Immigration policy has a profound impact on our entrepreneurial landscape. Whether it is foreign-born founders coming to the UK to start a business or British startups hiring scarce talent from abroad, ensuring that the immigration system is fit for purpose is essential if we are to fulfil our economic and innovative potential.

At The Entrepreneurs Network, we have been long-standing supporters of an open and inclusive immigration system which enables talented individuals to come to the UK and offer their skills to the economy.

Our research has consistently found that immigrants play a disproportionate role in founding Britain’s fastest-growing companies.

Of Britain’s fastest-growing companies that have a foreign-born founder, the plurality come from America, followed by Germany and India.

Visa costs to come to the UK are far higher than in other comparator nations.

Research

Job Creators 2024

In the latest iteration of our Job Creators report series, we reveal that 39% of Britain’s 100 fastest-growing companies had a foreign-born founder or co-founder. This means the rate has remained constant compared to last year, but is still ten percentage points lower than when we first analysed the data in 2019.

In this year’s report, we put forward a series of policy recommendations to enable Britain to better attract and retain top talent – including reversing recent harmful immigration policy changes and visa fee increases.

Passport to Progress

Talent is evenly distributed but opportunities are not. For many gifted individuals and entrepreneurs, maximising their potential is contingent on the ability to move to where they can best deploy their skills.

In Passport to Progress: A Blueprint for the World’s Most Pro-Innovation Visa System, published in partnership with ABE, Derin Koçer explains how immigration can enhance entrepreneurship and innovation, analyses international visa frameworks, and makes a series of recommendations for improving migration systems worldwide.

Job Creators 2023

In 2019, we published research showing that half of the 100 fastest-growing companies in the UK had a foreign-born founder. In Job Creators 2023, we have repeated our research — and find that the figure has shrunk to 39%.

While the headline statistic might have fallen, we believe the takeaway message remains the same — immigrants play a disproportionate role in setting up lucrative and innovative companies. As such, the UK should do more to welcome international talent to its shores, and we make a series of recommendations for how to do that.

True Potential

Immigration has made the UK economy stronger, and the current system does a good job of attracting global talent. The new High Potential Individual (HPI) visa, for instance, allows graduates of some of the world’s top overseas universities to move to the UK for up to two years without a job offer. But there is still room for improvement. 

In True Potential, Jason Sockin and Sam Dumitriu explain how the HPI visa’s methodology excludes graduates from many of the world’s top performing universities in terms of post-graduation earnings. They detail an alternative approach to eligibility, based on real-world market data from Glassdoor. Under their system, which would allow any overseas graduates who attended a university with higher potential earnings than the median-performing, currently eligible university, graduates from approximately 100 universities spanning 13 different countries would be able to access to the visa.

Job Creators 2019

Immigration is critical to the success of the UK. While just 14% of UK residents are foreign-born, 49% of the UK’s fastest-growing businesses have at least one foreign-born co-founder. These dynamic, innovative businesses bestow jobs and growth opportunities, and are vital to the strength of Britain’s economy. 

In Job Creators, Sam Dumitriu and Amelia Stewart analyse Britain’s fast-growing, immigrant-founded companies, and suggest a handful of visa reforms to allow the UK to retain its status as a top destination for entrepreneurial talent.

Contact

To learn more about our work on entrepreneurship education, please contact us by emailing info@tenentrepreneurs.org.