The StartupCity book: a manual for local governments

The rise of startups

In recent years, startups and fast-growing tech companies have become vital to any major city. Around the world, we find ourselves in a transitioning economy – one that offers opportunities to entrepreneurs, thinkers and inventors who are hard at work coming up with new forms of technology, products and innovations to improve our lives. City governments must play an important role in helping these startups flourish locally; to achieve this, governments must first embrace a startup mindset of their own, functioning as a dynamic and round-the-clock enterprise that matches the rapid pace of today's business.

The StartupCity Book was designed to provide administrations, civil servants and public-private initiatives with guidance on how they can think and work like a startup. The book takes a comprehensive look at how the public sector can engage with the private sector to form initiatives. This – in turn – will boost the startup world’s ecosystem and nurture cities as breeding grounds for innovation and job growth. Bas Beekman (public lead) and Ruben Nieuwenhuis (private lead) – the founders of the StartupAmsterdam action programme – guide the reader through concrete lessons, cases and best practices, showing how every city in the world can grow into a startup city.

The book was officially launched during The Next Web Conference 2017, which took place on 19 May 2017.

Download the PDF of the StartupCity Book

A warm welcome from Ukraine

StartupAmsterdam are more than happy to share insights and set an example for other progressive cities that wish to become more startup oriented.

West Ukraine’s largest city, Lviv, became the first city to express interest and utilise the StartupCity book. The translation of the book was a collaboration between local accelerator Greencubator (Ukrainian link) and the Western NIS Enterprise Fund. The Ukrainian edition was presented during the 1st International Mayors Congress. The event took place on 5 December 2016. Ruben signed the first copy and handed it to the Ukrainian Prime Minister, and 250 participants also received a copy.

Furthermore, the book was taken on a regional tour that included the following cities: Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv, Odessa and Dnipro. Additional workshops were held in Kyiv in February 2017. In total, the number of copies of the Ukrainian edition amounted to 1,000, which is 10 times more than the original version.

“This book should be the go-to for most people – specifically, the civil servants that work in Lviv’s administration,” said Lviv’s Mayor Andriy Sadovyi. “It’s important to travel, seek out best practices and implement them in our city, so I’m happy our creative team brought the StartupCity book to Lviv.”

A promising future

StartupAmsterdam are looking forward to working with more cities in the future, facilitating the knowledge and expertise exchange that will help us all grow as startup cities.