As Sunak prepares to announce £2bn support package to combat youth unemployment, new research has unveiled the extent to which young professionals can contribute to the economy.

It’s always refreshing when policymakers break with the status quo and do something genuinely left-field and unexpected. The current pandemic has certainly produced its fair share of bold initiatives. In the UK we’ve just had the announcement of Government-subsidised meal deals throughout August to boost the ailing hospitality sector. And, sitting slightly higher on the impact scale, earlier this month the French Government announced that it was making tax credits available to any citizen prepared to take out a subscription to a current affairs newspaper or magazine.

Fashwire is a mobile and web marketplace for discovery where you can shop directly from over 300 fashion brands from over 33 countries you know and love and discover new ones from all over the world. Fashwire is changing the way we shop on our phones. By connecting consumers directly with brands all in one app, and it also allows brands to curate, create, and control all product and content in their profiles, which is different from a traditional retail model.

As lockdown restrictions begin to ease, SMEs need to look into engaging potential customers immediately in order to drive sales and awareness in the difficult months ahead. As the majority of the public continue to live and work remotely, however, companies must seek out new methods of marketing in order to attract better engagement. The online space has, thus, become crowded with brands attempting to cut through noise to truly make an impact on consumers. 

Bagboard, the creation of former credit trader Ben Ayres, and advertising executive Ashleigh Bishop, are launching a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for the first sustainable rewards scheme that marries major brand campaigns and environmental impact, with a mission to make sustainable shopping the norm. 

A team of entrepreneurs just awarded $16.9m in Business Scholarships to help local entrepreneurs and small business owners across North America and Europe, and they’re not stopping there.

Tractive, a company which has designed a GPS tracking for cats and dogs, has announced the launch of a new activity monitoring feature, allowing pet owners to ensure that their pets stay fit, as well as safe.

Re-skilling Britain’s workforce for the economy of the future has acquired a new urgency post lockdown, as COVID-19 has dramatically accelerated long term trends towards digitalisation and distance working.

A host of small businesses from across the country have been crowned winners at this year’s  Small Awards, which celebrates the smallest and greatest firms in the UK, across all sectors.

A few years back, there was a two-day tube strike in London. As with most tube strikes, it forced stressed commuters to change up their route into work at short notice. When it was all over, economists who looked at Oyster Card data made a surprising finding. About one in twenty commuters who changed up their route on the days of the strike stuck with their new route.

As the nation continues to work from home for the most part, new research reveals that a quarter (24%) of those currently working from home say maintaining communication with colleagues is the biggest challenge they have faced while working away from the office.

Zendesk has released the Zendesk Startups CX Benchmark Report, documenting how early-stage startups that invest in customer experience (CX) outperform their peers. The data shows that while there is no one-size-fits-all approach, startup success stories have one thing in common: the ability to provide more holistic support to customers from the beginning.

British Patient Capital has commented on the British Business Bank’s Small Business Equity Tracker which reveals UK VCs currently have a record amount of dry powder ready to deploy.

Johnathan Ransom, CEO & Co-founder of Square Mile Farms spoke to Startups Magazine about the challenges and opportunities that arose during the 2020 COVID crisis whilst raising from their network. Think back, post-2008 financial crisis, internet technologies and crowdsourcing both evolved to allow companies to easily raise funds from their network and community for the first time. The power and value of the crowd have only increased since then, helping businesses grow quickly and sustainably while reaching entirely new audiences.

The Managing Director of Xero today has argued for a national campaign to help the UK’s 5.9 million small firms bounce back post lockdown.

Those of us in the recruitment services space are pausing, with a significant heap of excitement and a little touch of alert to perceive how the scene is going to change for us in the coming year. Is it true that we are prepared for 2020?

The Future Fund is the UK Government’s funding scheme designed to assist early-stage, high growth firms across the UK meet the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

NAEA Propertymark has partnered with REACH UK, a scale up programme, to help its members navigate through the world of technology by selecting the best startups and launching them into the marketplace.

Kennet Partners Limited (Kennet), a leading European technology growth equity investor focused on bootstrapped and capital efficient companies, has raised $250m (€223m) for its fifth fund, Kennet V in partnership with Edmond de Rothschild. The Fund exceeded its target and secured new investors from across Europe and Asia.