Hacking for entrepreneurs: a transatlantic go at designing policy – Jorge Cortell

In September last year, startup ecosystem representatives got together at the MTB Innovation Center in San Francisco to “hack” policies in an effort to design solutions to global policy challenges facing entrepreneurs. Ahead of this year’s Startup Europe Comes to Silicon Valley (SEC2SV) mission, Jorge Cortell*, Founder & CEO of Kanteron Systems, shares some thoughts on the Policy Hack.

Describe your experience with the Policy Hack in 140 characters.
A nice and needed multi-stakeholder collaboration. 

Were you surprised with the outcome?
Not really, since I wrote some of it. What I am looking forward is to see how far those recommendations go.

Do you think policymakers talk enough to entrepreneurs, investors & members of the startup ecosystem?
In general, they don’t. There are some exceptions, but most policymakers only speak with lobbyists and large interest groups. There is a need for a more “direct channel”, a way to interact that is both broad in reach yet narrow in scope. 

How about regulators – should regulators in your sector talk to startups?
Of course! My sector (healthcare IT) is heavily regulated, yet, regulators rarely reach out (or allow reaching in). Again, usually only lobbyists and deep-pocket multinationals get a seat at the table. 

What should that dialogue ideally look like?
Easy, quick, bidirectional, focused, auditable, transparent.

If you could pick a policymaker or investor to team up with and design a solution for a policy challenge you have come across- who would it be?
In order to maximize reach and impact, it would be:
Policymaker: relevant high-ranking official either from the EU or the UN.
Investor: one of the larger funds focused on Healthcare IT or Genomics from Silicon Valley.

*follow on Twitter @jorgecortell 

Jorge Cortell is the Founder & CEO of Kanteron Systems, on a mission to revolutionize cancer treatment. As the winners of the California Impact Challenge in Precision Medicine Award, Kanteron Systems’ software platform pioneers bringing Precision Medicine at the point of care. Kanteron Systems was one of the scaleups selected for SEC2SV 2016.

During Startup Europe Comes to Silicon Valley (SEC2SV) 2017, Mind the Bridge and Dell will host a Policy Hack on 18 September at the MTB Innovation Center in San Francisco to pull together a set of transatlantic recommendations for policy solutions. These will feed into the Startup Nations Summit (SNS), a global summit to take place in Estonia in November 2017 that will discuss the challenges digital disruption brings to the public sector in its role to set the rules of the game for entrepreneurs and innovators.

The SNS Policy Hack will take place on 22 November in Tallinn. Hosted by the Estonian Presidency of the EU and the Global Entrepreneurship Network and powered by Dell, the European Commission, EIT Digital and Startup Estonia, it will allow policymakers from across the globe to validate and test policies to make it easier for regulators and startups to talk to each other in their respective ecosystems.