The UK’s recent lockdown has seen a surge in demand for on-demand. By addressing one of the most challenging aspects of lockdown, food delivery services alone have experienced a 29% increase in popularity, and even industries historically steeped in tradition – such as theatres, pubs and restaurants – have had to embrace on-demand options. Digital businesses, in collaboration with more traditional high street counterparts, have kept access to services viable during the pandemic.
Kennet Partners Limited (Kennet), a leading European technology growth equity investor focused on bootstrapped and capital efficient companies, has raised $250m (€223m) for its fifth fund, Kennet V in partnership with Edmond de Rothschild. The Fund exceeded its target and secured new investors from across Europe and Asia.
This year’s shortlist for one of the world’s largest annual competitions in sustainability, Postcode Lotteries Green Challenge, has been officially revealed today. The international top 25 organisations now edge closer to being crowned the overall Postcode Lotteries Green Challenge winner and receiving €500,000.
While the world battles a loneliness epidemic, reinforced by COVID-19 imposed lockdown and social-distancing, a new, rapid growth startup uses technology to help solve the problem for companies individuals. Panion has recently announced a suite of features that solidify the startup’s position as the most exciting new virtual community-building app in the world. Panion encourages its members to be authentically themselves and to lean into the interests that make them unique.
Focal Point Positioning (FocalPoint), a UK-based startup has built and showcased software that solves the accuracy problems that plague sports and running wearables.
The COVID-19 pandemic has massively accelerated the pace of change in the business world. Leaders and employees have had to adapt to operate in a challenging environment, where the only certainty is change. Not only have organisations had to rapidly adjust to the changing needs of its people, customers and suppliers, but it has also navigated the financial and operational challenges. This has led to many businesses prioritising the now, focusing on reshaping its operations to stabilise revenue and align with short term demand.
Many progressive startup founders choose to incentivise and reward their early hires with equity. The key benefits of a share scheme are that employees become more productive, more loyal, and more aligned with the company’s goals.
At the start of 2020, my aspirations looked very different. In January 2020, I was geared up to go to the gym three times a week. The year was looking bright and I was ready to step things up. Now, I just want to get the battery on my watch fixed.
Until recently, for many smaller businesses, their website was purely a shop window with few, if any, transactions done through it. However, thanks to social distancing measures it has now become the primary means of business for almost every company. Ensuring your website is not vulnerable to hackers and other criminals is therefore more important now than ever. The crippling reputational and financial cost of a cyberattack can put a small company out of business.
Property consultants, Bidwells latest research has revealed that up to 20 million sq ft of new lab and office space will be required in the Oxford-Cambridge Arc within the next two decades to keep pace with soaring demand, twice the volume of the previous 20 years.
COVID-19 is changing the way SMEs take payments, with the use of cash payments having halved and online card payments rising by a quarter during the pandemic, according to the latest independent research from Close Brothers Asset Finance.
Workplace wellbeing expert, Kate Bishop is offering a free Wellness in Action Plan for all UK employers and workers to help tackle the rising levels of anxiety felt by those returning to work after months of working from home or furlough.
No Isolation was founded with the aim of reducing loneliness and social isolation through the creation and implementation of warm technology. Following the success of its first product, the AV1 telepresence avatar, designed to tackle loneliness amongst children and young adults affected by long-term illness, the company brought its second product, KOMP, to the UK in 2019. KOMP – a one button communication device, designed to connect seniors with their wider family unit – has been bought by 3,300 families across Europe.
With all the doom and gloom currently out there, especially for a lot of startups and small businesses, Blackstone LaunchPad powered by Techstars created the Summer Startup Fellowship this year in response to obstacles created, and elevated, by the coronavirus pandemic for current college students and recent graduates. The Fellowship program was developed in March of this year in response to the impacts of coronavirus on student job, internship, and entrepreneurship opportunities (50% – 60% of which were dropped or rescinded).
One of the biggest trends in software development has been the rise of Software as a Service (SaaS). With SaaS, vendors and customers follow a pay-as-you-go subscription model, which eliminates the large upfront payment and aligns their incentives more easily: vendors get more recurring revenue while customers are freed from having to host and maintain their own applications.
Technology, especially new technology, has always had something of a divisive effect; that is it can be seen as black or white, working in good ways or bad. If we look back in history, any technological advance is greeted with great enthusiasm by early adopters and shunned and ridiculed by those with a more traditional outlook on life.
The current financial climate is disturbing for technology founders. At the European level, we have over 300 VC funds continuing to actively invest and grant-making programmes in every country, yet founders face many hurdles accessing capital.
I was asked very recently by a company to explain how I would approach their projected Intellectual Property (trademarks, patents, code of the platform) concerning their Balance Sheet or Statement of Financial Position. To make it even more complicated and they have asked me to consider both UK accounting rules as well as the US.
I was young when I realised I came from a family of businessmen. At the age of eight, my paternal grandfather had been engaging in business deals between Africa and Belgium. One of my uncles had also started an import-export business based in Brussels. Then when I was ten years old, my father jumped on the bandwagon and launched a business engaged in the export of exotic meats from Botswana to the EEC. This is what began to pique my curiosity in business.
Enter Farm-Hand: a software startup revolutionising life for farmers in India by applying Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technology to irrigation hardware.
