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A new zone located south to Guangzhou’s University City will be built for the development of higher education R&D, scientific and technological services, as well as innovative industry. The initial region of the zone, which is called Guangzhou’s International Innovation City, was officially approved on May 1st. The initial 10-square kilometer region costs over 3.7 billion yuan and is scheduled to be completed by 2014. It is positioned as an extension of University City, which is now home to 120,000 students studying at ten higher education institutions. It will accommodate the new campuses of Jinan University and Guangzhou’s Medical College.

African entrepreneurs are increasingly looking for mentorship. Locally, a study by the Silicon Cape initiative, revealed that access to business mentors was the second most sought after resource. Now,VC4Africa (Venture Capital for Africa), the African entrepreneurial hub, is launching the Mentorship Marketplace, a peer-to-peer marketplace where entrepreneurs can add “mentor requests” that are searchable and actionable by a pool of registered mentors.

Entrepreneurs looking for advice on how to grow their business in Africa now have access to a group of dedicated mentors, while Africans living abroad can get directly involved with venture creation.

Assisting promising entrepreneurs

Having a quick look at the type of mentorship being requested on the Mentorship Marketplace, entrepreneurs are looking for advice on things like fund-raising, strategy development, acceleration and business model proposition. There’s also the odd startup at seed-stage looking for guidance on making it past year one.

VC4Africa’s own research shows 45% of Africa’s entrepreneurs who registered on VC4Africa are looking for mentorship. 20% of the members have currently engaged in VC4Africa’s mentorship activities.

“When an entrepreneur faces a challenge we are convinced there are members within the VC4Africa network who have the answers and are willing to lend their insight, expertise and experience,” says David van Dijk, Head of Entrepreneurship Development at VC4Africa.

The service is free of charge. Mentors dedicate their time, network and expertise free of charge. After a match is made through the platform, the dialogue between mentor and entrepreneur continues through channels of their choosing — email, phone, Skype, instant messenger and so on.

To place a request the entrepreneur has to have a good (draft) business plan and related documents, and have a clear challenge that is well-defined and measurable. For entrepreneurs who are still in the earlier stages and not yet ready to receive a mentor, VC4Africa hosts a growing number of self-help tools like business plan templates and the VC4Africa Questions & Answers service.

Mentorship successes

The Mentorship Marketplace grew from VC4Africa’s dedicated mentorship group, started in 2011. The programme has developed over the last two years into the service it is today.

“The new service is designed to help organise the supply and demand from across the community. Most importantly, the tool recognises people’s participation and we are continually looking at ways we can recognise members for their contributions,” explains Bill Zimmerman, CoFounder of VC4Africa.

The VC4Africa community of entrepreneurs and investors has more than 10,000 members in more than 159 countries. Entrepreneurs have raised more than a US$1-million in funding through VC4Africa.

Over 2,000 people gathered last week in Rio – the home of carnaval and caipirinhas.  They included over 135 delegations representing the host nations of GEW – Global Entrepreneurship Week.  Every March since 2009 they have gathered in ever increasing numbers for the Global Entrepreneurship Congress to plan and develop GEW as the world’s largest movement encouraging and supporting nascent entrepreneurs. Rio was the latest to play host following previous gatherings in Liverpool, Shanghai, Dubai, and Kansas City.

Building on last year’s amazing event in Liverpool, GEC2013 was hosted by Endeavor Brazil who put on a magnificent event at the Lagoon with a support team of 300.  With events and sessions spread across four days the program featured 50 visionary speakers from around the world.  Brad Feld Co-founder of TechStars, Bowei Gai Founder of World Startup Report, Jeff Hoffman Co-founder of Priceline, Alexandre Hohagen VP Facebook Latin America, Felipe Matos COO Startup Brasil, Dave McClure Founder 500 Startups, Linda Rottenburg Co-founder and CEO Endeavor Global, Mbwana Alliy Founder of the Savannah Fund, Marc Nager CEO Startup Weekend, Miki Kuusi Co-founder Startup Sauna, Fintan Donahue CEO Gazelle, Ingrid Vanderveldt Entrepreneur in Residence Dell – to name a few.

These were not just entrepreneur rock stars – they represented some of the finest minds and achievers.  While the debate was diverse several themes emerged. The role of government – how to be constructive not obstructive, women entrepreneurs – examining the challenges and roads to success, and how to efficiently provide the right kind of support and reduce failure rate.  Julia Deans representing GEW Canada saidtheir schemes were achieving a 15-20% higher startup survival rate and a loans repayment figure of 94%.  Other insights revealed developments in experiential entrepreneurship education, ways to scale up fast, and how to build entrepreneurial communities.

It was indeed the united nations of entrepreneurship complete with signing ceremonies for new host nations Finland, Georgia, India, Myanmar, Palestine, Philippines, Senegal and Vietnam.  Away from the Lagoon the fun continued with fringe events, helicopter rides, dinners and beach parties.  The Congress closed with the GEW Gala Awards on top of Sugarloaf Mountain.  Juliano Seabra and Endeavor Brasil certainly put on a world-class show.  The baton now passes to Alexei Komissarov and his team who will host the GEC2014 in Moscow.  If you want to be part of this extraordinary show next year sign up at http://gec2014.com/   In the meantime, plans are underway for 35,000 events in November when Global Entrepreneurship Week kicks off across the planet.

Over 1200 international delegates from 150 countries are expected to land in Rio over the next few days. They will be gathering for the 5th Global Entrepreneurship Congress hosted by Global Entrepreneurship Week, Endeavor Brazil, and the Kauffman Foundation. In a very short period of time, the Global Entrepreneurship Congress has evolved into the premier interdisciplinary gathering of startup champions from around the world—where entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, thought leaders and policymakers work together to bring ideas to life, drive economic growth and expand human welfare.

The 2013 Congress takes place from March 18 – 21, where thinkers, doers and leaders from diverse economies around the world will focus on how both policymakers and startup communities can better understand each other and work together to promote an environment more conducive to startups and the growth of young firms. The Congress will focus on awareness and celebration, experiential education, startup cities, financing growth, smart top down government policies and strategies for scaling up.  You can find out more at http://gec2013.com/en

The four players to watch are Nailab, Savanna Fund, Growth Hub and 88mph – all of which have sprung up within the last few years. NaiLab offers an accelerator for early-stage startups, which lasts from three to 12 months. The aim is to nurture innovation within the tech industry by offering bespoke business coaching and support for successful applicants. The template for the entrepreneurship programme seems not unlike schemes currently running closer to home, such as Berlin’s Startup Academy.

Startup Partners Africa, a new Berlin-based incubator, has set its business sonar solely to Africa. The incubator’s CEO Leonard Stiegeler, a Rocket alumnus, was a former co-founder of the online fashion retail store Sabunta before it merged with Kasuwa and rebranded itself as Rocket Internet’s Jumia in Nigeria.

Stiegeler and his new incubating outfit Startup Partners Africa are the brains behind the new retailer Sunglasses, which launched in Nigeria less than three months before the incubator got off the ground. “We tested and concept-proofed two models in the African market, the first of which was fashion and beauty and the second was sunglasses,” Stiegler says, with impressively precocial drive. “We are now looking at other models and other markets, specifically Kenya now.”

Kenya is one of the African leaders in this field with incubators and seed funds salivating at the country’s high mobile penetration rate (around 74 for every 100 people). In addition, mobile subscriptions in Kenya grew 16 per cent between 2011 and 2012, with 99 per cent of internet subscriptions being on the mobile.

Startup accelerator 500 Startups is serious about growing its presence in emerging markets. According to the accelerator, “big things are happening” in the South American country, which is why the programme has “been so passionate about supporting Brazilian startups and entrepreneurs”.

In a recent post on its site, 500 Startups noted that Brazil’s mobile landscape is worth paying attention to saying that it is “seeing Silicon Valley in Brazil”. “Mobile’s massive as well, with more than 1.4 phones per person, with 22-million of those being smartphones,” says the post. “And these numbers are going up faster every year.”

500 Startups was founded by high-profile Silicon Valley Angel investor Dave McClure in 2010 as a seed accelerator with a tech bias. Since its inception three years ago, the accelerator has already featured three Brazilian startups in its program and more will be featured in upcoming programs.

“3 companies in Batch 5, UniPay, Qual Canal, and Cuponomia, come from Brazil, and we’re excited to support more in our Spring 2013 accelerator. We even have our own Brazilian ambassador on staff, Venture Partner Bedy Yang, who focuses on partnerships and startups in the region through 500 Startups and Brazil Innovators.”

Things are definitely heating up on Brazil’s startup scene indeed, the country launched its own reality television show depicting its startup culture. The show, Go For It, follows several Brazilian startups telling their story.

Endeavor Brasil is hosting the Global Entrepreneurship Congress next month in Rio. The world is watching.

Samsung, the world’s top smartphone maker, will devote new funds to nascent technology ideas, with an eye to solving today’s challenges for mobile devices.

A motive driving Samsung’s investments is a desire to break through some fundamental barriers and unknowns in order to improve the “supercomputers in our hands,” as Sohn described modern smartphones. While some mobile technology advances are predictable—say, the move from 4G to 5G data networks by 2020—the path forward in other areas is less clear, he said. Technologies that address limited mobile battery life and weak device security, or lower the cost of a device and advance chip architecture, are among those of particular interest.

Of course, venture investments are nothing new for Samsung, nor are they for other research-focused companies in similar industries, such as Intel or Google. Last year, Samsung invested its capital in 20 deals worth $160 million, Sohn said. It also bought key startups, such as a Santa Clara–based data caching company called Nvelo.

“We believe that a number of venture companies have moved away from basic science and technology that takes a long time to incubate and develop. Samsung has decided we want to step in,” Sohn said.

Bloomberg has revealed its Innovation Index.  When you think about the most innovative countries, the U.S. and South Korea often come to mind. But what about Iceland or Iran? How do they compare?

Chile has put itself on the entrepreneurial map. It was named an “entrepreneurial hub” by the Start-Up Genome Project, surpassing such metropolitan cities as Madrid, Berlin, Chicago, and Austin. Certainly, programs like Start-Up Chile have cast a global spotlight on the small Latin American country, but ecosystems do not spring up overnight; they are assiduously developed and cultivated.

So how did a country with a population only 5% as large as that of the U.S. become such an entrepreneurial hot-spot? A new Endeavor Insight study analyzes the complexity of this question and attempts to quantify the direct impact of Endeavor Entrepreneurs and the Endeavor program itself on the creation of this ecosystem.

From interviews and surveys with over 300+ entrepreneurs in Chile, this study maps out the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem in Chile. It begins with the 66 Endeavor Entrepreneurs who have been chosen since 1998. These entrepreneurs have gone on to support 5,800 jobs and generate over $400MM in revenue in just 2011 alone. Moreover, they have inspired, mentored, or invested in over 160 other companies. Indeed, Endeavor Entrepreneurs are more than 30% more likely to mentor, 50% more likely to inspire, and 200% more likely to invest in other companies than their non-Endeavor counterparts. Successful entrepreneurs become cornerstones of ecosystems; their inspiration, mentorship, and investment in other entrepreneurs creates a true “multiplier effect” when it comes to impact.