In partnership with
Nature has a great article making the case that postdocs “need improved career guidance and programmes that teach them about entrepreneurship, expanding their career options and increasing their capacity to tackle the many problems facing humanity today.”
This is spot on. While 65% of postdocs are planning careers in academia, there are nowhere near enough jobs for them. We should harness their talents for entrepreneurship.
Nature profiles Canada’s Invention to Innovation (i2I) programme. Developed in 2015 at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, it provides academic assistance and financial help to graduate students whose research has the potential to be commercialised. To simplify: it’s an entrepreneurship course for researchers. It’s since expanded across the country in partnership with other institutions.
Surprisingly, the article doesn’t mention Innovate UK’s ICURe, which, when I last looked at the promising programme, had equally impressive stats and was estimated to have created £3.94 of economic benefits for every £1 invested.
But beyond the big numbers (which probably deserve a bit more interrogation), we want to hear from those with experience of the UK’s or other systems. Given how open this Government has been to shaking up spinouts, this might be another fruitful area for reform.
Delicious! Excelente!
I’ll have more details in the coming weeks, but we’re scoping out some research into entrepreneurs’ experience of British embassies and consulates around the world, when it comes to getting help with exporting and internationalising. If you have any experiences to share, get in touch with Derin.
Lilac Review
Michelle Ovens CBE, founder of Small Business Britain, is campaigning for a Government-led independent review aimed at making the UK the best place for disabled entrepreneurs to start a business: The Lilac Review. Mich has a post on LinkedIn where you can pledge your support.
Phoenix Founders
Our friends at Beauhurst are conducting research on "Phoenix" founders. (It’s a new term to me, but I think it works.) Phoenix founders are entrepreneurs who had an earlier business that failed but who are finding more success in a subsequent venture. They're keen to hear from founders who are willing to talk about how what they learnt the first time round helped them achieve success. Drop Henry an email if you want to share your story.
It’s a truism that bears repeating, but in the UK we don’t talk enough about failure; nor are we as accepting that it is inevitable if you want a dynamic, competitive, innovative and risk-taking business environment. Past research has found that even after failure, second, third, or even tenth time founders are more likely to be successful. But seeing Beauhurst’s data brought to bear on this question will add a lot more weight – as will any insights you can provide on how you bounced back. It could also serve an inspiration.
Natural Intelligence
Progress in artificial intelligence rests on some of the world’s smartest people’s natural intelligence. Currently, the UK, alongside the US and China, is one of the best places in the world to work in AI. But if we fail to bring in more elite talent, it’ll only get harder to compete. As our researcher Derin Kocer argues in City A.M., an optical obsession with ‘overall migration figures’ has made talking about any kind of immigration an uneasy subject, but this silence needs to come to an end.
Derin’s article was picked up by International Business Times, which highlighted Canada’s work in trying to poach talent from Silicon Valley. A point not new to us.
And it’s not just AI. As I wrote about Nazim Valimahomed, co-founder of Kroo – this week’s newsletter sponsor: “Originally born in Uganda, Nazim and his family fled to the UK as refugees following Idi Amin’s seizure of power. They then moved to Canada, where Nazim spent the rest of his childhood growing up before going to university. After graduating, he relocated to Moscow as Russia was opening up economically. In 2015, Nazim became a permanent UK resident using an Entrepreneur Visa.”
There are lots of policy levers for getting more talent like Nazim into the UK, but if you were to just give me one it would be tweaking the incredible High Potential Individual (HPI) visa – which currently gives graduates of the top 100 universities a two-year work permit – by expanding the list of universities and higher education institutions it includes. As Derin points out in relation to AI talent, the current list doesn’t include highly selective research facilities such as Carnegie Mellon and the Indian Institutes of Technology. It really, really should.
Message from our Partners
Kroo has launched a round of crowdfunding in partnership with Crowdcube. With £72m raised from private investors, including £14.5m in Kroo’s B+ round, crowdfunding opens the investment opportunity for Kroo’s customers and the wider public. Since launch, Kroo has opened 145k current accounts and acquired £765m in deposits with an average acquisition cost of £31 over the last 6 months.
Early access for this crowdfunding round opened for current customers on 1 November, with public access beginning 15 November. Supporters can invest from £10 to £500,000. This low threshold for investing is designed to ensure as many people can be part of the community Kroo is building to change banking for the better. The funds will support Kroo’s ambition to put money and power back into customers’ hands, and become the first bank people trust and love.
Those interested in supporting the crowdfunding round can head here – public access will go live on 15 November.
Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong.
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