Cazoo, the UK's fastest growing digital business which is transforming the way we buy used cars, has today joined the exclusive list of companies known as unicorns, with valuations in excess of $1bn. Founded 18 months ago by serial entrepreneur Alex Chesterman and having launched only 6 months ago, Cazoo is now the fastest British business ever to have reached the rare and coveted unicorn status.

Britain is facing a projected £74bn drop in revenue for creative industries due to the coronavirus pandemic, with 400,000 jobs of artists, designers, musicians, creators and curators likely to be lost.

For many businesses, scaling up and sustaining growth often seems unachievable, even when the brand has a profitable product or service. Investor and advisor, Sharon Brown, principal of Amplify Equity Inc. has recently adopted a laser focus for helping businesses step-up to the next level by leveraging investor expertise, industry experience, networks, and connections to help them grow faster.

The world is facing a mounting waste crisis and a South West technology startup has developed a new online system to help tackle the problem. The system will also help waste businesses run their businesses safely during the coronavirus pandemic.

It goes without saying that for any business, in any sector, in order for it to survive, grow and prosper, sales are imperative, because sales generate profit and cash flow and these are the lifeblood of any business. It is understandable, therefore, that I often overhear the question ‘how do I promote my business?’

Virgin StartUp has reported that funding applications from women entrepreneurs have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 lockdown.

When (or indeed if) office-based employees make a return to work, now that lockdown restrictions are slowly beginning to ease, they are likely to find a very different world to the one they left behind. Startups, by their very nature, are inherently innovative, adaptable, flexible, and more willing than most to embrace change.

In the last few months, COVID-19 has impacted businesses in profound ways. Throughout that time, I’ve heard from organizations, large and small, how they’re staying connected with customers through technology. This has always been core to my team’s purpose, but we can do more to help businesses and  nonprofits through this crisis.   

Start it X, the programme dedicated to driving innovation within large companies, announces the launch of a new matchmaking service. Start it X will help corporates innovate by connecting them to established scale-ups from all over the world. In doing so, the accelerator gives Belgian companies faster access to innovations developed in other countries while positioning the Benelux as a highly attractive region for trade.

Demand for digital agility and visibility during uncertain times fuels the hyper growth of native Salesforce DevOps platform backed by international investment leaders.

European challenger bank bunq today joins forces with global charities to aid its mission to make the world a better place. Following a public beta programme, which saw bunq ask its users to share their insights and to test its new app before rolling out to the masses, bunq is now unveiling ‘Common Goals’.

Lipreading-friendly face masks, digital medical services and contact-free ATM buttons among winning business entries to The AdamStart COVID-19 Innovation Challenge, as British entrepreneur Adam Bradford has revealled the five winners of the AdamStart global entrepreneurial challenge to tackle COVID-19.

Emerging and fast-growing markets offer the biggest opportunities to build and grow a brand. If you can start at the point of early adoption and gain enough traction, your brand could become a leader as the market becomes established. Identifying the right market is about understanding cultural trends and then positioning your brand as the solution to shifts in consumer behaviour and growing demands such as meat and dairy reduction or a move towards a more natural, skin-first makeup routine. With the right timing, you can hit a perfect intersection like the widespread adoption of craft beer coinciding with the cultural shift towards independent brands. 

The number of people on UK payrolls dropped by 612,000 between March and May, according to early data from the Office for National Statistics and HM Revenue and Customs that is starting to show the depth of the hit to the economy from the pandemic. The UK unemployment rate for the three months to April 2020 was estimated at 3.9%, 0.1 percentage points higher than a year earlier but largely unchanged on the previous quarter.

Lone Design Club is leading the charge for independent designers in the evolution of the high street, as well as the reaction to the challenges now facing small businesses brought about by COVID-19, by going 'phygital'.

Personalised health management platform, Span, has announced the launch of its new subscription-based business offering to help employees prevent and reduce symptoms of lifestyle-induced conditions - Diabetes, Hypertension, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, Obesity and IBS. The platform offers personalised, continuous nutrition and mental wellbeing plans and on-demand consultations with clinicians.

Over the last few weeks, Chancellor Rishi Sunak spelled out how he and the Treasury plan to end the Job Retention Scheme - also known as furlough - at the end of October. The scheme is currently paying 80% of the wages of at least 8.4 million workers placed on furlough by their employers. Many are concerned that the majority of these workers will be made redundant as soon as the scheme ends, leading to mass unemployment.

With recent news showing the British economy shrunk by 20.4% in April, several business owners are concerned about whether their businesses will recover and what the 'new normal' will look like. Here we chat to Pete Reis-Campbell, CEO and Founder of Kaizen, who discusses how he navigated the pandemic why remote working is the future for many companies.  

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire can now benefit from fully-funded University of Nottingham expertise through a programme which has been re-purposed to help businesses prepare for economic recovery following COVID-19.

….you never know what you’re going to get. Although Forest Gump didn’t technically say that, there is some truth in it: no two leaders are ever the same. Think about the people you’ve been led by in the past -  maybe they were a crunchy-coated, brittle leader, they might have been soft and gooey, or chances are you’ve probably had a few nutty ones as well. You never know what you’re going to get.