Northern Virginia’s Global Startup Media is launching a virtual conference

Northern Virginia–based Global Startup Media (GSM) is launching a seven-day virtual conference for the world’s startup ecosystem. In partnership with Startup Canada, the Center for Advancing Innovation, Launch Pad and more, the conference will feature more than 40 leaders from around the world in tech and venture capital providing insight into the global tech scene.

Headquartered in Tysons Corner, Va., GSM is ​a digital media company launched in 2016 that supports the global startup ecosystems around the world and produces The Global Startup Movement podcast on iTunes, covering startups. GSM CEO and Founder Andrew Berkowitz, who also hosts the podcast, told Technical.ly that the company launched this summit as a way to gather a high quality audience of investors and potential partners to shine a spotlight on founders who wouldn’t typically get exposed to a mainstream, global audience.

“Our main goal is to pique more investor interest in the opportunities that exist in startup ecosystems all around the world,” Berkowitz said.

The Global Startup Summit taking place Feb. 18-24, 2019, is completely free and will be broken down by world region across seven days with speakers from the World Bank, Invest India, Chinaccelerator, Middle East Venture Partners and more. This year’s event will focus on highlighting early-stage investment opportunities, global consumer trends and trends in tech adoption across markets, GSM states. DMV-based speakers include Viola Llewellyn, president and cofounder of Ovamba Solutions, Xiaochen Zhang, president of FinTech4Good, and Rachel Reilly the director of impact investing at Enterprise Community Partners 

“Great companies can be started anywhere in the world, and startups are growing everywhere. This event is an exciting opportunity to promote and connect the leaders driving growth and creating opportunities in the world’s startup ecosystems,” Anne Driscoll​, president and CEO of Launch Pad said in a statement.

The summit will also feature different startups each day in the Startup Spotlight portion of the event, including Newark-based tech nonprofit for young minorities MindRight and public relations firm The Social Exchange, based in Memphis, Tenn., who will get some extra attention during the U.S. portion of the conference.