Features

The emergence of DeepSeek, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup, has shocked the IT industry. With its extremely cheap AI solutions, DeepSeek has challenged the dominance of tech giants and exposed an inefficiency in the way large corporations approach product development. If DeepSeek’s model becomes the norm, the entire IT sector could see a dramatic reduction in costs, making technology more accessible. 

AI-driven automation is transforming industries, but reliability, scalability, and transparency remain major obstacles. Maisa, an Agentic Process Automation (APA) platform, aims to overcome these challenges with its deterministic ‘Chain-of-Work’ approach, ensuring traceability and accountability in AI-driven processes.

For nearly 40 years, discussions about women in business, finance, and entrepreneurship have felt like they’re on a loop. We talk about diversity, increasing female hires, and closing the funding gap. Yet, we rely on the same data and measurements – and unsurprisingly, we see the same results. This narrative makes it seem like we’re constantly falling short when, in reality, we may not be looking at the numbers the right way.

Growing a business in the UK is thrilling, until you hit the tax maze. With evolving regulations and financial hurdles, startups must be sharper than ever to keep their books in order and their cash flow intact. Compliance is not just about ticking boxes; it is about staying ahead of the game and avoiding unnecessary financial headaches.

While starting your business can be very exciting, your journey may be riddled with potential legal pitfalls. Navigating and understanding the legal landscape for early-stage companies will provide you with a strong foundation for your startup’s growth and avoid future disputes and potential costs.

The field of finance has long been known to have a predominantly male presence, and when fintech came along, it hadn’t done much to change this state of things. Despite being built on the idea of innovation, gender diversity remained something that fintech struggled with. 

With International Women’s Day approaching, the internet will soon be flooded with posts about its significance. But in many countries, this global celebration of women has only fairly recently become a major calendar date. For many of us, therefore, it’s not entirely clear how best to celebrate it.

“First they say you’re crazy, then they fight you and then all of a sudden, you change the world.” So said Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos entrepreneur whose vision of a finger prick blood testing revolution ended up with investors losing millions and her imprisoned on an 11-year sentence for fraud.

On the 3rd March 2025, Female Foundry officially launched its Female Innovation Index 2025, at an event hosted at Google. The event saw insightful panels, discussions around the stats that were uncovered in the report, and plenty of female founders in the room discussing what innovation meant to them.

In today’s modern world we have countless daily interactions where we’re being served by a dazzling array of apps, websites, shops, and startups. From buying your morning latte at that artisan coffee shop on the corner, to snapping up a bargain top on the latest pre-loved fashion app or sending an invoice to a customer through your banking app.

The employment landscape in the UK is set to undergo significant changes in 2025. According to LinkedIn’s recent “Jobs on the Rise 2025” list, which highlights the 25 fastest-growing roles, new job opportunities are emerging rapidly. From Artificial Intelligence Engineers to Partnership Development Managers, advances in industries such as artificial intelligence (AI) and sustainability are driving the demand for new skills and creating job roles at an unprecedented rate.

When I look back on my journey as an innovator, what strikes me most is not the “eureka” moments of invention but the quiet, persistent work of transforming ideas into tangible, industrialised solutions. It’s one thing to dream up a new technology in the lab, but it’s another to see it deployed at scale, solving real-world problems and making a measurable impact.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has called for the UK to go “further and faster” on economic growth in the wake of recent market uncertainty. For businesses, particularly SMEs, this means navigating an increasingly complex financial landscape while tackling mounting challenges, from economic volatility to rising cyber risks. In turbulent times, one crucial yet often overlooked factor in securing sustainable growth is insurance.

The startup differentiation problem: most startups believe that innovation means adding more features – a faster app, a smarter algorithm, a better design. But customers don’t buy features.

They buy transformation.

In the digital age, we interact with countless applications, whether for personal, professional, or recreational purposes. Many of these applications appear consumer-oriented but are, in fact, B2B applications. By accessing healthcare services, payroll systems, or school management platforms, customers are using their provider’s applications (such as GP or employer) which is a business customer of a larger B2B application. B2B applications form an integral part of daily operations across various industries.

Starting a new business is an exciting journey. You have an idea, you have spotted a market opportunity and have the passion to take the business forward. However, the path to profitability and growth can be challenging, as highlighted by data showing a 26% increase in the number of startups that shut down in 2024 compared to the previous year.

Innovation is a powerful driver of national economic growth. HMRC, having long recognised the role that tech companies play in the GDP engine, continues to support this output with its R&D relief scheme.

“Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections or trying to anticipate corrections than has been lost in corrections themselves.” – Peter Lynch

While few of us would ever actively try to imperil our organisation’s digital coherency or security, many of us do this every day by installing new software our IT teams know nothing about.

Can business success be distilled into a formula? Not exactly, but it can be structured, understood, and optimised. You hear it time and time again, exited founders who start again with a new product, nail it, and get to market faster, because they now understand the process, the pitfalls, and the structure behind execution.