Governor Braun celebrates Hoosier Entrepreneurs during Global Entrepreneurship Week

Governor Mike Braun today recognized Global Entrepreneurship Week in Indiana by highlighting new initiatives and measurable results showing the state’s rise as one of America’s best places to start and grow a business.

Governor Mike Braun, a Main Street entrepreneur himself, created the first ever Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Indiana to support small businesses. He also launched Power Up Indiana, a new initiative that incentivizes employers to upskill, retrain, and promote their employees. 

“We’re working to make Indiana the best place in the country to start and grow a business, and with the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Power Up Indiana, READI 2.0 and our new jobs-and-wages centered economic development model, we’re well on our way to achieving that goal this Global Entrepreneurship Week.” - Governor Mike Braun

Building on a Record of Results

• Indiana ranks near the top nationally in the Global Entrepreneurship Network’s state leaderboard, as do some Indiana cities: GEW Leaderboard | Global Entrepreneurship Network.
• The Indiana Small Business Development Center assisted 5,817 entrepreneurs and helped 372 new businesses launch in 2025.
• The Community Collaboration Fund invested $1 million statewide, supporting projects from Fort Wayne’s SEED/Brightpoint childcare-business accelerator to Muncie’s Innovation Connector, to the Ignition at 16Tech incubator designed to support early-stage collegiate founders, to Purdue Northwest’ s Baby-Boomer Succession Accelerator.
• The Office of Commerce’s READI 2.0 program is supporting communities across the state, and gBETA Indiana helped 30 companies raise $500,000 and created 27 new jobs this year across Main Street, agbioscience, and high-tech industries.
• Other programs supporting entrepreneurship in Indiana include STARTedUp, which cultivates entrepreneurship skills in students and has reached 13,640 Hoosier students this year, and Innovate WithIN which saw 1,854 students participating in this year’s competition, the largest high school pitch competition in the country.

Hoosier Entrepreneurship by the Numbers

• 591,000+ small businesses – 99.4% of all Indiana businesses
• 1.2 million Hoosiers (43% of the workforce) are employed by small businesses
• Indiana’s startup and small business survival rate ranks in the top 5 nationally, with 84% Indiana businesses remaining open after one year.
• Businesses under 5 years old account for 74% of new job growth