is that we try to understand what other kind of programs or what other capabilities were in the market. And we mapped that quite accurately, or we tried with the information we had. And we focused much on the demand side rather than the investors, the clients, the corporates that were looking for innovation rather than on the supply side, so the founders. And based on that, we defined, we designed a program that for the Italian market was was cross-border since the very beginning, because in that way could, we thought, we think that is adding value to the local ecosystem. Because most of the programs that are available in Italy is, they're very regional, and the type of as well founders that they enroll to this program, they feel like probably big constraints of looking just to the Italian market when they have the opportunity to scale beyond that. So I think that that's kind of where the exercise that Richard mentioned about connecting and providing those tools or the evidence, the data, to reach out the connection, that's extremely important because that kind of institutionalized the connection. So they just make from data, from insights, that help to bring those connections, that particular market, and allow the relationship and the trust to build. So that's what we're trying, you know, with the Italian market, and the Foundry has been a great asset there because it helps us with the global scope and the global network to connect our Italian founders to the broader community.

Let me share some clarification for everyone. Uh, most, most of you perhaps are certainly familiar with the fact that what Founder Institute typically does is a localized program, runs in a specific city, uh, operated by local directors. Uh, we connect with local mentors, and, uh, that's, that's built and operated on a platform that makes it easy for folks to work together. If, if anyone in the audience wants to have that in your city, that's easy enough. Hit fi.co, the website. Hit fi.co and reach out and say you want to do that kind of thing. The reason we're having these conversations is my point for interjecting this, that we— Alberto, Richard, myself— we're shifting into— we're in the business of helping these ecosystems develop. And so while we can run a local Founder Institute program, what I want you all to appreciate, since I've seen some of the questions, is that you can also just think of us as advisors or consultants or solution providers for the ecosystem itself, that you don't need to have a Thunder Institute program. We could just have a conversation with you about how to develop what you're doing in other ways. I saw a great question, for example, about Cape Town. And if I get a chance, I'll share that question. Cape Town, pretty isolated city, pretty isolated part of the world. Distant from capital. What do we do here in Cape Town? What I want to impress upon you is just reach out to us. I'm not for hire. I work for Federalist Institute. I'm happy to have a conversation with you and help figure out how we might develop that ecosystem in more meaningful ways, including bringing other programs or connecting other investors. That's the work that the three of us do in different ways. Let me— [SPANISH] [GERMAN] [FRENCH] [SPANISH] [GERMAN] [SPANISH] Just a quick thing to add.

I think this is a great point because when we see a region or a country and we try to build or facilitate the ecosystem, I think the connectivity as well within the ecosystems that are already there, it's a very powerful proposition because they will have, obviously, they will have the localized approach approach that is needed to create the local connections and potentially with other international ecosystems. And when I say ecosystem, again, it's a combination of stakeholders, right? It's not just about accelerator, but the opportunity to use these local existing networks and connect to broader communities is extremely powerful. And you're perfectly right to highlight this as a capability of the Foundry Institute, because that's exactly what we're trying to do as well in other cities in Italy. We're focusing on Milan as the main hub, but there are other places where we want to work and collaborate with local communities.

Perfect interjection, thank you. One place I can direct you, and Sanna can can drop a link, uh, if, if you want to have more of this kind of conversation rather than what is Founder Institute, do we put a program in place, this kind of conversation is best if you just go to fi.co/government. So hit that page and you'll be able to connect more quickly with, with people like myself in the organization. We can talk about public policy or local policy or how your economic development office or, or mayor's office or the national government could, could do more more of this kind of work. I am going to throw us a question from the audience because I like this one. Thank you, Leslie. Actually asking where cross-border opportunities actually seem to not work. Are there examples of where trying to work internationally on behalf of entrepreneurs fails? What's added from Leslie is, is there bottleneck? That's pretty evident that causes these to fail? Is there a bottleneck that prevents this kind of stuff from really working across border? Any thoughts, gentlemen? I thought that was a nice question from the audience.

Yeah, I like that question. Really nice question there. And a lot of things come to mind, again, for Japan. So I can think of major businesses and also individual examples, but I can give you one example. Japan is a very attractive market. For a long time, it was the third biggest economy in the world. I think it's number 5 now. But IKEA, for example, is one of the major companies which is now very popular in Japan. When they first came to Japan, they came with obviously massive backing and resources, but they tried to give a homogeneous product to Japan, which means the furniture, the flat packs, and everything was just shipped over to Japan and not adapted. Now, in a Japanese context, the Japanese homes are smaller and Japanese people do not expect to assemble things themselves. So IKEA had to leave and they didn't succeed and they had to come back and they had to come back with a completely kind of different model, adapting their products to the smaller dimensions of Japanese homes. They had to partner with logistics providers to make sure that, you know, the option of having it delivered and assembled was there. I live in Germany and a lot of people in Germany pride themselves on doing it themselves. I'm not ready to do that myself, but Germany is actually the country I think has the most IKEAs per capita or something, is 55 or so. But yeah, in terms of individuals or startups or founders going to Japan, the very long sales cycle is very painful for some, and some people can't tolerate that. And just the initial hurdles of getting the trust and winning the trust, which takes much longer there. I think once you have it, you have it, and it's just the pain point of getting it, which is a real, you know, a bottleneck. And on the other hand, people don't realize— a lot of people don't realize— only a fifth of Japanese have passports, which is quite surprising to many people. Japanese don't travel a lot. The Japanese who do travel and do business overseas are the exception, not the rule. Again, and also LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a, you know, we're all on LinkedIn. Japan isn't. Only 4 or 5% of Japan is on LinkedIn. But then these people are the exception and often the compelling exceptions because they don't follow the, you know, the road most traveled. They take their own path. Again, one last example. The education system in Japan is designed to produce for me kaizen people. People who are extreme attention to detail. It's not designed to produce entrepreneurs. But when you do get entrepreneurs like Uniqlo and Rakuten and Mikitani, these people succeed not because of the system but despite it. And they need to have incredible power of thinking and creativity to get through that education system and still retain it. The other example I always think is Super Mario. I saw a video of 1990 of the guy who actually made Super Mario. And in my mind, before I saw this, I knew what kind of office it would be. It would be a typical Japanese open-plan office. And to be fair, it was. The BBC clip— and I put this on my LinkedIn, it got a lot of views— there was a guy wearing blue overalls like a car worker, sitting in an office, paid a normal wage, and he's making a game which is iconic and selling hundreds of millions of copies. And that's just banned for me. It's a very good example. Just a few things came to mind, yeah.

Perfect examples. You're highlighting— Leslie, if I had to answer it since I may as well, as well, I don't just need to be the moderator. You're highlighting the fact that I think what we tend to find is that a city or a country or the founders tend to approach working cross-border from the standpoint of here's what I need, here's what we need. And they do that while neglecting is the answer to the bottleneck answer, in my opinion. Neglecting, this is how things work there. That it's, you know, I'm thinking of the US, a lot of people don't appreciate that the US is not one monolithic country, like where most of you are. The United States is 50 states, those states have their own laws and their own rules, their own tax policies. And if you don't appreciate how things work work, wherever you might be trying to develop a relationship, you can easily fall short of not even meeting expectations, but actually just things aren't going to work there because you're not doing what is necessary for the way things are in that other part of the world. Albert, any other quick thought on your part?

Yeah, no, first, learning so much about Japan from Richard, that's really, really fascinating. Thanks for sharing, Richard. And yeah, and thanks for the question, Lizely. It's a spot-on observation because from, again, probably less— well, from a founder perspective, it's about objectives and how you measure your success, right? So having clear what you're trying to reach, whether it's about a collaboration within a particular organization in that particular market, or acquiring clients, what type of clients, how you build your pipeline, how you understand the sales process and the relationship building aspects, the regulations, obviously fundraising, the investors' expectations. But also from— is an interesting paradigm for building those cross-border ecosystems in terms of metrics, how you measure the success. And I think very rarely I've seen programs that really put these ahead as an important aspect of the cross-border proposition. So how is success measured? I've seen, I've worked with Innovate UK, which is a innovation agents in the UK with pretty large budget in the UK. And they have these systems which is, I think, it's quite interesting, particularly for regional agencies and government-backed initiatives and programs where they measure the effect of the cross-border pathways based on the short-term, what they call more expectations, and medium-term goals. And by having this kind of clear metrics, and then when I say the short-term, it could be like a 6-month objectives to understand the effectiveness of that international pathway. It could be, you know, in terms of what the startup strategy, how the startup strategy has developed, what the partnership being initiated and providing those kind of clear pipeline of opportunities, assessing the readiness for international expansion, doing international fundraising. And then they have these more medium goals, which are more like the real goals of the program should demonstrate. It could be like annual or, you know, after 18 months, and that's where the visible evidence is important. So has been any, the startup generated any international revenue, or they raise any, what the capital they have raised, and then obviously get into more like the proposition of the jobs they have, they may have created to support that expansions, how many markets they have entered through that partnership. So I think that's kind of the approach anyway, that kind of having this very analytical and impact-driven method to assess the impact, the success of a cross-border initiative is extremely important both for the founder and for the ecosystem builders.

Great points. Hopefully that was helpful, Leslie. And yes, I see your comments as well. You're certainly not wrong adding that Africa is in fact 54 completely different markets too, like the United States. And I'm just sharing to reinforce that that comment was dropped because it's shocking to me how many organizations come to us and say, we would like to work with Africa. And I'm like, well, okay, which part and where and which government? We've done a little bit with Botswana, for example, and it's very different than Nigeria or South Africa. So great point, thank you for that question. I've got two more if we can fit them in, and I'd like to remind everybody to go ahead and ask a question if you've got one, you can do that in the chat function. If I can get these two, and I think that might be helpful because we've touched on them. Certainly one of the concerns that cities have and countries have is that question of, talent drain, Alberto. I think you mentioned that something like 40 unicorns have left and gone to Silicon Valley. Certainly, that's a valid concern. It's a fair concern. Do you have any advice on how to ensure that the local ecosystem, your city, your country, do you have any advice on how to help ensure that that kind of thing doesn't happen or that it's mitigated as much as possible, that you're able to work across border, but you don't you don't necessarily lose talent or lose companies in the process. Any best practices?

Yeah, that's what we hear a lot here in Europe. And I think we probably need to understand more why that's happened, right? Because if you go back to kind of that framework I discussed earlier about the innovation capacity, which Europe doesn't lack, because we do have top university R&D centers, a lot of deep tech, but we probably lack more about the entrepreneurship capacity, different level across different markets. But I think we need to understand more why that happened, that kind of founders want to relocate. And this is probably, you know, kind of more broader context. But then, look, I've seen the results of some research for the Italian ecosystem and they were highlighting how many accelerator in the local market— it was released last week— and they were highlighting how many of these programs actually failed and went out of business because they couldn't drive the value and they couldn't see the the exit that would generate the economic incentives for them to stay in the market. And then there was a presentation about how this accelerator invests, develop their programs, and a lot of emphasis on, you know, the potential, the grants aspect. So how much they would invest, they would give back, some more focus on the content, others on the mentoring. And then there was someone in the audience that actually, a panelist of this presentation, they say, well, one of the key problem is actually that if you want to scale a business in Italy, you can't find the people with the right skill set to do that. And that's maybe you have in London or Berlin or other European ecosystem. And then you think back and say, well, But why then the local accelerator or ecosystem, why they don't trying to attract, why they don't have, you know, services that recruit these high potential talents that can help Italian startups, Italian founders to scale very fast. And that's kind of the gap that is easy, quite easy to fix, right? It's about the design, about how you design the ecosystem. So the reality is that, yeah, there are some trends that are more difficult to tackle, but then if you think of what we can control maybe more locally is that designing well programs that can give the founders what they are looking for. And it's most of the time, it's not just capital, it's not just money, it's really about the infrastructure, the support, in this case about the talents who come to Italy and they have the right skill set to grow and to help grow the startups at the fast speed they need.

Yeah, and just to reinforce your last point, Everyone, places, founders tend to think the problem is capital. They tend to convey, ask about, and push that the problem is capital. What we need is capital. What the research and economists and consultants, people like myself consistently find is that capital is not the answer. Capital is a symptom of something else that's wrong. Alberto, I appreciate one point that you made in particular that it might be that we lack the experienced talent here. That enables your city or country to better understand what you actually need to fix so you don't have a talent drain. Richard, very quickly, do you have any thoughts on that question of how to preserve people?

Thank you both. Thank you, Alberto, great answer, and Paul also. I did have some thoughts and maybe a bit of an elephant in the room, but I'm British, as I mentioned, and I happen to be in Europe now. I made a conscious decision after leaving Japan. I think a lot of people expected me to go back to the homeland and I didn't, you know, and I have to admit, you know, we are outside Europe, as everyone knows. And that decision for me was a great mistake. I studied languages, you know, I speak French and German, I value the EU. And I would say that had we stayed, I probably would have gone back to to the UK. Now, I'm not saying that the people in the UK, the founders in the UK, cannot do business with Europe, but it's definitely, you know, much more trouble and hassle to do it now than it was before. And for me, when you have a— when you have a gain against that backdrop, then any gain is kind of like, um, for me, it would be difficult to tolerate that gain because you would think back 5, 10 years and that was not the case, you know, that, that obstacle was not in place So for me, I think that there must have been a drain of people who either left or didn't go back to the UK for similar reasons. Now, talking about Japan in terms of talent drain, I actually think Japan does not have the same talent drain because, as I said, only a fifth of Japanese have passports, so they don't all flock to Europe if they don't succeed. But Japan's problems are a bit different. Obviously, fast is aging, fast is shrinking. One problem in Japan is that everyone who lives in the regions wants to go to the cities, so everyone goes to Tokyo or Osaka or Yokohama, for example, and the regions need, you know, founders and impetus. Well, one interesting example recently is Kumamoto. Kumamoto in Japan is— before a few years ago, it's very much just a place with where they have nice strawberries and a nice castle, but actually TSMC built many factories there with some incentives from the prefecture, and now they have a real strong economic boost for the region. And also Japan maneuvers the tax payment, so when you pay your taxes in Japan, you can offset taxes by benefiting some regional, you know, things in the countryside. For example, if you pay your tax, uh, if you tick these boxes, we'll send you some crabs from this area. So certain parts of the system are trying to redistribute this concentration of people and resources, but it's a work in progress. Yeah, just some thoughts.

It's always a work in progress in our world as entrepreneurs or venture capitalists or startup founders. Trust me, it's always a work in progress. Han, I appreciate your chat, so I wanted to draw people's attention to that. Capital is not the need. I love that you agree with me. I want to point it out though, because I might even push you to think harder. We also tend to hear and tend to think that, as you pointed out, what we actually need is customers. And I wanted to highlight that because what I often find is that investors give a soft no by saying that you should focus on customers. And therefore, startup founders either think they need capital or they need customers, which I just want to touch on because frankly, What is both of those things? Both of those things is just cash flow. It's capital. And so if we think the challenge is getting customers, I would encourage— that means there's still something else, right? Marketing or sales or culture or product-market fit, right? Used to be decades ago, used to be the prevailing theory was that if you need to have salespeople, if you need to be pushing sales, it's because your marketing, your product market fit are wrong because customers should just show up. So might be worth digging in that a little bit. I hope the criticism of the comment is well placed because it's exactly what we're talking about here, right? That if things aren't quite working right, how do we fix it? And so, say thank you too for saying we've had a good webinar because that's why we're here. We're not here to, And in these sessions that we're doing with Founder Institute, we're not here to really tell you how to do things. We're not teaching in these kind of sessions that we're having. We're gonna have another event, I believe it's next week, it's coming up. We're gonna have another event about innovation districts and how public-private partnerships result in better innovation districts. And we don't have all the answers. We're just gonna ask some hard questions and have some great speakers and participants on the panel so that we can help you all figure out and think differently about how to do it better. I noticed in the chat too, Chris Foltz, if you saw his LinkedIn, Chris Foltz is going to be a very active participant with Founder Institute on behalf of these public-private partnerships that we're putting in place, which is part of my job to help you figure out how to put those in place. Chris is going to take a look at Startups 425, which is something we're doing out of Bellevue and Seattle in a public-private partnership that could be more meaningful. The event coming up though is actually in what we're doing with Washington, DC, everyone. It's an organization called PenWest and it's the mayor's office and George Washington University and an innovation district in the city, 3 completely different organizations putting in place a better startup ecosystem in a way that isn't just an accelerator or just an incubator. We're part of it. We're helping them be more meaningful as best we can. Let me wrap up with one final quick question or quick answer, hopefully, gentlemen, Alberto and Richard. If you have just a hot take, if you had the metrics or the objectives, Alberto, you touched on objectives or outcomes quite a bit. If you had the metrics metrics. You know, I find, I find a lot of programs celebrate all the events they have and how big their community is and how many connections they have. And those, those aren't outcomes. Those are just signs of things going on, right? What are the outcomes that we should be looking for from a very effective cross-border program for entrepreneurs? What are the kinds of things that we, when we, when we look at two cities or two countries working together, What are the kinds of things that make us go, yep, that is working, that's what we should be getting out of this? What are your thoughts on the KPIs?

Yeah, good, great, great question to finish on, Paul. Well, on this point, I would say that the best outcomes are things which, outcomes which last for the medium and long term. So rather than the quick wins, I would say revenue generated, jobs created and, you know, changes which are felt for the medium and long term rather than quick wins. And, you know, it's like the example of people who have 50,000 followers and, you know, very little revenue. Basically, it doesn't matter how many followers, it's also a question of alignment and, you know, how well you communicate your value and how good is the alignment between you and the customers. And if so, how the pipeline will be flowing well. Now, if it's not a question of quantity, it's a question alignment for me, that's the keyword, alignment. If the alignment is there, everything else is more or less there.

Yeah, I think we touched on that quite a bit. Alberto, you have a different take or agree?

Yeah, like I think we mentioned earlier as well, and the original point, I think it's those objectives need to have time to mature. So I think looking as a medium medium-term, 12-month objectives. And I think, yeah, hardcore metrics, right, that sometimes we don't like, but it's about, you know, revenue generated, capital raised, market access, number of market access. So it's really about those kind of medium-term metrics that have time to materialize. So the real question is about So not the capabilities that you want to build cross-border create an impact, but what type of accessible capability you create for your founder as an ecosystem builder that creates an impact. So, and that impact is measured, as we said before, right? So that, that's to me is the takeaway from, from this session.

Perfect. Both, both Richard and Alberto are very active on LinkedIn. As we've shared. So am I. Best way to connect with us directly would be there, I imagine. I've dropped a couple of Founder Institute links and Sana has shared those in the chat as well. If you want to try to connect through Founder Institute directly, fi.co/government. A real honor to have you all here, Alberto and Richard, to have you here in particular. Let me leave you with this note because I just saw this come in from Ben Morandi. Thank you for the question. That in Canada, there are a lot of accelerators. I'm not going to pose this question to the panel so we can wrap up. I just thought it was an interesting thought to leave everyone with. In Canada, there are a lot of accelerators. Can or how would cross-border entrepreneurship help a place like Canada? What I'd love to leave everybody with is think about this. In ecosystem development, in startup development, I think things are always changing, right? We're learning new things, we're developing new models, we're developing new opportunities. What most cities have been doing for the last 15 years is standing up an accelerator. And I guarantee you, most of you probably have an accelerator in your community. I'm gonna be a little critical in pointing out that what we've learned is that's probably version 1 of a healthy startup ecosystem. So what we're talking about here is the fact that we want to be moving into version 2 or version 3. Uh, and that means a lot of competing programs. That means a lot of collaborative programs. That means a lot of cross-border, uh, work. And that means a bit of what Alberto and Richard just finished on, that we need to be more outcome-driven, not input-driven. It's not a question of how many startups are we launching. It's not a question of how many people are showing up at demos all day. No one cares. That doesn't mean anything. That just shows what we call startup theater, where it looks like you're doing cool stuff. What we need to be shifting to are these outcome metrics. How many jobs are we creating? How much funding is being raised? And, and look at your community and appreciate that if the answer is not much, you're doing it wrong. Doesn't mean we know how you should be doing it better. Doesn't mean there's a right answer, but it's almost smarter to just say shoot, what we're doing is not working. So let's at least change things up and try something different. In this case, look at working with different countries. And like I said, coming up in our next program, so get on fi.co and register for the newsletter or follow Federated States of Europe on LinkedIn so you can get these updates. Our next event, we're going to talk about public-private partnerships and how those develop better eco systems and innovation districts. My name is Paul O'Brien. Alberto, Richard, thank you very much. I'm sorry, couldn't quite get to everybody's question. Sonia, you want to throw up the panel results and we'll leave this session on those panel results, just get a sense for what everybody thought are the reasons that these international cross-border ecosystems exist. If that's ready to show, we'll do that as we say goodbye, good morning, good evening, good afternoon, whatever the case might be. To everyone who joined us today. Thank you. And yes, recording will be available and we'll get a write-up about this as soon as possible too. Thank you everyone. Thanks Paul.

Thanks Richard.

Thank you. Thank you everyone. Cheers. Thank you.

Thanks.