The Netherlands is on its way to become a ‘Unicorn Nation’ very soon

His Royal Highness Prince Constantijn van Oranje wants to make the Netherlands “a unicorn nation.”

As a leading innovation nation, the Netherlands wants to play a bigger role in developing solutions for a better world and building companies that can make a positive impact on a global scale. To ensure this, the Dutch government recently launched at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2019 in The Hague, The Netherlands, a broad package of measures and a new initiative: TechLeap.NL, a major collective effort to bolster the growth and standing of Dutch scale-ups.

2018 was a good year for the Netherlands. Not only did Amsterdam-StartupDelta experienced the largest increase in the Genome Global Startup Ecosystem Ranking, rising from #19 in 2017 to #15 in 2019, it also experienced a high growth in funding, startup output, as well as strong performance in Life Sciences and Deep Tech. Its position was also helped by the successful exits of Adyen and Elastic.

To maintain such production of billion-dollar startups, the Dutch government will make 65 million euros available for startup- and scale-ups-policies. A list of actions also includes an adjustment of the stock option tax regime by moving the moment of taxation to the moment of disposal, the appointment of six startup liaisons in six priority international metropolitan areas (‘hubs’) and a pilot for the granting of a residence permit for key personnel of a startup, originating from outside the EU.

TechLeap.NL

As part of the plan, the government also launched TechLeap.NL as the successor of StartupDelta. Its program will from the first of July focus on knowledge development about the startup ecosystem, creating new initiatives in the ecosystem and connecting Dutch top scale-ups with the best investors and programs.

The emphasis will be on the themes of capital, talent, and market in relation to rapid growth. TechLeap.NL’s Special Envoy will be his Royal Highness Prince Constantijn van Oranje, who has also fulfilled this role at StartupDelta over the past three years.The organization will be renewed as TechLeap.NL until 2023.

Prince Constantijn van Oranje, “With TechLeap.NL the Netherlands is running for European leadership in tech. Being one interconnected delta we’re in a position where we can work as one unit to push the Netherlands forward together”.

Mona Keijzer, state secretary of Economic Affairs and Climate: “The success of the Netherlands is driven by an international culture of openness, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship.  With these new action plan, we want to build the best ecosystem of Europe.”

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