This will (obviously) be the last Friday Newsletter of the year, so, as I did last year, I hope you don’t mind indulging me in looking back at the year through our reports, events and webinars.

Despite the obvious challenges, 2021 has been our biggest and best year. It’s testament to the incredibly talented small team and network of Advisers and authors that we’re able to do so much on a relatively small budget.

If you want to support us, join us as a Supporter or Adviser (the price of this will double in a week and whatever price you pay for joining is locked in for life). Or you can help by simply letting other people know about us, suggesting that they sign up for this or any of our three other newsletters. Also, if you have any feedback, questions, policy ideas or partnership proposals I’m always keen to hear from you.

January
Fixing Copyright was our first report of the year. Dr Anton Howes argues for seven key reforms to create a world-leading copyright system that would protect intellectual property while giving entrepreneurs more creative freedom and legal certainty.

We also hosted Chi Onwurah MP, Shadow Minister for Science, Research & Digital, for a virtual Entrepreneurs’ Drinks, and heard from Lord Bilimoria and Nicolas Rollason of Kingsley Napley at a virtual roundtable on the future of visas and immigration.

February
In February we virtually hosted Lord Leigh for an Entrepreneurs’ Drinks. As well as being Treasurer of the Conservative Party, he speaks out regularly on business matters and advocates the case for entrepreneurs. As with many of our virtual drinks events in 2021, this one was supported by Mishcon de Reya, a long-term sponsor of our work. Later in the month we had Ian Murray MP, Labour's Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, for another virtual drinks event.

We also convened an event in partnership with Kingsley Napley on The Future of International Business with the government’s Global Entrepreneurship Programme, and held virtual interviews with our Adviser Farah Naz founder of EX1 cosmetics, as well as separately with Cecile Reinaud, founder of Seraphine and Member of our Female Founders Forum.

March
In March we released Making the UK the Best Place in the World for AI Innovation. Written by former Office for AI Adviser Seb Krier, it sets out the pro-innovation policies we need to build upon our strengths of being home to top universities and cutting edge businesses such as DeepMind and BenevolentAI.

Through the APPG for Entrepreneurship we also hosted a webinar on Levelling Up with Baroness Chalker, Seema Malhotra MP and Jo Gideon MP. The ideas from this will feed into a forthcoming report with input from the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC). We also had John Penrose MP for an Entrepreneurs' Drinks in March.

April
We hosted Sarah Olney MP for an Entrepreneurs’ Drinks in April. She undertakes the roles of Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Business and Industrial Strategy, Transport, and Energy and Climate Change, so it was a wide-ranging discussion. We also held a Female Founders Forum webinar on Trade Accessing New Markets.

May
In May we hosted Small Business Minister Paul Scully MP and founder of Octopus Chris Hulatt for a webinar on How to Build a Nation of Entrepreneurs. We also held a virtual roundtable on the Sharing Economy, which helped inform our report on the same topic released later in the year. In addition, we hosted an Entrepreneurs' Drinks with Selaine Saxby MP and a Female Founders Forum webinar on Preparing for a Crisis.

June
In June we released Conflicting Missions: The Risks of the Digital Markets Unit to Competition and Innovation. In this report, Sam Bowman, Sam Dumitriu and Aria Babu explained how the new Digital Markets Unit poses significant risks to competition, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

To launch the report we hosted a virtual event with the UK Government’s anti-corruption champion John Penrose MP; Will Hayter, Senior Director, Digital Markets Unit at Competition and Markets Authority; Camilla de Coverly Veale, Head of Tech Regulation, Coadec; and John Fingleton, former Office for Fair Trading CEO and founder of Fingleton Associates.

We also released Honours for Innovators in the same month. In this report, Ned Donovan and Dr Anton Howes make the case for establishing a new order of chivalry, specifically designed to encourage invention and raise the status of being an innovator in the eyes of the public. John Petrie OBE, who has helped design national honours and decorations for several Commonwealth countries, even created some potential designs.

June was a busy month for papers, with Knocking Down Barriers: Empowering Business Builders in the UK’s Most Deprived Communities also released. In partnership with Sage, Sam Dumitriu sets out how new business creation will play a vital role in the post-pandemic economic recovery and the wider levelling up agenda. One revealing stat: 43% of those in the UK’s most economically deprived communities could, unprompted, name a viable idea for a business or side-hustle.

We also hosted John Stevenson MP for Entrepreneurs' Drinks event. As Chair of the APPG for Family Business we were joined by many of the UK’s most innovative family businesses. We also held a Female Founder Forum webinar on Building a Team You Can Trust with Vanessa Tierne, founder of Abadoo; Karina Robinson, co-director of The Inclusion Initiative at the London School of Economics, and Louisa Chapple, HR Director for Barclays Execution Services.

July
In July, we released The Way of the Future: Supercharging UK Science and Innovation with The Tony Blair Institute. It includes a preface from Tony Blair and a foreword by Patrick Collison, co-founder and CEO of Stripe. If you’ve not read it yet, it would be my top recommendation out of all our 2021 reports. It covers a lot of ground in the pithy essays.

We kicked off our Something Ventured partnership with FieldHouse Associates in July. The formidable Sharon Vosmek, CEO of Astia inspiring all in attendance.

We also hosted Jerome Mayhew MP in July for a virtual drinks event. As a director of the Go Ape from 2006 to 2009, and its managing director from 2009 to 2018, Mayhew talked about how he plans on bringing his business experience into politics. We also spoke with ever-impressive Lord Young in July about his recently published Diaries of the Campaign That Saved Enterprise.

July also saw us virtually host some of the UK’s most impressive space entrepreneurs, the ideas from which will feed into a forthcoming APPG for Entrepreneurship paper on supporting space startups and scaleups. We also hosted a Female Founders Forum webinar on Funding Opportunities for Female Entrepreneurs with Tiffany Young of YFM Equity Partners, Helen Meade of UKRI and Katherine Morgan of Barclays.

September
Building on Conflicting Missions, Better Together: The Procompetitive Effects of Mergers in Tech saw Sam Bowman and Sam Dumitriu join forces again to explain how mergers in tech can enhance competition and why proposals to lower the burden of proof used by the CMA to block mergers involving digital firms with strategic market status risks harming the UK’s startup ecosystem.

We also hosted Stephen Page, founder & CEO of SFC Capital for another Something Ventured event. SFC Capital is the UK and Europe's most active seed investors, so we focused on early-stage funding. We also hosted Robin Millar MP for our first Hackatown event. Focusing on Llandudno, we convened local entrepreneurs and national experts to discuss what could be done to make the town more entrepreneurial.

October
In October, we published our annual Female Founders Forum report, which we run in partnership with Barclays. In Inspiring Innovation Aria Babu looks at female entrepreneurship in the high-growth sectors such as e-commerce, fintech, and greentech, setting out how the UK can capitalise on the opportunity for a £200bn uplift in our economic growth. It was launched in the House of Lords at our first in-person event for a while, with Baroness Susan Greenfield speaking at the launch.

In October we also released Digitise the Skies, in which Anton Howes and Sam Dumitriu highlight the potential of the UK’s nascent drone industry and set out reforms to unlock the sector’s £42bn forecast contribution by 2030.

We launched our Green Entrepreneurship Forum in October. In partnership with Mishcon de Reya, it’s a project we’re continuing next year. A week after the launch we hosted a virtual roundtable on Funding the Future – how to raise next stage funding for green businesses.

We also hosted a Late Payments Task Force webinar with the Small Business Commissioner. This was a culmination of Xero’s Late Payments Task Force which I chaired. It analysed the lifecycle of an invoice in order to work out what interventions could really work to address the persistent problem of late payments. We also hosted David Glick, Founder & CEO, Edge Investments, for another Something Ventured interview.

November
Tim Mills, Managing Partner at ACF Investors, was our guest for the penultimate Something Ventured interview of the year. ACF (formerly the Angel CoFund) backs early-stage businesses across a variety of sectors through co-investment funds that partner with angel syndicates. Among other things, we discussed the increasing importance of "professional" angel investors in early-stage rounds. Also in November, we hosted our final Green Entrepreneurship event of the year on Ecosystem Economics.

December
As part of the APPG for Entrepreneurship, we released a paper on the Sharing Economy in December. It advocates for a continued level-playing field on tax and for preserving the regulatory environment that has allowed the sector to flourish, while also empowering platforms to prioritise standards.

In early December we hosted a physical roundtable on the future of regulation for Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies, as well as our final Something Ventured open interview with Michaël Niddam, co-Founder of the venture builder Kamet Ventures.

Expect even more 2022!

All that's left is to wish you and yours a Happy New Year.