In 2024, The Entrepreneurs Network turned ten. Given that only around a third of businesses survive beyond a decade, perhaps we’re doing something right. Ultimately though, there is only one metric that matters: are we making the UK a better place than it would otherwise be for entrepreneurs? I’ll leave it to others to make that ultimate judgement, but as you’ll see below it’s not lack of effort – and our plans for the next year are even more ambitious. We hope you’ll remain part of our journey.
Unless something extraordinary happens in the next few days, the UK’s biggest political event of the year was July’s General Election. While we don’t take sides on politics – we do take a keen interest in policy. And there has been plenty of policy to get stuck into.
Most vocally, we got over 1,250 entrepreneurs to sign a letter against the negative impact that rumoured changes to Capital Gains Tax and Business Asset Disposal Relief would have. The Chancellor took note, but there is more work to do. As Richard Tyler wrote in The Times: Gordon Brown’s tax break for entrepreneurs survives — but for how long?
Back to Basics
Every year we release at least one wide-ranging report that aims to influence – or at least capture – the zeitgeist. In March, we released Building Blocks, which argued that the fundamentals of what makes for a competitive economy have been neglected for too long. We focused on four areas to fix: our chronic under-agglomeration, looming fiscal headaches, obstacles to innovation and a failure to fully harness domestic and international talent. There is still much to do on all four fronts, but the narrative that we and others have called for – fixing the foundations – has cut through.
Another wide-ranging report was June’s Backing Breakthrough Businesses, which was driven by our new Patron Steve Rigby through his leadership of the Private Business Commission. We launched it in Parliament with Jonathan Reynolds MP, Secretary of State for Business and Trade, and it picked up coverage in The Times and elsewhere, with many of the policy recommendations in train.
In September, our Research Director Eamonn Ives got to the core of small nuclear reactors in Small Wonders. As the report argues, abundant energy is crucial for economic growth, particularly with the rise of energy-intensive technologies like AI, and achieving climate goals requires significantly expanding clean generation.
Big Society
While entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone, we should aspire to live in a country where nobody faces social impediments when starting and growing a business.
We want to take everyone on this journey with us. Whether that’s the neurodivergent in March’s Neurodiverse Founders, the next generation in June’s Empowering the Future, the regions in September’s United Growth, or anyone no matter where they’re born in February’s Entrepreneurs Unwrapped.
As many of you will have seen, this week we launched Gaining Altitude in the House of Lords – the latest report from our Female Founders Forum. For this one we partnered with the Invest in Women Taskforce to better understand Britain’s female angel investor community around the UK. Yesterday, Hannah Bernard OBE set out in City A.M. what needs to be done.
Global Britain
We’ve long argued that if we are to remain competitive we must remain open to talent. In August’s Job Creators 2024, we reveal the proportion of founders behind Britain’s fastest-growing companies that were born overseas: 39%.
British companies also need to expand internationally. In December’s Towards A More Special Relationship we examined what challenges exist for British founders looking to do that in the US, and set out a clear raft of policy recommendations for the Government to address them.
Science Superpower
I’m delighted to announce that Anastasia Bektimirova has been promoted to become our Head of Science and Technology to build out our work portfolio in this area. Her main interests include AI policy, strategy and delivery of the National Data Library, research commercialisation, alongside broader topics related to the health of the UK’s R&D ecosystem. She is also thinking about how institutions can improve their delivery of national science and technology objectives. If you share these interests, reach out.
As such, we will be engaging with the Government as it is consulting on copyright and AI. We believe in a policy environment which enables responsible access to high-quality input needed to develop AI models in the UK, and have already set out some potential options in January’s Can the UK Become Competitive on Text-and-Data Mining for AI? We are keen to hear your thoughts on how the Government can strike the right balance. Feel free to drop Anastasia a line.
White Heat of Technology
This year we joined Substack. Check out our interviews with: Station F Director, Roxanne Varza; former DSIT Policy Adviser Ben Johnson; and ARC Accelerator Co-Founder Chris Fellingham. We also revived our Three Big Ideas series – where we and experts in our community pitch our weekly hot takes on things that have piqued our curiosity – and written up more digestible analysis about the research we publish.
Ten More Years
Last but certainly not least, I want to thank our Patrons, Advisers, Supporters, Corporate Partners, and event hosts. This includes everyone here, as well as American Express, Arbuthnot Latham, Barclays, Barclays Eagle Labs, Beauhurst, Blick Rothenberg, Bradshaw Advisory, Britain Remade, Enterprise Nation, Evelyn Partners, FieldHouse, Fora, Fragomen, Gatsby, Growth Hub Global, Jobbatical, Kingsley Napley, LSE IDEAS, MDRx, Milltown Partners, OakNorth, Octopus, Rathbones, Rigby Group, Sumer, UCL, University of Bristol, YBI, and almost certainly one or two I’m forgetting.
We can only do what we do with support from our partners. If you would like to help us deliver on our mission, support us here or book a time to chat over Zoom. We look forward to working with you.