Introducing GEPI: The Global Entrepreneurship Performance Index

In a world where entrepreneurs face rapidly changing markets and evolving challenges, Entrepreneur Support Organizations (ESOs) and policymakers need more than anecdotes—they need evidence-based insights.

Our new Global Entrepreneurship Performance Index (GEPI) provides a comprehensive, data-driven foundation to help you identify what’s working, what’s lagging behind, and where to focus your resources to create meaningful change.

A Clear Lens on the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

Think of the GEPI as a global scorecard on the health of entrepreneurial environments. Drawing on publicly available, globally recognized datasets—such as the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDI)—this index brings together critical factors that influence a business owner’s journey. From digital connectivity and financial access to the quality of training and mentorship, it measures the conditions that help young ventures survive and scale.

What Makes This Index Different?

While many reports measure economic indicators, we found it difficult to translate it into actionable steps. Our process distills the overall score into six actionable sub-categories, each aligned with Youth Business International’s (YBI) High-Flyer Guidelines. These guidelines encompass actionable areas within the entrepreneurial ecosystem that we can all work to improve:

1. Target Group Identification, Outreach, and Selection: Identifying and engaging the right pool of entrepreneurs.

2. Training and Knowledge Building: Ensuring entrepreneurs develop the skills to navigate complex markets.

3. Access to Finance: Helping ventures secure the capital they need to grow.

4. Mentorship: Connecting entrepreneurs to experienced advisors who can share insights, offer strategies, and open doors.

5. Fostering a Supportive Entrepreneurship Ecosystem: Creating the infrastructure and networks that help enterprises thrive.

6. Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL): Continuously measuring outcomes so you can refine your approach over time.

Each category is made up of carefully chosen indicators at a macroeconomic level from the World Bank.

For example, "Identifying a Target Group" considers internet usage and literacy rates because they are key factors that determine whether entrepreneurs can tap into global best practices and digital opportunities.

“Access to Finance” looks at domestic credit availability and lending rates, helping you see if local capital markets are truly entrepreneur-friendly. By turning the World Bank's raw data into normalized, comparable scores, the index gives you a clear snapshot of where your ecosystem excels and where it falls short.

Why This Matters for ESOs and Policymakers

As an ESO or policymaker, you’re trying to make a difference, designing programs and policies that can actually influence entrepreneurial success. But how do you know if your training sessions are closing skill gaps, or if your mentorship programs are translating into tangible growth? How can you identify which structural barriers—like high interest rates or slow business registration procedures—are holding back entire communities of business owners?

The GEPI helps you:

• Benchmark Performance: Compare your country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem against regional peers or global leaders. Understand your starting point, celebrate strengths, and zero in on areas that need attention. This can help you understand how to translate practices from one region into key areas of need for your market.

• Prioritize Interventions: With transparent data and category-level scores, you can quickly identify areas of strength to lean into, or areas of weakness that you would like to address. You likely can't do it all, and this gives data on a place to start.

• Inform Strategic Planning: By regularly tracking changes in the index, you can measure the impact of interventions over time. While a total country or regional number is made up of millions of people, we dream of a world where ESOs are creating impact that tangibly moves things at this level of scale. Did a new mentorship initiative correlate with an uptick in new businesses registered? Did improved broadband access shift the needle on training outcomes? The index provides a quantifiable baseline to answer these questions.

• Strengthen Policy Advocacy: Solid data equips you to present compelling cases for policy changes or targeted funding that are tied to respected data sources. Whether advocating for streamlined startup procedures or more inclusive lending practices, credible metrics can sway decisions that shape the entrepreneurial landscape.

Key Metric Changes over Time as a Measure of Impact

*See trends over time, and how your environment is changing for the entrepreneurs you serve.

See It In Action: Explore Our Live Dashboard

We’ve built a dynamic, interactive dashboard so you can see the GEPI come to life. Explore country-level scores, drill down into individual indicators, and visualize trends over time. We encourage you to:

• Identify top-performing countries and investigate what they’re doing differently.

• Spot emerging patterns—like how improving internet penetration relates to training outcomes.

• Understand where your ecosystem stands so you can tailor interventions more effectively.

Making the Most of This Resource

We see the GEPI as a starting point, not an end goal. The world doesn’t stand still—neither should your strategy. We've tried to provide additional documentation and detail within each of the tabs above. We encourage you to read each and play around with the filters that look at various countries, regions, and economic levels.

Driving Global Progress, One Data Point at a Time

Our ultimate mission is to empower ESOs, policymakers, and funders with the intelligence they need to fuel entrepreneurship worldwide. By moving beyond intuition and tapping into hard data, we can craft programs, grants, and policies that meet entrepreneurs where they are—fostering inclusive growth, generating jobs, and sparking innovation in markets that need it most.

Ready to Get Started?

Much of this data has informed how and why we're building our selected tools to address the areas of biggest need worldwide. Visit our website at  to learn more about how we’re using these insights to tailor products and solutions that empower entrepreneurs globally. For more details on the data methodology and production of the index, see the tabs above, or read our publicly-available documentation here. Together, we can transform data into action and build stronger entrepreneurial ecosystems—no matter where you are in the world.