Pulling Rank

Let’s start the year on a positive note. Not grounded in hope, but in data. Despite the challenges, the UK remains one of the best places in the world to start and grow a business. Across multiple independent rankings, produced by different institutions using different methodologies, the UK sits comfortably in the global top tier. We aren’t at the frontier on every single metric — but we’re very close on many.

On innovation, the UK ranks sixth globally in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Global Innovation Index, which aggregates around 80 indicators — spanning institutions, human capital, infrastructure, market sophistication and innovation outputs. We perform especially well at turning innovation inputs into new technologies, creative goods and commercially viable ideas.

Caveats aside, Britain also leads in science. On the Nature Index, which tracks high-quality publications in leading journals, the UK ranks fourth globally. Four of the top five research institutions in Europe are British. On Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers 2025 list, the UK ranks third worldwide, reflecting a deep concentration of researchers whose work sits in the global top 1%.

Britain is a magnet for top talent too. INSEAD’s Global Talent Competitiveness Index places the UK firmly among the world’s leaders. In the latest Times Higher Education Rankings, two of the global top five universities are British — Oxford ranked first and Cambridge joint third. The QS World University Rankings also place two institutions in the top five, with Imperial ranked second and Oxford joint fourth.

This depth of knowledge shows up in the structure of the economy itself. On Harvard’s Economic Complexity Index, the UK sits in the top tier of advanced economies. It captures how diversified and sophisticated a country’s exports are, which is a proxy for accumulated, hard-to-replicate productive knowledge. On the Government AI Readiness Index, the UK ranks second globally, behind only the United States. It highlights strong policy coordination out of Westminster, including the AI Opportunities Action Plan, alongside major research partnerships with the EU and US.

It is easier to run a company in the UK than in most other countries. The Global Business Complexity Index deems the UK to have one of the least complex business environments in the world, based on performance across 292 indicators covering tax, accounting, payroll, human resources and entity management.

By international standards, the UK also remains one of the most open services markets in the world. According to the OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index, the UK ranks second overall among 51 economies analysed. London meanwhile ranks second globally in the Global Financial Centres Index. This depth of finance translates into scale: London attracted more VC investment in 2025 than Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Munich and Madrid combined, while the UK ranks fourth globally for unicorns on the Hurun Global Unicorn Index, behind only the United States, China and India.

It might not always feel like it, but the UK remains well governed. On the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index, it ranks fourteenth out of 143 countries analysed. For an economy built on services, contracts and intangible assets, that matters enormously. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index tells a similar story, placing the UK firmly within the “very clean” tier of public-sector environments.

These are not cherry-picked statistics. After reviewing around 70 international rankings, I filtered hard for robustness and relevance. Echoing our Research Director Eamonn Ives, there are always methodological criticisms to make with these kinds of rankings, but taken as a whole they paint a fair picture. On many of the hardest-to-build dimensions — innovation, research, services openness, finance and the rule of law — the UK consistently sits in the leading pack.

One could look at this wealth of evidence and conclude that everything is going swimmingly. To do so would be short-sighted. For a start, we aren’t the clear leaders in much, so there’s plenty of room for improvement in many areas. Second, competitor economies are swiftly catching up. Staying ahead of them now depends as much on new initiatives as on discipline. We need to double down on allowing existing strengths to compound, remove avoidable frictions and come up with innovative policies to lead the world. More on that in the year to come.

Three Big Ideas #51

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 speaks up for free speech, Philip Salter opines on the innovation insights shed by 2025’s Nobel Prize in Economics winners, and Mann Virdee argues we need to broaden our skillsets in the changing economy.

‘Tis the Reason

Season’s Greetings! I promised myself that I wouldn’t end the year harping on about the dynamism-denting Employment Rights Bill, tempting as that is. Instead, let’s discuss some highlights, ways you can get more involved, and how you can support us in 2026.

Although we’ve taken to describing ourselves as a business group and community, we remain first – and probably foremost – a think tank. Our research is the bedrock of why we’re taken seriously. And 2025 was another feast for policy-minded readers. Of everything we published, here are three reports with the broadest appeal – ideal reading with a mince pie in hand.

In Ambition Unlimited, we captured the voices of young founders across the UK, showing that ambition alone isn’t enough. Outdated tax and investment incentives, burdensome regulation, and restrictive immigration rules are still holding back the next generation of innovators.

In Full Speed Ahead, we revealed that the UK’s accelerator and incubator landscape remains fragmented and often ineffective despite significant public investment – with weak evaluation, inconsistent standards and programmes that don’t always match what founders actually need.

Then finally in Job Creators 2025, we once again showed just how central international founders are to the UK’s fastest-growing companies. This year, 54% of Britain’s top 100 high-growth firms have at least one foreign-born founder. The report set out clear recommendations to ensure the UK stays open and attractive to the entrepreneurial talent that drives jobs, innovation and economic dynamism.

Ring Out

Our biggest internal innovation this year has been launching regular surveys of our network. Each wave has generated strong media coverage, but my favourite was this City A.M. piece arguing that government simply didn’t “get entrepreneurs.” Whether they’re now taking notice is ultimately for you to judge.

We genuinely couldn’t do this work without you. We want to grow this into a major strand of what we do, so if you’re an entrepreneur, please consider joining our survey panel. No one else can reach the founders in our network.

Claus for Thought

This year we moved our newsletters to Substack. Alongside Perennial Gale, we now regularly share ideas, analysis and interviews through Network Effects. For founders wanting timely insight into what’s emerging from Westminster that may shape your business, our Policy Updates have you covered, and Eamonn also provides a sharp, impartial monthly briefing through the APPG for Entrepreneurship newsletter.

If you fancy some thoughtful holiday reading, try my conversation with John Fingleton CBE, or our interview with Station F director Roxanne Varza — both rich with insight into how to support entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Room at the Inn?

We hosted 42 public events in 2025 – along with several private ones – to bring thousands of entrepreneurs together with front-benchers, back-benchers, advisers and civil servants from across the political spectrum.

When we started, we were happy just to see that people were willing to turn up to our events. Thankfully, that’s now the least of our worries – although we’re noticing that demand regularly outstrips supply, which creates problems of its own. We will never operate as a closed membership group – the best rooms require the most relevant people – but we will continue to reserve places for Advisers and Supporters (see below on how to join).

Wrapping Up

To close, here are five golden requests. I don’t expect everyone to do all of them – but if you can manage one or two, it would genuinely help our work.

First: join us for free as a Member. We now have more than 10,000 entrepreneurs in the network, and signing up helps us to understand what matters most to you. It also lets you express interest in writing for us or joining our private WhatsApp groups.

Second: we believe the UK can and should be the best place in the world to start and grow a business. If you agree, add your name to our Mission Statement.

Third: join our WhatsApp Community. We won’t inundate you, aiming to send an average of just one update a week, including sharing journalist requests directly with founders and the wider ecosystem.

Fourth: please share this newsletter. Believe it or not, there are still people out there who aren’t subscribed to this. We don’t have a budget to appear alongside the latest John Lewis or Coca-Cola Christmas adverts. Forwarding this to one or two people genuinely helps us grow.

Finally – the big one – consider becoming a Supporter, Adviser, Patron, or Corporate Partner. We know it’s not for everyone. If you’re just starting out or watching every pound, please don’t feel any pressure. But if £120 a year is manageable, and you value being part of a community that brings founders and the wider ecosystem together – while strengthening the environment for entrepreneurs across the UK – becoming a Supporter is a meaningful way to help that work continue, with priority access to our events along the way.

While we already have big plans for 2026, many of our best ideas come from our readers, so if you have thoughts on what we should do, or what we could do together, I’d love to hear from you.

Ultimately, our work is in service of entrepreneurs. Everything we do comes back to individual founders whose contributions to society are all too often underappreciated. Politicians can talk endlessly about growth, but entrepreneurs are the hinge on which progress swings.

This will be the last Perennial Gale of the year. But true to this newsletter’s name, we’ll be back on 2 January. For those who’ll miss our policy presents, join Network Effects to hear the three biggest ideas in entrepreneurship before the year is out.

Three Big Ideas #50

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 goes in to bat for GDP, Mann Virdee reflects on reasons to be optimistic as we go into 2026, and James Graham of the Prosperity Institute argues that financial crime regulations are not fit for purpose.

No Country for Young Workers

Unemployment is back in the news. As John Burn-Murdoch has written in the Financial Times, the proportion of young people in the UK who are neither working, seeking work, in education nor raising children has doubled over the past decade. In The Telegraph, Tim Wallace shows that Britain has experienced the sharpest rise in youth unemployment across the G7. Rachel Wolf, meanwhile, describes how the lives of those on the margins of the labour market are being hollowed out.

Putting any pretence of false modesty aside for a moment, I predicted this would happen back in May.

All unemployment is bad, but youth unemployment is uniquely pernicious. Early-career joblessness leads to persistent earnings losses, skill depreciation and weaker attachment to the labour market that can last for decades. These scarring dynamics do not just harm individuals; they reduce business formation, slow productivity growth and raise the economy’s long-run unemployment rate. Youth unemployment is not just a cyclical inconvenience but a structural drag on entrepreneurial dynamism and growth.

This is partly why the Government has committed £820 million with the aim of supporting nearly one million young people into work. The plan is to create 350,000 workplace opportunities, expand Youth Hubs, and introduce a “Jobs Guarantee” offering fully funded, six-month placements for long-term unemployed 18-to-21-year-olds in high-need areas. For eligible businesses, the attraction is straightforward: taxpayers cover 100% of wages and training costs for these placements.

The Government will also spend a further £725 million to try to generate 50,000 new apprenticeships over the next three years. Here too, the incentives for eligible businesses are significant, with taxpayers covering 100% of training costs for apprentices under 25, removing the previous co-investment requirement.

Success in both cases will depend on employer take-up, whether placements resemble real jobs rather than holding patterns, and whether there is clear progression into unsubsidised employment.

The Government, however, is not doing itself any favours. Since coming to power, the Employer National Insurance Contribution changes announced at Labour’s first Budget are likely to fall largely on employees — through lower wages — and hardest on the young, who are more exposed to job losses and more likely to be priced out of low-productivity roles altogether.

In addition, from 1 April 2026 the National Living Wage (for those aged 21 and over) will rise to £12.71 an hour, while the minimum wage for 18-to-20-year-olds will jump to around £10.85 — an increase of roughly 8.5%. Rates for under-18s and apprentices will also rise to around £8 an hour. It is possible to strike a balance on minimum wages without causing excessive unemployment, but when the Labour-aligned Resolution Foundation is warning that the increase for 18-to-20-year-olds is “unnecessarily big”, and risks making it harder for them to find work, alarm bells should be ringing.

Then there is the Employment Rights Bill, which remains far from settled. While the shift away from day-one unfair dismissal rights toward a six-month qualifying period is welcome, it still risks making employers more cautious about taking on new staff — particularly young and inexperienced workers.

And there is still plenty more to be concerned about in the Bill. Under current law, compensation for unfair dismissal is capped at the lower of 52 weeks’ pay or a statutory maximum (around £118,000). The original proposal was to remove this cap entirely – a move rejected this week by the House of Lords. Unlimited awards would significantly increase the tail risk of hiring, especially in sectors like tech, where startups must compete on pay with large firms but lack the HR capacity to manage legal risk. For some of our most innovative firms, this risk would be existential.

Alongside this sit expanded union ballot and recognition rules, enhanced protections around industrial action and a range of other changes that, taken together, would make many business owners markedly more reluctant to hire if passed in their current form.

This is not to dismiss the importance of worker protections — but there is a balance to be struck. Our latest Entrepreneurs Survey provides one of the clearest signals yet of how the UK’s most ambitious founders view the Employment Rights Bill. Among those aware of the legislation, 80% believe it will have a negative impact on the economy, with more than 40% expecting the impact to be “very negative”. Just 4% believe it will have a positive effect.

The Government can’t say they weren’t warned.

Reckoned With

The Invest in Women Taskforce has published its annual report, and the headline is that the fund has now reached £635 million in commitments from institutions including Barclays, M&G, BGF, Aviva, Morgan Stanley, Nationwide and the British Business Bank.

The funding is designed to work on two fronts. Around £270 million will support the pipeline of female fund managers, enabling them to invest in female and mixed-gender founding teams. The remaining £365 million will be deployed directly by institutional investors into those companies.

The Entrepreneurs Network also gets a mention in the report for our work on angel investment, highlighting both regional disparities and the growing – though still limited – participation of women angels.

Read it in full here.

Humanity’s Hallmark

If you haven’t yet signed our Mission Statement, you can do so here. We’ll publish the first set of names in the new year, and continue adding to it over the months, years and decades ahead. Our mission is Sisyphean — and that is precisely why it matters.

On Your Marks

I’m delighted to share that Mark McCormack, Founder and co-CEO of Talking Tables, has joined us as an Adviser. Mark brings over 25 years of experience growing Talking Tables to a £20m+ turnover international business.

Mark is already providing a wealth of knowledge on policies around exporting and trade tariffs. He believes, like us, that entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of the UK economy, and that we help facilitate getting entrepreneurs heard by Westminster. Get in touch if you’re keen to find out more about becoming an Adviser in 2026.

What We Believe

This week, prompted by a rather contentious LinkedIn post from Johann Nordhus Westarp, Sifted’s Martin Coulter asks the question: Can you be left-wing and an ‘elite founder’?

In his article, Coulter quotes our latest Entrepreneurs Survey, which revealed that founders have shifted their political allegiances slightly in the last few months towards the Conservatives and Reform (although it’s worth pointing out that the margins are still very tight).

I’ve managed to hold myself back from writing a diatribe on political economy — for today at least — because I figured it would be more constructive to set out what we as an organisation fundamentally believe.

This idea came from a discussion with our newest Adviser, Richard Browning, who launched the world’s first human jet suit, and who is the first signatory to our mission statement. This is a public pronouncement, which we’re encouraging all of our supporters to put their names to. You don’t need to be an entrepreneur to sign this — just someone who shares our worldview. So, are you with us?

A hallmark of humanity is our desire to solve problems. When we do that through markets — by creating new goods, services and ways of doing things — we call it entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship is one of the most powerful engines of productivity and progress. Throughout history, entrepreneurial ventures have transformed societies, lifting people from subsistence to prosperity.

Entrepreneurs pioneer new ideas, create jobs and drive the breakthroughs that raise living standards — not only today, but for generations to come. Supporting and nurturing entrepreneurship is essential if we are to live healthier, happier and more meaningful lives.

But progress doesn’t happen by accident. It is shaped by the choices made every day by entrepreneurs and by those who support them — their teams, mentors, investors, and the wider ecosystem.

And while the entrepreneurial impulse may be innate, its success depends on the environment around it. Entrepreneurs need the right laws, regulations, institutions, incentives, infrastructure, talent, capital and culture to thrive.

We believe the United Kingdom can and should be the best place in the world to start and grow a business.

Out of Focus

Most people — including, and perhaps most importantly, most politicians — have never run a business. That’s why the way journalists cover entrepreneurship really matters.

With support from Pathos Communications, we surveyed founders across our network to understand how they view the media’s portrayal of Britain’s startup ecosystem.

In Out of Focus, we found that five times as many founders disagree (60%) as agree (12%) that journalists do a good job of covering entrepreneurship. Most also said they had seen no improvement in the quantity or quality of coverage in recent years. And nearly three quarters feel that the issues that matter most to them get too little attention, compared with just 6% who feel they receive enough.

Alongside the quantitative data, founders shared their views in their own words. Many want the media to look beyond London-based, high-valuation tech stories and pay more attention to the everyday — and often unglamorous — realities of building a business. Others feel the tone around success and wealth creation could be fairer, and that journalists would benefit from a deeper understanding of entrepreneurship. There is also strong appetite for broader representation: across sectors, regions, backgrounds and stages of growth.

This isn’t intended as a broadside against the broadsheets. Founders were conscious of their own shortcomings too: while 30% feel entrepreneurs present themselves well in the media, 36% do not. And if you’re a journalist reading this, you’re already demonstrating a deep interest in entrepreneurship. Perhaps the main takeaway is that entrepreneurs still believe the media matters. Journalists continue to shape how policymakers, investors and the public understand risk-taking, innovation and economic dynamism.

The report — and its launch in the House of Lords — has already generated productive discussion on LinkedIn. We’re now speaking with several journalists about how we can help constructively bridge the gap between entrepreneurs and the media. Those in our WhatsApp community will know we’re already doing this by sharing live opportunities from journalists – so if you haven’t joined yet, now’s the time to do so.

Three Big Ideas #49

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 discusses our latest research on how founders think about national media, Eamonn Ives urges HMRC to follow America’s lead when it comes to tax transparency, and Mann Virdee ponders how AI is altering the hiring landscape.

Speculative Bubbles

We’re all stuck in our own bubbles. Try as we might, we’re naturally drawn to people who share our views, backgrounds or interests. So when the Budget landed this week, I realised that I sit roundly in two bubbles that saw it very differently: the entrepreneurship ecosystem bubble and the economics bubble.

First, the entrepreneurial ecosystem bubble. Viewed through this lens (to mix my metaphors), the Chancellor – advised by the incisive and indomitable Alex Depledge, the Treasury’s first Entrepreneurship Adviser – absolutely delivered. Depledge’s Entrepreneurship in the UK prospectus closely reflects many of the priorities of high-growth founders. As I wrote in our snap response: “The doubling of Enterprise Management Incentive allowances and the expansion of the Enterprise Investment Scheme stand out as a clear response from the Government to calls from entrepreneurs.”

We were also pleased to see some movement on the Stamp Duty Reserve Tax. As our Research Director Eamonn Ives explains: “[It] is an international outlier and a relic of a bygone age. It depresses share prices, increases the cost of capital and adds friction to our beleaguered markets.” In the next Budget, as argued in Backing Breakthrough Businesses, the Government should just scrap the whole tax.

Arguably the most underappreciated announcement was around procurement. Public procurement makes up around 15% of UK GDP, which makes it one of the largest single levers the state controls. It should be driving innovation – but it isn’t.

Announcements to expand Advance Market Commitments, the creation of an Innovation Marketplace to fast-track innovative solutions, and the appointment of Procurement Innovation Champions across all departments, all sound encouraging. It’s about time a government started thinking creatively about how to harness procurement’s power.

But we – including many reading this – really need to come together to understand why public procurement is so bureaucratic and how to unpick it. We aren’t the only country to suffer from this, though many countries do procurement better. Fundamentally, it can’t just be about layering the above on top of the current system; we need a genuine reset.

Finally, the Call for Evidence on Tax Support for Entrepreneurs, which launched alongside the Budget, is a welcome way to keep the conversation and momentum going. As well as looking at current schemes, you’ll have the chance to contribute ideas on things like how the government can strengthen the investment pipeline, why exited founders do or do not reinvest, and whether Business Asset Disposal Relief (BADR) is effective. I expect we’ll be integrating some of these questions into our Entrepreneurs Survey, so do let us know if you’re keen to partner on this work.

Now to the second bubble: the economics bubble. As a think tank, we’re grounded in and by economics, and it’s fair to say that most economists weren’t overly enamoured with the Chancellor’s Budget.

The Economist was eloquently blunt (paywall): “The tax-and-spend party has taxed and spent,” and “The state has never been so expensively funded, yet seemed so tired.” Paul Johnson, formerly of the IFS, spoke for many in the profession (paywall). I would summarise him and others as criticising big tax rises without reform, debt still rising, a barely better-than-even chance of meeting the fiscal target, repeated U-turns on tax and welfare, and an overall sense of a government lacking strategy and direction.

I won’t try to thread the needle here. It’s possible for a Budget to contain strong micro-level reforms that help entrepreneurs while still falling short on the foundational reforms that underpin growth. As we argued in Building Blocks:

“While remedying small issues can be important, there’s a danger that too much attention in policymaking is afforded to them, while more fundamental problems go unchecked. We contend that even marginal policy improvements in any of these bigger areas – from simplifying our country’s planning rules, to rationalising the tax code, to modernising the visa system – will 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.”

Finally, these lenses ignore others. As Enterprise Nation reveals in the reaction from some of the more than 150,000 small business owners they support, there are concerns about rising costs, squeezed margins, frozen thresholds, tax pressures, wage pressures and a lack of growth measures. Similarly, in his weekly must-read newsletter (sign up here), Beauhurst’s Henry Whorwood states:

“[I]f you’re starting a business that doesn’t fit the equity and grant funding model, you’re left out in the cold. Indeed, you are clobbered with onerous employee rights, minimum wage increases, and record employer NI contributions. Instead of ever more fine-grained interventions, we need to make it easier and cheaper to create jobs in every sector.”

I managed to avoid the tired framing of this being “the good, the bad and the ugly” Budget. Nor did I call it “a tale of two Budgets.” But there’s a reason these idioms are as hackneyed as they are.

It’s up to you to decide which bubble you’re in, and which lens matters most.
Rights Call

I’ll keep this brief. It’s good to see the government scrap the plan to give workers the right to claim unfair dismissal from their first day in a job. Reducing the qualifying period from the current two years to six months is a compromise employers can live with. But while this was the worst part of the draft bill, there’s a lot more they’ll need to unpick. Drop me a message if you’d like to be involved.

Cometh the Hour

I’m delighted to share that Dr Mann Virdee has joined us as a Senior Researcher. Before joining The Entrepreneurs Network, Mann led the Council on Geostrategy’s work exploring how the United Kingdom can build a more competitive and resilient science and technology base. He previously worked at RAND Europe, the UK Parliament, and the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and IMF.

Mann’s research has covered areas such as AI, energy, infrastructure, quantum computing, R&D, 5G, space, the life sciences, civil service reform and Foreign Direct Investment. Drop him an email here, follow him on X here, and connect with him on LinkedIn here.

Autumn Budget 2025 – Our snap reaction

This afternoon, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves gave the 2025 Autumn Budget. Read below for our team’s snap reaction to some of the main points concerning economic growth, innovation and entrepreneurship.

We’ll be digging into things in more depth later in the week — so stay tuned by subscribing to our Friday newsletter, Perennial Gale, if you haven’t already.

🍂💷 What does today’s Autumn Budget mean for Britain’s startup community?

Here are our snap judgements on some of the key announcements for entrepreneurs across the country.

Thread below! 🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/SAywpUAHn6

— The Entrepreneurs Network (@TenThinkTank) November 26, 2025

On the Autumn Budget in general 

Philip Salter, Founder of The Entrepreneurs Network said:

“Despite a challenging economic environment of sluggish growth, stagnant productivity and rising taxes, and a failure to deliver the fundamental tax reform the system desperately needs, this Budget includes targeted measures to support the UK’s entrepreneurial ecosystem that ambitious founders will welcome.

“Unlike the Chancellor’s first Budget, there were no significant unwelcome surprises, with a number of measures directly addressing founders’ priorities. The doubling of Enterprise Management Incentive allowances and the expansion of the Enterprise Investment Scheme stand out as a clear response from the Government to calls from entrepreneurs.

“Entrepreneurs will also welcome the Call for Evidence on supporting companies to start, scale and stay in the UK. But with our latest survey showing that more than a quarter of ambitious entrepreneurs are considering leaving the UK in the next 12 months, this focus couldn’t come soon enough.”

On the new UK Listing Relief 

Eamonn Ives, Research Director at The Entrepreneurs Network said:

“Britain’s 0.5% Stamp Duty Reserve Tax that is paid when anyone buys shares in a UK-listed company is an international outlier and a relic of a bygone age. It depresses share prices, increases the cost of capital and adds friction to our beleaguered markets. 

“A three-year SDRT holiday is therefore welcome, but given that most firms and investors operate on far longer time horizons than that, its overall effect will be muted. If the Government accepts the logic that SDRT is not fit for purpose, it should chart a course to abolish it entirely.”

On changes to EMI

Mann Virdee, Senior Researcher at The Entrepreneurs Network said:

“It’s encouraging to see that the Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) is being expanded. Currently, a company can offer EMIs if it has both assets of £30 million or less, and fewer than 250 full-time employees. The Chancellor announced that the gross asset test is being quadrupled to £120 million, and the employee limit is being doubled to 500 employees. Doing so allows startups to attract and retain talent from larger companies when they don’t have the resources to compete on salaries.”

On public sector procurement driving innovation

Philip Salter, Founder of The Entrepreneurs Network said:

“Public sector procurement accounts for 15% of GDP – a massive economic lever that should be driving innovation. But it isn’t.

“The recent Procurement Act didn’t go nearly far enough to unlock this potential. That’s why it’s encouraging to see the Government revisit procurement reform in the Budget.

“While the devil will be in the detail and implementation, three initiatives show promise: expanding Advance Market Commitments to drive innovation, creating an Innovation Marketplace to fast-track innovative solutions, and appointing Procurement Innovation Champions across all departments.

“These measures suggest the government is starting to think creatively about how to harness procurement’s power.”

On the Nuclear Regulatory Review 2025

Eamonn Ives, Research Director at The Entrepreneurs Network said:

“Access to cheap, reliable energy is critical to future economic growth. Nuclear power should sit at the heart of Britain’s decarbonisation mission, but presently we have some of the highest construction costs in the world.

“Reforms set out this week by John Fingleton in the Nuclear Regulatory Review 2025 could slash costs and expedite gigawatts of additional clean power to the grid. If the Government is as serious about delivering growth and halting climate change as it says it is, it must accept the Review’s recommendations in full.”  

On attracting and retaining talent

Mann Virdee, Senior Researcher at The Entrepreneurs Network said:

“As we recently revealed, 54% of the UK’s fastest-growing businesses have at least one founder – and often multiple – who was born overseas. High visa costs, together with slow processing times, are making Britain uncompetitive in the race for the world’s best and brightest researchers and entrepreneurs. As such, we are pleased to see the Government acknowledge the value of high-skilled immigration to the economy. 

“The Budget reiterated that the Home Office will introduce reforms to the High Potential Individual, Innovator Founder, and Global Talent visas. We hope that these changes streamline access to top-tier talent in support of the UK’s modern Industrial Strategy.”

R&D Tax Relief Delays and Silence are Stalling UK Innovation

We recently convened a roundtable of founders and business advisers to talk candidly about R&D tax relief. Following the event, we put out a call for further evidence, which has been fed into this policy brief. What emerged was a plea for predictability, clarity and the kind of practical engagement that lets companies plan, hire and build.

Half the Battlers

To those outside the entrepreneurial ecosystem, the fact that more than half of the UK’s fastest-growing businesses have a foreign-born founder often comes as a surprise.

This outsized contribution certainly surprised me when I first dipped my toe in the entrepreneurial waters while interviewing entrepreneurs at City A.M. Not that it was a ‘fact’ back then. To put a number on the phenomenon, we had to team up with one of our longest-serving Advisers, Beauhurst’s Henry Whorwood. Combining their proprietary fundraising data with Eamonn Ives’ methodical desk research meant that this week, in partnership with Kingsley Napley, we were able to reveal in Job Creators 2025 that 54% of the UK’s fastest-growing businesses have at least one founder – and often multiple – who was born overseas.

Among the 219 founders behind this year’s fastest-growing companies, 42% came from abroad – remarkable given immigrants make up less than half that in the population at large. Of the 54 immigrant-founded firms, almost half were created entirely by foreign-born teams, while the rest were built by mixed founding teams. This shows how international founders typically complement, rather than compete with, domestic talent. Put simply, this cohort of immigrant founders is more than twice as entrepreneurial as their population share would predict.

There are plenty of theories for why immigrants are more entrepreneurial – from immigration self-selecting for risk-takers, to blocked mobility in traditional labour markets, to the fact that immigrants are more likely to cluster in cities where agglomeration effects are strongest. Whatever the mix, the UK has clearly tapped into an extraordinary resource that we must protect.

The case studies in the report reveal the kind of frontier-level innovation immigrant founders bring to Britain. Teru Adachi is building cyber-intelligence tools that expose hidden threats in global supply chains. Dimitri Masin is developing AI systems for high-stakes financial environments. Kevin Lester is revolutionising how financial institutions manage risk. And in the NHS, Jing Ouyang is reinventing hospital workforce planning with technology that frees up time and improves care.

To get more Terus, Dimitris, Kevins and Jings, we set out several straightforward tweaks that could be made to the immigration system: 1) reforming the Global Talent visa so it welcomes world-class operators and experienced tech executives; 2) making the Innovator Founder visa functional by trusting endorsers and aligning settlement criteria with real startup timelines; 3) creating a selective Spinout visa for graduates and academics linked to high-quality incubators; and 4) reducing the cost and admin burden on early-stage firms by freezing fees and allowing staggered payments.

The numbers involved – whether in people or cost to the Exchequer – are tiny. But if we attract more incredible entrepreneurs as a result, the returns to the country would be enormous.

Of course, visas aren’t the whole story. One thing I’ve learned from talking with Britain’s most ambitious founders – including many on this list who have raised millions – is that they’re acutely aware of incentives and disincentives. Unlike some ministers I’ve met over the years (who will remain nameless), they all know their EIS from their EMI, and what other countries are offering. They also, like everyone else, want to feel welcome in the country to which they’re offering up blood, sweat and tears to realise their bold visions.

We know – because you told us so – that more than a quarter of entrepreneurs are considering leaving the UK in the next 12 months. I don’t want to get doomy and gloomy, but a lot hangs in the balance ahead of next week’s Budget. Over to you, Rachel.

Policy Fix

Patron – and friend of The Entrepreneurs Network – Steve Rigby has launched a new podcast: The Policy Fix. His first guest is the inimitable Rupert Soames, Chair of the CBI, and it’s available on Apple, YouTube, Spotify. Do give it a listen.

You Dropped This

Another week, another new Adviser: Peter King, Director of Business Banking at OakNorth. He’ll draw on his experience to highlight how the UK’s “missing middle” of scaleups is underserved, how regulation slows responsive lending, and how better data infrastructure could unlock faster, more flexible finance. As he put it: “The Entrepreneurs Network brings together ambitious business leaders, ecosystem players and advisors so that we all raise our game.”

If you want to join Peter and others in our mission to make the UK the best place in the world to start and grow a business, find out more about becoming an Adviser here.

True to

We’ve updated our Membership sign-up form. It’s free to join, and by doing so you’ll stay updated on our work, be invited to the events and opportunities most relevant to you, and help us prioritise what matters most to entrepreneurs.

Three Big Ideas #48

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 explains how Europe can grow again, Eamonn Ives defends university rankings, and Rebecca Hill from the Campaign for Science and Engineering reveals what the public think about R&D.

Ban the Budget

Here’s a bold idea. Let’s ban the Budget.

When entrepreneurs are turning to me for business advice – specifically, asking whether they should sell up or move out of the country – you know that something has gone very, very wrong.

Today’s flip-flopping on hiking income tax rates is just the latest twist in a month or more of deep uncertainty for British businesses.

It’s no doubt partly why, as reported by John Thornhill in Sifted, we found in our latest poll that just 3% of founders thought the government understood the needs of entrepreneurs. As Thornhill reports, this lack of confidence has political consequences:

“Such has been the disappointment with the government that more respondents said they would vote for the populist Reform party (15%) than for the ruling Labour party (10%) if an election were held tomorrow. Even more unnervingly, 27% of entrepreneurs said they were intending to leave Britain over the next year.”

If Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are serious about, well, so-called “serious government,” ending the political chaos of the Budget would be the “grown-up” thing to do.

As I’ve argued in the past, periods of high political uncertainty typically coincide with measurable drops in new business formation, investment, and innovation. When founders anticipate shifts in tax policy, regulation, trade arrangements, or public spending, the resulting volatility makes it difficult to project returns and encourages firms to defer launches, pause expansion, rethink hiring, and put R&D on ice.

Academic studies illustrate these effects clearly. Following the unexpected policy regime shift after President Trump’s first term, researchers found a decline in patenting and VC funding among high-growth startups, especially those denied H-1B workers despite winning the visa lottery. As Nicholas Bloom’s latest paper shows, Brexit uncertainty produced similar outcomes in the UK, adding further weight to evidence that our withdrawal from the European Union reduced equity investment and lowered employment growth.

This is a long-winded way of backing Hugo Gye in The i Paper and Andrew Marr on LBC in calling for the Budget to be scrapped.

It wouldn’t be easy. Abolishing the Budget would require strict safeguards: regular Office for Budget Responsibility assessments to ensure borrowing rules are being met, and a transparent year-round balance sheet capturing all tax and spending changes. Continuous transparency and independent oversight would be essential to keep the public finances disciplined.

Nevertheless, the alternative is demonstrably worse. Annual Budget theatrics freeze investment, delay hiring, and distort economic decision-making across both the private and public sectors. Concentrating all major tax and spending signals into a single annual event amplifies volatility, creates avoidable information gaps, and ties business planning to an arbitrary political timetable.

Is this wishful thinking? Of course it is. But to steal the quip from Dr Madsen Pirie, who knows a thing or two about economic revolutions: “We propose things which people regard as being on the edge of lunacy. The next thing you know, they’re on the edge of policy.”

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Rocketing Ahead

I’m delighted to share that Richard Browning, Founder and CEO of Gravity Industries, has joined us this week as an Adviser. You’ll recognise him as the man who “has turned the impossible dream of human flight into a ground-breaking $80m+ business.” In his own words:

“Entrepreneurship and innovation are the true engines of economic growth, and we need to keep that spirit alive by empowering the next generation of business owners to think boldly and act fearlessly. Every single business starts with individuals willing to take risks, challenge convention and build something new, and I’m looking forward to supporting The Entrepreneurs Network as they continue to play a crucial role in supporting these risk takers, and ensuring that innovation and entrepreneurship remain at the heart of Britain’s future.”

If that doesn’t inspire you to become an Adviser too, perhaps nothing will.

Firm Footing

Forsters LLP is the latest on our growing stable of Corporate Partners. Joining us as Advisers, we’re delighted to welcome Daniel Bryan, Counsel in the Corporate team, and Oliver Claridge, Senior Associate.

Daniel advises founders and investors across the full lifecycle of growth, giving him a sharp view of the legal and commercial frictions that slow fundraising, deals and exits. He will help shape our policy agenda around obstacles in UK company law and investment processes, ensuring our recommendations reflect the real challenges scaling businesses face.

Oliver is a recognised expert on founder-facing tax issues – from investment reliefs and employment taxation to cross-border and crypto tax – and will help guide our policy work by pinpointing the tax barriers that most constrain entrepreneurs and where targeted reform would have the biggest impact.

Get in touch to find out more about becoming a Corporate Partner.

Leaps and Bounds

A fast-growing London community of immigrant founders and investors is currently looking for a new home to expand. Founded by a highly respected early-stage venture group, this community runs more than 60 high-quality gatherings each year, bringing together founders, investors, operators, universities, and international delegations. Their focus is on helping ambitious entrepreneurs accelerate fundraising, go-to-market progress, and network-building within the UK tech ecosystem.

They’re now exploring partnership opportunities with organisations that share their mission or see a strategic fit in hosting a vibrant, high-growth founder community. If you know a venue, organisation, or partner that may be interested, I’d be very happy to make an introduction. Just let me know.

Steer the Agenda

I’m delighted to share that I’ve joined the Steering Group of the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC). Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the ERC has been delivering independent research to inform policy and practice on small- and medium-sized enterprises since 2013. Sign up to their newsletter here (scroll down).

Exit, Voice, and Loyalty

This week, we launched our pre-Budget Entrepreneurs Survey. I won’t sugarcoat things: the findings make for brutal reading. (Though do read on for a silver lining.)

To be clear from the start, this survey reflects the views of some of the UK’s most ambitious founders – not freelancers, CEOs parachuted into existing firms, or survey-panel participants posing as entrepreneurs. These are the people building significant companies from the ground up. This is where innovation, jobs and productivity come from, so their views matter.

Eighty-five per cent of respondents think the Government doesn’t understand the needs of entrepreneurs, while only 3% think it does. Seventy-nine per cent say life as an entrepreneur has become harder since they started; just 6% say it has become easier.

Following the first Labour Budget, we know that over half of entrepreneurs surveyed reduced their growth expectations and nearly as many paused hiring. A third cut headcount, and a third reduced investment in R&D.

Even more concerning, six in ten founders know at least one entrepreneur who has sold their business or left the UK because of changes made to capital gains taxes. Seven in ten know at least one who is planning to leave due to the current or expected tax regime. A striking 88% of founders view current UK taxation negatively, and 72% say the same about regulation – both an increase on June’s survey.

With the next Budget less than a few weeks away, 88% expect taxes to rise, and 82% expect the Budget to be bad for the entrepreneurial community at large. A fifth of founders surveyed plan to sell their business, and over a quarter plan to leave the UK. Something has to give. As our Research Director and number-cruncher Eamonn Ives was quoted by City A.M. as saying:

“Our polling shows that years of repeated tax hikes are now taking their toll. The UK can’t hope to outcompete tax havens, but we can be smarter about how we raise money to fund public services.”

“None of the Above” remains the most common answer to the question of which political party founders told us best understands entrepreneurs, though the Conservatives and Reform have made modest gains at the expense of Labour and the Liberal Democrats since our last survey. Among those expressing a preference, if a General Election were held tomorrow, 18% would vote Conservative, 16% Liberal Democrat, 15% Reform and 10% Labour.

I promised you a silver lining.

First, despite everything above, many of these same founders plan to increase headcount, R&D spending, exporting, expand internationally and seek new investment over the next 12 months.

Second, founders who would still encourage someone to start a business in the UK outnumber those who would not by a ratio of two to one.

And finally, we can only run this survey because there are founders who are as ambitious for the UK as they are for their own businesses (thank you to those of you who took part).

We don’t underestimate the challenge of balancing the books. Entrepreneurs aren’t asking for miracles – just a sense that things are moving in the right direction. It’s time to turn a corner.

If you want to join us in dissecting the next Budget, request a place to join us on 10 December at Home Grown for a panel discussion with Partners Wealth Management (PWM).

On the Uptake

Here’s another dose of optimism. Three quarters of entrepreneurs are positive about the impact AI will have on their business, with just 3% pessimistic. The main things holding them back from increasing their use of AI in their businesses are security or privacy concerns and accuracy or mistakes, although nearly a third haven’t found any barriers.

And while it’s leading to fewer hires for some, it is far from clear that it’s going to cause a spike in unemployment. For that, look at our findings on the much-maligned Employment Rights Bill. Among those aware of its implications, most think it will have a negative impact on the economy.

Coining it in

We’re delving into the policy details of stablecoins and would welcome input from experts – particularly in finance, law or Parliament. If you or your organisation has insights to share, get in touch.

Laid Plans

Fidelity International is launching major research on the retirement savings crisis facing UK entrepreneurs. They’re looking for founders willing to be case studies for the national press – offering a short quote for the media release and, if comfortable, speaking with a national journalist. You can reach out to Fidelity via email here.

Three Big Ideas #47

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.

Burning Ambition

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.

Think Inside the Box

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 #46

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.

Creative Thinking

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.

Know Your Limits

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.