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 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.

 Registration is now officially open for Workspace Design Show London, returning to the Business Design Centre on 25th – 26th February 2026 with its most forward-thinking edition yet. The 2026 show will push even further under its new theme, Connected Realities, exploring how physical spaces and digital layers are increasingly merging to shape the workplaces of tomorrow. 

Snowball, the award-winning disability accessibility app that made headlines with a rare full-house offer from all five Dragons on BBC’s Dragons’ Den, has been officially signed up by Google for Startups, accelerating its mission to make accessibility accessible around the world.

Only three months after its founding, NexDash has secured €5 million in seed funding to build Europe’s first Neo-Carrier for electric trucks. Founded by Michael Cassau – who previously built tech-rental unicorn Grover – the company aims to accelerate the electrification of Europe’s highly fragmented and under-digitalised road freight sector.

On 26th and 27th November 2025 at Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai will host the region’s most dynamic forum for technology, innovation, and digital transformation – DATE MENA. Organised by Trescon, DATE is a Digitisation, AI & Emerging Technology Summit. Over two days, the event will bring together 1,000+ pre-qualified business leaders, tech innovators, investors, enterprise buyers, and regulators to explore the technologies redefining industries and shaping the future of MENA.

This is the moment the MENA region has been waiting for. On 26th November 2025 at Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai will host the region’s most influential sustainability and clean energy event – CARE MENA, the Climate Action, Renewable Energy & Sustainability Forum, accredited by CPD and organised by Trescon.

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.

Private equity makes founders uneasy, in startups and in professional services alike. The usual fears come up quickly: loss of control, outside pressure, and culture being reshaped by someone who wasn’t there when the company began. Those concerns don’t come out of nowhere, but they also aren’t the full picture. When investment is structured with intention, capital strengthens the parts of a company that determine its long-term stability.

I’d like to quickly tell you about a female founder I’ve always found really inspiring. Her name is Sara Blakely.

In 1998 she was making a living selling fax machines door-to-door when, one day, she cut the feet off her tights because nothing fit right under white trousers. She wasn’t dreaming of billions. She was frustrated, determined to fix a problem she had herself

Trovr, a recycling technology startup transforming how the world manages single-use drink containers, has launched the QUBE in the UK – a smart recycling unit designed to offer independent retailers support with the upcoming Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) without the cost, complexity, or footprint of supermarket-scale systems.

Deeptech and life sciences startups that have spun out of Europe’s universities have a combined value of $398 billion and an increasingly influential position in the region’s technology ecosystem, according to a major new report.

The sign in big bold letters on the wall at a CEO’s office didn’t mince words: “Nobody cares, work harder.”

“No”. A word that leads many of us to experience disappointment, rejection, frustration, even anger. From childhood it’s often the hardest word to hear.

Europe stands at a crossroads. There’s never been a better time to be a tech founder here: the continent has the talent, ambition, and ideas to lead. Yet Europe still hasn’t realised its full potential on the global stage. That’s why Atomico’s eleventh State of European Tech report sets out a bold roadmap for action, and a rallying call to power Europe’s first trillion-euro tech company.

A recent global risk management survey revealed that macroeconomic volatility, trade disruptions and increasing competition have pushed cash flow and liquidity into the top 10 risks for business leaders – for the first time since 2019.

Emm, the UK-based pioneer in biowearable technology, has raised £6.8 million in an oversubscribed seed funding round, to bring the world’s first smart menstrual cup and connected app to market. Creating a new category of “smart menstrual care”, Emm will equip users to understand their individual menstrual baseline and track key metrics for personalised, actionable insights into their menstrual health.  

A new report from reputation management consultancy Infinite reveals that UK media are up to five times more likely to frame tech unicorns through the lens of failure compared to their US counterparts – a trend that reflects, and may be contributing to, the UK’s struggle to support startups in scaling.

Irish advertising technology innovator, Buymedia, has officially launched its UK operations in Manchester with the backing of Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham. The announcement marks a significant milestone in Buymedia’s international expansion and underscores Manchester’s growing reputation as a hub for digital innovation.