The UK has seen a huge rise in the number of independent businesses being set up over the past year. New analysis from The University of Law Business school shows 854,948 independent businesses have been established since 23rd March 2020, representing a 43% increase compared to the same period a year before (594,957).
Early Stage investors can often seem like mythical animals hidden in parts of the city you have little access to. When you do finally catch yourself face to face in a crowded networking event, or on a brief phone call that you’ve been preparing for all week, it can often feel like an uncomfortably one-sided encounter.
Tractable, the AI company helping insurers with accident and disaster recovery, has announced a $60m Series D investment led by Insight Partners and Georgian. The round doubles the total raised by Tractable from $55m to $115m and values the company at $1bn – making it the UK’s first computer vision unicorn.
Research from Ezra, provider of digital coaching, has found that UK employees are working longer hours than ever thanks to remote working. However, the lack of structured office hours is having a detrimental effect on employee work-life balance and wellbeing and, therefore, the quality of their work.
After over a year of anticipating the return of travel and tourism, it seems this summer we’ll finally start to see local attractions in cities across the US return in near full-swing. However, the tourism landscape that we’re returning to is not the same one that we left frozen at the starting line last summer: travelers’ priorities and needs have changed to reflect the new safety-conscious environment, and with the surge of new tech solutions released over the past year, their preferences have evolved to expect more seamless, automated, contactless systems and processes.
Having a strong reliable team is at the heart of building any successful sustainable business that is why investors say they invest in people not ideas. Many entrepreneurs overthink the ideas, the plans, the strategies, and underestimate the importance of building the team of people who will actually execute and turn these ideas into reality.
Read any guide on the best way to market your business and you’re bound to find social media high up the list — and sometimes, the only thing on the list. But what if the thought of all this posting, sharing, liking, boosting, engaging, following and whatnot else leaves you cold? Should you suppress these feelings and slog over social media anyway?
The famous Chinese proverb stating that ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’ is often wrongly accredited to Confucius, but whether it was him, Lao Tzu, or it is simply used in everyday life, does not alter the fact that it is, of course, true. And it is just as true that little steps normally lead to big steps.











