The global space sector is predicted to be worth £400 billion per year by 2030 – the Government wants the UK to have a piece of the action. Writing in the Telegraph, Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps argues that “Britain's space industry is ready for lift-off.”

While we aren’t eyeing up space colonies just yet, Shapps has changed regulations to allow the UK to launch satellites for the first time, claiming that now our “regulations are the most flexible in the world.”

Next year the UK will have spaceports, including in Cornwall, Wales and Scotland. The technological gains could be huge, but I like the fact that one of the potential benefits intersects with one of the most mundane and seemingly intractable policy problems out there: space-based wifi would help improve internet speeds in rural areas. This would help level the playing field for rural entrepreneurs.

Shapps compares his ambitions in the final frontier with the UK’s surprisingly successful vaccination programme. While it would be easy to criticise the comparison, I think there will be a lot that we can learn from the speedy creation and rollout of vaccines.

There will also be a lot to learn from the Government’s failures in responding to Covid too. Whatever you think of Dominic Cummings, the former SpAd's testimony is worth listening to. Not just to apportion blame, but to make sure we are better prepared for something like this in the future.

Some commentators mocked Cummings when he talked of solar flares and other potential catastrophic risks. But given what we’ve gone through with Covid, this seems short-sighted.

This all matters to entrepreneurs because with a better response to Covid, we would have seen a less dramatic impact on the economy. The first port of call for politicians, advisers and anyone unconvinced, should be 80,000 Hours. They predicted the severity of the pandemic earlier than most, and have been making the case for taking risks like this seriously for years.

This is a lot more important than any political score settling.

Sharp FAANGs
It’s not our job to defend ‘Big Tech’ – our focus is on startups and scaleups that may one day usurp them. But as Sam Bowman, Adviser to network writes in the FT, new regulation on acquisitions from Google and Facebook may make life harder for British startups.

As Sam argues, empirical evidence suggests investment in start-ups is sensitive to rules on acquisitions, with one paper finding venture capital activity grows by about 40-50% in countries that enact pro-takeover laws. And another finding that US states that introduced anti-takeover laws saw a 27 per cent decline in VC investment deals compared with those that did not.

Last month, the founders of Seedrs and Crowdcube put their heads above the parapet after facing the wrath of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for suggesting a merger. Separately, tech startups have got in touch with us sharing their concerns as a sale to a large tech company would have been a likely exit for them.

It’s a topic we’ll be exploring in a forthcoming report, as well as a roundtable discussion next month. Please get in touch with me if you want to find out more about either.