Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2016: A spirit of change

Hosted by the White House and US State Department, and held at Stanford University in Palo Alto, the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) 2016 aimed to bring together hundreds of entrepreneurs and investors from all over the world – putting all the right people in the right place to make business opportunities happen. 

Kamahl Santamaria and reporter Tarek Bazley take us around the summit to meet some of the people looking for their big break. They meet entrepreneurs looking for investors to expand both their companies and their social visions.

“We need the support – financially, knowledge, all we can get,” said entrepreneur Peetchai Dejkraisak. “You have an incredible model in the Western world for how to scale a business. Where we come from, businesses stay very small.”

Kamahl also interviews Maria Contreras-Sweet, the administrator of the US Small Business Administration, to discuss the challenges and inequalities that exist in the entrepreneurship world. 

“I think that the talent is evenly spread around the world, but I think opportunity is not spread out evenly around the world,” she said. “I feel an obligation to be able say to people, ‘How do we have inclusive entrepreneurship? How do we also bring our youth and women into the game?'”

Kamahl also visits the garage in Los Altos where, 40 years ago, Steve Jobs founded the company we now know as Apple.