Three Big Ideas #52

☀️ Eamonn Ives, Research Director

In a recent blog post, the ever-reliable Hannah Ritchie makes an interesting observation — that many of us are “individually optimistic, but collectively pessimistic.” She draws on a range of data that show how wide gulfs can exist between how people perceive how they themselves are doing versus how they think life is going for their fellow compatriots.

While reading, it occurred to me that a similar divergence has repeatedly shown up in our own surveys of founders. Last time out, fully 59% told us they were optimistic about the year ahead for their own business, even though just 8% thought the same about the economy as a whole. I wouldn’t dare criticise our esteemed respondents, but with the best will in the world, I can’t help but think there will have been some wishful thinking behind those results.

Then I thought to myself, “so what?” Suppose the 84% of founders who are pessimistic about the next 12 months for Britain’s economy are right. Would we be better off if they perfectly mirrored that sentiment about their own businesses? I hardly think so. If you’re one of the brave individuals who has taken the risk to start a company and do something different, it helps to be positive — even if that also means being a little Pollyannaish.

This isn’t an ode to blissful ignorance and unwarranted bullishness. Successful entrepreneurs are those who know when to stick as well as twist. But there’s an ocean of difference between realism and fatalism. As Ritchie concludes:

“If we think that nothing can be done to improve things, we’re unlikely to try. This is one reason why I try to emphasise that there are things that each of us can do to make the world a better place. We don’t have to just sit on our hands. Without a sense of agency, we can become cynical and fatalistic that anything can change.”

🌱 Philip Salter, Founder

In December, a paper titled AI as “Co-founder”: GenAI for Entrepreneurship was released that deserved far more attention outside academia. It provides rare, large-scale evidence that generative AI is already reshaping entrepreneurship in ways that cut against many popular assumptions about AI and market power.

The authors exploit the sudden release of ChatGPT as a global shock, comparing firm creation before and after its launch across neighbouring locations within the same city in China that differed in pre-existing AI-specific human capital. They identify a large, causal increase in small-firm entry — amounting to roughly 400,000 additional firms over two years, or around 6% of all new firms created nationally in the post-ChatGPT period — driven by reduced experience, financing and managerial constraints.

This result was not a given. Many have predicted that AI would reinforce concentration, entrenching large incumbents and reducing competition. Instead, the evidence points in the opposite direction: AI appears to act as a pro-competitive technology, compressing the minimum viable scale of entry and allowing individuals and small teams to replicate capabilities that previously required significant capital and labour.

This brings to mind the predictions of James Wise, Partner at Balderton Capital and Chair of the government’s Sovereign AI Unit, in his book Start-Up Century. Wise argues that the 20th-century model of working for a single large firm for most of one’s career is breaking down. Just as automation once shifted workers from farms to factories, AI and digital tools are now automating layers of corporate middle management and administrative work, pushing more people toward independent and entrepreneurial paths.

While this shift raises real challenges for individuals and policymakers alike, it also creates an opportunity for more people to exercise agency, pursue their own interests and build livelihoods through entrepreneurship.

🏘️ James Howat, Chief Economist, Labour Together

The 100-mile corridor between Oxford and Cambridge is one of the most exciting stretches of land on the planet. It serves as a crucible for British innovation and prosperity, yet even here the usual horsemen of stagnation hold us back: local politics, planning regulations, and financing (or lack thereof).

A new report authored by Labour Together and the Centre for British Progress details how we could rid ourselves of this unholy trinity and triple the GDP of the ‘Ox-Cam Corridor’. We call our plan Project Hawking.

Project Hawking would create a single development corporation — Hawking DevCo — and grant it supreme planning authority within the Ox-Cam Corridor. This would allow it to overrule any decision by local authorities within its boundaries that it believes undermines its mission, enabling it to deliver new infrastructure at pace.

It should also be afforded powerful land value capture tools — such as levying taxes on undeveloped land or congestion charges — which we believe could make the entire project self-funding. By buying land cheaply and granting planning permission and selling it for 100x multiples, Hawking DevCo would become a low-risk money-printing machine.

Government after government has promised to turn the Ox-Cam Corridor into a British Silicon Valley. Yet none have matched their ambitious rhetoric with workable plans. Ministers should give their backing to Project Hawking, and allow this small corner of England to pay massive dividends for the entire United Kingdom.

An Ounce of Prediction

In our latest interview for our UK AI Fieldbook series, Eamonn Ives speaks to Benedikt Thüngen about how AI is helping clinicians to avert medical crises before they arise.

High Networked Individuals

Entrepreneurial networks matter. Despite popular portrayals to the contrary, entrepreneurship is far less about cut-throat competition than it is about cooperation, shared knowledge and mutual support. This reality was reinforced by recent research we conducted with American Express for their Peer Power study.

Featured in The Times and City A.M. among others, you would be forgiven for taking the headline finding for granted: 94% of SME leaders in Britain believe that supporting their peers is critical to driving business success. Yet it’s easy to forget that most people aren’t business owners and don’t have close family members who run companies. For the majority, entrepreneurship remains something observed at a distance.

As a result, many people form their views about business through television and the mainstream media, which are more likely to present business through the lens of scandal than as a process of value creation. When entrepreneurship does appear on screen, it is often distorted and combative. A decade ago, 75% of entrepreneurs reported having a negative view of The Apprentice and Dragons’ Den — and there’s little reason to think that has materially changed. (That said, with fewer than half of 16–24-year-olds watching broadcast TV in an average week, the influence of these shows is already waning.)

But as everyone reading this will know, running a business is mostly about cooperation — whether that’s with employees, customers, suppliers or other founders. It makes business sense too. The Peer Power survey also found that 86% of those with strong networks said their businesses were profitable last year, compared with 66% of those with weaker networks.

The consequences of this framing are visible in public attitudes. According to the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in British businesses stands at just 51%. More striking still, 70% of Britons hold a moderate or high grievance against business, government and the rich. Businesses are not widely seen as a good in themselves: as many as 88% say they have an obligation to provide good-paying local jobs, while 86% say they should train and reskill workers.

These tensions are reflected in founders’ own perceptions of the media. As our Out of Focus report showed, entrepreneurs overwhelmingly believe Britain’s media fails to represent entrepreneurship accurately or fairly. Coverage is seen as narrow and misaligned with founders’ priorities, with nearly three-quarters saying the issues that matter most to them are underreported. Too much attention is given to unicorns, funding rounds and sensational stories, and too little to the realities of building and sustaining a business.

And yet, despite all this, Edelman’s data also suggest that business remains the only UK institution seen as both competent and ethical overall. By contrast, government is viewed as incompetent and unethical, the media as unethical and not very competent, and NGOs as ethical but not very competent.

None of this means we should import wholesale a stereotypical American attitude to business. But it does suggest something important: entrepreneurs have played a critical role throughout history, and continue to do so today, largely through cooperation rather than conflict. Recognising that — in how we talk about business, report on it and understand it — would be a good place to start.

Call on You

Despite the plethora of consultations affecting businesses — which subscribers to our APPG for Entrepreneurship newsletter are alerted to each month — it’s rare for us to recommend that our network of thousands respond to one. After all, consultations take time, and they are not always the best use of it.

But HM Treasury’s Tax Support for Entrepreneurs: Call for Evidence is the exception that proves the rule. It was launched alongside the Budget and will remain open until 28 February.

We know from experience that tax is one of the most important issues for entrepreneurs in our network. This call for evidence seeks your views on the effectiveness of existing tax incentives, the wider tax system for founders and scaling firms, and how the UK can better support these companies to start, scale and stay in the UK.

You might, for example, have a view on how tax cliff edges affect real-world scaling decisions. Treasury officials may understand these in theory, but only entrepreneurs can explain how they shape their behaviour: delaying hiring, selling early, relocating headquarters, or avoiding certain investors altogether.

Or you might be able to shed light on what genuinely determines whether founders reinvest after a successful exit. Again, only entrepreneurs can explain the factors — both financial and non-financial — that drive reinvestment decisions.

Or perhaps you can explain whether Business Asset Disposal Relief — or Entrepreneurs’ Relief before it — meaningfully influences your behaviour. BADR is frequently debated, but rarely grounded in direct entrepreneurial testimony. The Treasury wants to know whether it actually affects decisions to start, grow, sell or reinvest.

You do not need to answer every question. What officials are looking for is first-hand experience (e.g. this happened to my company when we hit X threshold), behavioural insight (e.g. this policy changed how we hired, raised capital or exited), specific examples (e.g. we lost a senior hire because our equity offer was no longer competitive once we outgrew the relevant scheme), and clear causality (e.g. we did Y because of Z tax rule).

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Pulling Rank

Let’s start the year on a positive note. Not grounded in hope, but in data. Despite the challenges, the UK remains one of the best places in the world to start and grow a business. Across multiple independent rankings, produced by different institutions using different methodologies, the UK sits comfortably in the global top tier. We aren’t at the frontier on every single metric — but we’re very close on many.

On innovation, the UK ranks sixth globally in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Global Innovation Index, which aggregates around 80 indicators — spanning institutions, human capital, infrastructure, market sophistication and innovation outputs. We perform especially well at turning innovation inputs into new technologies, creative goods and commercially viable ideas.

Caveats aside, Britain also leads in science. On the Nature Index, which tracks high-quality publications in leading journals, the UK ranks fourth globally. Four of the top five research institutions in Europe are British. On Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers 2025 list, the UK ranks third worldwide, reflecting a deep concentration of researchers whose work sits in the global top 1%.

Britain is a magnet for top talent too. INSEAD’s Global Talent Competitiveness Index places the UK firmly among the world’s leaders. In the latest Times Higher Education Rankings, two of the global top five universities are British — Oxford ranked first and Cambridge joint third. The QS World University Rankings also place two institutions in the top five, with Imperial ranked second and Oxford joint fourth.

This depth of knowledge shows up in the structure of the economy itself. On Harvard’s Economic Complexity Index, the UK sits in the top tier of advanced economies. It captures how diversified and sophisticated a country’s exports are, which is a proxy for accumulated, hard-to-replicate productive knowledge. On the Government AI Readiness Index, the UK ranks second globally, behind only the United States. It highlights strong policy coordination out of Westminster, including the AI Opportunities Action Plan, alongside major research partnerships with the EU and US.

It is easier to run a company in the UK than in most other countries. The Global Business Complexity Index deems the UK to have one of the least complex business environments in the world, based on performance across 292 indicators covering tax, accounting, payroll, human resources and entity management.

By international standards, the UK also remains one of the most open services markets in the world. According to the OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index, the UK ranks second overall among 51 economies analysed. London meanwhile ranks second globally in the Global Financial Centres Index. This depth of finance translates into scale: London attracted more VC investment in 2025 than Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Munich and Madrid combined, while the UK ranks fourth globally for unicorns on the Hurun Global Unicorn Index, behind only the United States, China and India.

It might not always feel like it, but the UK remains well governed. On the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index, it ranks fourteenth out of 143 countries analysed. For an economy built on services, contracts and intangible assets, that matters enormously. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index tells a similar story, placing the UK firmly within the “very clean” tier of public-sector environments.

These are not cherry-picked statistics. After reviewing around 70 international rankings, I filtered hard for robustness and relevance. Echoing our Research Director Eamonn Ives, there are always methodological criticisms to make with these kinds of rankings, but taken as a whole they paint a fair picture. On many of the hardest-to-build dimensions — innovation, research, services openness, finance and the rule of law — the UK consistently sits in the leading pack.

One could look at this wealth of evidence and conclude that everything is going swimmingly. To do so would be short-sighted. For a start, we aren’t the clear leaders in much, so there’s plenty of room for improvement in many areas. Second, competitor economies are swiftly catching up. Staying ahead of them now depends as much on new initiatives as on discipline. We need to double down on allowing existing strengths to compound, remove avoidable frictions and come up with innovative policies to lead the world. More on that in the year to come.

Three Big Ideas #51

Three Big Ideas is our fortnightly roundup of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.

This week, Eamonn Ives speaks up for free speech, Philip Salter opines on the innovation insights shed by 2025’s Nobel Prize in Economics winners, and Mann Virdee argues we need to broaden our skillsets in the changing economy.

Three Big Ideas #51

💬 Eamonn Ives, Research Director

There are some values we hold which appear so self-evidently worthwhile that it almost seems unnecessary to say so. Perhaps precisely because of that, they are also the ones most vulnerable to a determined challenger interrogating them.

In 2025, freedom of speech increasingly felt like one such value. High-profile cases abounded of people facing harsh consequences for harmlessly expressing their viewpoints. These were not just dramatic exceptions to the rule either – plenty of datasets show how freedom of expression in different guises has been in retreat across the world for decades.

Why this should matter for entrepreneurship might not be immediately obvious – but it does, and it should concern us all.

At its core, entrepreneurship is an act of discovery. It depends on founders questioning incumbents, testing unfashionable ideas, arguing against prevailing assumptions and persuading others to take risks with them. That takes more than just capital and skills. It requires a social environment where deviation from the status quo is not merely tolerated, but encouraged and indeed celebrated when it results in new, useful things.

History teaches us the value of toleration. It should be no surprise that many of the places that nurtured the Scientific Revolution during the 16th and 17th centuries went on to profit most from the Industrial Revolution that ensued. Similarly, we have repeatedly seen how émigrés fleeing persecution can transform the strength of their adopted nations’ economies – from industrial French Huguenots arriving in Britain, to Jewish scientists forced out of Central Europe contributing to the ongoing success of the United States.

Freedom of expression is therefore not only a civic concern, but an economic one as well. Though it’s patently true that exceptional founders can succeed even under illiberal regimes, I’d happily wager that the likelihood they will do so is lower. If we care about long-term dynamism in our economy, freedom of speech is something we ought to speak a lot more about.

🏅 Philip Salter, Founder

In the world of ideas, the big news of 2025 was the awarding of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt – three thinkers who, in different ways, helped explain how innovation becomes self-sustaining and why some places manage to turn new ideas into rising living standards.

Mokyr argues that lasting innovation depends on a steady flow of useful knowledge: both the scientific principles that explain how the world works and the practical know-how to turn those principles into working technologies. Britain, in the 18th century, offered an unusually fertile combination – a critical mass of skilled artisans, curious engineers and institutions flexible enough to let ideas spread and take root.

Aghion and Howitt’s breakthrough came in 1992, when they took Joseph Schumpeter’s insight about constant technological replacement and built the first growth model that properly captured it. Their article demonstrated mathematically how the incessant replacement – or Perennial Gale, if you will – of old technologies by new ones can yield sustained economic growth.

Before that, mainstream growth theory more or less ignored the churn of firms and the incentives that drive innovators. By embedding innovation into a realistic, dynamic economy, Aghion and Howitt opened the door to analysing everything from optimal R&D subsidies to the role of monopoly power – work that now underpins much of modern innovation policy.

This year’s prize should also remind us that entrepreneurs sit at the centre of this story. Entrepreneurship is not simply a route to personal or investor wealth; it is the mechanism through which societies discover better ways of doing things. Britain’s first innovation-driven growth era was powered by inventors, investors, engineers and tinkerers who embraced experimentation and were willing to break with convention.

Politics and policy played their part. While not perfect, our Parliament, as Mokyr shows, proved itself capable of brokering compromises and allowing policy shifts that prevented vested interests from blocking technologies that threatened them. That openness was a decisive advantage – and one of the reasons the Industrial Revolution took off here. Something to ponder upon as we head into 2026.

⚙️ Mann Virdee, Senior Researcher

What skills does it take to thrive in a modern economy? Many of us were taught to master the same types of skillsets in our careers – producing reports, spreadsheets and slide decks. We’re led to believe these will bring lifelong success and prosperity.

But it turns out that’s not true. AI can now do those tasks better than we can and it’s only going to improve. There are tough times ahead, particularly for those whose job is largely to read and write.

There’s an important aspect to this that’s not talked about enough. Focusing on such a narrow skillset means we’re losing other capabilities, such as the hands-on work of construction, manufacturing and DIY. That’s not just some feel-good zen philosophy about reconnecting with nature, it’s also a crucial part of how innovation works.

That idea has been at the heart of several pieces that have stayed in my mind this year, which collectively make a compelling case that there’s no substitute for hands-on learning-through-doing.

Dan Wang argues that process knowledge is being lost by offshoring supply chains, which in turn harms countries’ entrepreneurial ecosystems. The process of building, iterating, innovating, and improving manufacturing gets lost, and it’s just as important as the ‘Eureka’ moment in the lab. Libby Purves meanwhile makes the case that the decline in manual cars represents the loss of the ‘last necessary skills of physicality for the overeducated majority who don’t have a craft requiring routine dexterity’.

We’re fixated with removing friction and optimising our lives – but that very quest may inadvertently be eroding the competencies that make us creative, entrepreneurial and resilient. Without the friction of physical labour or complex coordination, our ability to iterate and problem-solve atrophies.

We don’t know what skills will be important in the future. In a rapidly changing world, conventional wisdom about the types of capabilities young people should focus on has been proven wrong time and time again. If we want to empower people to be entrepreneurial, we need to help them equip themselves with a broad foundation – including physical problem solving.

For a generation that experiences the present as an ‘anticipated memory’ and faces the challenge of increased automation, the best competitive advantage is re-engaging with the physical and the complex wherever and whenever we can.

‘Tis the Reason

Season’s Greetings! I promised myself that I wouldn’t end the year harping on about the dynamism-denting Employment Rights Bill, tempting as that is. Instead, let’s discuss some highlights, ways you can get more involved, and how you can support us in 2026.

Although we’ve taken to describing ourselves as a business group and community, we remain first – and probably foremost – a think tank. Our research is the bedrock of why we’re taken seriously. And 2025 was another feast for policy-minded readers. Of everything we published, here are three reports with the broadest appeal – ideal reading with a mince pie in hand.

In Ambition Unlimited, we captured the voices of young founders across the UK, showing that ambition alone isn’t enough. Outdated tax and investment incentives, burdensome regulation, and restrictive immigration rules are still holding back the next generation of innovators.

In Full Speed Ahead, we revealed that the UK’s accelerator and incubator landscape remains fragmented and often ineffective despite significant public investment – with weak evaluation, inconsistent standards and programmes that don’t always match what founders actually need.

Then finally in Job Creators 2025, we once again showed just how central international founders are to the UK’s fastest-growing companies. This year, 54% of Britain’s top 100 high-growth firms have at least one foreign-born founder. The report set out clear recommendations to ensure the UK stays open and attractive to the entrepreneurial talent that drives jobs, innovation and economic dynamism.

Ring Out

Our biggest internal innovation this year has been launching regular surveys of our network. Each wave has generated strong media coverage, but my favourite was this City A.M. piece arguing that government simply didn’t “get entrepreneurs.” Whether they’re now taking notice is ultimately for you to judge.

We genuinely couldn’t do this work without you. We want to grow this into a major strand of what we do, so if you’re an entrepreneur, please consider joining our survey panel. No one else can reach the founders in our network.

Claus for Thought

This year we moved our newsletters to Substack. Alongside Perennial Gale, we now regularly share ideas, analysis and interviews through Network Effects. For founders wanting timely insight into what’s emerging from Westminster that may shape your business, our Policy Updates have you covered, and Eamonn also provides a sharp, impartial monthly briefing through the APPG for Entrepreneurship newsletter.

If you fancy some thoughtful holiday reading, try my conversation with John Fingleton CBE, or our interview with Station F director Roxanne Varza — both rich with insight into how to support entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Room at the Inn?

We hosted 42 public events in 2025 – along with several private ones – to bring thousands of entrepreneurs together with front-benchers, back-benchers, advisers and civil servants from across the political spectrum.

When we started, we were happy just to see that people were willing to turn up to our events. Thankfully, that’s now the least of our worries – although we’re noticing that demand regularly outstrips supply, which creates problems of its own. We will never operate as a closed membership group – the best rooms require the most relevant people – but we will continue to reserve places for Advisers and Supporters (see below on how to join).

Wrapping Up

To close, here are five golden requests. I don’t expect everyone to do all of them – but if you can manage one or two, it would genuinely help our work.

First: join us for free as a Member. We now have more than 10,000 entrepreneurs in the network, and signing up helps us to understand what matters most to you. It also lets you express interest in writing for us or joining our private WhatsApp groups.

Second: we believe the UK can and should be the best place in the world to start and grow a business. If you agree, add your name to our Mission Statement.

Third: join our WhatsApp Community. We won’t inundate you, aiming to send an average of just one update a week, including sharing journalist requests directly with founders and the wider ecosystem.

Fourth: please share this newsletter. Believe it or not, there are still people out there who aren’t subscribed to this. We don’t have a budget to appear alongside the latest John Lewis or Coca-Cola Christmas adverts. Forwarding this to one or two people genuinely helps us grow.

Finally – the big one – consider becoming a Supporter, Adviser, Patron, or Corporate Partner. We know it’s not for everyone. If you’re just starting out or watching every pound, please don’t feel any pressure. But if £120 a year is manageable, and you value being part of a community that brings founders and the wider ecosystem together – while strengthening the environment for entrepreneurs across the UK – becoming a Supporter is a meaningful way to help that work continue, with priority access to our events along the way.

While we already have big plans for 2026, many of our best ideas come from our readers, so if you have thoughts on what we should do, or what we could do together, I’d love to hear from you.

Ultimately, our work is in service of entrepreneurs. Everything we do comes back to individual founders whose contributions to society are all too often underappreciated. Politicians can talk endlessly about growth, but entrepreneurs are the hinge on which progress swings.

This will be the last Perennial Gale of the year. But true to this newsletter’s name, we’ll be back on 2 January. For those who’ll miss our policy presents, join Network Effects to hear the three biggest ideas in entrepreneurship before the year is out.

Three Big Ideas #50

Three Big Ideas is our fortnightly roundup of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.

This week, Eamonn Ives goes in to bat for GDP, Mann Virdee reflects on reasons to be optimistic as we go into 2026, and James Graham of the Prosperity Institute argues that financial crime regulations are not fit for purpose.

Three Big Ideas #50

📈 Eamonn Ives, Research Director

One of our guiding beliefs here at The Entrepreneurs Network is that economic growth is something worth celebrating. In recent years, thanks in no small part to the widening reach of the progress studies movement, appreciation for the importance of economic growth has noticeably increased. The Prime Minister himself regularly preaches the gospel of why expanding the size of the economy matters. But we’d be kidding ourselves if we thought there weren’t still swathes of indifference among society to economic growth, not to mention stubborn pockets of resistance.

It’s not hard to see why we’re in the minority. Most of us ‘engage’ with economic growth by occasionally hearing about what’s happened to Gross Domestic Product in a given month – has it gone up by a tenth of a single percentage point, or down? Measly marginal updates one way or the other scarcely make for compelling news. As such, it’s understandable why many people place greater priority on other goals in their lives.

Moreover, it’s not as if GDP is a perfect measure. Famously, if I cleaned my apartment myself, Britain’s GDP figure wouldn’t budge an inch – but it would if I paid a professional to. Nor does GDP do a good job of encompassing things like the environment either. If I chop down a forest and sell the timber one year, economic growth on paper might rocket upward – even if we all know that rate won’t be sustained the following year.

Having said all this, GDP persists as one of the most important indicators we have. Why? In a recent article, Brian Albrecht eloquently explains that despite its fallibility, GDP is nonetheless a robust proxy for much of what we hold dear in life. Higher GDP per capita, he notes, correlates with longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, higher educational attainment, reduced extreme poverty, and higher self-reported happiness.

When telling the story of economic growth, perhaps it’s incumbent on us to focus more on these outcomes rather than simply reeling off cold dry numbers on a spreadsheet.

🪞 Mann Virdee, Senior Researcher

Christmas is for many a natural time of reflection. As we come to the end of 2025, what can we tell future historians looking back about what life was like at this moment in time in the UK?

There are times when it’s hard not to get carried away by the negativity about Britain’s potential for prosperity. We learnt yesterday that unemployment has risen to a four-year high of 5.1%, and it’s hitting the youngest hardest. I think the weakening labour market is a sign that things might get a lot worse before they get better.

The disruption from AI is also increasingly visible. AI is making it harder for employers to identify strong candidates, and it is also being used to perform tasks new graduates would previously have done in the earliest stages of their career in a fraction of the time and to a higher standard. What does that mean for the prospects of young people and social dislocation? I think we’re about to find out.

But there are developments that suggest, even if faintly, that a burgeoning pro-growth consensus is finally taking hold.

Yesterday, the Housing Minister announced reforms to deliver more homes. That includes the addition of a default ‘yes’ for housing developments around train stations, which may be a key to unlocking productivity growth. Recently, the Prime Minister has committed to implementing all the excellent recommendations from the Nuclear Taskforce, which should help lower energy costs in the long term. The Home Secretary has said the best and brightest talent will be fast-tracked to help Britain regain lost ground in the global race for talent.

These are reasons to be optimistic. We’re starting to see, admittedly more in rhetoric than reality at the moment, that this Government is serious about unblocking the arteries of the economy – in planning, energy and the labour market.

If 2025 was the year the problem was diagnosed, let’s hope it’s also remembered as the year we started to address it too.

🛑 James Graham, Senior Researcher, Prosperity Institute

Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations have exploded in scope in recent years, degrading our financial landscape.

Prior to 2002, responsibility for financial crime sat with the police. This changed with the passage of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, which represented a legal and philosophical shift. Banks and private businesses became responsible not only for providing financial services to their customers, but also for ensuring they were not criminals.

Since 2002, the burden placed upon banks has only expanded, with the most significant update being the Information on the Payer regulations in 2017. Neither the 2002 legislation nor subsequent regulations were at the behest of the British Parliament. Rather, they were required for us to abide by European Union directives.

In British common law, every individual is considered innocent until proven guilty, and their right to privacy is nearly absolute. The AML and KYC regime has turned this on its head. People are now treated with suspicion and presumed guilty – not just those in high finance, but ordinary people doing things such as purchasing a home. To prove their innocence and access basic financial services, customers must hand over vast amounts of private information to prove they are who they say they are.

This is not only wrong in principle, it has not been proven effective at preventing crime and it creates barriers for entrepreneurs who have to wait weeks rather than hours for new bank accounts, who pay higher fees to cover the £34 billion a year which banks must spend on complying with regulations, and who quite likely find themselves amongst the hundreds of thousands of accounts debanked every year. If that is you, please do let us know by completing our survey, which seeks to build and amplify a coalition of the debanked.

It is time to seriously rethink our financial crime architecture. The state should not require the private sector to enforce flawed regulations that stifle enterprise and undermine the British common law tradition.

No Country for Young Workers

Unemployment is back in the news. As John Burn-Murdoch has written in the Financial Times, the proportion of young people in the UK who are neither working, seeking work, in education nor raising children has doubled over the past decade. In The Telegraph, Tim Wallace shows that Britain has experienced the sharpest rise in youth unemployment across the G7. Rachel Wolf, meanwhile, describes how the lives of those on the margins of the labour market are being hollowed out.

Putting any pretence of false modesty aside for a moment, I predicted this would happen back in May.

All unemployment is bad, but youth unemployment is uniquely pernicious. Early-career joblessness leads to persistent earnings losses, skill depreciation and weaker attachment to the labour market that can last for decades. These scarring dynamics do not just harm individuals; they reduce business formation, slow productivity growth and raise the economy’s long-run unemployment rate. Youth unemployment is not just a cyclical inconvenience but a structural drag on entrepreneurial dynamism and growth.

This is partly why the Government has committed £820 million with the aim of supporting nearly one million young people into work. The plan is to create 350,000 workplace opportunities, expand Youth Hubs, and introduce a “Jobs Guarantee” offering fully funded, six-month placements for long-term unemployed 18-to-21-year-olds in high-need areas. For eligible businesses, the attraction is straightforward: taxpayers cover 100% of wages and training costs for these placements.

The Government will also spend a further £725 million to try to generate 50,000 new apprenticeships over the next three years. Here too, the incentives for eligible businesses are significant, with taxpayers covering 100% of training costs for apprentices under 25, removing the previous co-investment requirement.

Success in both cases will depend on employer take-up, whether placements resemble real jobs rather than holding patterns, and whether there is clear progression into unsubsidised employment.

The Government, however, is not doing itself any favours. Since coming to power, the Employer National Insurance Contribution changes announced at Labour’s first Budget are likely to fall largely on employees — through lower wages — and hardest on the young, who are more exposed to job losses and more likely to be priced out of low-productivity roles altogether.

In addition, from 1 April 2026 the National Living Wage (for those aged 21 and over) will rise to £12.71 an hour, while the minimum wage for 18-to-20-year-olds will jump to around £10.85 — an increase of roughly 8.5%. Rates for under-18s and apprentices will also rise to around £8 an hour. It is possible to strike a balance on minimum wages without causing excessive unemployment, but when the Labour-aligned Resolution Foundation is warning that the increase for 18-to-20-year-olds is “unnecessarily big”, and risks making it harder for them to find work, alarm bells should be ringing.

Then there is the Employment Rights Bill, which remains far from settled. While the shift away from day-one unfair dismissal rights toward a six-month qualifying period is welcome, it still risks making employers more cautious about taking on new staff — particularly young and inexperienced workers.

And there is still plenty more to be concerned about in the Bill. Under current law, compensation for unfair dismissal is capped at the lower of 52 weeks’ pay or a statutory maximum (around £118,000). The original proposal was to remove this cap entirely – a move rejected this week by the House of Lords. Unlimited awards would significantly increase the tail risk of hiring, especially in sectors like tech, where startups must compete on pay with large firms but lack the HR capacity to manage legal risk. For some of our most innovative firms, this risk would be existential.

Alongside this sit expanded union ballot and recognition rules, enhanced protections around industrial action and a range of other changes that, taken together, would make many business owners markedly more reluctant to hire if passed in their current form.

This is not to dismiss the importance of worker protections — but there is a balance to be struck. Our latest Entrepreneurs Survey provides one of the clearest signals yet of how the UK’s most ambitious founders view the Employment Rights Bill. Among those aware of the legislation, 80% believe it will have a negative impact on the economy, with more than 40% expecting the impact to be “very negative”. Just 4% believe it will have a positive effect.

The Government can’t say they weren’t warned.

Reckoned With

The Invest in Women Taskforce has published its annual report, and the headline is that the fund has now reached £635 million in commitments from institutions including Barclays, M&G, BGF, Aviva, Morgan Stanley, Nationwide and the British Business Bank.

The funding is designed to work on two fronts. Around £270 million will support the pipeline of female fund managers, enabling them to invest in female and mixed-gender founding teams. The remaining £365 million will be deployed directly by institutional investors into those companies.

The Entrepreneurs Network also gets a mention in the report for our work on angel investment, highlighting both regional disparities and the growing – though still limited – participation of women angels.

Read it in full here.

Humanity’s Hallmark

If you haven’t yet signed our Mission Statement, you can do so here. We’ll publish the first set of names in the new year, and continue adding to it over the months, years and decades ahead. Our mission is Sisyphean — and that is precisely why it matters.

On Your Marks

I’m delighted to share that Mark McCormack, Founder and co-CEO of Talking Tables, has joined us as an Adviser. Mark brings over 25 years of experience growing Talking Tables to a £20m+ turnover international business.

Mark is already providing a wealth of knowledge on policies around exporting and trade tariffs. He believes, like us, that entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of the UK economy, and that we help facilitate getting entrepreneurs heard by Westminster. Get in touch if you’re keen to find out more about becoming an Adviser in 2026.

What We Believe

This week, prompted by a rather contentious LinkedIn post from Johann Nordhus Westarp, Sifted’s Martin Coulter asks the question: Can you be left-wing and an ‘elite founder’?

In his article, Coulter quotes our latest Entrepreneurs Survey, which revealed that founders have shifted their political allegiances slightly in the last few months towards the Conservatives and Reform (although it’s worth pointing out that the margins are still very tight).

I’ve managed to hold myself back from writing a diatribe on political economy — for today at least — because I figured it would be more constructive to set out what we as an organisation fundamentally believe.

This idea came from a discussion with our newest Adviser, Richard Browning, who launched the world’s first human jet suit, and who is the first signatory to our mission statement. This is a public pronouncement, which we’re encouraging all of our supporters to put their names to. You don’t need to be an entrepreneur to sign this — just someone who shares our worldview. So, are you with us?

A hallmark of humanity is our desire to solve problems. When we do that through markets — by creating new goods, services and ways of doing things — we call it entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship is one of the most powerful engines of productivity and progress. Throughout history, entrepreneurial ventures have transformed societies, lifting people from subsistence to prosperity.

Entrepreneurs pioneer new ideas, create jobs and drive the breakthroughs that raise living standards — not only today, but for generations to come. Supporting and nurturing entrepreneurship is essential if we are to live healthier, happier and more meaningful lives.

But progress doesn’t happen by accident. It is shaped by the choices made every day by entrepreneurs and by those who support them — their teams, mentors, investors, and the wider ecosystem.

And while the entrepreneurial impulse may be innate, its success depends on the environment around it. Entrepreneurs need the right laws, regulations, institutions, incentives, infrastructure, talent, capital and culture to thrive.

We believe the United Kingdom can and should be the best place in the world to start and grow a business.

Out of Focus

Most people — including, and perhaps most importantly, most politicians — have never run a business. That’s why the way journalists cover entrepreneurship really matters.

With support from Pathos Communications, we surveyed founders across our network to understand how they view the media’s portrayal of Britain’s startup ecosystem.

In Out of Focus, we found that five times as many founders disagree (60%) as agree (12%) that journalists do a good job of covering entrepreneurship. Most also said they had seen no improvement in the quantity or quality of coverage in recent years. And nearly three quarters feel that the issues that matter most to them get too little attention, compared with just 6% who feel they receive enough.

Alongside the quantitative data, founders shared their views in their own words. Many want the media to look beyond London-based, high-valuation tech stories and pay more attention to the everyday — and often unglamorous — realities of building a business. Others feel the tone around success and wealth creation could be fairer, and that journalists would benefit from a deeper understanding of entrepreneurship. There is also strong appetite for broader representation: across sectors, regions, backgrounds and stages of growth.

This isn’t intended as a broadside against the broadsheets. Founders were conscious of their own shortcomings too: while 30% feel entrepreneurs present themselves well in the media, 36% do not. And if you’re a journalist reading this, you’re already demonstrating a deep interest in entrepreneurship. Perhaps the main takeaway is that entrepreneurs still believe the media matters. Journalists continue to shape how policymakers, investors and the public understand risk-taking, innovation and economic dynamism.

The report — and its launch in the House of Lords — has already generated productive discussion on LinkedIn. We’re now speaking with several journalists about how we can help constructively bridge the gap between entrepreneurs and the media. Those in our WhatsApp community will know we’re already doing this by sharing live opportunities from journalists – so if you haven’t joined yet, now’s the time to do so.

Three Big Ideas #49

📰 Philip Salter, Founder

Our latest briefing paper, Out of Focus, is different from most of our reports. Rather than our usual wide-ranging analysis or deep dive into technical policy, we used our latest Quarterly Survey to ask a simple but vital question: What do entrepreneurs think about the UK’s media landscape?

The verdict is clear: founders are dissatisfied. Sixty percent of founders disagree with the idea that journalists are covering the sector well, while only 12% agree. Yet there is also introspection. Founders are critical of their own efforts, with more believing they represent themselves poorly than those who think they get it right.

The data also points to stagnation. Around 40% of respondents have seen no improvement in either the quality or quantity of coverage in recent years. Even more concerning is the misalignment of priorities: 74% of founders feel the media ignores the issues that matter to them most, compared to only 6% who feel the press is focusing on the right topics.

This matters because our mission goes beyond policy – we also want to shift culture. Championing entrepreneurs in the public debate is a core pillar of our work. This drive for cultural change is why we are calling for initiatives such as a modern successor to the Great Exhibition of 1851 and a new order of chivalry to elevate the status of British innovators.

To be clear, we are not suggesting any interventions are required to our relatively free press. Nor are we ignoring the shift to digital – we know that 75% of young adults rely on social media for news. Yet, the reality remains that the country’s decision-makers still rely on mainstream media to form their views.

As a former journalist, I know the pressures of the job. This is not a critique of the trade, but a challenge to everyone across the ecosystem. We need to think more entrepreneurially about how we tell the story of British business, both to the influential elite and the wider public.

In our small way, we are taking practical steps to fix this. We have launched an interview series here on Network Effects to highlight leadership voices, and created a free WhatsApp Community where we share occasional media opportunities to help democratise access to the press.

🪟 Eamonn Ives, Research Director

Anyone who’s visited Washington, DC will know vehicle licence plates are emblazoned with the words “End Taxation Without Representation.” A new law passed by President Trump – the IRS MATH Act – takes the principle a step further. It compels America’s tax agency to explain precisely what it is changing on a return when it believes a taxpayer has made an error, and grants individuals 60 days to challenge any decisions before they’re made final.

The logic is straightforward, but the consequences could be profound. Most obviously, taxpayers should over time learn how to file returns more accurately – helping to shrink the tax gap, and also allowing the IRS to spend more time rooting out genuine tax evasion rather than punishing innocent mistakes. Further, if it helps to build trust with taxpayers, we might see more people decide to file by themselves, without shelling out on expensive accountants for peace of mind. Finally, someone who takes a more cynical view of the IRS may also think that by requiring them to categorically prove a mistake, it will reduce the likelihood of ‘over-taxation’.

HM Revenue and Customs should take inspiration. To its credit, earlier this year it consulted on its approach to dispute resolution. A large portion of the consultation focused on ‘Revenue Correction Notices’ (RCNs), which allow HMRC to amend a taxpayer’s return where it has reason to believe an error has been made. When considering responses to the consultation, HMRC acknowledged that “[a]lmost all respondents supported the idea that there should be a requirement for HMRC to provide an explanation for a revenue correction,” and that “[m]any respondents considered providing clear explanations should already be standard practice and expressed concern that HMRC’s explanations in revenue correction notices are often vague and inadequate.” They should heed this feedback, and accelerate reforms to increase transparency accordingly.

So much commentary on taxation understandably centres on headline rates, thresholds and allowances. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the administrative mechanics involved in actually paying what’s owed. Changes that make that process more straightforward should be championed. Of course, reducing overall tax complexity must be the priority, but greater clarity should be a close second. An end to taxation without explanation would be a nice reprieve to Britain’s beleaguered businesses.

📝 Mann Virdee, Senior Researcher

Last month, I read with interest that 995 people had applied for a single public affairs role at the London School of Economics.

Was this perhaps a particularly desirable role, a sign of a tough job market, or might AI have a role to play by making it easier to write cover letters? I suspect it’s a combination of all three.

Then, last week, I came across Andrew Orlowski’s op-ed. In this article, Andrew argues that generative AI is primarily a tool to fabricate, used by those pretending to be something they are not. I think that’s a little harsh and overly simplistic. But there may be more than a grain of truth in his conclusion: AI disproportionately rewards the lazy and dishonest, and that those who decline to use it are punished.

In support of his argument, Andrew cites a recent economics paper which focuses on how AI disrupts markets that have traditionally relied on writing as a signal of quality, and specifically the impact of applicants using AI to produce cover letters. The paper finds that:

“employers are less able to identify high-ability workers, causing the market to become significantly less meritocratic.”

As a result, employers hired fewer high-quality candidates and more low-quality candidates.

Now back to that job at the LSE. The hiring manager for that role would disagree with that paper. He claims that generative AI is actually a hindrance to applicants because it provides bland and easy-to-spot responses. He added that the LSE does not use AI to filter applications, and that each response is read by a recruiting panel member.

That’s all well and good for a large institution, but what does it mean for entrepreneurs?

It’s time to question the way we go about assessing applicants’ suitability for a role. For entrepreneurs in small teams, recruiting a good candidate can be the difference between success and failure. They don’t have the time to read through 995 applications. The real takeaway for entrepreneurs is that they are not recruiting to find the best writer, but the best problem solver. It’s more productive to test and filter applicants on how they would approach a problem rather than assess them on how well they write a cover letter.

Three Big Ideas #49

Three Big Ideas is our fortnightly roundup of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.

This week, Philip Salter discusses our latest research on how founders think about national media, Eamonn Ives urges HMRC to follow America’s lead when it comes to tax transparency, and Mann Virdee ponders how AI is altering the hiring landscape.

Speculative Bubbles

We’re all stuck in our own bubbles. Try as we might, we’re naturally drawn to people who share our views, backgrounds or interests. So when the Budget landed this week, I realised that I sit roundly in two bubbles that saw it very differently: the entrepreneurship ecosystem bubble and the economics bubble.

First, the entrepreneurial ecosystem bubble. Viewed through this lens (to mix my metaphors), the Chancellor – advised by the incisive and indomitable Alex Depledge, the Treasury’s first Entrepreneurship Adviser – absolutely delivered. Depledge’s Entrepreneurship in the UK prospectus closely reflects many of the priorities of high-growth founders. As I wrote in our snap response: “The doubling of Enterprise Management Incentive allowances and the expansion of the Enterprise Investment Scheme stand out as a clear response from the Government to calls from entrepreneurs.”

We were also pleased to see some movement on the Stamp Duty Reserve Tax. As our Research Director Eamonn Ives explains: “[It] is an international outlier and a relic of a bygone age. It depresses share prices, increases the cost of capital and adds friction to our beleaguered markets.” In the next Budget, as argued in Backing Breakthrough Businesses, the Government should just scrap the whole tax.

Arguably the most underappreciated announcement was around procurement. Public procurement makes up around 15% of UK GDP, which makes it one of the largest single levers the state controls. It should be driving innovation – but it isn’t.

Announcements to expand Advance Market Commitments, the creation of an Innovation Marketplace to fast-track innovative solutions, and the appointment of Procurement Innovation Champions across all departments, all sound encouraging. It’s about time a government started thinking creatively about how to harness procurement’s power.

But we – including many reading this – really need to come together to understand why public procurement is so bureaucratic and how to unpick it. We aren’t the only country to suffer from this, though many countries do procurement better. Fundamentally, it can’t just be about layering the above on top of the current system; we need a genuine reset.

Finally, the Call for Evidence on Tax Support for Entrepreneurs, which launched alongside the Budget, is a welcome way to keep the conversation and momentum going. As well as looking at current schemes, you’ll have the chance to contribute ideas on things like how the government can strengthen the investment pipeline, why exited founders do or do not reinvest, and whether Business Asset Disposal Relief (BADR) is effective. I expect we’ll be integrating some of these questions into our Entrepreneurs Survey, so do let us know if you’re keen to partner on this work.

Now to the second bubble: the economics bubble. As a think tank, we’re grounded in and by economics, and it’s fair to say that most economists weren’t overly enamoured with the Chancellor’s Budget.

The Economist was eloquently blunt (paywall): “The tax-and-spend party has taxed and spent,” and “The state has never been so expensively funded, yet seemed so tired.” Paul Johnson, formerly of the IFS, spoke for many in the profession (paywall). I would summarise him and others as criticising big tax rises without reform, debt still rising, a barely better-than-even chance of meeting the fiscal target, repeated U-turns on tax and welfare, and an overall sense of a government lacking strategy and direction.

I won’t try to thread the needle here. It’s possible for a Budget to contain strong micro-level reforms that help entrepreneurs while still falling short on the foundational reforms that underpin growth. As we argued in Building Blocks:

“While remedying small issues can be important, there’s a danger that too much attention in policymaking is afforded to them, while more fundamental problems go unchecked. We contend that even marginal policy improvements in any of these bigger areas – from simplifying our country’s planning rules, to rationalising the tax code, to modernising the visa system – will do more to ensure we are genuinely offering the best possible platform from which to unleash the full potential of entrepreneurship and innovation in Britain.”

Finally, these lenses ignore others. As Enterprise Nation reveals in the reaction from some of the more than 150,000 small business owners they support, there are concerns about rising costs, squeezed margins, frozen thresholds, tax pressures, wage pressures and a lack of growth measures. Similarly, in his weekly must-read newsletter (sign up here), Beauhurst’s Henry Whorwood states:

“[I]f you’re starting a business that doesn’t fit the equity and grant funding model, you’re left out in the cold. Indeed, you are clobbered with onerous employee rights, minimum wage increases, and record employer NI contributions. Instead of ever more fine-grained interventions, we need to make it easier and cheaper to create jobs in every sector.”

I managed to avoid the tired framing of this being “the good, the bad and the ugly” Budget. Nor did I call it “a tale of two Budgets.” But there’s a reason these idioms are as hackneyed as they are.

It’s up to you to decide which bubble you’re in, and which lens matters most.
Rights Call

I’ll keep this brief. It’s good to see the government scrap the plan to give workers the right to claim unfair dismissal from their first day in a job. Reducing the qualifying period from the current two years to six months is a compromise employers can live with. But while this was the worst part of the draft bill, there’s a lot more they’ll need to unpick. Drop me a message if you’d like to be involved.

Cometh the Hour

I’m delighted to share that Dr Mann Virdee has joined us as a Senior Researcher. Before joining The Entrepreneurs Network, Mann led the Council on Geostrategy’s work exploring how the United Kingdom can build a more competitive and resilient science and technology base. He previously worked at RAND Europe, the UK Parliament, and the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and IMF.

Mann’s research has covered areas such as AI, energy, infrastructure, quantum computing, R&D, 5G, space, the life sciences, civil service reform and Foreign Direct Investment. Drop him an email here, follow him on X here, and connect with him on LinkedIn here.

Autumn Budget 2025 – Our snap reaction

This afternoon, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves gave the 2025 Autumn Budget. Read below for our team’s snap reaction to some of the main points concerning economic growth, innovation and entrepreneurship.

We’ll be digging into things in more depth later in the week — so stay tuned by subscribing to our Friday newsletter, Perennial Gale, if you haven’t already.

🍂💷 What does today’s Autumn Budget mean for Britain’s startup community?

Here are our snap judgements on some of the key announcements for entrepreneurs across the country.

Thread below! 🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/SAywpUAHn6

— The Entrepreneurs Network (@TenThinkTank) November 26, 2025

On the Autumn Budget in general 

Philip Salter, Founder of The Entrepreneurs Network said:

“Despite a challenging economic environment of sluggish growth, stagnant productivity and rising taxes, and a failure to deliver the fundamental tax reform the system desperately needs, this Budget includes targeted measures to support the UK’s entrepreneurial ecosystem that ambitious founders will welcome.

“Unlike the Chancellor’s first Budget, there were no significant unwelcome surprises, with a number of measures directly addressing founders’ priorities. The doubling of Enterprise Management Incentive allowances and the expansion of the Enterprise Investment Scheme stand out as a clear response from the Government to calls from entrepreneurs.

“Entrepreneurs will also welcome the Call for Evidence on supporting companies to start, scale and stay in the UK. But with our latest survey showing that more than a quarter of ambitious entrepreneurs are considering leaving the UK in the next 12 months, this focus couldn’t come soon enough.”

On the new UK Listing Relief 

Eamonn Ives, Research Director at The Entrepreneurs Network said:

“Britain’s 0.5% Stamp Duty Reserve Tax that is paid when anyone buys shares in a UK-listed company is an international outlier and a relic of a bygone age. It depresses share prices, increases the cost of capital and adds friction to our beleaguered markets. 

“A three-year SDRT holiday is therefore welcome, but given that most firms and investors operate on far longer time horizons than that, its overall effect will be muted. If the Government accepts the logic that SDRT is not fit for purpose, it should chart a course to abolish it entirely.”

On changes to EMI

Mann Virdee, Senior Researcher at The Entrepreneurs Network said:

“It’s encouraging to see that the Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) is being expanded. Currently, a company can offer EMIs if it has both assets of £30 million or less, and fewer than 250 full-time employees. The Chancellor announced that the gross asset test is being quadrupled to £120 million, and the employee limit is being doubled to 500 employees. Doing so allows startups to attract and retain talent from larger companies when they don’t have the resources to compete on salaries.”

On public sector procurement driving innovation

Philip Salter, Founder of The Entrepreneurs Network said:

“Public sector procurement accounts for 15% of GDP – a massive economic lever that should be driving innovation. But it isn’t.

“The recent Procurement Act didn’t go nearly far enough to unlock this potential. That’s why it’s encouraging to see the Government revisit procurement reform in the Budget.

“While the devil will be in the detail and implementation, three initiatives show promise: expanding Advance Market Commitments to drive innovation, creating an Innovation Marketplace to fast-track innovative solutions, and appointing Procurement Innovation Champions across all departments.

“These measures suggest the government is starting to think creatively about how to harness procurement’s power.”

On the Nuclear Regulatory Review 2025

Eamonn Ives, Research Director at The Entrepreneurs Network said:

“Access to cheap, reliable energy is critical to future economic growth. Nuclear power should sit at the heart of Britain’s decarbonisation mission, but presently we have some of the highest construction costs in the world.

“Reforms set out this week by John Fingleton in the Nuclear Regulatory Review 2025 could slash costs and expedite gigawatts of additional clean power to the grid. If the Government is as serious about delivering growth and halting climate change as it says it is, it must accept the Review’s recommendations in full.”  

On attracting and retaining talent

Mann Virdee, Senior Researcher at The Entrepreneurs Network said:

“As we recently revealed, 54% of the UK’s fastest-growing businesses have at least one founder – and often multiple – who was born overseas. High visa costs, together with slow processing times, are making Britain uncompetitive in the race for the world’s best and brightest researchers and entrepreneurs. As such, we are pleased to see the Government acknowledge the value of high-skilled immigration to the economy. 

“The Budget reiterated that the Home Office will introduce reforms to the High Potential Individual, Innovator Founder, and Global Talent visas. We hope that these changes streamline access to top-tier talent in support of the UK’s modern Industrial Strategy.”

R&D Tax Relief Delays and Silence are Stalling UK Innovation

We recently convened a roundtable of founders and business advisers to talk candidly about R&D tax relief. Following the event, we put out a call for further evidence, which has been fed into this policy brief. What emerged was a plea for predictability, clarity and the kind of practical engagement that lets companies plan, hire and build.

Half the Battlers

To those outside the entrepreneurial ecosystem, the fact that more than half of the UK’s fastest-growing businesses have a foreign-born founder often comes as a surprise.

This outsized contribution certainly surprised me when I first dipped my toe in the entrepreneurial waters while interviewing entrepreneurs at City A.M. Not that it was a ‘fact’ back then. To put a number on the phenomenon, we had to team up with one of our longest-serving Advisers, Beauhurst’s Henry Whorwood. Combining their proprietary fundraising data with Eamonn Ives’ methodical desk research meant that this week, in partnership with Kingsley Napley, we were able to reveal in Job Creators 2025 that 54% of the UK’s fastest-growing businesses have at least one founder – and often multiple – who was born overseas.

Among the 219 founders behind this year’s fastest-growing companies, 42% came from abroad – remarkable given immigrants make up less than half that in the population at large. Of the 54 immigrant-founded firms, almost half were created entirely by foreign-born teams, while the rest were built by mixed founding teams. This shows how international founders typically complement, rather than compete with, domestic talent. Put simply, this cohort of immigrant founders is more than twice as entrepreneurial as their population share would predict.

There are plenty of theories for why immigrants are more entrepreneurial – from immigration self-selecting for risk-takers, to blocked mobility in traditional labour markets, to the fact that immigrants are more likely to cluster in cities where agglomeration effects are strongest. Whatever the mix, the UK has clearly tapped into an extraordinary resource that we must protect.

The case studies in the report reveal the kind of frontier-level innovation immigrant founders bring to Britain. Teru Adachi is building cyber-intelligence tools that expose hidden threats in global supply chains. Dimitri Masin is developing AI systems for high-stakes financial environments. Kevin Lester is revolutionising how financial institutions manage risk. And in the NHS, Jing Ouyang is reinventing hospital workforce planning with technology that frees up time and improves care.

To get more Terus, Dimitris, Kevins and Jings, we set out several straightforward tweaks that could be made to the immigration system: 1) reforming the Global Talent visa so it welcomes world-class operators and experienced tech executives; 2) making the Innovator Founder visa functional by trusting endorsers and aligning settlement criteria with real startup timelines; 3) creating a selective Spinout visa for graduates and academics linked to high-quality incubators; and 4) reducing the cost and admin burden on early-stage firms by freezing fees and allowing staggered payments.

The numbers involved – whether in people or cost to the Exchequer – are tiny. But if we attract more incredible entrepreneurs as a result, the returns to the country would be enormous.

Of course, visas aren’t the whole story. One thing I’ve learned from talking with Britain’s most ambitious founders – including many on this list who have raised millions – is that they’re acutely aware of incentives and disincentives. Unlike some ministers I’ve met over the years (who will remain nameless), they all know their EIS from their EMI, and what other countries are offering. They also, like everyone else, want to feel welcome in the country to which they’re offering up blood, sweat and tears to realise their bold visions.

We know – because you told us so – that more than a quarter of entrepreneurs are considering leaving the UK in the next 12 months. I don’t want to get doomy and gloomy, but a lot hangs in the balance ahead of next week’s Budget. Over to you, Rachel.

Policy Fix

Patron – and friend of The Entrepreneurs Network – Steve Rigby has launched a new podcast: The Policy Fix. His first guest is the inimitable Rupert Soames, Chair of the CBI, and it’s available on Apple, YouTube, Spotify. Do give it a listen.

You Dropped This

Another week, another new Adviser: Peter King, Director of Business Banking at OakNorth. He’ll draw on his experience to highlight how the UK’s “missing middle” of scaleups is underserved, how regulation slows responsive lending, and how better data infrastructure could unlock faster, more flexible finance. As he put it: “The Entrepreneurs Network brings together ambitious business leaders, ecosystem players and advisors so that we all raise our game.”

If you want to join Peter and others in our mission to make the UK the best place in the world to start and grow a business, find out more about becoming an Adviser here.

True to

We’ve updated our Membership sign-up form. It’s free to join, and by doing so you’ll stay updated on our work, be invited to the events and opportunities most relevant to you, and help us prioritise what matters most to entrepreneurs.

Three Big Ideas #48

Three Big Ideas is our fortnightly roundup of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.

This week, Philip Salter explains how Europe can grow again, Eamonn Ives defends university rankings, and Rebecca Hill from the Campaign for Science and Engineering reveals what the public think about R&D.

Three Big Ideas #48

🇪🇺 Philip Salter, Founder

Stagnation now threatens Europe’s ability to fund its welfare states, stay globally competitive and defend its values. (Those values, I should add, are also ours in the UK – despite Brexit.)

As The Constitution of Innovation argues, Europe’s original project — free trade, an internal market and peace through economic interdependence — has gradually been crowded out by an ever-expanding regulatory agenda. This bureaucratic accretion is holding the continent back, helped along by acts of self-sabotage such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Artificial Intelligence Act.

Economists Luis Garicano, Bengt Holmström and Nicolas Petit call for Europe to refocus on the fundamentals of innovation, market integration and economic dynamism. Instead of constant mission creep, they propose limiting the Union to its essential economic competences. Central to their argument is the need for vigorous enforcement of the internal market and removing barriers to entry and exit for firms so innovation can thrive.

Their recommendations include sharply reducing the use of directives in favour of directly applicable regulations; creating specialised EU-level commercial courts to enforce internal market rules swiftly; and establishing a truly supranational “28th regime” to give Europe-wide companies a workable legal infrastructure, instead of forcing them to navigate dozens of national systems.

By trying to take on everything, Europe has undermined its ability to do the things that matter most. That institutional drift is one key reason many free-market supporters in the UK lost faith in the European project, giving the Brexit campaign more legitimacy – and more votes – than it deserved.

But the Old World shouldn’t be counted out. As the authors note, European institutions have twice delivered extraordinary growth: first in the three decades after the Second World War, and again in Eastern Europe in recent decades. Few institutions can claim not one but two of the great economic catch-up stories of the past century. It’s time for a third.

🥇 Eamonn Ives, Research Director

British politicians simply can’t resist giving a speech on higher education without boasting about the global pre-eminence of our universities. Institutions like Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College routinely occupy top spots in world rankings, and attract thousands of gifted students a year – no doubt partly because of those accolades. But what if their claims were built on flawed evidence? What if the system of ranking universities is fundamentally unfit for purpose? That’s a challenge laid down by Elizabeth Gadd, who argues in a recent Nature article:

“[R]eliance on rankings means that universities are shaped not by the needs of society or by innovations driven from inside the international higher-education community, but by unappointed third-party ranking agencies.”

I’m not entirely unsympathetic. Indeed, previous research by The Entrepreneurs Network has highlighted the flaws in using university rankings to inform public policy making. A recent graduate’s eligibility for Britain’s innovative High Potential Individual visa depends not on their own talents, but on how well their alma mater performs on university rankings. (Incidentally, we proposed an alternative system which would be based on real-world market data, and would open up the eligibility pathway for many more colleges.)

Yet at the same time, I can only extend my support so far. In the messy reality of the world we live in, quantifying anything like what the world’s best university is will always be fraught with challenges. Methodologies will always need to be somewhat arbitrary. Gadd’s suggestion to band universities instead into clusters of ‘high’, ‘medium’ and ‘low’ will still ultimately entail sharp lines and judgement calls.

Moreover, even if current ranking systems are not impeccable, we should consider the long-run effect they might have in terms of driving up standards. If I can go on a small tangent, I draw a parallel here with football. Manchester City won the Premier League by a whisker in 2012, with Sergio Agüero’s late strike famously denying their cross-city rivals a 20th title. The next season, Manchester United invested in a prize striker of their own, whose haul of goals enabled them to romp to victory. Competition, even when based on fine margins, incentivises improvement.

Of course, we should be discerning when public policy is based on partial proxies. But, equally, we should not let the perfect become the enemy of the good. If we still get net beneficial outcomes as a result, we might just need to make our peace with things. The answer isn’t to abandon measurement, but to use it more intelligently.

🔎 Rebecca Hill, Public Opinion and Involvement Manager, Campaign for Science and Engineering

Research and development can transform lives and livelihoods; it tackles major societal challenges, helps grow our economy and creates jobs and opportunities for people of all ages.

Despite this, support for it from both policymakers and the public can’t be taken for granted. Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) works to champion R&D as a political and societal priority, including by exploring how the public think and feel about R&D, to help the sector make R&D matter to more people.

Our latest landmark opinion study – Public Attitudes to R&D 2025 – clearly shows the opportunity and the challenge our sector faces.

The research, which took in the views of a nationally representative sample of more than 8,000 adults in the UK, found broad awareness and support for R&D – but suggests that this support is shallow, and fragile.

On the positive side, a majority say they have heard of “research and development,” 88% think it is important for the Government to invest in R&D, and 71% agree that the private sector has an important role to play in UK R&D.

However, the people, processes and places linked to R&D are opaque, and the public feels disconnected from R&D and its benefits. Just 29% said they felt a connection or personal interest in R&D, and its benefits feel vague and hard to articulate, especially on a personal level.

Nor do the public necessarily see R&D’s role in their highest priority issues. Although 94% said reducing the cost of living should be a priority for the UK, only 58% said that R&D had an essential or important role to play in addressing it.

Such weak connections pose a risk. British R&D has benefited from support spanning successive governments, but if this political backing fractures, we will need more than shallow public support to see our sector through.

We must act now to strengthen the foundations. Our research emphasises that place, purpose and involvement are powerful connection points with the public. CaSE is working closely with our members and the wider sector to make R&D more local, and more human.

Ban the Budget

Here’s a bold idea. Let’s ban the Budget.

When entrepreneurs are turning to me for business advice – specifically, asking whether they should sell up or move out of the country – you know that something has gone very, very wrong.

Today’s flip-flopping on hiking income tax rates is just the latest twist in a month or more of deep uncertainty for British businesses.

It’s no doubt partly why, as reported by John Thornhill in Sifted, we found in our latest poll that just 3% of founders thought the government understood the needs of entrepreneurs. As Thornhill reports, this lack of confidence has political consequences:

“Such has been the disappointment with the government that more respondents said they would vote for the populist Reform party (15%) than for the ruling Labour party (10%) if an election were held tomorrow. Even more unnervingly, 27% of entrepreneurs said they were intending to leave Britain over the next year.”

If Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are serious about, well, so-called “serious government,” ending the political chaos of the Budget would be the “grown-up” thing to do.

As I’ve argued in the past, periods of high political uncertainty typically coincide with measurable drops in new business formation, investment, and innovation. When founders anticipate shifts in tax policy, regulation, trade arrangements, or public spending, the resulting volatility makes it difficult to project returns and encourages firms to defer launches, pause expansion, rethink hiring, and put R&D on ice.

Academic studies illustrate these effects clearly. Following the unexpected policy regime shift after President Trump’s first term, researchers found a decline in patenting and VC funding among high-growth startups, especially those denied H-1B workers despite winning the visa lottery. As Nicholas Bloom’s latest paper shows, Brexit uncertainty produced similar outcomes in the UK, adding further weight to evidence that our withdrawal from the European Union reduced equity investment and lowered employment growth.

This is a long-winded way of backing Hugo Gye in The i Paper and Andrew Marr on LBC in calling for the Budget to be scrapped.

It wouldn’t be easy. Abolishing the Budget would require strict safeguards: regular Office for Budget Responsibility assessments to ensure borrowing rules are being met, and a transparent year-round balance sheet capturing all tax and spending changes. Continuous transparency and independent oversight would be essential to keep the public finances disciplined.

Nevertheless, the alternative is demonstrably worse. Annual Budget theatrics freeze investment, delay hiring, and distort economic decision-making across both the private and public sectors. Concentrating all major tax and spending signals into a single annual event amplifies volatility, creates avoidable information gaps, and ties business planning to an arbitrary political timetable.

Is this wishful thinking? Of course it is. But to steal the quip from Dr Madsen Pirie, who knows a thing or two about economic revolutions: “We propose things which people regard as being on the edge of lunacy. The next thing you know, they’re on the edge of policy.”

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Rocketing Ahead

I’m delighted to share that Richard Browning, Founder and CEO of Gravity Industries, has joined us this week as an Adviser. You’ll recognise him as the man who “has turned the impossible dream of human flight into a ground-breaking $80m+ business.” In his own words:

“Entrepreneurship and innovation are the true engines of economic growth, and we need to keep that spirit alive by empowering the next generation of business owners to think boldly and act fearlessly. Every single business starts with individuals willing to take risks, challenge convention and build something new, and I’m looking forward to supporting The Entrepreneurs Network as they continue to play a crucial role in supporting these risk takers, and ensuring that innovation and entrepreneurship remain at the heart of Britain’s future.”

If that doesn’t inspire you to become an Adviser too, perhaps nothing will.

Firm Footing

Forsters LLP is the latest on our growing stable of Corporate Partners. Joining us as Advisers, we’re delighted to welcome Daniel Bryan, Counsel in the Corporate team, and Oliver Claridge, Senior Associate.

Daniel advises founders and investors across the full lifecycle of growth, giving him a sharp view of the legal and commercial frictions that slow fundraising, deals and exits. He will help shape our policy agenda around obstacles in UK company law and investment processes, ensuring our recommendations reflect the real challenges scaling businesses face.

Oliver is a recognised expert on founder-facing tax issues – from investment reliefs and employment taxation to cross-border and crypto tax – and will help guide our policy work by pinpointing the tax barriers that most constrain entrepreneurs and where targeted reform would have the biggest impact.

Get in touch to find out more about becoming a Corporate Partner.

Leaps and Bounds

A fast-growing London community of immigrant founders and investors is currently looking for a new home to expand. Founded by a highly respected early-stage venture group, this community runs more than 60 high-quality gatherings each year, bringing together founders, investors, operators, universities, and international delegations. Their focus is on helping ambitious entrepreneurs accelerate fundraising, go-to-market progress, and network-building within the UK tech ecosystem.

They’re now exploring partnership opportunities with organisations that share their mission or see a strategic fit in hosting a vibrant, high-growth founder community. If you know a venue, organisation, or partner that may be interested, I’d be very happy to make an introduction. Just let me know.

Steer the Agenda

I’m delighted to share that I’ve joined the Steering Group of the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC). Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the ERC has been delivering independent research to inform policy and practice on small- and medium-sized enterprises since 2013. Sign up to their newsletter here (scroll down).