Three Big Ideas is our fortnightly roundup of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.
This week, Eamonn Ives dwells on why American startups are pulling ahead of their European counterparts, Philip Salter salutes a significant tax consensus, and Pedro Serodio warns that public data is slowly degrading.
On Wednesday we launched Ambition Unlimited, the inaugural report of our Young Entrepreneurs Forum.
Speaking at the launch in the House of Lords were Callum Anderson MP, Sean Kohli, Chair of the Young Entrepreneurs Forum, Dana Denis-Smith OBE, Founder of Obelisk Support, and our Research Director, Eamonn Ives, who all set out a positive case for why we need to back the next generation.
As I wrote in Forbes, Eamonn delivers a compelling suite of policies which would deliver a platform upon which entrepreneurs can flourish:
“The UK must double down on openness, dynamism and stability. That means ensuring tax and investment incentives stay internationally competitive, designing regulation that adapts quickly to new technologies, and keeping visa routes navigable and attractive so that founders like Lin continue to choose Britain as their base. Above all, government should give entrepreneurs the confidence to plan for the decade ahead, not just the next fiscal statement.”
I would, as you would expect, encourage you all to dig into the report, but I want to take a slightly different tack today and share one lesson I’ve learned from the events we’ve undertaken with the Young Entrepreneurs Forum project: that Britain has no shortage of talent nor ambition to take on the world.
We’re not alone. Matt Clifford CBE expressed similar sentiments in a speech at the recent LFG conference, arguing that, as the birthplace of modern science, democracy, industry, medicine, computing, and even sport and literature, Britain can be so once again.
It goes without saying that we believe in the importance of policy change to drive change. But it’s also worth acknowledging that much can still be achieved despite these constraints.
To that end, it’s worth sharing a list of organisations that support the next generation of entrepreneurs that our Adviser and the Small Business Commissioner, Emma Jones CBE, put together following our event, including Young Enterprise, Founders for Schools, Kickstarter and LaunchIt. Emma encourages you to share other organisations that support young entrepreneurs, which you can do so here.
It’s vital to attack the challenge of renewal on both fronts. Policy change and practical efforts reinforce each other – not least because launching a report with over 100 of the most ambitious young entrepreneurs in the country gives you the inspiration to keep up the policy work to support them.
500 Smiles
Without much of a push, our WhatsApp community has now grown steadily to over 500 people. We still have some work to do in thinking about how we can make the most of the groups (answers on a postcard, please), but it’s proving a useful avenue to share our latest work, events and opportunities. Join our community here.
Express Yourself
To coincide with some polling they’ve commissioned on the importance of networking for small businesses, American Express is looking for case studies of entrepreneurs with positive stories to tell.
Perhaps networking helped you to land a big client, navigate a rocky period, or make connections necessary for international expansion. Whatever it was, if you have benefited from networking in the past and want to be considered for a case study, let us know by emailing us with a few sentences about yourself and how networking helped your business.
Trading Places
The Department for Business and Trade has asked us to share that next week is the fifth edition of International Trade Week (ITW) – five days of free online and in-person events designed to help businesses grow through exporting. Find out more here.
Some policy ideas take a while to bear fruit. Take this week’s announcement of the AI Growth Lab, a regulatory sandbox in which innovators can safely test their AI products under adjusted or temporarily relaxed regulations.
This announcement puts a bit more meat on the bones of the AI Opportunities Action Plan, which, among many other things, called on the Government to “work with regulators to accelerate AI in priority sectors and implement pro-innovation initiatives like regulatory sandboxes.” However, this is an idea with a long history.
Success, of course, has many mothers and fathers, but it’s worth looking into the work of John Fingleton CBE, who, over the years, has created the conceptual framework and supplied the intellectual ballast for those making the case for the sort of pro-innovation regulation the UK needs. His advocacy for bounded regulatory discretion and competition-driven innovation not only influenced the creation of the FCA’s sandbox, but also this week’s announcement.
The most compelling aspect of the policy is the option to regulate across the economy, rather than relying on the coordination of existing regulators. This chimes with Fingleton’s idea for an ‘n+1 regulator’, which he explained in an interview I conducted with him earlier this year:
“The idea of the n+1 regulator goes back to about 2012, when I worked in the Cabinet Office and was advising on supply-side reforms. The essential idea was that new business models come along, and the existing regulatory framework doesn’t suit them. That could be because incumbents have captured it, or it could be because what they’re doing is just more risky or has a different profile of risk.”
The point here isn’t to write the history, but to shape the future. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has opened a consultation and would like to hear from individuals and organisations who are interested in using the AI Growth Lab; who are going to be affected by it; or who have expert views on implementing sandboxes.
Having spoken to the officials working on this policy, we highly recommend relevant entrepreneurs in our network consider responding. If you’d like to get in touch with us beforehand about that, my email is always open. We may also host a roundtable discussion with the government on this topic, so please get in touch to show early interest.
Anasta–see ya!
After a highly productive year and a half with us, our Head of Science and Technology, Anastasia Bektimirova, has left to join the Royal Academy of Engineering. Anastasia achieved a lot during her time at The Entrepreneurs Network, including authoring Governing in the Age of AI: Building Britain’s National Data Library, Towards a More Special Relationship and Full Speed Ahead, but perhaps her greatest legacy will be in moving our newsletter here – to Substack – which is proving to be a brilliant decision as our content and numbers continue to grow. Anastasia will be staying on as an Adviser – nobody ever really leaves The Entrepreneurs Network.
Network Intelligence
Anastasia also helped launch our new UK AI Fieldbook series, with her interview with Paul Patras, founder of Net AI, which looks into how AI is transforming mobile networks to prevent communications blackouts and optimise energy consumption.
It’s a cracking read with a lot of lessons for policymakers, including the need to design funding and policy around real startup experience, not top-down assumptions; to fix cash-flow pain by paying grants upfront rather than in arrears; to emulate ARIA’s speed, flexibility and minimal paperwork; and to bridge gaps between early-stage schemes like ICURe and follow-on support.
There’s also a clear case for modernising grant rules to suit globally distributed teams, tailoring evaluation criteria to company maturity, and, coincidentally enough, investing in AI sandboxes and better public compute tools so startups can safely develop and deploy innovations in critical sectors.
The UK AI Fieldbook series is kindly sponsored by OpenAI. This gives us the time and resources to really uncover the policy lessons from entrepreneurs at the cutting edge. We want to replicate this sort of deep policy dive with entrepreneurs across other areas of the ecosystem, so if you’re keen to partner with us on this, get in touch.
Three Big Ideas is our fortnightly roundup of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.
This week, Eamonn Ives asks whether Waymo can inspire an uptick in innovation, Bella Rhodes explains how to turbocharge EMI, and Ed Hezlet makes the environmental case for reducing taxes on electricity.
This year’s winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences are a win for entrepreneurship, with Joel Mokyr awarded it for showing how the Industrial Enlightenment made growth possible through ideas and openness, and Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt recognised for their explanation of how creative destruction keeps economies advancing.
On Mokyr, Dr Anton Howes, author of many of our reports, wrote the definitive reaction post following his win. As Anton notes, Mokyr put entrepreneurs and innovation at the heart of the story of how our species went from near-universal poverty to relative prosperity:
“Whereas most of the public, and even many historians, think of the causes of modern economic growth – the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution – as being rooted in material factors, like conquest, colonialism, or coal, Mokyr tirelessly argued that it was rooted in ideas, in the intellectual entrepreneurship of figures like Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, and in the uniquely precocious accumulation in eighteenth-century Britain of useful, often mechanically actionable knowledge. Britain, he argued, through its scientific and literary societies, and its penchant for publications and sharing ideas, was the site of a world-changing Industrial Enlightenment – the place where progress was thought possible, and then became real.”
This worldview aligns with one of our core tenets: to elevate the status and champion the role of entrepreneurs across society. From our reports, it shows itself most clearly in Anton’s Blueprint for a New Great Exhibition, which makes the case for why we need to recreate the Great Exhibition of 1851, to both inspire innovation and foster a culture of improvement among frontier entrepreneurs and the general population. More broadly, it’s the reason behind every meeting and every event we host.
Turning to Aghion and Howitt, the name of this very Substack, Perennial Gale, isn’t a reference to Britain’s inclement weather, but a quote from Joseph Schumpeter’s description of capitalism as “the perennial gale of creative destruction.” His observation in 1942 was that our economic system is neither stable nor static, but constantly shaped by innovation, entrepreneurship and change. Entrepreneurs are central to this, driving forward economic progress by disrupting existing systems.
Aghion and Howitt put some numbers on the theory. As the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences stated in its press release:
“In an article from 1992, they constructed a mathematical model for what is called creative destruction: when a new and better product enters the market, the companies selling the older products lose out. The innovation represents something new and is thus creative. However, it is also destructive, as the company whose technology becomes passé is outcompeted. In different ways, the laureates show how creative destruction creates conflicts that must be managed in a constructive manner. Otherwise, innovation will be blocked by established companies and interest groups that risk being put at a disadvantage.”
As backers of upstarts over incumbents, you can see why we’re so keen on the winners.
Aghion and Howitt’s work also highlights an emerging challenge: the growing productivity gap between frontier firms and laggards. The best business models and innovations aren’t diffusing as rapidly as they once did. This raises familiar, but no less urgent, questions like: What barriers prevent promising startups from scaling? Why aren’t successful innovations spreading to more firms? How can policy accelerate knowledge transfer while preserving the competitive dynamics that reward innovation?
We exist to answer these questions, but we also need insights from the frontline of entrepreneurship. Answers on a postcard (or email).
Table Matters
On Wednesday, we will host a roundtable lunch with Alex Depledge MBE, Entrepreneurship Adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
This one will be focused on scaling businesses with either £10 million in annual revenue or that have raised over £10 million in venture capital funding. If that’s you, we might still be able to squeeze you in – please request a place here.
I know Alex has been tirelessly hosting roundtables like this with businesses at various sizes and stages up and down the country, but if you haven’t had the chance to chat with her, please get in touch with me before Wednesday with what you think the Chancellor needs to know going into the Budget, and I’ll pass it on directly to her.
Oxford Come ’ere
Since our very first Ecosystem Builders event, the positive feedback has been supplemented with a fair critique: what about the rest of the country? Well, we’ve listened, so I’m delighted to announce that we’re going to Oxford, courtesy of our co-hosts Dr Fabio Bianchi (Oxentia) and Meric Sevgi Eren.
Oxford Edge has a workspace you’ll be able to work from, so we’re encouraging people to make a day of it. Find out more here.
Our sights are also set on Birmingham, Leeds, Cardiff, Manchester, Cambridge and Edinburgh, so watch this space for more information. And get in touch if you’re happy to host a bunch of energetic ecosystem builders in your city.
The Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) are the backbone of Britain’s innovation economy, fuelling thousands of startups up and down the country. Yet the annual and lifetime investment limits for these schemes have been frozen for nearly a decade. In that time, inflation has eroded their real value, meaning their impact is now roughly three-quarters of what it once was, and could soon fall to half of their 2016 strength if nothing changes.
That’s why we’re backing Growth Beyond Limits, a new campaign calling on the Chancellor to raise the lifetime company investment limit to £30 million, or £40 million for Knowledge-Intensive Companies (KICs), and the annual limit to £15 million, or £25 million for KICs, alongside a commitment to review them every three years. If you believe Britain should back its most innovative businesses with funding that keeps pace with the times, you can read the letter here and sign it alongside me and many others here.
State of AI
Yesterday, Nathan Benaich released his annual State of AI Report 2025. While coming in at over 300 slides, as always, Air Street Capital’s General Partner delivers. There is a lot to unpack, but I’ll focus on one aspect that matters to everyone reading this.
The report covers OpenAI’s new GDPval benchmark, an evaluation launched in September that measures model performance on economically valuable, real-world tasks across 44 occupations. The results are clear: models now rival human experts across many professions.
As many of you will know first-hand, general-purpose models are proving effective as professional assistants, and companies like Lufthansa are forecasting thousands of administrative job cuts by 2030 on the back of AI.
Entry-level jobs are being hit hardest. Hiring for junior software and support roles has stagnated since 2022, even as overall employment rises. Law school applications are up 21% as graduates hedge their bets, while seasoned professionals appear more insulated – for now, at least.
Not everyone agrees this signals an imminent crisis. A Yale–Brookings study suggests AI’s long-term disruption may take decades. Yet both OpenAI and Anthropic report growing use of their models for workplace tasks.
This is largely a good thing – after all, this is what increasing productivity and growth looks like. But if this is the way of the future, entrepreneurial skills will be at a premium. It’s a strange world where being an entrepreneur is a safer bet than some established professions, but that may be where we’re heading.
(I recommend reading it in full. For the futurism-enjoyers, flip to the predictions on slide 11 and then to slide 305. The deck starts with a scorecard on last year’s calls, such as an open-source alternative surpassing OpenAI’s o1 (“YES,” with DeepSeek-R1), and challengers failing to dent NVIDIA’s dominance (“YES”), then lays out ten bold bets for the next 12 months. Highlights include the prediction that a major retailer will get over 5% of online sales from agentic checkout as agent-ad spend hits $5 billion.)
Still Stock-Still?
Last Friday, I discussed Britain’s downturn in listings. What a difference a week makes. Since then, the Manchester-based The Beauty Tech Group listed on the London Stock Exchange with an initial market cap of £300 million, while the pipeline for the first half of 2026 looks promising.
A lot of my job revolves around pointing out how things could be better. But that shouldn’t be mistaken for thinking Britain is the basket case that some seem to think it is. We have cracked, or inherited, many of the hard things that make a country a great place to be an entrepreneur – from world-class universities and a strong rule of law to a global financial centre, a global language, and a culture that prizes creativity and fairness.
Too often, we make the easy things harder than they need to be – through complex taxes, clunky regulation, and slow-moving policymaking. But I like to think these are problems to be fixed, rather than insurmountable barriers to crash up against.
This is why, at The Entrepreneurs Network, we’re optimistic.
Message from our Partner
Zestic AI has announced a new partnership with Proteus, the UK’s leader in strategic change management, to help organisations move from AI pilots to measurable performance. By combining Proteus’ $100 billion transformation dataset and change-management expertise with Zestic AI’s AI-first architecture, the partnership enables companies to embed AI directly into live and new transformation programmes – without disruption. Together, the two firms aim to help Boards and C-suites turn AI from experiment into enterprise capability, accelerating productivity, innovation, and growth. Read the full announcement to learn how the partnership is redefining what intelligent transformation looks like in practice.
Three Big Ideas is our fortnightly roundup of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.
This week, Philip Salter hails the work of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Eamonn Ives looks at why startups are taking longer to go public, and Anastasia Bektimirova discusses whether agentic AI could spell the end of the line for transaction costs.
First, the good news. This is the last time I’m going to harass you (at least via the newsletter) to fill in our latest survey. We’re on the cusp of our target number of responses, so if you’re an entrepreneur, you could be the one to make our day. If you’re part of any other network of founders, sharing it would be incredibly helpful.
Now, the bad news. London has dropped to twenty-third place globally for IPOs. Twenty-third. Behind Oman, Mexico and Croatia. According to Bloomberg, volume this year dropped 69% to $248 million, the weakest haul in more than 35 years. In 2013, UK IPOs accounted for more than half of the European fundraising total – this year it’s just 3%. Ouch!
No wonder the Treasury is reported to be considering giving a stamp duty holiday to new London Stock Exchange (LSE) listings. The measure would exempt investors from the 0.5% tax on buying the shares of newly listed companies in the UK, applying for a period of two to three years after the company’s stock market flotation.
While the current state of public finances might not allow it in November’s budget, the Government should really scrap stamp duty entirely. As we argued in Backing Breakthrough Businesses through our Private Business Commission:
“Stamp Duty Reserve Tax (SDRT) is highly distortive, affecting decisions about share turnover, suppressing share prices, and biasing investors against UK-listed equities at a moment when we need the exact opposite – something that also biases entrepreneurs against listing in, or indeed setting up in the UK. It disproportionately punishes marginal investments too. Whereas Corporation Tax taxes the return on investments and relieves the cost of investing through allowances, SDRT has no such allowances and effectively taxes both the investment itself and the return on it, even when those returns are negative.”
It’s not just a matter of tax, though. The exchange remains more highly regulated than many of its competitors. Victor Riparbelli, founder of UK-based $2 billion AI unicorn Synthesia, recently tore into the LSE, describing it as “more like a hospice than a stock exchange,” lamenting the City’s preference for rent-seeking over innovation. Riparbelli isn’t threatening to leave, but he is articulating what many founders quietly think but often won’t say – at least, not publicly.
To be fair, there are pockets of understanding in the current Government (as there were in the previous one) about the scope of the challenge. As the Science Minister Lord Vallance said only yesterday:
“We are streamlining listing and prospectus rules, removing outdated restrictions on follow-on capital, and have launched PISCES – a new stock-exchange model to help private companies scale and provide a stepping-stone to public markets”...“We are pushing better regulation, including through the work of the Regulatory Innovation Office which has cleared away barriers in four technology areas and will expand its work over the next year.”
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Britain excels at creating startups – we raised over £8 billion in the first half of 2025, more than France and Germany combined. But we’re losing companies at the scale-up stage. If we want to remain a globally significant economy of the future, we need to fix that – pronto.
Now, I’m afraid, the ugly – and it’s connected.
In the same week London slumped in the IPO rankings, a debate erupted about the economic contribution immigrants make to the UK. On Sunday, Hannah Prevett, Associate Business Editor of The Sunday Times, made the business case for immigration and shared her personal story on LinkedIn, which is worth reading if you missed it.
But here’s why it matters for our capital markets crisis: you can’t fix the IPO drought without securing the fundamental building blocks of growth, which include, among other things, having the talent pipeline to create IPO-ready companies in the first place.
According to The Economist, Synthesia only exists in London because Victor Riparbelli wanted to move to California but the US denied him a visa. Our latest Job Creators data makes this concrete. Hannah shared the numbers in her column:
“Analysis of Britain’s fastest-growing companies from The Entrepreneurs Network in 2024 showed that 39% have at least one foreign-born founder or co-founder. That is far out of proportion to the roughly 14.5% of the general population born overseas, and early indications suggest the figure will be higher still for 2025.”
Somehow it looks like I managed to end on a positive note. Let’s double down on this. And if you need another dose of optimism, watch Jensen Huang talk up Britain in an interview with Faisal Islam.
Blick 101
Our Corporate Partner Blick Rothenberg is hosting a breakfast roundtable with the esteemed Centre for the Analysis of Taxation on how our tax system should evolve to meet the needs of a modern, competitive economy. Our Patron, Chris Hulatt, co-founder of Octopus Group, will be on the panel. It would be great to see you there. Find out more here.
Connect 10
Our friends at Enterprise Nation reached out following the launch of Supply Connect, a free national programme supported by JPMorgan Chase. It provides practical support for small and micro businesses to get them fit to supply and win public sector contracts.
I hope it’s useful. Relatedly, on the back of a chat with Number 10, I’m collating a list of all the useful, free resources that are out there which support entrepreneurs. I know not all the best things in life are free, but it’s a good place to start. Drop me a message if you have anything to recommend.
Three Big Ideas is our fortnightly roundup of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.
This week, Eamonn Ives suggests raising the cost caps that incentivise spurious legal claims against infrastructure projects, Philip Salter argues that hikes to H-1B visa fees present an opportunity for Britain to attract priced-out talent, and Anastasia Bektimirova reflects on an evening of technology vibes.
Before I share my thoughts on policy, I want to hear yours!
Specifically, if you’re an entrepreneur and you haven’t completed our latest survey, now’s the time. This really is one of the best ways to get your voice heard. Last time around we secured strong press coverage, and all the main parties reached out to find out what they can do to appeal to founders.
If you’re not a founder or have already filled it in, I’d encourage you to share it with your network. A quick post in a WhatsApp or Slack group really does help.
On the Cards
The big news today is that the Government will be bringing in digital IDs. Like Tony Blair, the last Prime Minister to try to bring a version of them in, Keir Starmer is framing the policy around illegal migration, which given the political climate isn’t surprising, but overlooks its wider benefits.
First things first, digital IDs would not plunge Britain into a totalitarian state. There has been much talk about Estonia in the announcement, whose experience has shown to many liberals (with a small “l”) across the political spectrum, including Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, that this isn’t to be feared.
In fact, a digital identity could offer greater liberty than the current system, where data sits across numerous databases with varying degrees of security and can be accessed without record. In advanced digital states, by contrast, you can see exactly who has accessed your data and why. (Even so, I don’t think it’s absolutely required that they’re mandatory for them to be a success in the UK.)
It would also make life easier. As I argued back in 2020:
“The relationship between the state and business owners in the UK and Estonia is starkly different. For example, in the UK the National Audit Office (NAO) has found that there are more than 20 ways of identifying individuals and businesses across 10 departments and agencies, with no standard format for recording data such as name, address and date of birth. This wastes business owners’ time, and leads to delays and errors. It also means that the government doesn’t understand the UK business population as well as it could.”
In Estonia, digital reforms built on digital ID save business owners around 12 million hours every year. Matching this in the UK would equate to about 430 million hours annually. And it’s not just about bureaucracy. Digital states also allow efficiencies and innovation in healthcare, welfare, justice, education, and civic engagement more effectively. The lessons of how digital states coped with lockdowns compared with others shouldn’t be forgotten.
But things get really exciting when you consider what’s around the corner. As the newly minted Special Adviser for Britain’s Science Department Kirsty Innes and I argued years ago, we could soon see a proactive, one-stop-shop for government services that anticipate citizens’ needs – whether renewing a passport, filing taxes, or receiving tailored healthcare – rather than forcing people to navigate dozens of disconnected systems.
We wrote that in an essay collection that included a foreword from Tony Blair, who, of course, failed to bring in ID cards (for both technical and messaging reasons). While most discussion today in Westminster has focused on the negative case for not bringing them in, we shouldn’t forget the positive argument: this is the first step to ending bureaucracy.
Way to Make a Living
In case you missed it, we’re hiring a new Researcher or Senior Researcher to join the team. The deadline is this Sunday. Find out more here.
Wise Words
On Thursday we hosted a small roundtable with our Adviser Iain Butler, Head of Innovation Incentives at Buzzacott, to dissect the R&D Tax Credits. We’re going to produce a short briefing off the back of the roundtable, with lessons for policymakers. If you’re keen to share your experiences and insights with us anonymously – whether good, bad or somewhere in between – drop me an email with your thoughts.
Subscribers to our Policy Updates newsletter will receive the briefing in their inboxes. If you’d like to host a similar deep dive on a policy area relevant to entrepreneurs, just let me know.
Message from our Partner
Corporate Partners Blick Rothenberg and the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax) are hosting a high-impact breakfast debate bringing together successful entrepreneurs, ultra-high-net-worth individuals, and heads of tax and finance to have a discussion around how our tax system should evolve to meet the needs of a modern, competitive economy. Taking place on Wednesday 15 October, this will be a unique opportunity to help shape the conversation and contribute to meaningful reform. Please note, places are limited.
It’s been a miserable week for commuters in the capital, and even though strikes on the London Underground are now winding down, the disruption is forecast to have cost the UK economy £230 million in lost productivity.
Whether or not the actual figure hits almost a quarter of a billion pounds, one thing is certain, the final amount will have been markedly reduced by an unlikely saviour from Silicon Valley: Neutron Holdings, Inc – or, Lime.
During the strikes, the number of Lime bike trips rocketed by 74%, with a 40% increase in trip duration and a 35% increase in distance covered. While by no means a perfect substitute for the Tube, it’s proof that choice and competition are an unalloyed good for consumers.
Whether the next disruption comes from strikes or something else, we know that e-bikes make transport systems more robust – antifragile, even. This also points towards the benefits of the UK becoming a testbed nation for more technologies from around the world. As we argued in The Way of the Future:
“[F]or the UK to become the most attractive place for innovative investments, it needs to do all it can to support domestic demand. This means making the political decisions that enable the adoption of new technologies.”
At this point, I’m acutely aware that readers based outside the M25 may only have so much sympathy for Londoners’ week of transport woe. Leodensians, (in)famously, go without a mass-transit system 365 days a year. Indeed, perhaps the biggest lesson for policymakers is therefore that the temporary hit to productivity from reduced agglomeration facing Londoners this week is anything but for those in our nation’s other cities. As Tom Forth wrote back in 2019, the lack of public transport effectively makes Birmingham an economically small city.
This doesn’t necessarily need to come at a huge cost to the public purse. Through an innovative programme of finance, funding and value capture, London’s businesses and future passenger revenues contributed around two-thirds of the cost of building the Elizabeth Line. The Government is already exploring a privately funded Birmingham-Manchester rail link. Full steam ahead, please!
For more food for thought, check out The Economist’s Mike Bird’s discussion of Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway (MTR) rail and property model for building transport infrastructure by capturing land value.
(New)sletter
This week, Callum Anderson, the Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, launched a newsletter on LinkedIn. Commons & Capital will offer a regular look at the overlap of markets, policy and politics – through a centre-left Labour lens, which is exactly what we’ll be discussing with him and a room full of entrepreneurs and investors on Tuesday.
It got me thinking about other Members of Parliament who produce policy-rich newsletters. The Shadow Minister for Policy Renewal and Development, Neil O’Brien’s Substack, immediately springs to mind. But so too do Liam Byrne’s Fixing Inequality and Jeevun Sandher’s Winning Formulas.
If we zoom out to the Lords, at opposite ends of the economic spectrum, we also have Robert Skidelsky’s Substack and Matt Ridley’s Rational Optimist.
Who did I miss?
Good Graces
I’m delighted to share that Grace Almendras-Castillo – Founder and CEO of Gifftid – has joined us as an Adviser. She is building an AI intelligence and analytics platform that mobilises capital, data, and partnerships to scale underserved SMEs and impact-driven enterprises, which aligns perfectly with our mission.
Grace has been recognised as one of Canada’s Top 50 Women in STEM, a Springboard Enterprises Alum, an EY Entrepreneur of the Year nominee, and a fellow of JLabs and MaRS Discovery District in Toronto.
Grace praises the UK for its highly educated, intelligent community: “Overall, it fits the environment where I can participate in innovation, creation and make a contribution to society.”
Why don’t you join us as an Adviser? Drop me an email if you have any questions.
Message from our Partner
On 8 October, leaders from across finance, defence, technology, and government will gather in the City of London for the Fifth Anniversary of The City Quantum & AI Summit. With its rule of “plain English only”, the Summit is designed to cut through the noise and focus on what matters: the practical business outcomes driven by frontier technologies.
The event will bring together decision-makers shaping the future of finance, security, and technology adoption, to listen to discussions with CEOs from the likes of AWS, Palantir, and Multiverse Computing. Panels will be chaired by senior figures such as Sir Edward Braham (M&G and NED to the UK Treasury), Ian Stuart (CEO of HSBC UK), and General Sir Patrick Sanders (former Chief of the General Staff).
For entrepreneurs and the wider ecosystem, this is a chance to hear directly from board-level leaders on how Quantum and AI are already reshaping industries – and where opportunities lie.
Three Big Ideas is our fortnightly roundup of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.
This week, Eamonn Ives examines the new Defence Industrial Strategy, Anastasia Bektimirova mulls over a new book contrasting China and the United States, and Philip Salter discusses navigating the politics of immigration.
With the Deputy Prime Minister’s demise precipitating a full Cabinet reshuffle, it would be easy to focus on the negatives. But this is also an opportunity for the Government to strike out in a new direction. As every founder learns through experience: never let a good crisis go to waste.
Tony Blair articulated this opportunity well with his famous “kaleidoscope speech” in Chicago on 22 April 1999:
"This is a moment to seize. The kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us reorder this world around us."
The Prime Minister must already get this. After all, it’s all too easy to forget that he inherited a Labour Party in crisis. When Jeremy Corbyn was their leader, Labour was polling only in the 20s. Keir Starmer rebranded the party, purged the antisemitism, rebuilt its credibility with business, and decisively won the 2024 election.
While the last 14 months haven’t gone swimmingly, all is not lost. Now’s the time to ditch what isn’t working and lean into what we know will – specifically when it comes to spurring economic growth.
First things first: do no (or at least less) harm. With Angela Rayner gone, it’s time to ditch the worst parts of her Employment Rights Bill. As I wrote back in February, the Government’s own analysis projects its annual cost to businesses to be in the billions. Founders have told us repeatedly that they’re really concerned about the mooted changes. Of course, workers need protection; but they also need jobs in the first place. (Next month, Lord Leigh is chairing a virtual roundtable to discuss the implications of the Government’s Employment Rights Bill on businesses – sign up here.)
Second, we need to get more of the basics right. As we argued in Building Blocks, even marginal policy improvements in a few large areas – such as simplifying our country’s planning rules, rationalising the tax code, or modernising the visa system – would do more to ensure we are genuinely offering the best possible platform from which to unleash the full potential of entrepreneurship and innovation in Britain.
These aren’t only things that the Government could (or should) do, but if I were Starmer I would apply the advice of Steve Jobs to the rest of his term: “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”
In truth, you can count the real and lasting achievements of even our most radical Prime Ministers on one hand.
Clement Attlee created the NHS, built the welfare state, co-founded NATO, initiated Britain’s nuclear deterrent and granted independence to India.
Margaret Thatcher privatised major industries, curbed trade union power, deregulated the City and introduced Right to Buy.
Tony Blair secured the Good Friday Agreement, gave the Bank of England independence, introduced the National Minimum Wage and devolved power to the nations.
Starmer’s second phase of this Government should be unapologetically focused on the big things.
To that end, I would point people towards the latest newsletter from the APPG for Entrepreneurship. Penned by my colleague Eamonn Ives, it flags what will definitely be one of the less discussed job moves this week, but that doesn’t make it any less important. John van Reenen, the Chair of the Chancellor’s Council of Economic Advisers will now report directly to Rachel Reeves as an expert adviser. As Eamonn writes:
“One piece of research that has stuck with me over the years is his 2019 paper A Toolkit of Policies to Promote Innovation. Written with the equally distinguished Nicholas Bloom and Heidi Williams, this paper quickly yet comprehensively makes the case for why governments should support endeavours to promote innovation, before evaluating some of the most common ways they try to do so. Specifically, they examine tax policies to favour research and development, government research grants, policies aimed at increasing the supply of human capital focused on innovation, intellectual property policies, and pro-competitive policies.”
Research the Role
We are looking to hire either a new Researcher or Senior Researcher, depending on experience. The successful candidate will be a core member of the team – primarily producing original policy reports and other written outputs, but also contributing on other fronts, such as supporting our events programme and expanding our presence in the policymaking ecosystem.
The ideal candidate will be highly self-motivated with a strong interest in public policy. They will not simply wait to be assigned tasks, but proactively identify new opportunities to drive the policy agenda. We expect applicants to be recent graduates, or to be working in a similar role, or to have already demonstrated the core competencies we’re looking for in another role.
Strong applicants will have shown an active interest in policies and issues that impact entrepreneurs. Most importantly, their values will be in strong alignment with those of The Entrepreneurs Network.
On 18 April 1930, BBC Radio’s 6.30pm news bulletin announced: “Good evening. Today is Good Friday. There is no news,” which was then followed by piano music to fill the remaining time.
As the News and Views section below shows, while the headlines never truly stop, they do have a tendency to slow down over the summer months. In this rare respite from the torrent of politics and policy, I hope you’ll forgive me for turning inwards – not least because we’ve picked up hundreds of new subscribers in recent weeks who might value a bit of a pointer to what we’re all about.
In short, we are the voice of Britain’s most ambitious entrepreneurs. A decade ago, I would never have been so presumptuous to describe ourselves as the voice of anyone but myself; however, over that time we’ve built a network of thousands of entrepreneurs and we’re now pretty confident that we know what keeps entrepreneurs up at night, and what they need from government to succeed.
Just to be one hundred percent sure, we’ve recently teamed up with Public First to conduct quarterly surveys of our network, the latest of which is currently open for responses. If you haven’t done so already, please complete it and consider sharing the opportunity with your networks and on social media.
Demanding supply
One of the challenges that has come with having built such a large and open network is that demand for our events is now outstripping supply. There are three ways that we’re solving this without closing the network or charging for events.
First, we’re being more selective about inviting the right people to the right events. Just this week we hosted a dinner with Ian Sollom MP, the Liberal Democrats’ Spokesperson for Universities and Skills, which had the perfect mix of entrepreneurs, investors, and Tech Transfer Office leaders. Compiling the guest list was made all the easier thanks to attendees having proactively told us which issues they’re interested in. If you haven’t let us know what topics you’re curious about, you can do so by filling out our recently updated and extended Join Us form.
Second, we’re planning more meetups. These are much more open than our more policy-focused events. Watch this space for an ambitious plan to undertake regular events outside of London, as we’re keen to travel the length and breadth of the country. We’re looking for more hosts and partners for our events, so if you’re keen to host us, get in touch.
Finally, for those who are able, becoming a Supporter, Adviser, Patron or Corporate Partner both opens up more events for you, but also supports us to do more for the wider ecosystem. It’s a win-win for everyone. Join us here.
Supplying more
Before signing up, you may want to know a bit more about the scope of what we do. If that’s the case, we have a deck which distils it into a few slides.
While this should give you an overview of what we currently do, I want to also take this opportunity to find out what you think we should be doing more of. We may be more than ten years old, but we’re just as nimble today as on day one. Everything we’ve done, and everything we’re doing now, all started with a simple conversation. As such, the time to share any ideas you have for partnering with us is now. Get in touch.
Three Big Ideas is our fortnightly roundup of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.
This week, Eamonn Ives writes about novel ideas for funding new infrastructure, Anastasia Bektimirova wonders whether ‘micro-tipping’ will replace subscriptions, and Jessie May Green welcomes the inclusion of small businesses as a focus for COP30.
Today’s newsletter comes from our Research Director, Eamonn Ives. Normal service with Philip will resume next week!
Veteran Westminster watchers will know that the long summer months when Parliament is in recess are a breeding ground for less credulous stories to find their way into national newspapers. During ‘Silly Season’, as it’s affectionately known, journalists feed on scraps – with even speculative rumours standing a chance of being written up as if they’re iron-clad facts. So it was with more than a little apprehension when I read in The Guardian that the Chancellor Rachel Reeves is mulling over a new tax grab on high-value properties to raise revenue at the forthcoming Autumn Budget.
According to leaked proposals, the Treasury is considering charging Capital Gains Tax on the sale of homes worth over £1.5 million. Currently, an exemption which shields most main residences from being liable for CGT sees a whopping £31 billion a year slip through the Chancellor’s fingers as taxes forgone – earning it the title of being Britain’s single biggest tax relief. No wonder our cash-strapped Treasury is looking enviously at shaking things up, and that should be reason enough for us to take seriously the fact these ideas are surfacing – Silly Season or not.
What’s all this got to do with entrepreneurship though, I hear you ask? Well, regular readers should be acutely aware that strong agglomeration effects form the basis of just about all fertile startup ecosystems (for the uninitiated, go straight to Building Blocks after reading this newsletter). When people can live in close proximity to one another, the ease with which founders can exchange ideas, attract talented employees, find willing investors, share physical and social infrastructure and so on only increases. Density doesn’t just correlate with economic success, it actively enables it. There’s a reason why London alone routinely receives over two thirds of all venture capital invested in Britain, is a magnet for both domestic and international talent, and is the nation’s foundry bar none for producing cutting-edge startups.
Anything, therefore, that impedes agglomerative forces from taking hold thus also prevents entrepreneurial sparks from flying. And there are few better (or worse?) ways to do that than by putting homeowners on the hook for potentially tens of thousands of extra tax should they wish to move house. As a consequence, people liable for paying the new tax will hang onto property for longer than they otherwise would in an efficient market. Evidence suggests that the construction of new homes may well slow down too, as demand for housing dampens. Altogether, prospective entrepreneurs will find it harder and more expensive to move into economic hotspots, and any well-heeled international talent would be forgiven for thinking twice about relocating to Britain.
We don’t need to rely purely on economic theory here either. Anyone who has had to grapple with the pain of Stamp Duty will be well acquainted with the damaging effects of transaction taxes on property. Empirical evidence from the Office for Budget Responsibility shows that a one percent increase in Stamp Duty causes transactions to fall by between 4.5-7%, depending on the value of the property. Some economists have even argued that property transaction taxes are so harmful that they may even destroy more value than they raise. Static markets serve nobody.
As Philip mentioned a fortnight ago, the reason we’re debating tax rises in the first place is because of the daunting fiscal black hole we’re facing. The Government has shown itself incapable of meaningfully trimming back public spending, has limited room for extra borrowing, and can’t rely on economic growth to save the day. That leaves tax hikes as the only way to try to balance the books – and with a prior promise to not touch VAT, Income Tax or National Insurance Contributions, officials are understandably searching for other routes to bring in extra cash.
By definition, anyone fortunate enough to have profited from the meteoric rise in house prices in Britain over recent decades – even if only on paper – has the proverbial broad shoulders needed to bear further tax hikes. But while such lucky homeowners may be viewed as a politically easy target, we must consider whether the juice is worth the squeeze. Whatever happens at the Autumn Budget, here’s to hoping the Chancellor properly evaluates the second-order effects that taxes like this might have. If the Government is as serious as it says it is about growing the economy, it will ensure idle ideas like this remain exactly that.
(P.S. Speaking of the Autumn Budget, we’ve just opened the next round of our Entrepreneurs Survey for responses. If you’re a founder and want to make your voice heard on the issues that matter to you most, please consider taking ten minutes or less to fill it out.)
What’s your spin?
We’re gathering evidence for our next Female Founders Forum report, which will investigate how university spinouts are created in the UK today, and what policy fixes are needed to support their growth.
If you have spun out a company from a UK university within the last three years (or are in the process of doing so), or are someone who supports spinouts (e.g. through a TTO, university, funder, or advisory organisation), please consider filling in our survey and sharing it with others. And if you’d like to be interviewed for this research or know someone who should, just drop Anastasia a line.
Calling all entrepreneurs! Today, we’re asking for 10 minutes (or less) of your time to fill in our quarterly Entrepreneurs Survey. (For those who haven’t started a business, the ask is that you share it with your networks.)
Our inaugural survey was picked up by many media outlets and led to all the political parties chasing us for more insights. No wonder. Entrepreneurs play a disproportionately important role in our economy, but too often their voices go unheard by the politicians who are designing policies that impact their businesses.
This will be an important one, as it will inform our campaigning ahead of the Budget. This is your best chance to tell those in power what you really think.
Another Year Wiser
We’re beginning the research process for our annual Female Founders Forum report with Barclays. This time, we’re investigating how university spinouts happen today and how to make translating academic ideas into real world companies work better for everyone in the UK.
The 2023 Independent Review of University Spin-out Companies promised faster, fairer, more founder-friendly journeys. We want to see where that promise has landed: where progress is being felt on the ground, where challenges remain, and where further steps are needed. We also want to understand how much founder experiences differ by gender, region and sector.
We’re building on important work already done in this space, adding a UK-wide, gender-aware lens and combining survey data with in-depth interviews to produce practical policy recommendations.
If you’ve spun a company out of a British university (or are in the process of doing so), or if you work with those who do, please consider filling out our survey or drop Anastasia a line for a chat. LinkedIn aficionados may also want to tag close contacts into this post, which is proving a useful way of getting the word out.
And Spend
Another week, another mention of tax. I’ll keep it short though. I just want to direct you to our Adviser Derin Kocer’s Big Idea this week. Derin thinks I didn’t make a big enough decision in last week’s Perennial Gale about the need to cut spending.
Unlike him, I’ve never been an official political strategist, so I’ll leave it to others to decide on feasibility and extent of cuts, but, either way, it’s always worth reminding the Government about which taxes are the least damaging.
Up to Date
Our Policy Updates are well and truly back. This week, we informed subscribers about the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill with more than a little help from Spark Legal and Policy Consulting. These updates are intended to be timely, bitesize overviews on policies that will impact the thousands of ambitious entrepreneurs in our network. If you’re an expert on an area of policy get in touch to see how you can partner on future updates.
Ta-da, Tata
Our friends at the Centre for Entrepreneurs have just announced that they’re teaming up once again with Tata for their Varsity Pitch Competition. It is the longest-running inter-university business pitching competition in the UK, with a £25,000 prize pot, as well as mentoring opportunities and connections to Tata Group for category winners and alumni.
One reason I like to promote this competition is that you don’t need a fully-formed idea to enter – or, indeed, win. Find out more here.
Three Big Ideas is our fortnightly roundup of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.
This week, Derin Kocer unpacks why the UK’s fiscal “black hole” can’t be closed by tax rises alone, Anastasia Bektimirova explores how experimental foresight could help policymakers make better calls on emerging tech, and George Patin looks at how AI-powered “vibe coding” is reshaping startup formation.
According to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), “substantial adjustments in the Autumn Budget will be needed to meet the ‘stability rule’.” In plainer, more worrying words, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves will have to hike taxes in October’s budget to make up for a £40 billion deficit.
You may be wondering: why doesn’t the Chancellor simply relax those rules? While they are self-imposed, most economists believe that anything more than minor tweaks could trigger a market backlash. The lessons of recent history are still fresh, and few scenarios are more alarming than a repeat of Liz Truss’s mini-budget — an event it’s hard to describe without using the qualifier “disastrous.”
You may also wonder why Reeves doesn’t simply cut spending. Whatever your view of austerity, the recent U-turn on the winter fuel allowance suggests there is little appetite for a repeat of 2010–2019, when public spending fell from about 45% to around 39% of GDP.
So how does the Government plug that £40 billion gap?
One thing’s for sure – it can’t be on the backs of Britain’s entrepreneurs. Not just because it would be wrong, but because it wouldn’t generate nearly enough tax revenue. The pips are well-and-truly squeaking for those who have already made it, while many of those nearer the start of their journey would be minded to either leave the country or shift ambitions away from entrepreneurship.
NIESR rightly argues that Labour needs to spread the pain with broad-based tax changes. The two obvious contenders are income tax and VAT. NIESR estimates that a 5p rise in the pound on both the basic and higher rates of income tax would close the gap. However, Tom Clougherty makes a more compelling case for broadening the VAT base instead, while compensating lower-income households and introducing pro-growth tax cuts.
As Tom notes, taxes on consumption generally do less harm to long-term growth than taxes on earnings. There is also a clear opportunity to redesign VAT so it raises substantially more revenue while becoming more efficient and less distortive.
By global standards, Britain’s VAT system is unusually narrow. A mix of exemptions, zero-rating, reduced rates, and a comparatively high registration threshold means that only Italy and Romania have a smaller effective VAT base within Europe. The OECD’s VAT Revenue Ratio (VRR) — which measures actual VAT receipts against what could be collected if the standard rate applied to all consumption — puts the UK at 48.3%. For comparison, New Zealand’s broad-based VAT achieves a VRR of 99.2%. If the UK matched that breadth, Tom calculates it could bring in around £150 billion more in 2029–30.
As Tom also argues, one way to make such a reform politically and socially workable would be to use part of the extra revenue to shield lower-income households from the change. For instance, allocating roughly £75 billion to a universal flat-rate “prebate” for all adults could offset the burden on the bottom income quintiles. Another £50 billion could help meet fiscal rules, leaving around £25 billion for further pro-growth tax changes. This approach would combine a stronger revenue base with fairer distribution and space for broader reform.
On one hand, this may sound radical. On the other, it is very much in line with what eminently orthodox voices such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies have been advocating for decades. And more importantly, what’s the alternative?
Shooting Stars
Last year, I attended an event hosted by Lord Kamall of Edmonton and Purple Shoots in the House of Lords. Purple Shoots is a not‑for‑profit microfinance organisation, and the Founder Karen Davies is doing incredible work helping people escape poverty through entrepreneurship. On the day, we heard from people who had benefited from their support.
It provides small, affordable business loans, typically £500-£3,000, mainly to individuals excluded from mainstream lenders – many of whom are unemployed, on benefits, or facing other barriers
In their own words:
“Many of society’s problems have their roots in poverty and insufficient income. By enabling people to create an independent income we are tackling many other issues such as economic inactivity, poor mental health, indebtedness, child poverty, and re-offending, at their cause, creating sustainable change.”
Let me know if you would like me to make an introduction to Karen.
As subscribers to our Policy Updates will be well aware, yesterday the Government published the long-awaited Small Business Strategy. Backing your Business: Our Plan for Small and Medium Sized Businesses covers a lot of ground, but today I’ll pick out a few themes.
Alongside other business leaders and policy experts, I’m quoted in the Government’s press release, where I began by setting out the case for supporting small businesses:
“Small businesses are where opportunity begins – new jobs, new skills and new ideas. Practical help, such as being paid on time, easy access to advice and finance, and less administrative burden, makes a real difference.”
I went on to focus on what’s shaping up to be the headline announcement around late payments:
“In a world where online banking, accounting software and e-invoicing exist, it’s completely unacceptable that so many burgeoning startups see their growth stall due to late payments. At its worst, they can send perfectly good businesses to the wall – leaving Britain’s economy less dynamic and competitive. Founders in our network will hope the measures outlined today mean it is the beginning of the end for late payments.”
As our Research Director Eamonn Ives sets out in the Policy Update:
“New rules and powers will be introduced to clamp down on late payments – including stricter maximum payment terms, mandatory payment of interest on late invoices, fines against large companies who persistently pay their suppliers late and excluding suppliers who fail to pay promptly from large public sector contracts.”
Above all, it’s reassuring to know that Emma Jones CBE, the new Small Business Commissioner, will be leading on this. If there’s one thing Emma proved in building Enterprise Nation, it’s that she knows how to deliver.
On exports, the Plan restates the Government’s commitment to expand UK Export Finance’s capacity by £20 billion. As we argued, coincidentally with Enterprise Nation, in Access All Areas: Markets, there is room to expand on the successes of the world’s oldest export credit agency, particularly with regard to supporting more small and medium-sized businesses.
When it comes to backing the next generation, we’ve previously engaged with the government on the creation of a new ‘Youth Entrepreneur’ category of the King’s Awards for Enterprise, which was announced yesterday. This aligns with our belief that raising the status of entrepreneurs and innovators is an underappreciated policy lever of governments. As Ned Donovan and Anton Howes wrote in Honours for Innovators:
“Raising invention’s status and prestige was crucial to how Britain first got its reputation during the Industrial Revolution as the best place to innovate. Invention came to be seen as a viable and attractive career path, not just financially but in terms of the social standing that could result from it – something that was purposefully cultivated by those seeking to improve the country’s technological prospects.”
Turning to regulation, the Government is making the bold promise to reduce the administrative costs of regulation for SMEs by 25%. This is quite the claim, and one which, if it is to be achieved, deserves some serious thinking.
It goes without saying that no matter who has been in power, business regulation in the UK has only grown more burdensome. Even well-intentioned drives to cut through red tape have invariably failed. And we don’t just need to slash regulation, we need nothing short of a digital transformation of government to truly allow entrepreneurs to focus on growing their businesses, not grappling with bureaucracy.
All of this is to say that Gareth Thomas MP, the Small Business Minister, has an unenviable task on his hands. Viewed more positively, however, he has a great opportunity to leave a profound legacy: the unburdening of business bureaucracy.
Easy as ABC
The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Entrepreneurship, of which we are the Secretariat, is ramping up with our first project. We’re putting together an A-Z of Entrepreneurship and we want your help.
So we’re asking, what would your A-Z of Entrepreneurship include? For the letter ‘A’, would you pick – Accelerators, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), or the Annual Investment Allowance (AIA)? Or perhaps we need all three. You don’t need to give us every letter, but feel free if you’re on a roll. And good ideas for ‘J’, ‘Q’, ‘X’ and ‘Z’ would be particularly appreciated.
The ideas and some of the writing will be crowdsourced, so there may also be an opportunity to write an entry.
Reach out to Eamonn with your thoughts, and drop me an email if you want to sponsor the project.
Value Creation
Substack is now a unicorn. While we only recently moved our newsletter over to this platform, we’ve all been big fans for a while and I would recommend others make the leap of starting or moving their existing newsletter over here. We’re now benefitting hugely from the network effects of the platform, growing our readership much more quickly, which includes our network of entrepreneurs.
So who else should you follow? Well, here’s who we recommend for those interested in entrepreneurship policy, innovation and economic growth more broadly. Let us know if you think we’re missing anyone.
Buzzwords
Meera Shah, Head of M&A Advisory at Buzzacott has joined us as an Adviser. Meera specialises in advising institutional and founder shareholders through exits, whether to private equity or large corporates.
As Meera kindly writes:
“I really admire The Entrepreneurs Network’s work, particularly its strong political and policy focus which sets it apart from other broader entrepreneur groups. Since becoming a board member of the ICAEW’s Corporate Finance Faculty, I understand how important it is for industry groups to lobby for potential changes that align with and protect the best interests of their sector [...] I believe The Entrepreneurs Network’s wider remit is crucial to nurturing a founder-friendly environment in which to build and grow a business in the UK.”
If you’re keen to join Meera in supporting our mission to make Britain the best place in the world to start and grow a business, get in touch.
