What to do with startups in the Dominican Republic?

Santo Domingo – It is essential that the processes of innovation and the emergence of new innovative companies are strengthened and consolidated.

No city in the Dominican Republic appears or has ever appeared among the top twenty in Latin America in the Global Startup Ecosystem Index 2024 (a ranking that classifies countries with the right conditions for creating this type of technology company) or among the top fifty globally.

The DR does not appear among the top ten countries in the region with the best indicators.

The DR’s lag in this ranking, which assigns each ecosystem a score that is the sum of three subscores measuring quantity, quality, and entrepreneurial environment, does not correspond if one takes into account the fact that the Dominican economy has become the seventh-largest in Latin America and the largest in the Caribbean and Central American region, in addition to its strategic geographical location, which makes us a country entire of opportunities to develop startups and invest more and more in these types of companies.

According to the World Bank’s Enterprise Survey, among the main obstacles faced by young entrepreneurs in the region’s countries (including the DR) are problems of access to financing, lack of qualified human resources, high tax burden, and poor labor regulations.

Therefore, for the DR to advance in its sustainable development processes, the innovation process and the emergence of new innovative companies must be strengthened and consolidated.

To achieve this, it is necessary to form networks of mentors with startup experience, simplify the tax bureaucracy for entrepreneurship, and encourage investment in emerging technology companies. This will allow us to join the innovation and growth train observed in other regional countries.

But the most significant emphasis should be placed on creating an ecosystem that promotes research and innovation because Jeff Hoffman, the entrepreneur and founder of Booking, is dedicated to the task of advising all kinds of startups and trying to transmit to them what he has experienced first-hand over the years, says, “the most common mistake startups make is to think that they don’t succeed because they don’t have enough money,” because what these companies that rely on technology need to succeed “is more talent and more innovation and creativity.”