Philippine Startup Week 2024 was nothing short of enlightening, featuring insightful talks, engaging networking sessions, and inspiring individuals to learn from. This year, both Philippine and regional colleagues from Gobi Partners played key roles, offering valuable insights and actively contributing to the week’s events.
The week kicked off with the launch of the Philippine Horizons: Filipino Innovation in the ASEAN Landscape report. The report explores the startup ecosystems of the ASEAN-6 countries and how the Philippines fairs against them. It also tackles the differences and advantages of the Philippine market, building up to why investors should pay attention to this market now. Recommendations included active government support in the form of startup visas and taxes as it is crucial for a rising startup ecosystem like the Philippines to measure up to its neighbours.
The Philippine Startup Database was also published in an effort to consolidate all the information that investors, founders, incubators, or anyone interested in learning about the ecosystem could use. It contains key details on the local investor landscape, available government support for founders, founder expertise, among others.
Kicking off the Philippine Startup Week festivities, Founding Partner Carlo Chen-Delantar delivered a keynote speech highlighting the key findings from the recently released report. The session was attended by government agency officials, investors, and startup founders from across Metro Manila.
Last November 12, Founding Partner Ken Ngo discussed the report with crucial players in the Cebu startup ecosystem during the 2024 Philippine Innovative Startup Policy Conference. During this event, there were insightful talks on advancing policy directions and initiatives for supporting startups outside of Metro Manila.
The Gobi-Core Philippines team also collaborated with the Fiestartup team, consisting of representatives from Quest Ventures, Startup Island.ph, DOHE, Nala Woman, and RGC, in organising a series of events catered to Cebu-based startups. A workshop on “Fundraising for Founders” was held in preparation for the business matching segment that took place during the Geeks on a Beach event on November 14. Through this event, Cebuano founders were able to meet local and international institutional and angel investors.
To wrap up the week-long festivities, Carlo also presented the report’s recommendations last November 15, the second conference day of Geeks on a Beach. The session brought together ecosystem stakeholders from across the Philippines and abroad to delve into the developments of both local and regional startup ecosystems.
Philippine Startup Week 2024 has become an avenue not only to reconnect with collaborators in the ecosystem, but also amplify valuable sentiments. The growth of the Philippine ecosystem has become apparent, but relative to its neighbours, there is still a lot to be done for the Philippines to be known as one of the rising ecosystems in Southeast Asia. The call for more government support through the implementation of startup visas and taxes can only be stronger when the ecosystem comes together and champions this message.
The ASEAN horizon is shifting. Now is the time to take action and position Filipino innovation at the forefront of Southeast Asia’s thriving tech landscape.