Features

Scaling a startup is an exciting yet daunting challenge. While product-market fit and funding are critical, leadership is often the deciding factor between success and failure. In fact, approximately 70% of startups fail within their first 10 years, with many of these failures attributed to ‘people issues,’ including leadership challenges.

When America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. When it comes to mergers and acquisitions amid Trump’s tariffs, however, it could be more like Covid. According to Iain Lownes, a partner in the Corporate Finance practice at professional services firm S&W, the pandemic could provide a guide as to what we’re likely to see in the market.  

Support for regional small businesses has never been more important. The UK’s entrepreneurial community is facing mounting challenges, with the economic climate increasingly challenging following recent tax increases in particular. Business closures are at a 20-year high, economic growth has stagnated, and employers are having to make tough choices to navigate these new tax and regulatory burdens.

In business, relationships are everything. We build, create, dream, and grow, often side-by-side with people who feel more like family than colleagues.

In today’s turbulent world, marked by geopolitical instability, economic uncertainty, and unforeseen crises, the importance of adapting your business to create risk resilience, is critical. 

For ambitious startups, 2025 is set to be remembered as a year of regulation whiplash, where rules around the world shift faster than a Series A pitch deck. The pace of AI development is shaking up business, while political turnover from London to D.C. is rewriting the rules, too.

Bees are revered for their hard work and ‘busy as a bee’ is a common theme throughout culture and society worldwide. To create a single 500 gram jar of honey, honey bees will have collectively visited approximately 2,000,000 flowers. They will have flown 88,000 kilometres and visited up to 100 flowers in a single day. Bees live their lives at a fast pace, and in the summer that’s only about thirty-four days.

A major cyberattack can send shockwaves through a business, causing severe financial, operational, and reputational damage. While some companies have managed to claw their way back, others may never fully recover. But in a world where cyber threats are a matter of “when, not if,” can businesses truly bounce back from a devastating breach?

As businesses bring teams back into the office after years of remote work, many are finding that the transition is more disruptive than anticipated. Despite good intentions – to reconnect people, foster collaboration, and rebuild culture – many return-to-office (RTO) plans are failing to deliver. In some instances, they are causing more harm than good.

Climatetech is an umbrella term for technological solutions that have been built to address the climate crisis. It can include solutions built to support decarbonisation, the energy transition, and reducing emissions. Startups within this space are working in a variety of sectors, such as electric vehicles, sustainable foodtech, battery recycling, clean energy solutions, and biomaterials.

Vienna is the heart of Austria, but the second-largest city, Graz, is a gem in itself. Its historic city centre is one of the best preserved city centres in Central Europe, and in 1999, it was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. Graz was also designated the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2003. The city is filled with natural beauty and culture and should be top of people’s tourism wish list.

If you’re a startup founder in the UK, you probably over-index in hard work, determination, and resilience. Data from Statista shows that over 90% of startups in the UK fail in their first year. And only 39% of startups launched between 2019 and 2022 are still in business.

We all have our echo chambers, but leaders have them more than most. And that’s a problem, because they undermine decision-making, are usually invisible, and can be tough to break.

When you’re in growth mode, paying yourself often becomes an afterthought, caught between reinvesting in your business, managing expenses, and holding your breath until the next big sale. But what if you didn’t have to choose between growing your business and getting paid fairly.

Compliance with regulations or standards should not be seen as merely a tick-box exercise. It’s a crucial route to increasing trust among your customers, especially for startups.

For most people, the idea of starting their own business is a daunting enough challenge to overcome. It’s only once it’s up and running that it becomes clear the greater challenge will be growing the business and, even more specifically, taking it from the startup to the scaleup stage.

During his ‘Liberation Day’ announcement, Donald Trump revealed aggressive measures that will have consequences for trade on an international scale. Any country charging tariffs on US exports will see tariffs rise for products they send in the opposite direction, while Canada and Mexico will be hit with sweeping duties.

In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing business world, it can be easy to get caught up in the hustle of chasing profits, expanding networks, or challenging competitors. But during this whirlwind, many entrepreneurs lose sight of what truly drives them.

Startups have a unique advantage when it comes to building a sustainable future. Unlike large enterprises that must modernise or upgrade operations to align with circular economy principles, startups can integrate these models from the beginning, creating a sustainable foundation for future growth while contributing to global decarbonisation efforts.

In this day and age, every business must have a digital presence to survive. Do you need a cleaner? A dog walker? A plumber? A quick Google search will bring up hundreds of thousands of options. However, search algorithms are unforgiving, and to get to the top of the page can be a feat. Couple this with short attention spans and picky users, crafting the perfect digital presence becomes a hefty task.