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The Future of Entrepreneurship is a Question of Risk Structures, Gatekeeping, and Who Gets to Build

  • Elena Mayer-Besting and Jonathan Wong
  • 9 hours ago
  • 5 min read

By Jonathan Wong and Elena Mayer-Besting



Asia and the Pacific boasts millions of small businesses. Yet, too few go on to reach scale and transform our economies. How do we change that? What does it take to build successful businesses and thriving entrepreneurship ecosystems? We often point to familiar ingredients: talent, scalable ideas, venture capital, entrepreneurial culture, and “ease of doing business”. These are necessary. Yet even where they exist, only a fraction of innovation potential is realized and scaled. 


At its core, this is about risk. Entrepreneurship is a bet. The crucial question is not only how promising your idea is, but whether it makes sense for you, personally, to take the risk and become an entrepreneur. What are your odds of success or failure – and what happens if you fail? Those odds differ starkly and are influenced, for example, by gender, wealth, ethnicity, and geography.


What Has Changed


In some ways, very little has changed. Venture capital (VC) funding remains heavily concentrated among founders who look alike. All‑male teams still receive a disproportionate share of capital, and successful founders largely come from narrow professional and geographic backgrounds. Bias is well documented: women founders are more likely to be asked “prevention questions” about risk, while men are asked “promotion questions” about growth. Women are expected to show more traction and certainty, yet typically receive less capital on worse terms. Entire sectors, such as women’s health, remain massively underfunded because they fall outside the priorities of those making investment decisions. For example, in South-East Asia, only 21 per cent of femtech (female-focused technology) companies have secured external funding.[1] 


At the same time, everything is changing all the time. Founders today face economic uncertainty, geopolitical disruption, climate shocks, and rapid technological change. While “fail fast” has long been a start-up mantra, entrepreneurs are now required to pivot constantly and operate amid permanent uncertainty.


This sharp contrast raises a core question: Who can afford to take risks in a high‑uncertainty world? Who can “move fast and break things” without ending up broken?

The answer is uncomfortable but clear. Those who are already privileged – often men with tech backgrounds, financial buffers, supportive families, and VC‑embedded networks – can afford to fail and try again. For others, failure is not a learning experience; it is a permanent setback.


If that is the case, for whom does it make rational sense to start a business?


What Is Still Missing


Despite years of diversity talk, startup ecosystems are still largely built by and for tech and finance insiders. What is missing are structures that feel like “home” for more founders and that make entrepreneurial risk possible and survivable for them:


  • Backing and support. Entrepreneurship success comes easier with emotional and practical support from family and peers. Many potential entrepreneurs do not have this backing, and entrepreneurs with disabilities, in particular, have told us they often lack this support.

  • Networks and trust. Opportunities rely heavily on informal access and referrals. For entrepreneurs who are not part of investor and elite professional circles, this remains a major hurdle.

  • Money before money. External capital typically arrives only after bootstrapping, where founders self-fund using personal savings. Sufficient savings, credit, and funds from family to get a business off the ground are only available to a small segment of people due to wealth inequality, pay gaps, and financial exclusion.  

  • Time. Building a venture requires time – often unpaid or underpaid for extended periods. Many people simply do not have this time, as they depend on paid work for income or already shoulder significant unpaid responsibilities caring for children or other relatives.

  • Safety nets. Social protection provides a basic level of security that enables people to take productive risks. Yet, while just over half of the region’s population is covered by at least one social protection benefit (slightly above the global average), coverage remains patchy and uneven, especially for the self-employed.  


What Is Next


The challenges we face today are complex, fast‑moving, and deeply interconnected. Addressing them requires more diverse founders, solving different problems, and developing a broader range of solutions. The opportunities are immense – but they will remain underutilized unless we deliberately put in place the structures that give more people a real shot at entrepreneurial success:


  • Communities matter. We need more inclusive founder communities and fewer closed circles of self-reinforcing elites. Such networks can provide backing and emotional support and widen access to information and opportunities.

  • More and better early-stage capital. Public funding, including credit and guarantee schemes remain the principal vehicles delivering micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) capital at scale across much of Asia and the Pacific and belong at the core of this pathway. Increasing the overall supply of early‑stage funding and creating dedicated pathways for founders facing higher barriers – through grants, smaller tickets, and income‑replacing capital is critical to broadening who can afford to take the leap.

  • Investor diversity. Changing who invests changes what gets funded. More diverse investors assess risk differently, see a wider range of opportunities, back different founders, and bring more diverse solutions to scale. For example, VC firms with at least one female partner are 2.3x more likely to invest in female-founded teams.[2]

  • Care is economic infrastructure. Investment in comprehensive, high-quality and affordable childcare, disability care, and eldercare is essential to expanding who can build and scale companies.

  • Social protection for entrepreneurs. Founders should not have to choose between innovation and basic security. Extending affordable health, parental, and income-loss protection to founders would broaden who can take the leap. The Republic of Korea shows that this is possible: through a combination of subsidized mandatory and option social insurance schemes, founders can access health coverage, pensions, parental benefits, and even unemployment protection after business closure, though coverage and take up remain uneven.

 

The real test of a venture ecosystem is not how many unicorns (companies valued at over one billion dollars) it produces, but how many people can plausibly imagine themselves becoming founders – and surviving the journey. The good news is that the odds are not fixed. With the right ecosystem shifts, innovation can become as diverse, dynamic, and ambitious as today’s challenges demand.


Author Bio


Elena Mayer-Besting is an Economic Affairs Officer at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), leading initiatives on entrepreneurship, MSMEs, and feminist and innovative finance across the region.


Jonathan Wong is the Chief of Innovation, Enterprise and Investment at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), where he leads the Commission's work on innovation ecosystems and entrepreneurship across Asia and the Pacific.

 


 

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