Three Big Ideas is our weekly roundup of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.
In this week, Eamonn Ives wonders why air conditioning gets such a bad wrap, Anastasia Bektimirova discusses how much ‘white space’ science and technology R&D should get in an industrial strategy, and Philip Salter writes about how society could change once we get truly powerful artificial intelligence.
❄️ Eamonn Ives, Research Director
It’s about this time of the year that British people enter into a ritual debate – “have you turned on your heating yet?” And though some may tut at those who crack early, nobody in their right mind would expect someone to go without artificial warmth full stop.
So I’ve always wondered why this logic doesn’t apply to air conditioning for keeping homes cool when it’s too hot. And it seems I’m not alone. In a recent blog, the always reliable environmental economist Hannah Ritchie explains in great detail the health impacts of a changing climate. She concludes by saying: “If you’re looking for a challenge to work on over the next decade, innovating on better air conditioning technologies that are cheaper and more efficient, would be very high-impact. Billions of people who would benefit hugely from air conditioning currently can’t afford it.”
I am sure there’s an entrepreneur or two who’s working on this. But if we think they could benefit from an extra helping hand, maybe we can learn from the policies of the not too distant past about how to stimulate more innovation?
🌠 Anastasia Bektimirova, Researcher
I spent last Thursday in the increasingly exciting White City Innovation District, attending the inaugural conference for Imperial’s Centre for Sectoral Economic Performance. The event focused on the many flavours industrial strategies come in, with learnings from the US, Singapore and Sweden, along with deep-dives into sectors where the UK could build a competitive edge, from aerospace and tidal power to biopharma and fine chemicals.
One recurring point was if and how much room industrial strategy should allow for “white space” when it comes to science and technology. When discussing Industry Transformation Maps for 23 sectors developed as part of Singapore’s industrial policy, Arnoud De Meyer, Emeritus Professor and former President at Singapore Management University, mentioned that officials did wonder how to tackle the need for “white space”, and if they should invest in the 24th sector that is not there yet. The same question was put to a panel of present and former MPs. Chi Onwurah, Chair of the Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, said that “the challenge for industrial strategy is the sectors of the future”, and that “there is the need for a vision for the evolution of sectors”.
The same question occupies the finest minds at DSIT at the moment. Yesterday, Science Minister Sir Patrick Vallance told the Lords Science and Technology Committee that protecting and growing the basic curiosity-driven science is one of his five priorities. He stressed the importance of:
“...understanding what percentage of total spend on curiosity-driven research we want to have as a country that is a knowledge-based economy and being explicit about it. That’s where we need to get to for the Spending Review 2025, and try to be much clearer about it. Because it gives the research councils the ability to understand where they can do things a bit differently and take risks on very early research, which might have no obvious application.”
Those who might find the need for “white space” hard to justify shouldn’t forget that many sectoral niches underpinning today’s industrial strategies in different parts of the world were once a product of curiosity-driven research themselves, or, as Sir Vallance puts it, “that is the work that ultimately is the goose that lays the golden eggs that in years to come creates all the economic and societal benefits”. It’s a strategic investment. Today’s oversight might become tomorrow’s missed fortune.
🧠 Philip Salter, Founder
While patriotic Brits might want to focus on the common nationality of Geoffrey Hinton and Demis Hassabis, of wider import to humanity is that the latest Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry went to AI researchers. This surely won’t be the last time. Soon it might become the only option. At some point in the future, it may become redundant to give humans prizes altogether.
Dario Amodei, Co-Founder and CEO of AI giant Anthropic has written an essay on how AI could transform the world for the better. Better known for talking about the risks, in the delightfully titled Machines of Loving Grace, Amodei lays it all on the table. Once we get truly powerful AI – a “country of geniuses in a datacenter” – which may be as soon as 2026, in the following five to ten years our world will be turned upside down: “the defeat of most diseases, the growth in biological and cognitive freedom, the lifting of billions of people out of poverty to share in the new technologies, a renaissance of liberal democracy and human rights.” Ideas don’t come much bigger than this. The essay deserves to be read in full.
As Matt Clancy discusses on X, many economists think technological diffusion takes much longer, but there is no getting away from the fact that there is a growing consensus that we’re on the precipice of something significant. While Amodei is at pains to avoid the language of science fiction, it’s impossible to avoid the convergence. How long before we’re catching crumbs from the table?
On Friday we launched an open letter to the Chancellor on reported changes to CGT. Over 500 entrepreneurs have already signed it. Here are the first 500. You can read and sign the letter here.
Philip Salter – Founder, The Entrepreneurs Network
Melissa Morris – Founder & CEO, Lantum
Martin Frost CBE – Co-Founder, CMR Surgical
Giles Andrews OBE – Co-Founder, Zopa
Rishi Khosla – Co-Founder & CEO, OakNorth Bank
Emma Jones CBE – Founder, Enterprise Nation
Justin Basini – Co-Founder & CEO, The ClearScore Group
Victor Riparbelli Rasmussen – Co-Founder & CEO, Synthesia
Erika Brodnock MBE – Co-Founer & CEO, Kinhub
Whitney Hawkings – Founder & CEO, FLOWERBX
Matthew Hare OBE – Founder & CEO, Zzoomm
David Benigson – Founder & CEO, Signal AI
Christoph Rieche – Co-Founder & CEO, iwoca
Robin Tombs – Co-founder & CEO, Yoti
Anna Maxwell – Founder & CEO, Maxwellia
Sabrina Del Prete – Founder & CEO, Kore Labs
Ann Kramer – Founder & CEO, The Electrospinning Company
Tim Chong – Co-founder & CEO, Yonder
Thesokkumar Jivajirajah – Co-Founder, Yonder
David Jarvis – Founder & CEO, Griffin Bank
Sarah McVittie – Co-Founder, Dressipi
Brad Goodall – Founder & CEO, Banked
Alexander Mifsud – Co-Founder & CEO, Weavr.io
Jeff Lynn – Co-Founder & Chairman, Republic Europe
Eddie Harrison – Co-Founder, Navro
James Dean – Founder & CEO, Sensat
Nigel Purves – Co-Founder & CEO, Wayhome
Darren Jobling – Co-Founder & CEO, ZeroLight
John Goodall – Founder & CEO, Landbay
Richard Mabey – Founder & CEO, Juro
Phelim Bradley – Co-Founder & CEO, Prolific
Robert Griffin – Co-Founder & CEO, MIRACL
Andrew Yates – Co-Founder & CEO, FullCircl
Michael Nabarro – Co-Founder & CEO, Spektrix
Ali Afshar – Co-Founder & CEO, Mytos
Matthew Dreaper – Co-Founder, Oxford Space Systems, KEIT, Fusion Energy Partners
Will Stewart – Co-Founder & CEO, Northflank
Iain Griffin – Founder & CEO, Seatfrog
Steve Coulson – Founder & CEO, Kitt Technology
JP Doumeng – Co-Founder & CEO, Napo Pet Insurance
Will Goodwin – Co-founder, Tumelo
Dev Amratia – Co-Founder & CEO, nPlan
Alan Mosca – Co-Founder & CTO, nPlan
Aldo Monteforte – Founder & CEO, The Floow
Asi Sharabi – Co-Founder & CEO, Wonderbly
Anthony Eskinazi – Founder & CEO, JustPark
Chris Edson – Co-Founder & CEO, Second Nature
Nick Jones – Co-Founder & CEO, Zumo
Louise Birritteri – Founder & CEO, Pikl
Alex Depledge MBE – Founder & CEO, Resi
Richard Moross – Founder & CEO, moo.com
George Graham – Co-Founder & CEO, Wolf & Badger
Deepak Ravindran – Co-Founder, Oddbox
Ashutosh Bhatt – Founder & CEO, Pillar
Naimish Gohil – Founder & CEO, Satchel
Timothy Brownstone – Founder & CEO, KYMIRA
Freddie Green – Co-Founder, Minimum
Amon Ghaiumy – Co-Founder & CEO, Ophelos
Mark McDermott – Co-Founder & CEO, ScreenCloud
Ellie Webb – Founder & CEO, Caleño Drinks
Alexander Lempka – Co-Founder & CEO, Connect Earth
Will Mason – Founder & CEO, Infact Systems
Nick Perrett – Founder & CEO, Prosper
Pip Murray – Founder & CEO, Pip & Nut
Toby Austin – Founder & CEO, Beauhurst
Johannes Solzbach – Co-Founder & CEO, Clustermarket
Laura Towart – Founder & CEO, My Personal Therapeutics
Fraser Smeaton – Founder & CEO, MorphCostumes
Tamzin Lent – Founder & CEO, Where You At
Llewellyn Kinch – Founder & CEO, Switchd
Anthony Rose – Co-founder & CEO, SeedLegals
Miguel Martinez – Co-Founder, Signal AI
Karl Deady – Founder, Cinos
Lisa Robinson – Founder & CEO, companiions
Stephen Crosher – Co-Founder & CEO, RheEnergise
Justin Fitzpatrick – Co-Founder, FullCircl
Duncan Cheatle – Founder & CEO, Learn Amp
Constantine Karampatsos – Founder & CEO, Good Life Sorted
Jing Ouyang – Co-Founder, Patchwork Health
Wayne Lloyd – Founder & CEO, Smarter Contracts
Brian Harrison – Co-Founder & CEO, Swoon Editions
Raj Meghani – Co-Founder, BLOCKAPT
Lyndsey Simpson – Founder & CEO, 55/Redefined
Pip Wilson – Co-Founder & CEO, Amicable
Hon Lung Keith Tsui – Co-Founder & CEO, Medwise AI
Simon Banks – Founder CSL Group
David Boon – Founder & CEO, Dijuno
Claire Harrison – Founder & CEO, GetSetGo Group
Ben Prouty – Co-Founder & CEO, PonchoPay
Sarah Bolt – Co-Founder & CEO, Humankind Ventures
Terry Canning – Co-Founder & CEO. CattleEye
Beth Michael – Co-Founder, Streeva
Pauline Paterson – Founder & CEO, Dr.PAWPAW
Caroline Goodman – Founder & CEO, Institutional Protection Services
Dr Diana Hodgins MBE – Founder & CEO, Dynamic Metrics
Gary Jones – Co-Founder & CEO, MediMusic
Rupert Schneider – Founder & CEO, Gardenia Technologies
Dominic Hall – Co-Founder & CTO, Biographica
Glen Calvert – Co-Founder & CEO, Kaizan
Lucinda O'Connor – Founder & CEO, Clothes Doctor
Katerina Pljaskovova – Founder & CEO, Fair HQ
Daniel Howitt – Co-Founder & CEO, Recap
Richard Turnbull – Founder & CTO, Officely
Tina Warner-Keogh – Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Warner’s Distillery
Matt Milligan – Co-Founder, Uhubs
Daniel Gill – Founder & CEO, Augnet
Graham Cook – Co-Founder & CFO, RheEnergise
Jay Orlean-Taub – Co-Founder & CEO, Sipgood
Neil Taub – Co-Founder, ZoomDoc
Cindy van Niekerk – Founder & CEO, Umazi
Irene McAleese – Co-Founder & CSO, See.Sense
Tariq Attia – CEO, IW Capital
Sarah Montgomery – Co-Founder & CEO, Infyos
Lara Mott – Co-Founder & CEO, ImproveWell
Areeb Siddiqui – Founder & CEO, Kestrl
Dr Cristian Gherhes – Founder & CEO, Lexverify
Janthana Kaenprakhamroy – Founder & CEO, Tapoly
Jonny Philp – Co-Founder & Director, Nursem Skincare
Kate Jillings – Co-Founder, ToucanTech
Dr Paul Reynolds – Founder & CEO, FSD Active
Tom Barltrop – Co-Founder, SuperFi
Chris Jackson – Co-Founder, OptAxe
Nadia Simonds – Founder, Lune & Wild
Philip Callow – Founder & CEO, Rosetta Risk Management
Leo Kellgren-Parker – Founder & CEO, LIVR
Sarah Dowzell – Co-Founder, Natural HR
Ben Maughan – Co-Founder, Add to Event
Jason Mohr – Founder & CEO, LoveJunk
Tamsin Dewhurst – Founder & CEO, Uptree
Seb Wallace – Co-Founder, Further
Johnny Paterson – Co-Founder Dr.PAWPAW
Olivier Scaramucci – Founder & CEO, Boutique Brands
Rachael Grimaldi – Co-Founder & CEO, CardMedic
Alistair Sergeant – Founder &. CEO, Niico
Edward Hall – Founder & CEO, Qualification Check
Alex Freeman – Co-Founer & CEO, Stance Fitness
Steve Monk – Founder, Good Guys Bakehouse
Sam Peters – Co-Founder & CEO, Vyde
Jason Dowzell – Founder & CEO, Natural HR
Akber Tahir – Founder & CEO, Pharmovo AI
Chloe Sweden – Founder & CEO, Lowr
Rowan Jackson – Co-Founder & Executive Chair, Promising Outomes
Barbara Gottardi – Co-Founder & CEO, Finbridge Global
Betty Bonnardel-Azzarelli MBE – Founder & CEO, Farmer Charlie
Mark Taylor – Co-Founder, BizNest
Gary Hunter – Founder & CEO, Redu Group
Kuntal Fisher – Founder & CEO, FIECON
Paddy Willis – Co-Founder, Mission Ventures
Richard Heggie – Co-Founder, Enginuity
Oli Bates – Founder & CEO, 4WALLS
Felicia Meyerowitz Singh – Co-Founder, Engage Smarter AI
Robert Sims – CEO, Sum Vivas
Steven South – Founder & CEO, Hydra EVC
Lily Elsner – Co-Founder & CEO, Jack Fertility
Mercurius Saad – Co-Founder & CEO, Tutorbloc
Adam Allen-Rogers – Co-Founder, AI Fit
Saideep Gogineni – Founder & CEO, Novocuris
Julia Kemp – Founder, Pawpass
Ken Hendricks – Co-Founder & CEO, Basepilot
Dominic Ponniah – Co-Founder & CEO, Cleanology
Sam Soares – Co-Founder & CEO, MPWR-365
Joseph Burns – Co-Founder & CEO, Reformed IT
Frederick Mark Tughan – Co-Founder & CEO, Comic Enterprises
Lorna MacLean – Co-Founder & CEO, Demetria
Kevin Withane – Founder & CEO, Diversity X
Jon Dobinson – Founder & CEO, other group
Dom Hawes – Founder & CEO, Selbey Anderson
Amanda Coulson – Founder & CEO, SVC Solutions
Ollie Scott – Founder & CEO, UNKNOWN
Kerry Burn – Co-Founder & CEO, 848 Group
Ben Putley – Co-Founder & CEO, Alkimi
Dermot O’Grady – Co-Founder & CEO, Ardent Tide
Michael Venner – CEO, Auva Certification
Julian Daniel – Founder & CEO, BSB Construction
Alan Smith – Founder & CEO, Capital Asset Management
Charles Groome – Co-Founder & CEO, Everna
Simon Francis – Founder & CEO, Flock Associates
Stephen Findlay – CEO, Growth CFO
Neil Davidson – CEO, HeyHuman
Dominic Wheatley – CEO, Interactive Partners
Dr Frazer Thompson – CEO, Invicta Tweed plc
David Whittaker – CEO, Keystone Property Finance
Dips Patel – CEO, KitKing
Simon Barry – Founder & CEO, Knowbotics AI
Matt McDonnell – CEO, Medicare EMS Group UK
Jason Pearson – CEO, On Chain International
Edward Bussey – CEO, Oxford Science Enterprises
Andrew Pullman – CEO, People Risk Solutions
Tom O’Hagan – CEO, PXC
Charles Skinner – CEO, Restore plc
Natasha Guerra – Co-Founder & CEO, Runway East
Tom Perry – Founder & CEO, Sherpa
Alan Wing-King – Founder & CEO, Syntegra Group
Leonard Evans – Founder & CEO, The Profs
Emma Mirrington – CEO, The Talent Labs
Christian Edwards – Co-Founder & CEO, This is Tommy
Shain Khoja – Founder & CEO, Thriving Ai
Amy Hopper – Founder & CEO, TOA Group
Aaron Ross – CEO, Vix Technology
Dinesh Dhamija – Founder & Chairman, Copper Beech Group
Joe Nelson – Chief Strategy Officer, Heartfelt Technologies
Georgi Rollings – Co-CEO, Starfish Accounting
Saudenh Doctzan – Co-Director, May Sum Restaurant Nottingham
Hannes Verschueren – Co-Founder & CEO, atomic
Rupert Patrick – Co-Founder & CEO, James Eadie
Emily Gill – Co-Founder & CEO, LEVRA
Paddy Stobbs – Co-Founder & CEO, Stackfix
Adam Thomas Orme – Co-Founder & CEO, Trinity Space Technologies
Ami Daniel – Co-Founder & CEO, Windward
Carlo Keenan Ross – Co-Founder & COO, Bridge
Jake Wells – Co-Founder & COO, Meshed
Wil Benton – Co-Founder & Director, Metta. VP, Aerospace Xelerated
Clara Latham – Co-Founder & Managing Director, Deeply Foods
Jill Willis – Co-Founder, Attract & Engage
David Turney – Co-Founder, Avery Law
Tom Griffiths – Co-Founder, BitCompli
Jag Singh – Co-Founder, Bricktrade
Harrison Thomas – Co-Founder, Elephants
Rune Sovndahl – Co-Founder, Fantastic Services
Sunjit Saroya – Co-Founder, GiroStor
Hetesh Pal – Co-Founder, GiroStor
Sophie Eden – Co-Founder, Gordon & Eden
Sam Waterfall – Co-Founder, Greenwood Foods
Edward Wijnen – Co-Founder, Intuicon.ai
Paul Billingham – Co-Founder, Knight Corporate Finance
Ash Dey – Co-Founder, Lyfe
Will Taylor – Co-founder, Old House Labs
Fabricio Chavarro – Co-Founder, Otravista Consulting LLP
Tim Simpson – Co-Founder, Pinchful
Bridie Cunningham – Co-Founder, Portman Scott
Robert Irvin – Co-Founder, RMS Partners
Colin Weston – Co-Founder, TidyChoice
Andrew Dougan – Co-Founder, Viital
Guy Pengelley – Co-Founder, Viresco Group
Dr Nikhit Anilbhai – Co-Founder, Your Cue
Sonakshi Senthil – Co-Founder, Your Cue
Charlotte Pegg – Co-Founder, ZEN8
Andrew Stephen Brode – Director & Former Chair, RWS Holdings PLC
Cain Ullah – Founder & Board Director, Red Badger
Zoe Robson – Founder & CEO, Strateva Group
Rudy Parengal – Founder & CEO, Abjak
James Gozney – Founder & CEO, Aslan
Spencer Gallagher – Founder & CEO, Cactus
Becks Armstrong – Founder & CEO, Clarity
Ahana Banerjee – Founder & CEO, Clear
Suzy Ferreira – Founder & CEO, Dinie
Emma Shipley – Founder & CEO, Emma J Shipley
Matt Norbury – Founder & CEO, Epoints Rewards
Gary Mead – Founder & CEO, euroloos
Matt Jonns – Founder & CEO, Founder + Lightning
Grace Castillo – Founder & CEO, Gifftid
Chris Twigg – Founder & CEO, Inner Circle Consulting
Richard Oastler – Founder & CEO, KPI Tree
Rob Reeve – Founder & CEO, LexTego
Claire Mason – Founder & CEO, Man Bites Dog
Johnny Manning – Founder & CEO, Manning's Tutors
Diane Banks – Founder & CEO, Northbank Talent Management
Serena Fordham – Founder & CEO, ProspHER
Rosie Hewat – Founder & CEO, Rosie’s People
Sean Ramsden MBE – Founder & CEO, Sean Ramsden International
Cathy Moseley – Founder & CEO, Supernatural Food
Emmanuel Cohen – Founder & CEO, The Armadillo Group
Amanda Thomson – Founder & CEO, Thomson & Scott
Alla Ouvarova – Founder & CEO, Two Chicks
Kate Bright – Founder & CEO, UMBRA International Group
Merilee Karr – Founder & CEO, UnderTheDoormat Group
Francis Toye – Founder & CEO, Unilink Software
Damian McLaughlin – Founder & CEO, Urban Phoenix
Warren Davies – Founder & CEO, Utilize
Jonathan Summerfield – Founder & CEO, Xiatech
Joe Seddon – Founder & CEO, Zero Gravity
Mats Stigzelius – Founder & Chair, Takumi
Mark Sweeny – Founder & CEO, de Novo Solutions
Bev Shah – Founder & Co-CEO, City Hive
Felix Mitchell – Founder & Co-CEO, Instant Impact
Charlotte Guzzo – Founder & COO, Sano Genetics
Nazim Valimahomed – Founder & CPO, Kroo Bank
Jonathan Falkingham MBE – Founder & Creative Director, Urban Splash
Thomas Schilling – Founder & Director, Tugela People
Tony Craddock – Founder & Director, General of The Payments Association
Adam Fudakowski – Founder & Executive Director, Switchee
Nicholas R Morgan – Founder & Group CEO, We Group
Patricia Ypma – Founder & Managing Director, Spark Legal and Policy Consulting
Stephen Britt – Founder & Managing Director, Anchor Storage
Paul Theile – Founder & Managing Director, MEL (Holdings)
Will Linay – Founder & Managing Director, Stratstone Developments
Daniel Philip Astaire – Founder & Managing Partner, Grosvenor Law
Jarmila Halovsky-Yu – Founder & MD, YUnique Marketing
Bundeep Singh Rangar – Founder & President, PremFina
Tom Bohills – Founder & Principal, Founders Law
Pascal de Mul – Founder & CEO, Setmixer
Nadine Campbell – Founder, ACE Entrepreneurs
David Horne – Founder, Add then Multiply
Alison Shadrack – Founder, Adia PR
Alison Cork – Founder, Alison at Home
Christopher Robinson – Founder, Ampsahead
Sarah Turner – Founder, Angel Academe
Jason Mohr – Founder, Anyjunk
Jason Living – Founder, Argyle Square Property Group
Rachel Hayward – Founder, Ask the Chameleon
Peadar Coyle – Founder, AudioStack
Simon Jones – Founder, Baanx
Robert Hurst – Founder, Bengeho
Harriet Hastings – Founder, Biscuiteers
Stefano Di Gregorio – Founder, Boogi
Oliver Noakes – Founder, Boulders
Dominika Minarovic – Founder, BYBI Beauty
Lucy Chamberlain – Founder, C&C Search
Nadia Crandall – Founder, Capshore Partners
Shernaz Engineer – Founder, Cerity Appointments
Guy Tolhurst – Founder, Fintel
Niklas Friedberg – Founder, Clustermarket
Sid Pourfalah – Founder, Concrete4Change
Nick Smith – Founder, Cordel PLC
Daniel Szor – Founder, Cotswolds Distillery
Louisa Jackson – Founder, Craic
Martine Abboud – Founder, Creo Incubator
Pawel Kaminski – Founder & CTO, Founder + Lightning
Douglas Emslie – Founder, Cuil Bay Capital
Akansha Pandey – Founder, Cureline Pvt
Dan Martin – Founder, Dan Martin Content & Events
Catherine Bedford – Founder, Dashel
Hani Armstrong – Founder, Dengi Media
Paul Angeli – Founder, digitalPACT
David Forsyth – Founder, Document Data Group
Christian Nentwich – Founder, Duco
David Greenberg – Founder, Eave
Laura Sofie – Founder, Elevate Personal Finance
Amanda Cook – Founder, Excellent Gourmet Trading
Emma Little – Founder, ExecSpace
James Van Den Heule – Founder, Fenton Whelan
Ed Hill – Founder, Fiddlie Technology
Cordelia Meacher – Founder, FieldHouse Associates
Shaun Ng – Founder, Fifth Row Technologies
Sam Smith – Founder, finnCap
Russell Stinson – Founder, Fireheart Coffee
Robert Van Den Bergh – Founder, Fluent
Valeria Vahorovska – Founder, Fondy
Dr Jason Zheng Jiang – Founder, FOSTER Technology
Daniel Wardle – Founder, Founder Sales Club
Christina Richardson – Founder, Foundology
Danny Hall – Founder, FSE Online
Nigel Farren – Founder, Fundability
Ingrid Murray – Founder, Fundfast
Sarah Lloyd-Hughes – Founder, Ginger Training & Coaching
Maggie Chen – Founder, Girls in Charge Initiative
Russ Shaw CBE – Founder, Global Tech Advocates
Sean Kiernan – Founder, Greengage
Joe Devereux-Kelly – Founder, GrowGrows
Kajal Sanghrajka – Founder, Growth Hub Global
Martin Leuw – Founder, Growth4Good
Stuart Barr – Founder, Hey Maestro
Tim Keaveney – Founder, Homethings
Adam Amos – Founder, Iceberg Ventures
Simon Thethi – Founder, Indicium Ventures
Rushina Shah – Founder, Insane Grain
Caitlin Rozario – Founder, interlude
Jamie Darkin – Founder, JD Enterprises
Kevin Bath – Founder, JimJams Spreads
Kate Macdonald – Founder, Kadence Consultancy
Ailsa Kiely – Founder, Kiely Transformative Growth
Mark O’Neil – Founder, Kinetic Business Advice
Lucy Minton – Founder, Kitt Offices
Matthew Jack – Founder, Kythera AI
Lucy Read – Founder, LA Personal Products
Mark Kingsley-Williams – Founder, LawPanel
Jude Jennison – Founder, Leaders by Nature
Richard Carter – Founder, Lopay
Gail Laser – Founder, Love Barnet
Gary Stewart – Founder, Lyfeguard
Charlie Bradshaw – Founder, Matrix APA (UK)
Max Beech – Founder, Maxed Labs
Miriam Dervan – Founder, MDE Services
Douglas Orr – Founder, Message Matrix
Clare Shaw – Founder, Mini Mozart
Georgina Bowman – Founder, MYSHOOTS®️
Eren Kocyigit – Founder, NBT
Kieran South – Founder, North Star
Keir Carnie – Founder, Nuud
Lydia Carrick – Founder, Apputee
Samir Patel – Founder, Omnia Housing
Kerry Morgan – Founder, Outsource financial Solutions
Catrin MacDonnell – Founder, Papadeli Foods
Kelly McCabe – Founder, Perci Health
Emma Walford – Founder, Perigon Partners
George Phillips – Founder, Phillips Hobbies
Sathya Smith – Founder, Piper Technology
Stefan Husanu – Founder, Pith & Stem
Jamie Beaumont – Founder, Playter
Mark Hawes – Founder, Potential HR
Nazanin nankali – Founder, Powertutors
Rachael Twumasi-Corson – Founder, PPTCS
Tony Harrison – Founder, Printercare
Amrit Lotay – Founder, Product Sphere
Anthony Gale – Founder, PromoLens
Edmond Ibrahimi – Founder, Propertalis
James Hadley – Founder, Property from Pensions
Matthew Pearce – Founder, PuriFire Labs
Steven Matthew Hyde – Founder, Push Group
Imogen Wethered – Founder, Qudini
Rachel Vosper – Founder, Rachel Vosper
Simon Newell – Founder, Renewell Water UK
Kevin Brittain – Founder, Runpreneur
Catherine K Jolly – Founder, Rutherford Glen Global
Jack McMahon – Founder, Saint Group
Charlie Kenny – Founder, Salve
Benedikt von – Founder, Sanome
James Digva – Founder, Sauce Shop
Laura Harnett – Founder, Seep
Cecile Reinaud – Founder, Seraphine Maternity
Oliver ashness – Founder, SimplyCook
Pallav (Paul) Naha-Biswas – Founder, Sixley & Knowledgemotion
Sarah Graham – Founder, Skills4Stem Group
Hussain Hilli – Founder, Skrap
Damien Gray – Founder, SOAK’d OATS
Gareth Deakin – Founder, Sonorous Consulting
David Herbada – Founder, Spectroma
Melwin mehta – Founder, Sterling Investments
Craig Jamieson – Founder, Straw Innovations
Martin Banbury – Founder, Streetify.com
Katie Lopes – Founder, Stripe & Stare
Ben Lakey – Founder, Syndi Health
Rayan Bannai – Founder, Table for Ten
Bevan Thomas – Founder, Tahu Capital
Rakhitha Lakshman Dias – Founder, Terias Consulting
Georgina Cotton – Founder, The Accounts Shop
Manya Klempner – Founder, The Boxing House
Diane Young – Founder, The Drum
Matthew Freeman – Founder, The Numbers Studio
Torie Blythe-Richards – Founder, The Partnership Collection
Harry Turpin – Founder, The Savourists
Leah Brown – Founder, The WayFinders Group
Amelia Rope – Founder, Third Time Lucky
Dan Amos – Founder, Tools for Schools
Claire Trachet – Founder, Trachet Advisory
Harry Bremner – Founder, Tuggs
Gus Tugendhat – Founder, Tussell
Dr David Webster – Founder, UK/Romania Business
Adrian Wong – Founder, Ultraviolet Venture Community
Lucas Johnston – Founder, Umber
TJ Lee – Founder, Vagabond Digital
Alex Davies – Founder, Wealth Club
Simon Hague – Founder, Wheresmylunch
Will Polston – Founder, Will Polston Coaching and Training
Simon Woodroffe OBE – Founder, YO! Sushi and YOTEL
Stephen Phillips – Founder, Zappi
Victor Jarland – Founder, ZEN8 Sports
Edward Goodchild – Founder, Zendht
James Basden – Founder, Zenobe
Chris Parsonson – Founder & CEO, Solve Intelligence
Adam Spence – Founding Partner, Edition Capital
Logan Naidu – Group CEO, Kernel Global
Jason Yeomans – CEO, Iglu Tech Group
Nicolas Marquez Arnedo – Managing Director, Bocking Homes
Nicola Barden – Managing Director, BSF Solid Surfaces
Daniel Holloway – Managing Director, Budget Waste Management
Alexander Low – Managing Director, DCM insights
Stuart Wade – Managing Director, Empire Manufacturing
Jamie Willsdon – Managing Director, Future Group
Alina Cooper – Managing Director, GetSetGo
Jeff Barnett – Managing Director, Industrial Door Systems
Mark Brackley – Managing Director, InfiniSki
Stephen Burke – Managing Director, John Burke Associates
Scot William Gardiner – Managing Director, New Waverley Partners
Dan Mitchell – Managing Director, Oakheart Property
Ian Banks – Managing Director, One to One Personnel
Samuel Bowen – Managing Director, Opal Black Insurance Services
Peter Bowles – Managing Director, Original BTC
Ian Davis – Managing Director, Packaged Pumps Systems
Edward Freeman – Managing Director, Rare Origins
Ces Terranova – Managing Director, Red Earth Studio
Clive Bonny – Managing Director, Strategic Management Partners
Matthew Shanahan – Managing Director, Stream Networks
James Hook – Managing Director, SubVision Surveys & SkyVision Surveys
Terry Upham – Managing Director, Tau Advisory
Angela Prentner-Smith – Managing Director, This is Milk
Jaysri Thangam Ananthapadmanabhan – Managing Director, TrillionDollars
Charles Cameron – Managing Partner, Cameron Barney Herbst Hilgenfeldt
Kevin Tan – Managing Partner, Upsilon Family
Irina Pafomova – Managing Partner, Zestic AI
Anton Derlyatka – Co-Founder & CEO, Sweatcoin
Victoria Johnson – Founder & CEO, VetCT
Lucy Walker – Founder, AM Insights
Flynn Robinson – Founder & CEO, scOS
Michael Blakeley – Founder, Entrepreneurs Collective
Harry Cruickshank – Founder, Cruickshank Associates
Ruth Simmonds – Co-Founder, TACaccess
Kelly Sinclair – Founder, Vero Tech Sales
Piers Mummery – Co-Founder, Crunch Technologies International
Marcus Love – Co-Founder, Love Ventures
Jeffrey Bartlett – Director, Nurture Ventures
Sean Cook – Founder & Managing Director, Urban & Regional
Steve Monk – Founder, Good Guys Bakehouse
Liza Levy – Founder, Unravel Health
Hasan Toprakkaya – Founder, Sociality.io
Sam Gordon – Co-Founder Gordon & Eden
Lilijan Sulejmanovic – Founder, Bardo Ventures
Toinette Vicars – Founder, Dot-Connectors
Gabriel Isserlis – Founder,Tutti & SuperScout
Dean Hills – Co-Founder, EDR Technology
The role of any good think tank or business group is to speak frankly to whoever is in Government. As many of you will already know, we’re asking entrepreneurs to sign a letter to the Chancellor following reports that she is considering hiking Capital Gains Tax (CGT) and further restricting Business Asset Disposal Relief (BADR) in the forthcoming Budget.
If you are a founder, you can read and sign our letter here. Whoever you are, please share it far and wide: email, WhatsApp or Slack groups, social media, carrier pigeon etc. The more, the mightier.
In essence, it argues that restricting BADR or hiking CGT rates would jeopardise the success of Britain’s startup ecosystem by enormously weakening the incentive individuals have to start and build businesses. It would also reduce the incentive for startups to offer employee stock options or shares, making it even harder for startups to attract the talent they need to scale.
Any revenue it might raise in the short term would be more than offset by the damage it does to long-run productivity by stifling the growth of future startups.
Below is the letter in full so you can circulate it among your own networks. Previous letters we have coordinated have garnered a lot of support and made a real difference to policy (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). This one has already been signed by over 200 entrepreneurs, including more than a few household names, but we’d like to get even more signatures.
The stakes are high. According to Evelyn Partners, one in three business owners are fast-tracking sales as capital gains raid looms. This is a response (included anonymously with permission) from a foreign-born founder in our network who started his deep tech business in the UK and has raised millions: "Not gonna lie, in my circles people are not signing letters, they are already moving country. Even *discussing* increasing CGT was enough. I know founders who have left the UK only for this reason since the election. I don’t go on record on this but it is serious."
I respectfully disagree that it’s not worth signing letters. We have shifted policy in the past with your help. But I regretfully agree that it is serious.
If you didn’t get my email about this letter, sign up here. Any journalists who want to get in touch about this should drop me email.
The Letter
Dear Chancellor,
Entrepreneurs represent a uniquely important segment of any country’s economy – but especially our own. Britain can rightly claim to be one of the best countries in the world to start and scale a business, and that reputation has been carefully earned over recent decades.
The risks entrepreneurs take in striking out and starting new and innovative companies are essential to moving the economy forward. From startups developing solutions to the climate crisis to those working to revolutionise healthcare, entrepreneurs not only create businesses that provide good, high-paid jobs, they also generate taxes to pay for public services and help tackle pressing social issues too.
At the last general election, many entrepreneurs put their faith in what they recognised was a changed Labour Party – heartened by statements you made about being the party of wealth creation and your promise to give investors the certainty they need to fuel growth. Reporting in the lead up to the Autumn Budget, however, has given many in Britain’s thriving entrepreneurial community pause for thought.
Chief among our concerns are the rumoured restrictions to Business Asset Disposal Relief (BADR) and rise in the rate of Capital Gains Tax (CGT). According to The Guardian, your officials have modelled the impact of increasing CGT as high as 33% to 39%. Higher CGT or any restrictions on BADR would make this relief less competitive at a time when the rest of the world is making their reliefs more competitive. It would mean the UK has the second-highest CGT rate in Europe, and jeopardise the success of our country’s startup ecosystem by enormously weakening the incentive individuals have to build businesses. Reporting by The Telegraph gives us some hope that the 39% figure may not be on the table – but businesses need clear and definitive reassurances right now.
This applies as much to British entrepreneurs as it does to founders from abroad who currently view Britain as an attractive destination in which to base their company – previous research from The Entrepreneurs Network revealed that four out of ten of Britain’s fastest-growing companies had a foreign-born founder or co-founder.
Many fledgling startups offer employees stock options or shares as part of their compensation package as they cannot compete with the higher salaries of established big corporates. Further restrictions to BADR would reduce this incentive, making it even harder for startups to attract the talent they need to scale while denying workers the chance to own a piece of Britain's growing companies.
Policymakers should also understand that entrepreneurship is an engine for further economic growth. By discouraging entrepreneurs from starting and growing their businesses, HM Treasury could well end up lowering the tax take overall. Indeed, this is what its own previous modelling suggests. Leading economists are also much more likely to agree than disagree that taxing capital income at a permanently lower rate than labour income would result in higher average long-term prosperity.
Given the straitened public finances it is understandable to leave no stone unturned when looking to balance the books. However, any temptation to rapidly and radically hike CGT should be resisted. Any revenue it might raise in the short term would likely be more than offset by the damage it does to long-run productivity by stifling the growth of future startups.
Our hard-fought reputation as a place where entrepreneurs can successfully build a business has been one of Britain’s economic saving graces. We, the undersigned, urge you to ensure our CGT regime remains competitive and encouraging for founders wanting to get Britain growing again.
Lunch & Learn
Our good friends at Enterprise Nation have secured the Small Business Minister, Gareth Thomas MP, for their highly recommended Lunch and Learn series. The session will take place online on 13th November from 1pm to 1.30pm. To register for the free event, please click here.
Education, Education, Recommendations
Our other good friends at Youth Business International (YBI) and Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) have launched a comprehensive Youth Entrepreneurship Framework. The framework brings a fresh perspective on harnessing the opportunity of youth entrepreneurship. It includes 50 actionable recommendations, with each recommendation tied to a case study in GEN’s Atlas – the world’s largest compendium of entrepreneurship policies.
Three Big Ideas is our weekly roundup of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.
In this week, Anastasia Bektimirova writes about thinking boldly, Eamonn Ives looks at the productivity of British ports, and Philip Salter discusses what defines a great founder.
⚡️ Anastasia Bektimirova, Researcher
Ask an investor about the differences between British and US founders, and you’ll likely hear a familiar narrative about the deficit of ambition. They’ll tell you that British startups are not going after big markets, seek an early exit, or are pitching cautious rather than boldly optimistic sales numbers. In a recent World of DaaS podcast interview, when asked what conventional wisdom or advice he thinks is generally bad, Matt Clifford (Entrepreneur First co-founder and ARIA Chair) replied:
“There's a very annoying thing that happens in Europe. A lot of entrepreneurs get advice like ‘that’s a good idea, but do something just a little bit less ambitious because then you're more likely to succeed.’ A lot of people have an intuition that there should be an inverse correlation between odds of success and ambition – if you're trying to do something really hard, you're less likely to succeed. But it is much easier to succeed by being more ambitious, because in the end, it comes down to: can you attract talent and can you attract capital? Guess what? They're attracted to ambition. I think that intuition is just wrong and it gets amplified into very bad advice.”
This has made me wonder why founders don’t know better by default: what mechanisms might be at work here, and where else they might be restraining ambition. While not every founder is university-educated, the academic environment does play a role in shaping the mindset and ambition levels for those who are. From undergraduate to doctoral dissertations, filling a “gap in the literature”, no matter how incremental, is prized; supervisors encourage students to aim at “feasible” research above all, instead of letting their ambition roam while their work is still insulated from the pressure of the market or specific grants. This might be pronounced in some disciplines more than in others, affecting the impact we see from research in different fields and its commercialisation potential. It’s not hard to spot the same logic in education even earlier than university.
Reflecting on a year spent in the Bay Area, Alice Bentinck (Entrepreneur First co-founder) gives a mindset-rewiring steer which, I believe, applies to science as much as to entrepreneurship:
“The remedy isn’t an over-hyped slide that you don’t believe. The remedy is to ask yourself ‘what’s the most ambitious target we think we could achieve and then what would it take to get there?’. Pitch that.”
📦 Eamonn Ives, Research Director
In American politics, an ‘October Surprise’ refers to an unexpected event that occurs in the month prior to the presidential election, and that threatens to hurt the chances of one of the candidates. On 1 October, a strike called by the International Longshoremen’s Association looked like it could prove to be one for Kamala Harris – if it meant supply chains getting gummed up and inflation taking off again.
One of the demands made by the striking workers was a ban on automation at US ports. You might imagine this would be a straightforward hammerblow to productivity, but a fascinating post by Brian Potter suggests the impact could well be more nuanced. It also got me wondering, how productive are British ports?
Data from the World Bank’s Container Port Performance Index don’t make for pretty reading. Of the British ports it considers, only two – London and Southampton – feature in the top quartile, at 76th and 93rd out of 405 respectively. Every other port ranks deep into the triple digits – Felixstowe is 174th, Teesport 224th, Grangemouth 264th, Liverpool 293rd, Greenock 346th and, last of all, Bristol, coming in at a dismal 368th. These lowly figures mean a typical British port on the index would rank 230th – somewhat lower than the global average.
Economists have known for centuries how important international trade is for the economy, and the critical role exporting can play as a way of boosting productivity within individual firms. Previous research we’ve published has highlighted the pains entrepreneurs face when it comes to selling goods abroad. While it might not trigger an economic miracle, it wouldn’t hurt to nudge the performance of our ports up slightly.
💡 Philip Salter, Founder
My Big Idea for this week comes courtesy of our Adviser Francis Toye, founder of Unilink Software. He shared a Paul Graham's article from September on Founder Mode to get my thoughts.
In the September article, Graham shares the insights of Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb:
“As Airbnb grew, well-meaning people advised him that he had to run the company in a certain way for it to scale. Their advice could be optimistically summarized as ‘hire good people and give them room to do their jobs.’ He followed this advice and the results were disastrous.”
Chesky turned to Steve Jobs for inspiration. One thing Graham pulls out is that Jobs used to run an annual retreat for what he considered to be the 100 most important people at Apple. Critically, these weren’t the 100 people highest on the org chart: “It could make a big company feel like a startup,” suggests Graham.
As Graham acknowledges, clearly things need to change as a company scales. And there is a risk that a lot of bad management could be excused as “founder mode”. As Toye wrote to me:
"Extreme Founder Mode has obvious disadvantages: lack of delegation, micromanagement, high staff turnover, reliance on one individual etc., but on the other hand many corporate managers, however well intentioned and experienced, do not have the background to take a founder-led company into a successful growing business."
We still don’t fully understand what defines a great founder or when – and if – a company should transition to being run like a large organisation. Given the rising power of founder-led companies, getting this right (or wrong) could have huge implications for the rate of global innovation and the quality of all our lives.
On Wednesday, Keir Starmer will have his first meeting as Prime Minister with Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission. Top of the President’s agenda is negotiating a youth mobility scheme between the UK and EU. It’s top, not necessarily because it’s the most important thing, but because it’s an obvious win-win and a test to prod Starmer on his commitment to building a closer relationship.
Immigration has been top of my own mind over the last few weeks too. I spoke on the topic at both the Labour and Conservatives Party Conferences.
As well as my familiar schtick about immigrants being behind 39% of the UK’s fastest-growing businesses and our suite of policy recommendations, I argued that while immigration and upskilling the domestic workforce are two sides of the same coin, they require very different policy levers to get right.
On skills, while the Government is more or less on the correct track in announcing an expert-led review of curriculum and assessment and it’s commitment to replace the apprenticeship levy with a more flexible Growth and Skills Levy (with the caveat that there will be a higher potential for deadweight costs), its reliance on trying to plug skills gaps from the centre through the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) and Skills England is destined to fail.
The data simply isn’t there to make accurate decisions, nor are any of the functions of the state anywhere near quick enough to respond. This is Hayek’s local knowledge problem writ large, and it’s why free movement – even if limited to the young – beats central planning.
It was Margaret Thatcher who famously grabbed her copy of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty from her handbag, slammed it down on the table and declared, “This is what we believe.” Those on the other side of politics can learn a thing or two from the Nobel Prize winner without subscribing to everything he believed. After all, Hayek literally wrote a paper called Why I Am Not a Conservative.
It was only four years ago that Keir Starmer said: “We welcome migrants, we don’t scapegoat them. Low wages, poor housing, poor public services, are not the fault of people who come here: they’re political failure. So we have to make the case for the benefits of migration; for the benefits of free movement.”
While times change, economic truths don’t.
SHAPE of Things
Over on our Substack, Anastasia has written up a fascinating interview with ARC Accelerator Co-Founder and Director Chris Fellingham on the commercialisation potential of social sciences, arts and humanities – or what The British Academy calls SHAPE (Social sciences, Humanities and Arts for People and the Economy).
ARC was founded in 2020 and now supports over 45 universities in an ICURe-like commercialisation programme specifically for researchers in social science, arts and humanities. There are lots of great examples cited, but as someone who studied history I’ll point you towards HistoryCity, which was founded by historians from the University of Exeter. They offer immersive trails in European cities and have partnered with organisations like the National Trust and museums to bring the past very much into the present.
For those interested, I would recommend reading the article in full, or at least skimming Anastasia’s X thread. As she says: “Social scientists have deep insights and answers to many pressing issues. If that can’t be translated into solutions, something must be broken or underbuilt.”
Also, in case you missed it, we put out another issue of our weekly Three Big Ideas roundup – on the demise of coal, priorities for growth, and letting a thousand Beatles bloom.
Join Us
As you’ll see, we have a lot coming up. While a fair amount of it is open to anyone – e.g. if you’re an angel investor in Scotland you’ll be accepted onto next week’s Edinburgh roundtable, others will be filled by those who go above and beyond in their support for us.
The more support we get, the more we are able to help entrepreneurs in the UK – including more events that are open for everyone. Now is the time to get on board. Sign up here or book a call with me to find out more.
For our latest interview, Anastasia Bektimirova sat down with Chris Fellingham, Co-Founder of ARC Accelerator, to chat about the commercialisation potential of research by academics in social sciences, arts and humanities.
They discussed:
How ARC Accelerator came about and what gaps in research commercialisation landscape it fills
Challenges of telling the impact story of SHAPE-based ventures
The differences between STEM and SHAPE commercialisation
SHAPE-based company archetypes, business models, and success stories
Commercialisation potential of pure versus computational social science and digital humanities
What it would take for SHAPE ventures to become VC-backable, and what high-risk high-reward work looks like in this space
How we can get more SHAPE commercialisation, and with greater impact
🪨 Eamonn Ives, Research Director
The year is 1882 – Queen Victoria marks her 45th year as reigning monarch, William Gladstone is enjoying his second of four terms in Downing Street, and, at 57 Holborn Viaduct in London, the world’s first coal-fired power station is sputtering into life. One hundred forty-two years – and 4.6 billion tonnes of coal – later, no more electricity will ever be generated from the dirty fossil fuel in Britain again. At 3pm on Monday 30th September, the last remaining coal-fired power station, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, was desynced from the grid.
Different reasons explain the demise of coal in Britain. There was legislative pressure, which placed limits on how polluting power stations could be – limits which coal struggled to comply with. Meanwhile, the rise of renewables ensured there were alternative ways to generate the electricity consumers demanded. But perhaps the killer reason was price. From 2013, a carbon price has been applied to the power sector, which levies a tax per tonne of carbon dioxide generated. Coal-fired power stations became increasingly uneconomical – going from producing 40% of Britain’s electricity in 2012 to just 10% in 2016.
Source: Our World in Data
Economists have long advocated the use of price signals as a way to efficiently and effectively achieve policy objectives. Britain’s rapid transition away from coal seems to vindicate them pretty comprehensively. As we look towards cracking other stubborn issues – from congested roads to decarbonising agriculture – the current government should be minded to learn the lessons of the past, recognise the power of prices to incentivise desired outcomes.
📊 David Lawrence, Co-Director, UK Day One
Keir Starmer says his new government’s ‘number one’ priority is growth. We at UK Day One wanted to take him at his word, so we asked 44 pro-growth economists, think tankers and experts to share their views on what Labour’s priorities should be.
Far at the top of the list was planning reform. However, respondents largely insisted that the growth impact will depend on building housing and infrastructure in or near existing areas of high productivity, particularly London and the Southeast.
Following this was investment in nuclear energy, to bring down energy costs. These are viewed by some as the main driver of Europe’s economic ills vis à vis the US, and bolstering electricity supply is particularly important given rising demand for electricity arising from heat pumps, electric vehicles and AI data centres. Nuclear is also favoured due to its supply of continuous baseload power, which is essential for industry. Interestingly, respondents were more divided about whether the UK should increase investment in non-nuclear renewable energy – and the UK’s ‘green tech potential’ was generally deemed ‘highly overrated’, despite the current government’s prioritisation of green jobs.
In what will surprise some, another idea that was viewed as ‘overrated’ was access to capital for startups. Where capital is in short supply, as one respondent put it, is more because of “underlying issues making it difficult to create profitable opportunities here with which to generate returns.” Fixing these could prove to be more effective than tinkering with pensions reforms.
With the Budget just three weeks away, Rachel Reeves’ first meaningful opportunity to shape Britain’s economy is fast approaching. Our survey findings – which you can read in full here – provide a plan for her to build on.
💫 Philip Salter, Founder
“[W]e should be taking more chances on quite young people, giving them more authority,” Tyler Cowen declares on the excellent Institute for Progress’ Metascience 101 podcast, the latest episode of which looks at how to better fund scientific innovation.
Tyler adds, “when you think of young people running things – well, who ran the Beatles? There was George Martin and Brian Epstein, but the Beatles ran the Beatles. Paul McCartney had to figure out the recording studio. We don’t call that science, but that was an extremely difficult scientific project that had never been done before. And this guy, who hadn’t gone to college, at age 23 starts figuring it out and becomes a master.”
It’s not just music. The next generation can bring a fresh approach to tackling the world’s most pressing problems, something we’ve consistently argued for at The Entrepreneurs Network. And, as with musicians, though not everyone will become great, a great entrepreneur can come from anywhere (to misquote Anton Ego in Ratatouille). That’s why we’re supportive of organisations like the Junior Achievement, VIVITA, Young Enterprise and the Prince’s Trust who aim to imbue young people with the skills to lead.
Three Big Ideas is our weekly roundup of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.
In this week, Eamonn Ives explains how coal-fired power was phased out in Britain, Philip Salter writes about the importance of empowering youth entrepreneurship, and guest contributor David Lawrence discusses the results of a survey on priorities for economic growth run by UK Day One.
This week I’m opening with a request. If you’re an angel investor who backs female founders, or you’re actively interested in becoming an angel investor, or a female entrepreneur backed by angels, we have a unique opportunity for you to feed into the Government’s Invest in Women Taskforce, co-chaired by multi-exit entrepreneur Debbie Wosskow and Barclays’ Business CEO Hannah Bernard, and backed by the Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
Over the next few weeks, we’re hosting roundtables with Barclays in Newcastle, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Belfast and London. This really is a chance to have your say on policy, get quoted in the report or feature as a case study (or input off-the-record if you prefer), as well as meet like-minded people in your area.
We want to share this opportunity far and wide so we get the very best and diverse insights. Therefore, before you read any further, sign up for an event or forward this email to anyone in your network who might be interested – the more the merrier. Additionally, you can reshare my LinkedIn post, our tweet, or get it out to the great and good through your channels.
We take this topic very seriously. We were the first organisation in Britain to reveal the equity funding gap; we helped launch the Rose Review; and alongside Barclays have been campaigning for policies to support female entrepreneurship through the Female Founders Forum for over a decade.
We’re also scoping out doing something in Wales (either in person or virtually), so if you’re interested in that or have any questions about these events, drop us an email.
Pepper Questions
Another week, another three big ideas landed on our Substack. While Eamonn wrote about the lessons of US overregulation of Sichuan Pepper and Anastasia opined on the UN’s AI governance efforts, I pointed people towards what might well be this year’s most influential essay on British politics: Foundations.
It’s worth amplifying the alarm raised in the essay that by making it so hard to build, Britain is sabotaging its leadership in the technologies of the new industrial revolution (sorry, despite claims to the contrary, this will be the second not fourth).
But it’s not just AI and biotech. As Foundations states: “Britain’s strongest industries are creative and intangible, and yet we blocked a £750 million film studio by a dual carriageway, right by the UK’s strongest film cluster. Britain is the most advanced country, per capita, in artificial intelligence, but we blocked a £2.5 billion ‘super hub’ data centre site by the M25. Top talent from around the world flocks to work in biotech in Cambridge, yet we have starved the sector of lab space – under one percent of Cambridge lab space is vacant. Prime city centre office space and labs there are renting for even more than residential property.”
RIO ROI
Adviser to the network Ben Greenstone has co-written an excellent report on how regulation is suffocating startups. Igniting Innovation makes for brutal reading. As Ben’s thread on X explains, the Food Standards Agency has approved just 14% of requests since 2021, the Financial Conduct Authority hit just two-thirds of its targets, while the Civil Aviation Authority has yet to authorise out-of-sight drone flights, even though the US and Japan did so two years ago.
There is a great deal of ruin in our regulatory state: Space Forge, the British aerospace manufacturing company headquartered in Cardiff, had to consult eleven different regulators to launch, while an AI legal startup must navigate at least six different regulators to get approval.
The new Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO) might help with some of the regulatory burden. We’re certainly keeping an eye on it. The report recommends it should be given powers to compel regulators to coordinate on emerging technologies, which would certainly be a step in the right direction. I’d be minded to go a step further, and follow John Fingleton’s suggestion to create an N+1 regulator that could give licences to disruptive entrants across the entire economy.
Well Spent
Labour done. Just the Conservative Party conference to go. If you’re there on Monday, I’ll be on a panel with Karim Fatehi MBE (London Chamber of Commerce and Industry), Shuyeb Muquit (Fragomen), Jonathan Thomas (Social Market Foundation) and Heather Rolfe (British Future). We’ll be chatting about the UK’s current immigration system. I’ll be drawing on much of our recent work, including Eamonn’s latest article on the case for increasing youth mobility.
To conclude our three part series digging into our recent report on Britain’s foreign-born founders, our Research Director Eamonn Ives makes the case for increasing global youth mobility, and how to go about it.
Three Big Ideas is our weekly roundup of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.
In this week, Eamonn Ives writes about Sichuan peppercorns and how regulations can shape our economic possibilities in quite unexpected ways, Anastasia Bektimirova discusses the UN’s approach to AI safety, and Philip Salter examines the essay on economic growth that everyone’s talking about.
🥡 Eamonn Ives, Research Director
If you’re a fan of spicy food, the New York Times served up a treat last week. In a fascinating article on ‘The Life-Affirming Properties of Sichuan Pepper’ (paywalled), one extract in particular piqued my curiosity. In 1968, the American government banned imports of Sichuan peppercorns, over fears they posed a biological threat to domestic citrus crops. Some of the numbing spice surreptitiously continued to make its way into the US, but it was generally low-quality and often only sold to Chinese-speaking customers under the counter to minimise detection from inspectors. In 2005, the import rules were relaxed, but the peppercorns still had to be heated to 140°F for ten minutes to kill any potentially harmful bacteria – which dulled its potency. Only years later, when this requirement too was dropped, could the unique ingredient properly showcase its magical qualities.
New businesses sprang up, now able to freely sell unmeddled Sichuan peppercorns, while existing corporations – including the likes of McDonald’s and Panda Express – got in on the action too. Americans’ appetite for the distinctive properties of Sichuan peppercorns no doubt partly explains why Sichuan restaurants are increasingly muscling in on Cantonese restaurants’ monopoly on the broader ‘Chinese’ food scene in the US.
What this all very tangibly brings home is how regulations can shape our economic possibilities in quite unexpected ways. It can only make one wonder about what other pleasures existing rules may be preventing us from experiencing. In a recent interview with The Telegraph (paywall), Science Secretary Peter Kyle gestures towards one contender – lab-grown meat. Though British regulators have taken some progressive steps forward, startups in the sector remain highly regulated. As with the Sichuan peppercorn, who knows what culinary delights might be in store for us if we gave lab-grown meat more space to flourish?
🇺🇳 Anastasia Bektimirova, Researcher
Liverpool was not the only destination du jour last weekend. So too was New York, as foreign policy delegates descended on the United Nations (UN) headquarters for the Summit of the Future ahead of the General Assembly this week. The tech policy community had expected the long-anticipated announcement of the new UN AI Office, as recommended in the report from the High-level Advisory Body on AI. But that failed to materialise yet. The closest we get to it in the Global Digital Compact, which was supposed to lay down the plans, is “an international scientific panel on AI and a global AI policy dialogue.”
The game play change might be a reason. In a shift from the Advisory Body’s interim report, which attempted to craft a UN-led superstructure for global AI governance, the new report calls for a “light touch mechanism,” and says that “the case for an agency with reporting, monitoring, verification, and enforcement powers is not yet made.” The purpose of the proposed AI Office would be to “ensure information sharing across the UN system,” and fill any gaps in the flurry of national, multilateral and global initiatives so that the excluded parts of the Global South could have a say in AI governance. Instead of falling into the trap of directing resources at governing every shiny new thing, the report is a reality check. This course-correction, however, is a far cry from the initial power play.
So, what does the adopted Global Digital Compact leave us with? The international scientific panel on AI is expected to produce an annual report surveying AI opportunities and risks. But the AI Safety Institute (AISI) -led International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI is doing just that. The global AI policy dialogue, another adopted recommendation, is already what the AI Safety Summit, and its sequels, are tasked with. Rather than pooling resources as intended, the UN’s efforts risk adding more layers to an already complex AI governance landscape.
As several reports argued this year (e.g. Onward, The Tony Blair Institute), the international network of AISIs, which have already built impressive capacity, should take the lead in setting standards, including for safety evaluations, and collaborative research efforts on advancing scientific understanding of AI opportunities and risks. And as the first and best-funded one in this network, the UK’s AISI should lead the way in this work.
🧱 Philip Salter, Founder
What do Britain’s recent political leaders have in common with the elites of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Qing Dynasty China and the Polish Commonwealth? Answer – they all tinkered ineffectually while their metaphorical ‘Romes’ burned. That’s according to Foundations, a new essay from our Adviser Sam Bowman, and friends of the network Ben Southwood and Samuel Hughes, which is setting British policy discussions ablaze.
The thesis is easy to explain: our economy has stagnated because we have denied it the foundations on which to grow. Investment has been all but banned in housing, transport and energy, effectively prohibiting many of the most valuable investments that could be made in the UK. As such, instead of devising intricate schemes to try to stimulate and crowd in investment, we should focus on simply giving the private sector the platform and permission to build. It’s what we’ve done historically, and it’s what many other countries around the world are still doing.
While the diagnosis is simple, the solutions are less so. Whether it’s unpicking the Town and Country Planning Act (TCPA), removing the second staircase requirement, reforming nutrient neutrality rules, or disincentivising lengthy judicial reviews, there is plenty to build on. And yet, while some of this won’t be easy, as the paper concludes, “the hardest things to create are ours already. No government can legislate into being a respect for the rule of law, appetite for scientific discovery and entrepreneurship, or tolerance of eccentricity and debate.”
Together with Barclays, we are currently undertaking research for our next Female Founders Forum report. In this year’s report, we are exploring the opportunities and challenges for female angel investors in the UK. The report and its policy recommendations will contribute to the Government-backed Invest in Women Taskforce.
This research will be informed by a series of roundtables across the UK. There will be opportunities for attendees to be quoted in the report and featured as a case study.
We’ll cover:
Regional challenges in angel investing
The impact of angel syndicates, groups, and co-investment funds in supporting female entrepreneurs and investors across different regions.
Strategies to increase women's participation in angel investing through improved support programs and policy changes
Bridging the gap between entrepreneurs and investors
The roundtables are open to both male and female angel investors, female entrepreneurs who have been backed by angels, and those actively interested in becoming angel investors.
You are invited to join us, and feel free to share with your network!
Newcastle
Monday, 7 October 2024
1.30pm to 3.30pm
Maybrook House, Newcastle upon Tyne
Request a place
Edinburgh
Tuesday, 8 October 2024
1.30pm to 3.30pm
CodeBase, Edinburgh
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Birmingham
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Belfast
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Ensuring the UK has cheap, clean energy is critical for any entrepreneur looking to build – or power – anything. When energy prices soar, businesses suffer or go bust. That’s why, in Small Wonders, we argue that Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) – developers of which include a host of innovative startups – should play a role in meeting this challenge.
For those unfamiliar with SMRs, these reactors have capacities of around 300 megawatts or less and are modular by design, meaning they are manufactured off-site and then assembled at their intended location. “The potential of SMRs is huge,” explains Will Murray in CapX. “Their modular nature allows for iterative learning and improvement, which means less risk of cost overruns. There is also export potential for SMRs made in the UK.”
As I discussed on Substack, energy is the cornerstone of progress: “Artificial intelligence will demand vast amounts of energy. The International Energy Agency forecasts that by 2026, electricity consumption will exceed 1,000 TWh. Just this week it was announced that Oracle is scoping out using three small nuclear reactors to power a new 1 GW AI data centre. That’s why our report advocates for the co-location of data centres with SMRs, aligning with two of the new Government’s core missions: stimulating economic growth and positioning Britain as a clean energy leader.”
The report, kindly supported by Bradshaw Advisory, is written by our Research Director Eamonn Ives, an expert on energy and environment matters, and who was a Special Adviser to a Cabinet Minister on energy and climate policy prior to joining us. Among other things, we call for the Government to open up more sites for SMR development, allow local authorities approving new nuclear power stations to retain a greater share of the business rates developers would pay, and for Britain to recognise the work of nuclear regulators in allied countries. Eamonn has a cracking thread on X that explains this better than I can.
Some people reading this might have concerns about the mere mention of the word “nuclear.” I won’t waste your time busting every myth about it, but I will point you in the direction of the remarkable work of Dr Hannah Ritchie – specifically this article on Our World in Data, but also more broadly her Sustainability by Numbers Substack.
Mission Possible
This week, my colleague Anastasia Bektimirova interviewed former DSIT policy adviser Ben Johnson on how bridging government and innovation networks can enhance the UK’s competitive edge in science and technology. The interview has made waves across Westminster and is a must-read for anyone invested in these areas. You can read it here.
Reach for the Stars
With party conference season in full swing, if you’re in Liverpool for Labour’s, head to the Main ACC, Auditorium 1C at 9am on Tuesday to hear my thoughts on how Labour should think about aligning policies for work with its skills agenda.
I’ll be speaking alongside a stellar panel, including Seema Malhotra MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at Home Office, as well as representatives from British Future, London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the National Federation of Builders, and the Social Market Foundation.
If you’re based in or near London and can’t wait until Tuesday, feel free to attend our event on Monday morning.
Time to Join
On 24 October Rathbones is hosting us for a private dinner for our Patrons and Advisers. This will be a valuable opportunity to learn about our policy initiatives and to share your thoughts on the issues entrepreneurs face in relation to government policy. If you’re interested in becoming an Adviser, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Three Big Ideas is our weekly roundup of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.
In this week, Philip Salter digs into our latest report on nuclear reactors, Anastasia Bektimirova reports back on the need for bilingual science, and Eamonn Ives looks at new evidence on the sharing economy.
⚛️ Philip Salter, Founder
Energy is the cornerstone of progress. A strong correlation exists between per capita energy consumption and economic output, but this growth has historically come at the cost of increased carbon emissions. Small Wonders, which we released this week, argues that Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) should be part of the solution. These reactors, with a capacity of 300 MW or less, are modular by design — manufactured off-site and assembled on location.
Artificial intelligence will demand vast amounts of energy. The International Energy Agency forecasts that by 2026, electricity consumption will exceed 1,000 TWh. Just this week it was announced that Oracle is scoping out using three small nuclear reactors to power a new 1 GW AI data centre. That’s why our report advocates for the co-location of data centres with SMRs, aligning with two of the new Government’s core missions: stimulating economic growth and positioning Britain as a clean energy leader.
Looking back, the true marvel of nuclear power isn’t its potential but the decades-long delay in realising that potential. In 1956, the UK made history at Calder Hall in Cumbria by launching the world’s first full-scale nuclear power station to supply electricity to a civilian grid. As the report highlights, 18 additional nuclear power stations followed, but the most recent one – Sizewell B in Suffolk – was connected to the grid nearly 30 years ago in 1995. Since then, eight Prime Ministers have come and gone, while South Korea has brought 18 new nuclear stations online.
The report also recommends that the UK recognise nuclear regulatory approvals from allied nations. Similar precedents exist in other sectors, such as pharmaceuticals between Australia and Switzerland, food and drug regulation between Canada and the European Union, and automotive standards between the EU and the US. This can even be done unilaterally – as seen in Singapore’s recognition of pharmaceuticals from the US, EU, and UK – and wouldn’t cost the government a penny. Something for the Chancellor to keep in mind with the Budget just around the corner.
👩🔬 Anastasia Bektimirova, Researcher
Last week, I got a spot for a fireside chat between Matt Clifford (Entrepreneur First co-founder and ARIA Chair) and Tom Kalil (Renaissance Philanthropy CEO and former Deputy Director for Policy at the White House Office for Science and Technology under Presidents Clinton and Obama), organised by UKDayOne and TxP.
The dialogue ranged from institutional innovation and research funding to industrial strategy and technological diffusion. But if I were to highlight just one point, it would be Tom’s answer about a skill gap between the UK and the US:
“Many US universities are really significantly increasing the number of courses in AI, machine learning and data science. And not only people who would just focus on that, but people who are genuinely bilingual, that is, they have both deep domain expertise and this sort of computational skills as well. And it would be important for UK universities to benchmark how they are doing in this area vis-à-vis world-class peers.”
In a field like engineering biology, for example, this means that having the best biologists alone won’t cut it – we also need more people who know how to combine biology with engineering expertise (and there is evidence that the UK struggles here). Having already secured an early edge – built on a scientific pedigree and exciting companies spanning from new materials to novel foods – we can’t afford to let it slip.
Bilingualism is likely to develop fairly naturally in many disciplines, where there is a strong computational precedent. Computing principles have already been part of biological workflows for decades. Chip design is also a computational playground. In the social sciences, a shift into advanced computational methods has made economists valuable hires for tech companies. But this won’t be the case for many other fields. Especially with AI tools lowering the skill barrier, there is no excuse for not being more intentional in preventing gaps from forming.
So, what could a game plan for a comprehensive computational shift involve? One part of it is a curriculum catch-up. This means degree programmes, starting from the undergraduate level, with training in applied computational methods and writing software for research, done in a way that is tailored to each field.
At a more advanced level, there is room for translational postdoc programmes, which, as Tom noted, some US universities are experimenting with. This, essentially, means that a PhD graduate enters a programme specifically designed to help them bring research from the lab to the marketplace. By extension, this could create a ripple effect back through the academic pipeline – for example, PhD programmes developed with this postdoc route in mind too.
Another part of it is physical social infrastructure: more cross-disciplinary research centres, institutes, and other spaces, such as co-working hubs envisioned as part of the EU’s AI Factories, which will allow startups, scientists and students “to meet and work on common ideas and projects,” creating “an environment that can attract the necessary talented human capital and build vibrant, attractive, and dynamic communities of practice.” The beauty of such spaces lies in their ability to blur traditional boundaries between the fields, with computational thinking as a common language.
💼 Eamonn Ives, Research Director
As well as providing us with cheaper takeaways and convenient rides home, one of the other key benefits that the sharing economy has given rise to is an extra way for people to earn a living. A new paper from Tucker Omberg from Jacksonville University, which analyses the impact of ridesharing on the labour market, caught my eye this week. His headline finding is that “Uber’s arrival to a city resulted in [a] decline in the unemployment rate by between a fifth and a half of a percentage point.” The good news doesn’t stop there either – Omberg also finds evidence that Uber has a positive effect on wages at the lower end of the wage distribution, which he suggests may be due to changes in how workers search for jobs or shifts in bargaining power.
Omberg’s research is one more datapoint proving the importance of the sharing economy, and the tangible consequences it has for consumers and workers alike. It gives us further reason to ensure that the rules that govern it – from worker’s rights to matters of taxation – are fit for purpose. And with the Labour Party about to descend on Liverpool for their annual conference, chatter about the future direction of travel on these issues is gearing up.
Prior to the election, Labour published their ‘Plan to Make Work Pay’. Among many other things, it contained a promise to end the three-tier system for employment status, which classifies people as either employees, self-employed or ‘workers.’ Removing the worker definition, however, could pose significant challenges – as platforms would then likely be on the hook for offering things like statutory sick pay or redundancy rights, while workers using them would be subject to National Insurance Contributions on their earnings. Indeed, according to the Financial Times (paywall), there are fears even from worker unions themselves that an unintended consequence of Labour’s plan could be businesses simply hiring staff as contractors or casual workers.
As was previously noted in research by the APPG for Entrepreneurship, the sharing economy is a unique segment of the overall economy and one deserving of bespoke policy attention. Though the Labour high command promised to table an Employment Bill within their first 100 days in office, it’s critical that enough time is taken to work out the specifics. Even the best intentioned legislation can end up causing trouble if it’s rushed through.
For our first interview in a new series, Anastasia Bektimirova sat down with Ben Johnson, former Adviser to the Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary, to chat about bridging government and innovation networks to seize the UK’s edge in science and technology.
They discussed:
What the new Government’s five missions mean for DSIT and its interaction with the sector
How to better deploy expertise and evidence into government
What needs to happen to make UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) as effective a delivery partner as possible
Stakeholder engagement beyond public consultations and roundtables
How the science and technology community can get the Government excited and compelled to invest resources
Moving from being comparatively good to objectively good at research commercialisation
Strategic advantage in science and technology beyond economic growth
This week we launched our United Growth report in partnership with Sumer. Based on a survey of entrepreneurs across every region of the UK, we got into the nitty-gritty of the challenges they face, their expectations about the future and their views on different policies that could make their lives easier.
As many of you will be acutely aware, it’s tough out there. By a ratio of more than six to one, business owners agree that economic inequality between the regions of the UK is a problem. And more agree than disagree that they’ve come close to closing in the previous six months. Nearly two in five are currently considering closing up.
With the Budget just around the corner, the Government will no doubt be interested to know that entrepreneurs feel that the tax burden is the single biggest obstacle holding back growth. Things could get worse.
On this, we know that the thousands of entrepreneurs in our network are worried about mooted changes to Capital Gains Tax (CGT). As our Research Director Eamonn Ives argues for CapX: “Though there is a logic to bringing rates of CGT and income tax closer together, nobody doubts that this would have harmful economic consequences – not least lowering the expected return to investment or company growth. If CGT is to rise, we urge the Chancellor to accompany such a move with paring measures such as base reform and targeted carve outs to ensure that genuine entrepreneurship does not get overly penalised in the process.”
The report was launched in our home away from home: the Cholmondeley Room in the House of Lords. After last week’s Labour-led launch, with Jonathan Reynolds and Lord McNicol, this week we crossed the floor of the House to host the Business Secretary’s opposite number, Kevin Hollinrake MP, and the Liberal Democrat MP Victoria Collins, a new Member who, like Kevin, used to be an entrepreneur. As I wrote for Forbes, concern over tax changes were echoed by Kevin, while Victoria expressed particular support for the calls in the report around extending devolution, which called for the granting ‘London-style’ powers to all metro mayors.
Victoria also backed the report’s call for business rates reform – suggesting a commercial landowner levy as an alternative – which aligns with the report’s recommendation for the adoption to tax in proportion to the value of the underlying land that premises sit on. This is an idea inspired by Andrew Dixon, one of our Advisers, who in 2018 commissioned a team to draw up a land value tax to reform business rates and support the struggling high street.
I expect you’ll be hearing a lot more from Sumer as they scale in their efforts to support small businesses. Read City A.M. recent profile of its founder Warren Mead to find out more.
What the Big Idea?
If you’re not already doing so, do give us a follow on Substack. This week we published our first Three Big Ideas, a new series where Eamonn, Anastasia and I share our thoughts on ideas that have captured our attention. The first covers self-driving cars, AI art, and measuring immigrant entrepreneurship. On the topic of visas, Eamonn has written the second deepdive into our Job Creators 2024 report, which is also on our Substack.
More Immigration?
There are few policy areas with as much chopping and changing as visa rules. Consultation after consultation, tweak after tweak, it’s beyond the wit of any business owner to keep on top of it.
I’m no expert, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve given an overview of the visa routes open to perplexed entrepreneurs and their (wannabee) employees – before passing on to someone qualified to give legal advice. In a few weeks, we’ll be hosting an actual expert: Dr Madeleine Sumption, Director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford and Member of the influential Migration Advisory Committee.
If you want to see things nudged in the right direction – come along to support us.
