Features
Early-stage founders spend a huge amount of energy on the usual forms of capital: cash, talent, time, and product. But purpose-driven startups have access to a fourth resource that often makes the biggest difference in the years where margins, headcount, and certainty are all painfully thin – their community.
When I started my business from my bedroom in 2013, I didn’t have investment, a five-year plan, or even a proper desk. What I did have was a belief that I could do things differently.
The upcoming Autumn Budget has been sparking debate across the UK economy for several weeks, largely due to leaks. The rumoured measures, from a possible exit tax (which thankfully now looks to have been abandoned) to changes to capital gains tax and pension rules, could reshape the landscape for investors, fund managers, and entrepreneurs alike. With the government looking to balance competitiveness with fairness, overburdening businesses and investors in private markets could ultimately backfire, hindering the UK’s position as a leading home for private capital.
If you had met me in first year of university, you would have found a completely normal student. I showed up to lectures half awake, clinging to a coffee, and hoping the problem set I “remembered” submitting had not just been a dream. Nothing hinted that a year later I would be sitting in the entrepreneurship hub, convincing myself I was building the next big thing. All I lacked was a turtleneck and a slide with a graph going neatly upwards.
As enterprises race to deploy AI, a startling trend is taking shape: the majority of initiatives never evolve into long-term investments because big businesses pull the plug before results can materialise.
Many leaders treat Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) as little more than a legal formality or a simple perk to attract talent. According to Stefan Surina, CEO and Founder of Eldison, this is a critical mistake. Drawing from years of experience advising founders, he believes that an ESOP isn’t just a part of a compensation package – it’s the foundational tool for building a company’s culture. Done right, strategic ESOP turns employees into true owners, while a poorly planned one risks creating resentment and killing motivation before a company even gets off the ground.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned after two decades specialising in leadership it’s this: startups don’t fall apart because of strategy, they fall apart because of people.
I’m Dani, and I’m the CEO of The Sleep Consultant Academy. I specialise in helping women set up an online business, specifically in infant sleep.
Once, product managers were measured by their ability to translate user needs into feature roadmaps and shepherd products to launch. Today, as AI moves from the fringe to the core of countless products, PMs are expected to master an entirely new language, where concepts like retrieval-augmented generation, dataset curation, and bias mitigation are daily realities.
Black Friday is the biggest seasonal peak for sales for many retailers. Nationwide predicts over 12 million transactions on Black Friday, despite low consumer confidence, as well as over 260 million transactions across November in the run-up.
Every founder reaches a moment where growth becomes harder than it used to be. Early expansion might come from a great product, strong word-of-mouth, or the founder’s own network, but scaling beyond that can be a different game entirely. That’s where many startups find themselves stuck – growing, but not fast enough; investing in ‘random acts of marketing’ but not seeing a return; and spending more time being reactive and tactical rather than proactive and strategic.
Every entrepreneur dreams of scale. You have proved your product, your customers are happy, and revenues are growing. Then the wheels start to wobble. Decisions slow down, the team loses focus, and what once felt like a tight-knit crew starts to resemble a traffic jam.
Every November, the world braces itself for the spectacle that is Black Friday, an event built on urgency, panic, and often regret. For decades, retailers have conditioned shoppers to believe that savings must be squeezed into a single, frenzied weekend. The formula is familiar: countdown clocks, “only three left” warnings, disappearing carts, and doorbuster deals that seem too good to miss. These tactics aren’t just marketing. They’re engineered scarcity designed to provoke impulse buying rather than thoughtful decision-making.
A new survey of UK startup founders by the Angel Investment Network (AIN) challenges the pervasive stereotype of the twenty-something entrepreneur working from their parents’ garage, revealing that the median founder is now middle aged, often relying on external employment to keep their ventures afloat.
Private equity makes founders uneasy, in startups and in professional services alike. The usual fears come up quickly: loss of control, outside pressure, and culture being reshaped by someone who wasn’t there when the company began. Those concerns don’t come out of nowhere, but they also aren’t the full picture. When investment is structured with intention, capital strengthens the parts of a company that determine its long-term stability.
I’d like to quickly tell you about a female founder I’ve always found really inspiring. Her name is Sara Blakely.
In 1998 she was making a living selling fax machines door-to-door when, one day, she cut the feet off her tights because nothing fit right under white trousers. She wasn’t dreaming of billions. She was frustrated, determined to fix a problem she had herself
The sign in big bold letters on the wall at a CEO’s office didn’t mince words: “Nobody cares, work harder.”
As hybrid work matures and occupier expectations continue to evolve, 2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for the UK’s commercial property market. The pandemic-era shockwaves have settled, but their impact on how we work, meet, and use space has created a lasting shift and it’s just about to enter its next phase.
“No”. A word that leads many of us to experience disappointment, rejection, frustration, even anger. From childhood it’s often the hardest word to hear.
A recent global risk management survey revealed that macroeconomic volatility, trade disruptions and increasing competition have pushed cash flow and liquidity into the top 10 risks for business leaders – for the first time since 2019.
