To coincide with London Tech Week, the Government has made a number of announcements, including a Digital Strategy and £30 million of small grants for cutting-edge start-ups. But today I’m going to focus on the UK’s main opposition party.
Labour has been pretty quiet in terms of business policy and engagement. But as we get closer to the election we can expect more. First out of the blocks has been Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who this week launched a review to ensure “Britain is the best place in the world to start and grow a business” (we won’t sue them for pinching our tagline – not least because the Conservative Party also did it a few years ago, and because I’m not entirely sure we were the first to come up with it).
Reeves’s review will look at access to capital (in particular patient capital), incentives to scale, universities and spinouts, public procurement, the geographical distribution of high-growth businesses, the listings regime, and diversity.
The panel includes former Treasury minister and founder of Northern Gritstone, Lord Jim O’Neill; CEO of Resi Alex Depledge (who is a Member of our Female Founders Forum); Julie Devonshire, the Director of Entrepreneurship Institute at King's College London; and Tom Adeyoola, Co-Founder of Extend Ventures.
Unlike quite a few think tanks, we’re not tied to a political party, just to good ideas. So we’ll be hosting events with members of the panel over the coming months.
Although we aren’t affiliated with any political party, we appreciate that you might be. So we’ve added an optional question about it when you sign up (for free) as a Member on our website. If you have a particular interest in engaging with party-specific events, do fill it out. This won’t preclude you from being invited to other events, and nor will having no party affiliation at all, but it will help us better match event invitations to your interests.
25% Reduction
We do a lot of work helping female founders, so are always happy to see others come up with new ways to look at things. Alongside our friends at Beauhurst, JP Morgan has put out a report that finds that although female-powered businesses are attracting an increasingly large amount of equity investment, female founders give up a larger percentage of their ownership than male founders. In fact, it is almost twice that of men: a 25% reduction compared to 13%.
This is an important finding. You can read the report here, or Henry Whorwood (our Adviser and Beauhurst’s Head of Research) is happy for you to drop him an email to find out more about the report.
Times A-Changin'
The Times has released its much anticipated Education Commission report. It’s littered with quotes from entrepreneurs and framed around the need to ensure the next generation has the skills for the 21st century. In the recommendations it calls for a cadre of Career Academies with close links to industry, but I think there’s more work to be done in terms of concrete policy.
We’ll help fill in some of those gaps soon with the launch of a report through the APPG for Entrepreneurship. With support from finnCap it focuses on improving entrepreneurship education in schools. While I can’t break our own embargo, I can tell you we’ll be asking entrepreneurs to sign a letter to back the findings (assuming you agree with them of course).
If you want to be invited to sign the letter, you’ll need to sign up (for free) as a Member. Just tick that you’re interested in education and we’ll make sure the letter gets to you.
Party Faithful