COVID has caused disruption in the business and education sector like nothing before. With the unpredictability of exam cancellations, the jobs market simultaneously seizing up and becoming flooded with job-seekers, and with some sectors unrecognisable to what they were this time last year, many young people are considering the option of ‘going it alone’ when it comes to taking their first steps in to the workplace.
The ranks of the self-employed have swelled over the past two decades, rising from 3.4 million (12.9% of the workforce) in 1998 to 4.8 million (15.1%) in 2017. Yet over the same period, the proportion of self-employed workers paying into a private pension has fallen from 48% to just 16%, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Like Minded Females (LMF) Network joined efforts with online business school Jolt and technology venture firm, Balderton Capital to grant five Future Leaders scholarships to rising female tech talent from LMF’s community. The full bursaries will allow them to attend Jolt’s Switch course, a programme designed to create pathways for those who want to begin a career in tech.
We have a sense that more companies are starting this year investing energy in considering their brand purpose, their brand’s reason for being, beyond making money. It is incredibly rare, in fact I couldn’t tell you the last time, someone came to us to launch a business they created solely as a money-making endeavour. Startups are born out of a desire to fix a problem and make a change. That is their brand purpose.
The next Mayor of London’s TechInvest, taking place 27th April, will celebrate 10 of London’s pioneering HealthTech startups. This upcoming TechInvest instalment will seek to identify industry leaders that are converging technologies with medicine and healthcare to improve the efficiency and delivery of prediction, prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care.
LawtechUK, the government-backed initiative within Tech Nation, to help transform the UK legal sector through technology, today brings to a close the Pilot stage of the first Lawtech Sandbox – a research and development initiative for lawtech scaleups – following a successful three month trial period.













