Launching a new business is exhilarating – the energy, the creativity, the vision of building something that’s uniquely yours. But the statistics are sobering. According to ONS data, around one in five UK businesses fail within the first year, and nearly half don’t make it to their fifth birthday.

Tech startups today sit at the intersection of enormous opportunity and mounting risk. On one hand, global IT spending is projected to grow by 9.3% this year according to Deloitte, driven in part by surging demand for AI and digital transformation. On the other hand, the rapid pace of change, macroeconomic volatility, and shifting investor sentiment mean that even high-growth companies can find themselves vulnerable.