Adapting and pivoting. For businesses, these two words sum up 2020 and the COVID pandemic perhaps more than any other words. Each and every business has had to reinvent itself in some form or another during the last year or so.

Working at Startups Magazine, we come across some extremely inspiring, empowering and all-round incredible women, but it would be impossible to name them all. As we celebrate International Women's Day 2021, we wanted to highlight our 20 most influential women of 2020 from our last Women in Tech edition.

Women throughout history continue to make their mark creating innovations and discoveries that impact our lives today. To celebrate International Women’s Day 2021, Miranda Kent, Managing Associate at intellectual property firm, Mathys & Squire, reflects on inspiring female inventors in each decade since 1910 - when the firm was first founded - to demonstrate the significant value that realising new ideas and inventions can bring.

Disputes in business are inevitable, but they don’t have to cost the earth or damage your reputation. Here are some tips to avoid commercial disputes from escalating.

The Digital Women’s Day, JFD in French, was started up by Delphine Remy-Boutang back in 2013, (back then just an annual meeting), but has since evolved into so much more. It is now a platform for the promotion of digital entrepreneurship for women, and JFD has brought together and celebrated a large number of women who all share the same goal - to revolutionise the world digitally both in Europe and Africa.

Today is World Book Day and primary school children across the UK will be dressed as their favourite fictional characters in front of laptops with their classmates.

Employees are at greater risk than ever of suffering burnout and employers should consider putting in place preventative and curative measures. For startup employers in particular it is important to look at tackling burnout in a sustainable way, eradicating the factors and issues before they take hold.

China can be a tough market to enter, however it is far from being as impenetrable as some startup leaders may believe. Yes, there are cultural attitudes and government roadblocks to overcome, but new sectors and opportunities are opening up in China all the time.

The Government is exercising extreme caution when it comes to easing lockdown restrictions. This is a sensible approach. After all, the UK is in its third national lockdown, and the Prime Minister will be keen to avoid another. That said, the slow road out of lockdown will likely frustrate many UK businesses. Many non-essential, retail and leisure businesses must now remain closed until 12th April, and even then, many will be unable to operate at full, pre-pandemic capacity.

The education sector is facing some of the toughest years in its history. But how can it position itself to handle the demands of the modern-day learner? Here we take a look at what’s driving a return to the classroom and how providers can best respond by offering new digital learning methods. 

There is nothing more important to company growth than employee productivity. That is why employers have to ensure that their workers are happy, educated, and motivated enough to give more than 100% on the job, on a daily basis. They strive to inject more office efficiency every single day.

As of this week, the government has put into effect a VAT Domestic Reverse Charge (DRC) for building and construction services. The reverse charge VAT procedure is an anti-fraud measure designed to counter sophisticated criminal attacks on the UK VAT system.

Value propositions can seem like a load of empty words to many entrepreneurs. "Leave it to the marketing team to get people to buy our product or services," they tell themselves.

Last year businesses were quickly forced into new ways of working, kickstarting one of the largest unplanned changes in operations the modern workplace has ever seen. It’s become clear that many of those changes are here to stay — for a long time to come, business as usual will not be an option. When we eventually return to the office, we can expect the workplace to be very different to how we left it. Typical office practices like hotdesking and crowded meeting rooms will no longer be viable as workplaces reduce onsite headcount and adhere to social distancing practices.

If you’ve dipped a toe into marketing, you know that every business needs social proof to grow. You must reassure potential customers that they’re right to pick you, because other people have done so before.

Right now it might feel harder than ever to cut through the noise and get your brand featured in the press. You might also feel that you'd like to secure media coverage but you don't have the budget to employ a PR agency, or perhaps the time yourself to knock up a press release or work out which journalists you should be targeting.

Over the last 12 months, video conferencing tool Zoom experienced exponential growth, B2B social media platform, LinkedIn, saw a 60% increase in user content creation and 55% of UK buyers revealed they will continue to shop online even when the high street re-opens its doors.

Last year was an incredibly challenging one for entrepreneurs and small business owners. According to a survey from Alignable, 45% of small businesses reported earning less than half of their pre-pandemic revenue. Statistics like these can scare you away from starting a company in 2021, but they shouldn’t.

There’s one tool that’s underused to address the gender diversity gap in startups - education.

Businesses in a wide range of industries rely on stock procurement to thrive, and issues with supply lines will always have a hugely detrimental impact on profits. Ultimately, companies cannot consistently sell their own goods if they’re struggling to procure the products and materials needed to manufacture them.