It’s an irony for small businesses that when it comes to finance, the more they need it, the less there is. With interest rates up for a fourth consecutive time in May and inflation forecast to be as high as 10% by the end of 2022 – a 40-year high – the economic outlook is highly uncertain. Traditional lenders are nervous and wary of increasing lending to SMEs, which already saw their debt rise by a quarter during the pandemic, and it’s no longer just struggling businesses that have a hard time securing funding.

According to McKinsey, more inclusive and diverse organisations are 35% more likely to outperform their competition. Also, they tend to capture new markets more effectively than their counterparts. However, diversity is still an issue in the UK workforce. Almost half of employees feel that their employers are not doing enough to achieve the right balance.

It is no secret that during the midst of the covid pandemic, thousands of people decided to start their own business. The under 25’s boomed with innovation during lockdown, and a new study has shown that e-commerce, freight and real estate were the top sectors for the start-up businesses in under 25’s.

Crowd Data Systems (CDS), a B2B SaaS platform providing data-driven decision support to corporate treasury, has secured an €1m seed round led by Triple Point Ventures, alongside Portfolio Ventures and a number of angel investors.  This investment will enable the business to build out sales, marketing and customer success in order to meet its next phase of growth.

Sustainable IT solutions partner, and certified B Corporation Klyk announces their ambitious sustainability targets and the launch of their IT repair café on June 24th. Over the next five years Klyk aims to cut CO2 emissions by 1,200 tonnes and reduce electronic waste (e-waste) by 145 tonnes.

Salience Labs has raised a seed round of $11.5m to develop an ultra high-speed multi-chip processor combining photonics and electronics to accelerate exponential advances in AI. The round was led by Cambridge Innovation Capital and Oxford Science Enterprises, with Oxford Investment Consultants, former CEO of Dialog Semiconductor Jalal Bagherli, ex-Temasek Board Member Yew Lin Goh and Arm-backed Deeptech Labs participating.

It has become a cliché in ecommerce marketing and web design blogs to state that throwing your website out there without instigating a proper testing regime is taking a shot in the dark, throwing darts blindfolded, or riding a bike with flat tires… You get the picture. 

Racing to disrupt both access and sustainability within the cycling industry, kid’s bike subscription service, Bike Club, gears up for national and European expansion after closing £16.75m in new investment.

As the metaverse becomes the norm, startup brand managers can’t really afford not to embrace 3D brand design for their organisations, it offers businesses a competitive advantage while offering no end of creative possibility in communications.  

UK workers want more financial education resources from their employers and believe receiving it as a wellbeing benefit can strengthen their commitment to their jobs, according to the ‘Can We Connect’ report, released today by global financial wellbeing platform nudge Global. 

Sustainable parenting platform, YoungPlanet, has seen a 235% increase in app sign-ups during the first five months of 2022, compared to the same timeframe in 2021. The app is used by families across the UK to give and receive pre-used children’s items for free; helping parents to prevent unnecessary landfill waste. 

Cancer is the main reason employers claim for their staff across all group risk benefits (employer-sponsored life assurance, income protection and critical illness), so it’s especially important that employers know how to make the most of the support available under these policies.

Nearly two thirds (63%) of employers say they offer early parenthood support, according to research from Peppy, leaving those employers who don’t, extremely vulnerable to losing staff to other more family-friendly organisations at the point their staff become parents.

In today’s business world, it’s not just what you know but who you know (and who knows you) that matters. In the past, this used to refer to the closed shop of the old boy’s network. Now, thankfully, that’s no longer the case - at least for the most part. One of the key reasons for this is the internet or, more precisely, social network sites and more precisely still – LinkedIn.

Hybrid working is being adopted by businesses all over the world and equally, is becoming an expectation of employees looking for a new job. What was initially a strategy to keep people safe has now become a highly-sought norm that has revolutionised the workplace forever.

As the years go by, technology continues to advance at a steady pace. From initial trials of self-driving vehicles to sophisticated mobile phones with endless features, we are living in an increasingly futuristic world. On one side, the constant growth in innovation may excite the younger generations, who are used to handling digital devices from an early age. On the other, the older population may feel somewhat intimidated by the continuous rollout of new technologies.

Did you know, 85% of social media marketers anticipate incorporating new technologies like Virtual Reality, the Metaverse, Cryptocurrencies, and NFTs into their social media strategy within the next year? This is according to Sprout Social’s UK & Ireland Index 2022 released last week.

Award-winning entrepreneur and former Ambassador for Entrepreneurship in the UK, Gerard Jones has launched a digital coach education platform ULearnbly.com which offers online sports coaching courses, mentoring services and exclusive insight interviews to sports coaches across all levels around the world.

Given the strong economic barriers to entry in the pharmaceutical sector for new companies, the issuance of K2Z is a step to be able to advance in the project of the fight against cancer from precision medicine and AI. The K2Z Utility Token project is supported by the democratization of its industrial property in NTF format and by a management and research team of international relevance

Over the last few weeks, we have had the opportunity to speak with tens of startup founders and investors as part of our Private Beta launch for Truealpha.