This will be the last newsletter of the year. I won’t pick over the political malarkey and machinations of a year with four Chancellors and three Prime Ministers – many others will do a better job of that. Instead, I want to just share what we’ve been up to. The tl;dr is: we’re bigger and better than ever, producing more reports, hosting more events, and, most importantly, having a greater impact on policy.
Thanks to all our sponsors, Patrons, Advisers and Supporters. We wouldn’t – and couldn’t – exist without your support.
If you would like to get more involved, you can join us here. Or, if you’d rather have a chat, book 15 minutes in my diary for early next year, or just drop me an email.
Q1
The start of the year was packed with events – mostly online for obvious reasons – with our various forums on green entrepreneurship, female founders, and small businesses. We also hosted online events with leading VCs through our Something Ventured project with FieldHouse Associates, on the future of immigration with Kingslety Napley, and when things opened up we got back to private dinners with our Advisers with FTI.
In February we released Strong Foundations, written by our Head of Policy, Aria Babu. It makes a forceful case that entrepreneurship is being dampened in our most productive cities due the high cost of housing and office space. The Telegraph published our open letter signed by 64 entrepreneurs and campaigners, Aria wrote on how high housing costs are sapping growth, and if you’re still not convinced I wrote about it for Forbes.
In March we released Access All Areas: Finance. The report made the case against an Online Sales Tax (which is thankfully now dead in the water) and extending the EIS, SEIS, and VCTs schemes (which thankfully isn’t).
March also saw the launch of the Inclusive Innovation Forum project with Morgan Stanley. It focuses on funding for underserved founders – a topic that we’ll focus on in more detail next year.
Q2
May saw the release of our Procurement and Innovation report which identified key issues with the current public sector procurement process and put forward 14 ideas for improving it.
In June the APPG for Entrepreneurship released a report on Entrepreneurship Education in the House of Lords with support from FinnCap. The report highlighted the lack of a specific entrepreneurship education strategy and made the case for why it should be embedded across the curriculum. Many of the UK’s leading entrepreneurs signed a letter backing the report, and this week BGF’s Stephen Welton is the latest to back our proposed our reforms.
We also released True Potential, which argued for the expansion of the High Potential Individual Visa to include universities with more successful graduates (as decided by real-world labour market data from Glassdoor) than those already on the government’s list.
Q3
Building upon our Procurement and Innovation report, in July we released another report with Enterprise Nation on how government can fix procurement for small businesses which included new data from Tussell about how which departments spend more with SMEs and are meeting the government’s overall targets.
In August we published A New Model for Science with the Tony Blair Institute and Convergent Research. It made the case for investing in Focused Research Organisations, which undertake projects at the intersection of cutting-edge-science and entrepreneurship that are too big for a single academic lab to do; too complex for a loose, multi-lab collaboration; and not directly profitable enough for a venture-backed startup or industrial R&D project. Aria has written a useful explainer for those new to the idea.
In the same month we released Tech Startup Manifesto 2022 with our friends at Coadec (incidentally, do take their survey on the upcoming reduction in value of R&D tax credits for SMEs). We called on the new Prime Minister to do everything in their power to support our ideas. Liz Truss did, but we all know what happened next, though it's great to see the current PM retaining many of the bits of the Truss agenda we campaigned (while scrapping those we didn't), and Labour also backing them in its Startup Review.
In September the APPG for Entrepreneurship released a report with the support of the Space Applications Catapult on supporting Space Startups and Scaleups. In Q3 we also hosted four Female Founders Forum roundtables focused on the UK’s fastest growing businesses, a virtual roundtable on accessing talent, an event on the future of sustainable businesses, and an Inclusive Innovation Forum virtual roundtable on public policy.
Q4
In October we launched Tomorrow's Entrepreneurs in the House of Lords with Youth Business International (YBI). The report shows that attitudes towards entrepreneurship have shifted, with young people seeing entrepreneurship as a way of changing the world instead of simply a way of making money (although pleasingly we also found that founders who want to change the world for the better are also more profitable). Read my thoughts about the report in Forbes.
In November we released another report with Enterprise Nation on the importance of access to the right people so entrepreneurs can meet their growth ambitions. It makes a series of recommendations to boost the supply and quality of the labour force, including reducing the cost of visas, reforming the Apprenticeship Levy, and widening the scope of tax breaks for training.
November also saw the release of One in a Million with Barlcays – the culmination of a year of roundtables, interviews and surveys with female founders who have raised over £1m. It’s a sizeable report, covering everything from attitudes in the media to division of chores at home, but read Aria on the impact of the ‘chore gap’ and childminding regulations.
In December we released Supporting SMEs Successfully with Virgin Money in the House of Lords. It found that while existing interventions are well intentioned, and in many cases working well for the businesses using them, more could still be done to ensure they are as effective as possible. Eamonn Ives, our new(ish) Head of Research, wrote about the report in CapX.
In Q4 we started hosting more private dinners, something we’re hoping to do more of in 2023 (get in touch if you’re keen to host). We hosted Lord Clement-Jones CBE in Drummonds to discuss how to make the UK the best place in the world for artificial intelligence. With Evelyn Partners we hosted two, one on tax reform and another on increasing the quality of people in public life.
We’ve worked closely with Labour on their Startup Review, hosting two of their eight roundtables, to talk about economic growth and female founders respectively. We definitely managed to make some impression, as they quoted our second report on procurement in the final document. We also hosted a fireside chat with The Office Group on business funding for 2023.
Again, thank you to everyone who has supported us this year. We look forward to continuing to do what we do in 2023, championing entrepreneurship and making the UK the best place to start and grow a business.
So, Last Year