We’re often asked what entrepreneurs in our network think about the country. The truth is, it’s been hard to give a precise answer. Until now. This week we released two papers, drawing on our most recent Entrepreneurs Survey with Public First, with Cool Britannia revealing entrepreneurs’ views on the country, and London’s Calling drilling down into the views of those building in the capital.
Though they’re both breezy reads — a few scrolls and you’re done — they’re so dense with data that it would be impossible to do them justice here. But I’ll try my best. As I argue in City AM:
“Despite most believing it a good place to start a business, 70 per cent of founders said the UK presents itself ineffectively. So what shapes that judgement? According to some of Britain’s most ambitious entrepreneurs, in third place come cultural factors like language and lifestyle; in second, the pull of investor networks; but top of the list sits the cold truth for any government — founders judge a country first on its tax rates.”
“Presented with a range of options, founders would sell the UK on two things above all: its Enterprise Investment Schemes, which offer a tax break for investors, and its position as Europe’s largest venture capital market (cited by 49 and 42 per cent respectively). The prosaic is pivotal.”
Asked what they would warn about, 60% of entrepreneurs in our network converged on taxation and regulation.
Turning our attention to the capital, we found that London’s draw is real but its cost is corrosive. What pulls founders in are the ecosystem and the network effects it engenders — and quality of life matters too. London’s founders also recognise the bump the city gives them in fundraising, credibility and partnerships.
But 55% of London founders have considered moving their company out of the capital in the past year, with more than a quarter giving it serious consideration or actively planning a move. They are looking across the pond at cities like San Francisco and New York, with Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris trailing well behind.
In short, founders rate the UK and London highly on fundamentals — talent, ecosystem, capital access, quality of life — but feel let down by cost, tax, regulation and the way the country sells itself. The good news is that these are largely things government can change.
We launched the Entrepreneurs Survey with Public First because our network is large (and growing fast) — and because the insights of the entrepreneurs reading this weren’t being heard. To that end, if you’re a founder who wants to be heard, join us here. If you want to sponsor the survey, drop me an email. And if you’re a policymaker with a burning question, let me know — we may be able to put it in the next wave.
Means Testing
Jonathan Ortmans, President of the Global Entrepreneurship Network and one of our Advisers, wrote an ambitious essay in June that I’ve only just caught up on, looking at what AI does to the case for entrepreneurship education.
His starting point is that the deal on offer for most of human history — follow the process and the process will look after you — is being withdrawn, because the process was always underwritten by the scarcity of cognitive competence. When expertise is abundant, what stays scarce is the willingness to act on it. He takes the frame from Sam Kriss, who argues in Harper’s that the defining division of the coming decades will run not between levels of education, but between those with agency and those without.
Which raises the question: where does agency come from? Jonathan presents a swathe of studies, but to take just one, Saras Sarasvathy of the University of Virginia sat twenty-seven expert entrepreneurs down with real venture problems and had them think aloud. Rather than fixing a goal and assembling the means to reach it, they started from the means already to hand — their skills, their contacts, whatever was lying about — and let the ends emerge. Effectuation, she calls it, and its significance is that it describes a logic rather than a temperament. Logics can be taught.
Jonathan argues that a logic like this could be designed into an education system, but isn’t — we built ours to sort and certify, which rewards the opposite. He is clear that nobody has a blueprint for reversing that at the scale of a school system, so he asks for a process rather than a plan. Read it, then take him up on it.
Founders Keepers
The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (DBIST) has asked us to remind you that The King’s Awards for Enterprise have a new Young Founder category this year. It’s the first new strand in a while. The bar is reasonable: you need to be aged 18 to 30 on 6 May 2027, with a minimum annual turnover of £250,000 or £500,000 raised in external funding such as investment, loans or grants. Awards work best if the right people know they exist. If you know an eligible founder, encourage them to apply before applications close on 8 September.
Separately, DBIST is keen for more nominations for its Pro-Worker AI Adoption Prize. The framing borrows from Daron Acemoglu, David Autor and Simon Johnson’s pro-worker AI argument — that whether AI raises wages or hollows out work is a question of how firms choose to deploy it, not a property of the technology — and Johnson himself chairs the judging panel. Any UK business, charity or public body with at least ten UK-based employees can be nominated — by itself, by its workers, by a union or by an investor. Nominations close on 30 September.
In Essence
Our latest Adviser is Dr Nimrita Bassi, founder and CEO of Marketing Essentials Lab. She holds a PhD in Online Customer Experience from the University of Exeter and combines academic research with practical work supporting companies. In her own words:
“Entrepreneurship is the lifeblood of any economy, and The Entrepreneurs Network plays a crucial role in not only helping shape policy but also nurturing a powerful community where founders can come together, share ideas and be supported. I have been following the work The Entrepreneurs Network has been doing to make the UK a truly great place to start and grow a business, and I could not be more delighted to support them in their mission.”