Artificial intelligence has already become a powerful democratiser for smaller companies and startup ventures, enabling them to achieve faster growth and enterprise-level efficiency. As the sophistication and simplicity of AI improves, there are also expanding opportunities for companies to enhance their competitive edge by taking direct charge of advanced technologies.

You are not your grandfather’s SMB.

While many mid-market manufacturers still fax purchase orders and wrestle brittle ERPs, born-in-the-Cloud startups enjoy a greenfield. That blank canvas is both a luxury and a trap: copy yesterday’s stack, and you inherit yesterday’s headaches.

Fintech is nearing the end of 2025 with an unmatched pace of innovation. AI is now embedded in daily operations, and the industry has grown noticeably more ambitious. But while technology accelerated, communication systems inside many organisations failed to keep pace.

A new education technology company, PupilPower, has launched with an ambitious mission: to bring immersive, virtual reality (VR) learning into UK classrooms – completely free for schools.

Startups love building elegant technology and chasing ideas no one has tried before. But in the supply chain, elegance rarely survives contact with reality. Julia Sanzharova – a supply chain transformation leader with deep FMCG and product-development experience – explains why even the most advanced AI models fall short without a solid understanding of how operations actually run.

Founders get early traction through pure hustle, personal networks, charisma, and tenacity, but at some point, relying on the hustle inhibits growth.

Early-stage founders spend a huge amount of energy on the usual forms of capital: cash, talent, time, and product. But purpose-driven startups have access to a fourth resource that often makes the biggest difference in the years where margins, headcount, and certainty are all painfully thin – their community.

When I started my business from my bedroom in 2013, I didn’t have investment, a five-year plan, or even a proper desk. What I did have was a belief that I could do things differently.

The upcoming Autumn Budget has been sparking debate across the UK economy for several weeks, largely due to leaks. The rumoured measures, from a possible exit tax (which thankfully now looks to have been abandoned) to changes to capital gains tax and pension rules, could reshape the landscape for investors, fund managers, and entrepreneurs alike. With the government looking to balance competitiveness with fairness, overburdening businesses and investors in private markets could ultimately backfire, hindering the UK’s position as a leading home for private capital.

As enterprises race to deploy AI, a startling trend is taking shape: the majority of initiatives never evolve into long-term investments because big businesses pull the plug before results can materialise.

Many leaders treat Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) as little more than a legal formality or a simple perk to attract talent. According to Stefan Surina, CEO and Founder of Eldison, this is a critical mistake. Drawing from years of experience advising founders, he believes that an ESOP isn't just a part of a compensation package – it's the foundational tool for building a company's culture. Done right, strategic ESOP turns employees into true owners, while a poorly planned one risks creating resentment and killing motivation before a company even gets off the ground.

If you had met me in first year of university, you would have found a completely normal student. I showed up to lectures half awake, clinging to a coffee, and hoping the problem set I “remembered” submitting had not just been a dream. Nothing hinted that a year later I would be sitting in the entrepreneurship hub, convincing myself I was building the next big thing. All I lacked was a turtleneck and a slide with a graph going neatly upwards.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned after two decades specialising in leadership it’s this: startups don’t fall apart because of strategy, they fall apart because of people.

I'm Dani, and I'm the CEO of The Sleep Consultant Academy. I specialise in helping women set up an online business, specifically in infant sleep.

Once, product managers were measured by their ability to translate user needs into feature roadmaps and shepherd products to launch. Today, as AI moves from the fringe to the core of countless products, PMs are expected to master an entirely new language, where concepts like retrieval-augmented generation, dataset curation, and bias mitigation are daily realities.

Black Friday is the biggest seasonal peak for sales for many retailers. Nationwide predicts over 12 million transactions on Black Friday, despite low consumer confidence, as well as over 260 million transactions across November in the run-up.

Every founder reaches a moment where growth becomes harder than it used to be. Early expansion might come from a great product, strong word-of-mouth, or the founder’s own network, but scaling beyond that can be a different game entirely. That’s where many startups find themselves stuck – growing, but not fast enough; investing in ‘random acts of marketing’ but not seeing a return; and spending more time being reactive and tactical rather than proactive and strategic.

Every entrepreneur dreams of scale. You have proved your product, your customers are happy, and revenues are growing. Then the wheels start to wobble. Decisions slow down, the team loses focus, and what once felt like a tight-knit crew starts to resemble a traffic jam.

Every November, the world braces itself for the spectacle that is Black Friday, an event built on urgency, panic, and often regret. For decades, retailers have conditioned shoppers to believe that savings must be squeezed into a single, frenzied weekend. The formula is familiar: countdown clocks, “only three left” warnings, disappearing carts, and doorbuster deals that seem too good to miss. These tactics aren’t just marketing. They’re engineered scarcity designed to provoke impulse buying rather than thoughtful decision-making.

A new survey of UK startup founders by the Angel Investment Network (AIN) challenges the pervasive stereotype of the twenty-something entrepreneur working from their parents’ garage, revealing that the median founder is now middle aged, often relying on external employment to keep their ventures afloat.