GEC+ Puerto Rico: July 15 – 18, 2024
The Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) linked up in Puerto Rico this past week with the latest iteration of its GEC+ (Global Entrepreneurship Congress Plus) event hosted in the vibrant capital city of San Juan.
GEN is a global force for uniting ecosystem builders, policy makers, entrepreneurial industry leaders, university officials – and people that more likely than not identify as more than one of those categories. GEC+ is their international event series that focuses on a geographic region or industry-specific sector, bringing significant expertise to strengthen those entrepreneurship ecosystems and aid the acceleration of startups. Over 400 attendees flocked to San Juan from all over the globe (I believe every continent was represented save for Antarctica), but with a heavy emphasis on the Latin American and Caribbean populations.
The EcoMap team received an invite to participate in the GEC+ Puerto Rico convening and you don’t pass up on an opportunity like this. Over the course of four days, we had the chance to reunite with some familiar faces, meet some new ones, and deepen relationships with a global network of ecosystem builders who are dedicated to catalyzing the world’s entrepreneurs.
Below I’m going to share a snippet of my personal experience at GEC+ Puerto Rico in order to shed some light on what happens at this type of convening as well as to hopefully entice any reader to make sure they don’t miss the next one!
Vision 2035 : An Entrepreneurial Future for the Americas
Traditionally known as la Isla del Encanto (the Island of Enchantment), Puerto Rico took on another nickname throughout this conference – la Isla Emprendedora (the Enterprising Island).
GEN Founder/President Jonathan Ortmans kicked off the convening with a warm welcome to attendees from all over the world by putting the spotlight firmly on Puerto Rico and the watershed opportunity this island has based on its unique location, culture, and workforce. Ortmans then connected that to the bigger picture of how a more connected entrepreneurial ecosystem across the region has the ability to position all of its stakeholders for exponential growth over the next ten years.
Island leaders from both the public and private sectors such as Gov. Pedro Pierluisi, Secretary of Economic Development and Commerce Manuel Cidre, and Banco Popular CEO Ignacio Alvarez spoke of a concerted effort to position Puerto Rico as an entrepreneurial friendly environment, both to attract new businesses and support its local entrepreneurial ecosystem. Attendees may have been surprised to learn that only 7% of PR economy is based on tourism – The vast majority of Puerto Rico’s economy is built around the skilled sectors of biotech, pharma, aerospace, professional services, and the creative arts.
Isabel Casillas Guzman, Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, built upon that discussion by expanding the scope to Latin entrepreneurs all across the U.S. Administrator Guzman shared data about how entrepreneurship provided a pathway for Latin generational wealth-building and how that wealth tended to find its way reinvested throughout the community. Building even further, Cesar Buenadicha who is the Chief Discovery Officer with the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB) and Alejandro Panameño who is the Director of Innovation and Competitiveness in El Salvador shared the pan-regional vision of regional cooperation that strengthens all of its participants.
While there may not be a singular vision for Latin America, there appears to be consensus on building bridges across the region to help address common challenges and support the innovators driving new ideas forward. The role of regional entrepreneurial ecosystem builders over the next decade may well be a key determinant in that success.
EcoMap’s Participation
The EcoMap team (myself, our Co-Founder CEO Sherrod and Chief of Staff Maria) was invited to participate in three sessions throughout the course of the GEC+ PR convening.
The first session, titled Ecosystem Building Comes of Age, was hosted by Jonathan Ortmann and shined a spotlight on the trajectory of global ecosystem building activities over the course of this millennium. In a literal roundtable discussion (seriously – it looked like the large circular table from the Doctor Strangelove war room), over a dozen ecosystem building practitioners gathered to share their unique expertise based on a guided conversation. The question I received revolved around how we think about telling the story of an ecosystem through its data. My primary point was that while we can measure and report on certain elements of an entrepreneurial ecosystem through analysis on its assets, the stories of the people behind these assets are what captures the human spirit.
Later on that day, I participated in a breakout session called Measuring What Matters which further delved into the question of ecosystem data. This was a true breakout session as the chosen facilitators spent the majority of the time guiding a discussion on ecosystem data/metrics at smaller table discussions, primarily focusing on the topic of what is and isn’t working when it comes to ecosystem data collection. Each table gave a quick share-out of their discussion while a facilitator (Andrea Mazariegos of Swisscontact in Guatemala) synthesized those findings into bullet points. After the session, all of the notes were collected as we’ll continue to report out on this topic in the lead-up to GEC in Indiana next year.
Finally, Sherrod had the opportunity to speak on a panel called Storytelling for Ecosystem Builders. Panelists here included entrepreneurial support org (ESO) leaders, authors/journalists, marketers, and leaders in charge of shaping their organizational brand identities. Each panelist approached storytelling through their own lens, using the power of strong personal storytelling to illustrate their own points. One key takeaway here? Storytelling will help you open minds, but only when you marry that story with data will you open checkbooks.
Masterclasses
In addition to the main stage sessions and breakouts, GEN assembled an All-Star squad of entrepreneurial practitioners to download their expertise to attendees. I had the good fortune to sit on two jam-packed Masterclass sessions which left me with copious notes and actionable takeaways I’ll be applying to my work at EcoMap.
The first topic of Shaping your Brand for Exponential Growth through Inbound Sales was led by Jeff Hoffman, the Board Chair of GEN and one of the Co-Founders of Priceline.com. Jeff weaved stories of his own personal experience at Priceline along with examples from an iconic batch of his peer entrepreneurs (Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson to name two). The main takeaway here was in order to achieve explosive growth, you need to narrow your focus and “win a gold medal at one thing”. Priceline chose hotel pricing, Amazon chose online bookstores. That becomes your brand and then your brand sells itself as it becomes associated with excellence in that category.
The next session on Using Low-Fidelity Experiments to Launch High-Growth Businesses was led by Donna Harris, a highly successful serial entrepreneur who is currently running an organization called Builders+Backers – a robust startup venture studio which provides a variety of targeted support to help idea-stage companies launch and scale.
Donna’s session focused about the importance of customer validation instead of customer discovery through designing novel Minimum Viable Experiments (MVEs) instead of the traditional Minimum Viable Products (MVPs).
In a somewhat full circle moment, Donna was the Co-Founder of the D.C.-based incubator 1776 which gave me my first internship in the entrepreneurial/ecosystem building world back in the summer of 2015. Nine years later, I had the opportunity to thank her for that career trajectory-altering experience.
In total, there were eight Masterclasses held at GEC+ Puerto Rico with other topics including Building Exponential Organizations, Reimagining Your Business Strategy Throughout the Enterprise Life Cycle, and Product Design with Hispanic Consumers in Mind.
One thing is for certain – if you attend a GEC Masterclass, you’re going to walk out with tangible takeaways that you can apply to your work as an ecosystem builder and/or entrepreneur.
Other GEN Programs
GEN as an organization provides year-round opportunities to connect through its programming – not just at GEC convenings. Below I wanted to shine a quick spotlight on four additional programs this audience should know about in order to get involved.
Startup Huddle
Startup Huddle is a GEN chapter program with ~100 locations worldwide. These chapters are place-based communities you can tap into in order to meet fellow entrepreneurs/ecosystem builders on a local level. In order to see if there is a Startup Huddle chapter in your community, click this link.
If you don’t see a chapter for your city and would like to change that, please connect with GEN Startup Huddle Director Pretty Ndlovu on LinkedIn.
Entrepreneurship World Cup
The Entrepreneurship World Cup (EWC) is one of the largest and most diverse pitch competitions and support programs of its kind. Every year, tens of thousands of entrepreneurs from 200 countries compete for US$1 million dollars in cash prizes and millions more worth of investment, support and publicity through national pitch competitions, bootcamps and a global finals event attended by leading investors. Since launching in 2019, the competition has connected founders with over US$4M in cash prizes and another US$266M worth of perks and free support and services.
Learn more about how you can get involved with the EWC.
Global Startup Ecosystem Report
Most years since 2015, GEN has released an annual impact impact report which is a leading source of entrepreneurial ecosystem data on a global city level. In partnership with Startup Genome, this report is one of the most cited sources of entrepreneurial ecosystem data, metrics, and rankings. One exciting announcement by Matt Smith – GEN’s Director of Research and Policy – was that next year GEN will release its first country-wide impact report, first with a focus on G20 member countries, which will enable insights from cross-country ecosystem comparisons for the first time.
Check out the 2024 (and previous) GEN Impact Report
Global Entrepreneurship Week
Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) is happening all around the world on November 18-24 of this year. One of GEN’s hallmark programs, GEW is a truly global celebration of entrepreneurship in which cities, states, regions, and whole countries put a concerted effort to put the spotlight on entrepreneurship in their communities. GEW is a fairly decentralized event (the running motto is catalyze, don’t organize) which allows each hub to add their own distinct flare to the entrepreneurial celebration. Anyone can help to organize an event and add it to the running GEW calendar, which will host 40,000+ events across 200+ countries in November.
Click here to view the GEW hub and learn more about how to get involved.
Conclusion
If you missed GEC+ Puerto Rico this past week, I have two things to say to you. The first? ¡Qué lástima! The second? Fear not, there are more opportunities to get plugged into a global network of ecosystem builders.
The next flagship GEN event is happening in 11 months in Indianapolis, Indiana – hosted by our good friends over at the Indiana Economic Development Center (IEDC). This conference will be exponentially bigger as the early estimate is ~6,000 attendees from all over the world will descend upon Indiana to keep engaging in global ecosystem building dialogue.
You can learn more about GEC Indianapolis here.
And if you don’t want to wait until June 2025 to attend a similar-minded convening, EcoMap is hosting its inaugural conference called SuperConnect September 24-25 of this year in the Greatest City in America™️ – our proud HQ of Baltimore, Maryland.
Many attendees from GEC+ Puerto Rico will be making an appearance at SuperConnect and I promise this is an event you will not want to miss out on. If you were a GEC+ attendee (or even just made it to the end of this recap regardless – kudos for your attention span), message me in order to get a registration discount.
You can learn more about SuperConnect and get your tickets here.
Hasta luego, Puerto Rico.