As we near the end of a year unlike any other, many business owners will be hoping for a more optimistic 2021 and preparing to turn a new leaf. The crisis is not over yet, but it has already shown us the importance of resilience, resourcefulness, and vigilance for businesses and there are many key lessons for us to carry into the New Year.

The government-backed Start Up Loans scheme has partnered with distance-learning provider, The Open University to give its customers - and other small business owners across the UK - the opportunity to take free Open University business learning courses.

A leading business insurance broker has urged firms and SMEs to get new insurance quotes in 2021. Get Indemnity, the digital insurance broker polled 650 SMEs and found that 68% of participants had not sought alternative insurance quotes in the past three years - and a further 32% had not applied for new quotes in the past five years.

With the COVID-19 pandemic in full swing and uncertainty over when we will be returning to our offices, every company big and small is now adjusting to remote working.

Although many businesses are currently able to access significant finance via the various Government-backed loan schemes, which have recently been extended until January 2021, not every business is willing or able to accrue additional debts.

Natural intelligence startup, Opteran has raised £2.1m in seed funding. Opteran will use the funds to pioneer its radical lightweight, low cost silicon-based approach to autonomy called Natural Intelligence and expects its technology will significantly expand the potential addressable market for autonomy in machines and robotics.

Tech is now Bristol’s dominant industry, boasting the most jobs and higher-than-average salaries across the board according to new data by Tech Nation, the UK network for ambitious tech entrepreneurs, and job search engine Adzuna.

Starting a business may be exciting, however there are a few things that you need to make sure that you get right from the beginning. Here are some of the top tips that I share in my new book, BOSS IT.

After a very unusual year indeed, the CRL and Mouser cohort is coming to an end, and with the National lockdown and pandemic it caused some interruptions and delays, however, speaking to the startups involved it seems everyone is feeling the same, and is a little bit of sadness that the end is in sight.

Are you working from home? Do you enjoy it? Given a totally free choice how would you like to split your time between working from home and working in the office? These are questions facing not just many millions of people in the UK, but hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

Seeing is believing, as the saying goes. And nowhere is this phrase more appropriate than in the world of fashion and jewellery. Startups Magazine speaks to Dawn Jones, Founder of augmented reality (AR) platform Stack Studio, which is looking to take the post-COVID market by storm.

As the world's first training and tracking system, Wondercise analyses and scores users performance after each workout. The business was created with the mission to revolutionise the way people get fit and healthy, and we managed to catch up with the Founder and CEO Eric Chuang to ask a few questions and find out more about the fitness business.

Having recently been named on the prestigious Forbes 30 under 30 list, Parveen Begum, Co-Founder of EV charging port provider Solisco, seemed a perfect candidate for the founder focus feature in our dedicated Women in Tech issue.

Anyone digesting the headlines and latest research over the last few weeks would be forgiven for believing things have never been so bad for small business.

The UK’s path to Brexit has not been an easy one. Since the 2016 EU Referendum the country has experienced three different Prime Ministers, a global pandemic and a recession; all have which have made an inevitably difficult negotiation process even more complicated.

Pandemic is a relatively new word to most of us. Not that we do not fully understand what it means, more that we had little use for it before March this year.

Like so many startup companies, the origin of Developing Experts was in the recognition of a problem, and an individual with the foresight to come up with a solution. The individual in question is Co-founder, Sarah Mintey, and her company was one of Tech Nation’s 2019 Rising Star Winners, and are one of ten UK companies on Google’s Immersion Growth Program for 2020. For our women in tech issue, Startups Magazine caught up with her to find out more.

We couldn’t really publish our annual women in tech issue without featuring our very own Hustle Award winner Joanna Montgomery, Fonder of Little Riot. Montgomery scooped the Biggest 2020 Hero award earlier this summer for her company’s innovative Pillow Talk product, so we caught up with her to find out more.

The Really Good Idea Test offers seven practical steps to test an idea and find out if it really is worth pursuing. It might be an idea for a new business launch, a development to an existing product or a major life decision, but the simple process will help you understand what people really want and spot potential downfalls before you commit (or waste) time and resources on them.

The New York, Berlin and Tel Aviv-based startup, Dynamic Infrastructure is expanding its pilot project with the Public Works Department of New York’s Suffolk County using the world’s first deep-learning solution which allows bridge and tunnel owners and operators to obtain visual diagnosis of assets they manage in order to reduce direct and indirect maintenance costs.