Northern Powerhouse needs the talents of the entire region to succeed | Annabel Denham writes for Yorkshire Post

To mark the launch of The Entrepreneurs Network’s newest paper, Regional Voices: Yorkshire, Annabel Denham outlines in the Yorkshire Post why the Northern Powerhouse initiative must include the whole region, rather than just Manchester.

“At a recent roundtable hosted at PwC and chaired by BIS Select Committee chairman Iain Wright MP, Yorkshire entrepreneurs expressed fears that cities like Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford and Hull were being overlooked in favour of their neighbours west of the Pennines.

“With the North dreaming big again, as long as efforts are diversified away from Manchester and the skills gap is narrowed, we could still make those dreams a reality.”

Read the article in full here.

The FFF Interview: Emma Sinclair, founder, EnterpriseJungle

This week, I caught up with Emma Sinclair – serial entrepreneur, Unicef Business Ambassador and the youngest person to IPO on the London Stock Exchange.

Emma left a successful career at Rothschild to found Mission Capital, which she floated aged 29. Since, she has built two more businesses – Target Parking and EnterpriseJungle.

She has never let her age act as a barrier to her success, and she dismisses claims order ativan online canada that female entrepreneurs aren’t taken as seriously as their male counterparts. Nonetheless, she spends much of her free time championing entrepreneurship across the globe and giving back to the entrepreneurial community.

“I’m happy to do it: I love each and every interesting person, venture and event I cross paths with. I never tire of hearing their stories and experiences.”

Read my interview with Emma in full here.

Philip Salter talks visas, Osborne and women’s entrepreneurship on The Seed & EIS Hour

In an interview with The Seed & EIS Hour, Philip Salter, director of The Entrepreneurs Network, explains why women-led businesses often struggle to reach the same economic scale as those run by men; why the Chancellor’s 2016 Budget was broadly good for entrepreneurs; and why, if there was one thing the UK government buy ativan cheap could do to support entrepreneurs, it would be to reform the Entrepreneurs Visa to attract more foreigners to set up businesses here in Britain.

Exporting opportunities for UK businesses | Philip Salter writes for Virgin StartUp

Many entrepreneurs have set their sights on expanding overseas, but may not know where to start. And, as our director Philip Salter points out in Virgin StartUp, getting advice can be tricky – which is why we’ve partnered with UKTI on its Exporting is GREAT initiative.

“It has been calculated that poor professional advice from third parties and consultants has resulted in one in six small firms losing money in the last year, at a total cost of £6.4bn.”

So where should internationally ambitious entrepreneurs turn to for advice? Read Philip’s article in full here.

Why we should abolish employers’ National Insurance

In response this week’s Budget, I’ve made the case for integrating employers’ national insurance, income tax and employees’ NI.

“Complexity has long been a feature of taxation in Britain, and nowhere is this more manifest than in the National Insurance regime. Constant tinkering over the last 70 years has left it unrecognisable and has reduced the likelihood of the electorate appreciating (i) what their total tax burden is; and (ii) the size of any increase.

“But what makes the NICs regime especially opaque is the employers’ part of national insurance, not least because the incidence falls squarely on employees.” 

This is not to say employers are unburdened – studies have shown that administration alone imposes a significant cost on businesses and disproportionately affects smaller companies:

“SMEs are vital to the UK economy. Cutting costs creates an incentive for them to use their resources more efficiently and to transfer them into more production or more hiring. Further tweaking is not enough.”

Read my Huffington Post column in full here.

What did you think of the Budget? | Annabel Denham gives her views in ConHome

I joined Suella Fernandes MP, Dr Andrew Lilico, Tim Loughton MP and others to give my views on the Chancellor’s 2016 Budget.

“After the burdens to business of a National Living Wage, tax on share dividends, and auto-enrolment on pensions, entrepreneurs were looking for some compensation from the Chancellor in this Budget. On the face of it, Osborne has delivered.”

Read my ConservativeHome comment in full here.

The best UK cities to scale a business

Our supporting founder Octopus Investments has identified some of the best places in the country to scale a business.

Its Urban Hub League Table 2016 is based on what the teams behind 22,470 High Growth Small Businesses thought were most important to them when building and growing their companies: finance, talent and connectivity.

As Philip Salter writes in Forbes this week:

“London’s dominance isn’t a shock, but Reading and Milton Keynes are (arguably) surprising additions to the top ten. And Scotland does itself credit with both Edinburgh and Glasgow making the top ten.

Read Philip’s analysis of the findings in full here.

What Budget 2016 means for entrepreneurs

Commenting on today’s Budget, Entrepreneurs Network director Philip Salter said:

“Cuts to growth forecasts may not have been what George Osborne and the country at large wanted, but for entrepreneurs, this was a solid Budget. Reducing corporation tax to 17% by 2020 sends the right signal that Britain is the best place in Europe to build a business, as does the cut to capital gains tax from the higher rate of 28% to 20% and the basic rate from 18% to 10%.

“Abolishing Class 2 National Insurance for 3.4 million self-employed people will act as a fillip for the self employed. But Osborne should have also tackled National Insurance by rolling both employees’ and employers’ NI into income tax. After all, the incidence falls on employees, and the burden falls on those businesses forced to manage the growing bureaucracy of exemptions.

“Perhaps the biggest surprise for entrepreneurs and investors was the extension of Entrepreneurs’ Relief to include long term investors in unlisted companies. This should help drive more risk capital into fast-growing companies.

“The cuts to business rates will be celebrated by many in the small business community, but it should be remembered that most economists calculate that the incidence of this tax actually falls on landowners. However, reform to Stamp Duty Land Tax on non-residential property transactions, which the government predicts will see a cut in tax for many small businesses purchasing property, is to be welcomed. Stamp duties are always and everywhere inefficient taxes.”

The FFF interview: Debbie Wosskow, founder, Love Home Swap

In my latest Huffington Post column, I catch up with Love Home Swap founder and FFF member Debbie Wosskow about chutzpah, lie ins, and Hollywood romcoms.

Back in 2011, and inspired by mushy Christmas movie The Holiday, Wosskow founded a home-swap business that has now grown to over 100,000 members and 60 staff buy ativan canadaworldwide.

Equally as interesting as Wosskow’s entrepreneurial flair is her view on female entrepreneurship. “Women need a thick skin,” she tells me. “It’s easier for people to tell you all the things that are wrong with your business than all that are right.”

Read the interview in full here.

Cobra Beer founder Lord Bilimoria talks UK-India Business Relations

You would struggle to find a British statesman who can match the stateliness of Lord Bilimoria, Entrepreneurs Network director writes in his latest Forbes column.

The distinguished entrepreneur is not only founder of Cobra Beer, but also founding chairman of the UK-India Business Council, chancellor of the University of Birmingham and chairman of the advisory buy ativan online cheap board at Cambridge Judge’s Business School.

Philip tapped his brain on Britain’s business relationship with India, and what the UK can learn from the way business is done in the former colony.

Read the interview in full here.

Small businesses needn’t fret about extended Sunday trading

In a column for the Huffington Post, I’ve asked whether small business outcry over changes to Sunday Trading Laws is justified. From Autumn 2016, prohibitions limiting large stores (with a floor space of over 3,000 sq ft) from opening on Sundays for more than six hours will be lifted – an announcement which has led to claims that this will only see more trade moving to larger stores at the expense of smaller shops.

Yet the evidence (research, polls and local borough reports), does not suggest that small businesses will suffer from their larger rivals opening for longer. A fifth of consumers have said they would do more shopping on a Sunday were the changes implemented, meaning more customers for everyone.

And rather than wishing the competition be banned from trading, small business owners – many of whom are disruptive by nature – should view this proposal as an opportunity to find new ways to innovate and outsmart their larger rivals.

Read the article in full here.

The FFF interview: Tamara Lohan MBE, founder, Mr and Mrs Smith

In the latest in a series of FFF interviews for the Huffington Post, I catch up with Tamara Lohan – one half of the duo behind Mr and Mrs Smith hotels.

Unlike many entrepreneurs, who sold lemonade at kindergarten and grew up wanting to be the next Bill Gates, Lohan took a more opportunistic approach to her career. It saw her launch an energy drink in Brazil, consult Ericsson and Swissair on their branding strategies and, at one point, run a dating agency.

In 2002, she co-founded Mr and Mrs Smith with her husband James. Since then, the business has grown into an award-winning booking service and worldwide travel club.

Read the interview in full here.

Accelerating growth: Three entrepreneurs share their experiences

For entrepreneurs considering applying to an accelerator programme, what better than to hear from founders who have been there, done that.

In his most recent Forbes column, Entrepreneurs Network director Philip Salter speaks to three entrepreneurs who’ve gone through Telefonica’s Wayra retail accelerator in London. Chris McCullogh (co-founder, RotaGeek), Imogen Wethered (co-founder, Qudini) and Ben Brown (founder, Shopwave).

McCullogh went through Wayra in 2014 and says the experience with helping him transform his business. Wethered credits Wayra with helping Qudini generate long-lasting relationship and a network that opened up new opportunities. For Brown, Wayra was not his first accelerator: he previously went through Seedcamp with VouChaCha, which he exited to Monetise.

Read the article in full here.

Should entrepreneurs understand economics?

From Economic Value Added to stand up meetings, economist Anthony J Evans makes the case to our director, Philip Salter, for entrepreneurs getting a grasp on economics.

“We tend to think of economics as being a way to understand the economy, but it is really a way to understand markets. It is the basis upon which we understand hidden costs and what constitutes value in the minds of our customers.”

“So it helps us to make internal choices about the best use of our resources, but also the prices that are generated by market exchange provides valuable feedback on the wider industry,” the economist says.

Read Philip’s interview with Professor Evans in full on Forbes here.

The FFF interview: Laura Tenison MBE, founder, JoJo Maman Bébé

For the first in a series of interviews with the inspirational members of our Female Founders Forum, I caught up with JoJo Maman Bébé founder Laura Tenison MBE.

Tenison may have the drive and tenacity typical of many entrepreneurs, but her business still remains in the unemployment-ridden dock town in South Wales where she grew up. She is on a mission to help regenerate local high streets, and for her, success goes hand-in-hand with social good. And she has little sympathy for those founders who think entrepreneurship should be easy.

“‘I worked three jobs when I started JoJo,’ she says. ‘I slept on the floor of my flat and rented out my bedroom. Entrepreneurship is hard. But I feel those entrepreneurs who are really challenged in the early years are those who achieve longevity. They’re the ones who know how to solve problems.'”

Read the article in full here.

SwiftKey’s big investor on the Microsoft sale

There’s more to SwiftKey’s sale to Microsoft than the decision by an ex-founder to cash in his stake in 2008 to purchase a bicycle. Octopus Ventures invested in SwiftKey from seed through to Series B. In his latest buy ativan visa Forbes column, our director Philip Salter catches up with Jo Oliver, member of Octopus Ventures and a non-executive director at SwiftKey.

Read his interview in full here.

The enterprising founder making Britain the best place in the world for entrepreneurs

Britain has a few enterprising individuals who have helped the country become one of the best in the world to do business, writes Entrepreneurs Network director Philip Salter in his latest Forbes column.

“In an age of shallow celebrity, the likes of Lord Young, Sherry Coutu CBE, Lord Bilimoria, Michael Hayman MBE and Emma Jones stand out for their ethic of serving the public good. They have had – and continue to have – a tremendous impact on improving the policies, support and general climate for entrepreneurship in the UK.”

“Over the last decade, Jones has been a leading supporter of small businesses through her tireless work with Enterprise Nation. Towards the end of last year, she was made a UKTI business ambassador by the Prime Minister. I caught up with her to find out more about enterprise nation and her outlook for Britain’s entrepreneurs.”

Read Philip’s interview with Emma Jones here.

Skills, scale ups and the Northern Powerhouse

I want to do my part as chair of the Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) Select Committee to encourage you, as entrepreneurs, to voice concerns into government when I’m interrogating the Secretary of State. I want to understand what concerns you have about barriers to your business.

I have a number of key priorities that I want the Select Committee to look at. I don’t want to be partisan. I don’t want to make this about petty party politics as I think you would get bored very quickly, and we would lose reputational value. By 2020 I want to make sure Britain is a more competitive, more productive and more innovative economy – with a greater number of companies starting and scaling up, and with a workforce that has the skills excel in business.

I want to talk to you briefly about some key areas we are looking at.

Skills
I would be interested to know about the problems you’ve had in growing your business. Can you attract the talent you need for your businesses to grow? I’m keen to promote entrepreneurial skills as much as possible. What do we need to do in order to make sure that we have more entrepreneurs in this country? Are entrepreneurs born or made? Can the system – whether it’s the education system, the fiscal system, or whatever – encourage entrepreneurialism in this country?

Entrepreneurs have a certain mindset, but I want the whole workforce to be entrepreneurial in its outlook. You don’t have to be the next Steve Jobs to be enterprising. But does the education system lend itself to having a workforce that’s enterprising? You aren’t going to get people fully formed, and perhaps one of your jobs as entrepreneurs is in adding value and helping your staff make the transition from school, college and university into work-ready people. But what do we need to do to make sure there is a close coordination between what the education system is doing and what the requirements of new and traditional businesses are? I was an education minister for the last 11 months of the Labour government. I didn’t have enough time to do what I wanted, but I was there long enough to observe that government departments operate too much in silos – there is no coordination between BIS and the Department for Education. Now I’ve got this opportunity as chair of the BIS Select Committee, we are pulling together the BIS and the Education Select Committee to produce a coordinated response and ensure there is a real match between the education system, the requirements of business and the skills system.

Digital
What does the digital economy look like? We are seeing a digital revolution – the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Industrial Revolution. I’m excited by disruption and the opportunities that technological innovation can bring, so how do we encourage that? How do we make sure there’s a regulatory environment that’s technologically neutral, but that encourages new entrants who disrupt the traditional market? I’m interested in how traditional sectors adapt? How will they use digital as a means of driving forward productivity and innovation?

Construction is a good example of this. Are British construction companies using Business Information Modelling (BIM) in order to make sure that design, build and whole life costs are analysed properly? Are they taking out inefficiencies and costs through their supply chain in order to make them leaner through digital processes?

Exports
The Secretary of State has said that this is one of his key priorities. He has a target to produce a trillion pounds worth of exports by 2020. While I would like him to achieve it, he is going to miss it hopelessly. But it’s very important that we are outward looking, and that entrepreneurs go out into the world and create wealth for Britain. So what do we need to do? Are UKTI doing enough? Are they responsive enough to new businesses? How do they identify market opportunities? And to what extent do you want the likes of UKTI – and private sector organisations like PwC and not-for-profits like The Entrepreneurs Network – to help you through the process?

Scale Ups
It’s relatively easy to set up a business in Britain, but it’s really difficult to scale up to be a large business, employing large numbers of people, exporting around the world and creating huge amounts of wealth for this country. How do we do that? What are the barriers? Is it cultural? Do we sell out too early? Do we discourage scaling up through the tax system? Why does Silicon Valley produce the Googles and Facebooks of the world? Is it just in Britain where we say I don’t want to be the next Google, I want to sell out to Google? I don’t think that’s appropriate and I think we need to do something about it. It’s an enormous challenge for this country and we will be carrying out an enquiry and producing a report into this issue.

Finance
What’s shocked me since becoming BIS Select Committee chair is that access to finance remains such a big issue. People are increasingly telling me that access to growth capital is really difficult to find. Banks are doing a lot and there is always going to be a place for loan finance, but what needs to happen in terms of venture capital, private equity and non-bank finance? Are we doing enough? Is the ecosystem in this country good enough to make sure that we can scale up and produce these high growth small companies? I recently spoke at an Octopus Investments event and I would really encourage you to look at their report on High Growth Small Businesses, which shows that one of the major challenges is access to finance, particularly around the regions.

The Northern Powerhouse
As an MP representing the northern constituency of Hartlepool, I’m concerned that economic activity is still far too concentrated in London and the South East, and if you’re ambitious, talented and entrepreneurial you might think the only way to succeed is by going to London. It wasn’t like that in the past. Look at the great cities in the North. They’re absolutely fantastic. Leeds is one of them, but we’ve also got Manchester, Newcastle and many more. All of these places were powering economic activity – not just in Britain, but around the world.

I’m interested in your thoughts on what we need to do to make the Northern Powerhouse a reality. What do we need to be doing to make sure the creation of wealth and jobs is across the country? I worry that George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse is just shorthand for Manchester or the M62 growth corridor. What about the North East? What about other parts of North? What do we need to ensure these great cities of the Industrial Revolution drive forward innovate in the digital age?

Iain Wright MP is chair of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) Select Committee. This article is a transcript of his speech at the PwC/The Entrepreneurs Network Regional Voices event in Leeds, Yorkshire.

Going it alone in the gig economy

Freelancing can be enormously rewarding. The opportunity of working flexible hours, being your own boss and, above all, doing your own thing can be exhilarating and offer a sense of wellbeing that you may not have had from your regular job. Indeed, according to the RSA, 84% of people who are self-employed are more satisfied with their working life than they would have been working for someone else.

But it can be hard. The UK’s 1.6 million freelancers have endless challenges to overcome. On the practical side of things, finding new clients, dealing with tax issues and legal considerations can be a real hassle, while late payments from clients are a constant source of worry. And on the emotional side, freelancers spend huge amounts of time on their own, without the support of colleagues and the conversations around the water cooler that many of us take for granted. 

Running your own business is never going to be easy. Indeed, just gathering the know-how necessary to run a business as a sole trader or limited company without any training takes huge effort. But as the freelance market grows – it has increased in size by 40% since 2000 – support for protecting this segment of the economy is also growing. Given (perhaps slightly optimistic) forecasts by PeoplePerHour.com and others that half of the workforce could be self-employed by 2020, this support could not come soon enough.

Technology has started to make life better for freelancers. The growth in freelancer marketplaces (such as UpWork and 99Designs) has made it easier for freelancers to connect with their clients. ‘Co-working spaces’ now provide affordable office space, people to talk to and access to shared know-how. Freelancer-focused book keeping tools like FreshBooks have helped freelancers navigate the tricky world of accounting. And my own business, Juro, is playing a small part in speeding up freelancer payments.

But there is a role for government too in enabling a more fertile landscape for freelancers.

Think ‘freelancer’ and you probably conjure up an image of a trendy graphic designer operating out of East London, charging £500 a day advising start-ups on their websites. It is important to bear in mind though that not all freelancers are highly skilled or highly paid. The recent job creation miracle that we have experienced in the UK entailed in small part the creation of involuntary self-employment. Indeed, some 210,000 people are in ‘under-employment’ – the phenomenon of part-time workers (many of whom are self-employed) who would prefer to be in full-time employment.

For these vulnerable workers, the Government is doing a good job of stripping back unnecessary regulation, helped by its one-in-two-out policy. There are, however, some more ambitious policy plays here. Encouraging banks to consider future capital gains in mortgage lending would be a game-changer for the self-employed, who often cannot raise the funds necessary to buy their own place. Reforms to national insurance and automatic pension enrolments should be on the table. And considering a more holistic approach to UK employment policy to take account of the full spectrum of our modern workforce would be a welcome step.

That currently only 14% of freelancers think the Government adequately supports them is a fact we can no longer ignore. In the digital economy, freelancing will become as mainstream as regular employment. Government needs to be more proactive in creating an ecosystem for freelancers that will boost our productivity, competitiveness and wellbeing and provide much-needed support for those brave self-starters who decide to go it alone.

Richard Mabey is the CEO of Juro, a start-up that helps freelancers cut down on paperwork and get paid on time.

Why founders need good networks

Barely a week passes without a conference to celebrate entrepreneurs – and quite right too. This week I popped along to Toucan’s The Nest 2016, which counted Brian McBride (chairman, Asos.com), Fanny Moizant (co-founder, Vestiaire Collective) and Alexander Woollcombe (Gates Foundation) among its diverse range of speakers.

I was there for the “Wonderwomen in Business” event, featuring Kathy Harvey of Said Business School and Carolina Bucci, whose eponymous jewellery brand is currently stocked by Harrods and Net-A-Porter – and I wrote up my thoughts for the Huffington Post.

“Some important points were raised. Harvey addressed what the MBA can offer future entrepreneurs. Other panellists discussed the scale-up puzzle: why so few women led businesses reach the same economic scale as their male counterparts. And Harvey mentioned an interesting Insead study, which found women exploit networks differently to men.”

Read my piece in full here.