Features

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.

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.

There’s been a huge amount shared about the EU AI Act in recent weeks, so much so that you’d be forgiven for being pretty confused as to what is happening and when, and whether you need to worry about it at all.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is significantly changing the way small and medium-sized businesses manage their finances. In the UK, the number of SMEs adopting AI tools has increased 32-fold between 2022 and 2024, while average spending on AI tools has risen nearly sixfold over the same period. Once seen purely as a tool for automation, AI now plays a much more proactive role, helping businesses anticipate cash-flow gaps, prevent fraud, and deliver more personalised customer experiences.

Dean Franklin is the winner of The Apprentice 2025 and Founder of ADL Air Conditioning, and at The Business Show 2025, he discussed starting a business during lockdown, his experience on the show, and how life has changed since the big win.

I love the British startup community. Its founders are filled with creativity, talent, and a sense of fairness and purpose. However, when I started my climatetech career at Greentown Labs, the US’ largest climate tech incubator, I could tell the energy was different.

For most startups, building credibility takes a lot of hard work, as they must demonstrate consistency and competence to build trust. They may have a great product or service, but until people trust the brand, growth stalls.