Andy Burnham told the Innovation Nation Summit in Manchester this morning that the Government will legislate so that startups and scale-ups can hire who they want without non-compete clauses standing in the way. He called it “the Bosman ruling for the innovation sector”. More details will come in the Budget on 28 October. Thank you to all of you who backed the Free to Start and Scale letter, which we signed and which I wrote about last week.
Burnham also said Britain cannot afford for its startups to sell up rather than scale, and that more is needed on tax to keep founders here. As if by magic, today we open our new Entrepreneurs Survey with Public First, asking founders which tax changes they would most like to see at the Budget.
It takes under seven minutes, and the results go to the ministers, officials and journalists shaping policy for founders.
Built Regardless
On Wednesday we published the Female Founder Ambition Series Report, kindly supported by the Jessica Vollman Foundation and drawing on roundtables and a run of interviews.
As Sarah Vollman, Primary Advisor at the Jessica Vollman Foundation, said:
“The founders described a system that wasn’t designed with them in mind, and the ingenuity it took to build successful businesses regardless.
“Many of these barriers affect all small firms, but for female founders they compound. A founder who bootstraps can age out of SEIS [the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme] before she ever pitches an investor. One who pays herself a £5,000 salary to avoid employer National Insurance can get less than half the maternity pay of a founder on £12,570, and miss out on 30 hours of funded childcare.
“Modest, workable changes within the current framework would close many of these gaps. Progress should be measured by whether female founders find the system easier to navigate, not by the number of initiatives announced.”
The Jessica Vollman Foundation was introduced to us by our Adviser Kajal Sanghrajka. Kajal was Jessica’s friend and business partner. Mike Vollman, Jessica’s father and an Adviser, describes the series as honouring his daughter’s legacy, which you can read about here. Thank you to all the founders who took part in the series, many of whom are Members of the Female Founders Forum. As Kajal said at the launch on Wednesday, “we’re only just getting started.”
Speakers’ Corner
We are pleased to reveal who’s opening our next two report launches. Job Creators 2026, with Penningtons Manches Cooper on what international talent contributes to Britain’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, will be opened on Wednesday 14 October by Max Wilkinson MP, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson, and Joshua Reynolds MP, Liberal Democrat Investment and Trade Spokesperson.
A week later, Starting Out and Starting Up, with Sage on the rise of self-employment, will be opened in the House of Lords by the Rt Hon Kanishka Narayan MP, Minister for AI.
I hope to see some of you there.