News

• 4th ScaleUp Female Founder Index reveals 371 ‘visible’ scaleups with at least one female founder (Scaleup Institute)
• The growth economy post-covid: The perspectives of woman who lead growing businesses (BGF survey of 152 female business leaders)
• Outcry from businesses over perceived delays to support grants (LGC)
• Deliveroo confirms anticipated floatation in London, will be among first to use ‘dual shares’ structure (Techcrunch)
• Tech titans club together to launch climate change taskforce (CityAM)
• New UK fintech visa will struggle to attract specialists, experts warn (FT)
• UK small businesses donated £6bn in cash and gifts during the pandemic (CityAM covers Oxford Economics and Intuit Quickbooks research)
• Apprenticeships Levy ‘has failed on every measure’, says HR body (BBC covers CIPD study)

Opinion

• Female entrepreneurship can help fuel a fairer, more productive future (Alison Rose, CEO, NatWest)
• We can’t let Covid crisis hold back female entrepreneurs (Ann Cairns, exec vice chair, Mastercard and global chair, 30 Per Cent Club)
• Innovating places (Stephen Roper, director, Enterprise Research Centre)
• FinTech revolution was borne out of 2008 crash; Rishi Sunak must nurture a post-crisis environment for innovation (Darren Westlake, co-founder and CEO, Crowdcube)
• Taxes, tweaks and super-deductions – but where was the long-term plan? (John Ashmore, editor, CapX)
• Memo to Silicon Valley: Here’s what ‘blitzscaling’ looks like in the nonprofit world (Mona Mourshed, founding global CEO, Generation: You Employed and Maryana Iskander, CEO, Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator)

Opportunities

• Centre for Entrepreneurs: Join our team as content and social media lead or business development lead
• Small Business Charter: Register your interest for the newly-announced Help to Grow: Management scheme
• Government: Respond to the R&D tax credits consultation and the enterprise management incentives call for evidence

Features

• BBC: Teen entrepreneurs: ‘My friend’s pug inspired my business’
• Daily Mail: ‘Female-led firms can be at the heart of recovery‘ (feature with Small Business Britain)
• UK Tech News: 2021’s coolest UK female founders mkaing huge impact in tech

Travelling to European markets and recognition of professional qualifications

In my recent conversations with business and trade associations, I’ve been hearing about how businesses are successfully adapting their processes and seizing new opportunities now that we have left the EU. It has been encouraging to learn about business plans for growth once coronavirus travel restrictions are lifted.

I appreciate that you are unlikely to be travelling under the current restrictions, but to prepare yourself for selling services to the EU you may need to get your professional qualifications recognised, and will also need to be aware of changes relating to business travel.

This preparation is critical to making sure that you can get the best from our new status as an independent trading nation. Below you will find a summary of the support available from the Government.

Thank you for your efforts and your ambition.

Yours sincerely,

Rt Hon Kwasi Kwarteng MP

Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy

New rules on professional qualifications

• If you wish to practise a regulated profession in the EEA or Switzerland and have not yet had your professional qualifications recognised in the EEA or Switzerland, you should:
  • Check the European Commission’s Regulated Professions Database to find out if your profession is regulated where you intend to work.
  • Contact the single point of contact for the country in which you intend to work to find out how to get your professional qualification recognised there.
• If you or your staff members work in a UK regulated profession using professional qualifications obtained in the EEA or Switzerland, you will need to seek recognition from the appropriate regulator in the UK. You can find details of the appropriate regulator from the UK Centre for Professional Qualifications (UK CPQ, formerly UK NARIC).

Support for businesses

• Business travel and mutual recognition of qualifications are both topics explained in the new on demand videos which focus on priority topics for businesses.You can also download a step-by-step guide on how to navigate the new rules on business travel to the EU.
• You can also use the Brexit Checker tool on gov.uk/transition, which will provide you with a personalised list of the most up to date actions that your business needs to take.

Helpline numbers

You can contact the government’s Business Support Helpline for free business advice.

England: 0800 998 1098

Scotland: 0300 303 0660

Wales: 0300 060 3000

Northern Ireland: 0800 181 4422

CFE partners with Founders Forum
We’re delighted to announce a partnership with Founders Forum.

Together, we’re scaling CFE’s flagship entrepreneurial development programme NEF+. The new approach will see larger cohorts and increased frequency per year.

‘NEF+ in partnership with Founders Forum’ will allow scaling companies to sponsor emerging leaders to join the programme, boosting entrepreneurial training and retention within scaling companies. It will remain open for individual applicants and we will be making 30% of places available with funding support for diverse candidates.

Learn more

News

• UK to launch new research agency to support high risk, high reward science (gov.uk)
• Rishi Sunak set to raise UK corporation tax in 3 March Budget (CityAM)
• ‘Tech visas’ to boost British industry (Telegraph)
• Tech sector recruiting in London now above pre-Covid levels, Hays boss reveals (Evening Standard)
• More than half of UK firms plan to hire new staff (BBC covers CIPD survey)
• More than a third of UK small businesses pushing to trade overseas in 2021 (CityAM covers YouGov survey)

Opinion

• The gig economy is too important to leave to the courts (Sam Dumitriu, research director, The Entrepreneurs Network)
• Put London’s world-beating universities at heart of Covid-19 recovery (Stefan Allesch-Taylor, fellow and prof of the practice of entrepreneurship, King’s College London)
• Rishi Sunak’s last chance to do right by 2.3 million self-employed Covid victims (David Prosser, contributor, Forbes)
• Innovation and Invention are the keys to levelling up (Torsten Bell, chief executive, Resolution Foundation)
• Businesses need to teach their staff how to have better small talk and ditch weather chat (Georgie Nightingall, founder, Trigger Conversations)
• History suggests the ‘British ARPA’ will be a wasteful failure (Terence Kealey, fellow, Adam Smith Institute)

News

• Half of medium-sized businesses on the brink as lockdown restrictions continue (CityAm covers BDO research)
• New ‘Pay As You Grow’ facility will enable more flexible repayment son Bounce Bank Loans for UK small businesses (British Business Bank)
• Buy now, pay later firms such as Klarna face stricter controls (BBC)
• Atomico launches third angel programme (Sifted)

Opinion

• Post-brexit, how do we get more founders backing the next generation of tech startups? (Brent Hoberman, co-founder and chairman, Founders Factory)
• Business needs some breathing space, not talks of tax rises (Rory Meakin, research fellow, Taypayers’ Alliance)
• Here comes Govtech: It’s time to digitise government and the public sector (Matthew Elliott, senior political advisor, Shore Capital)
• There’s a massive hole in so many critiques of big tech – the enormous value they offer consumers (Sam Bowman, director of competition policy, International Center for Law and Economics)
• Tech firms need to grasp the chance to change their hiring (Oliver Beach, UK GM and VP for growth, Jolt)

Opportunities

• Beauhurst: Impending changes to capital gains tax: Take the survey

Features

• Sifted: The most active angel investors in the UK
• FT: UK government becomes shareholder in toilet maker (feature on the Future Fund)

News

• Call for digital adoption fund to boost small business productivity (Growth Business covers new Coadec report)
• Bounce Back Loan Scheme top-ups open for eligible businesses (British Business Bank)
• Rishi Sunak extends furlough scheme till end of March and increases support to self-employed (Elite Business)
• Some 19,000 jobs for 16-24s created under government Kickstart scheme (CityAM)
• Y Combinator doubles European founder intake after going remote (Sifted)
• Early-stage VC funds have the potential to generate higher returns (new research from British Business Bank)

Opinion

• The second lockdown risks an insolvency tsunami (Mark Hart, deputy director, Enterprise Research Centre)
• Myth-busting in European venture capital (Ha Duong, investment principal, Ocean Investment)
• Chasing unicorns: Can smaller European states compete? (Steven Frigerio, founder, The Hive Effect)
• If Rishi Sunak must tax the rich, it should be on private equity’s carried interest, not entrepreneurs’ CGT (Jim Armitage, Evening Standard)
• Working from home already has a tax disadvantage, we don’t need any new ones on top (Sam Dumitriu, research director, The Entrepreneurs Network)
• London’s thriving future depends on giving today’s youngsters a chance (CityAM)

Features

• Kansas City: Kansas welcomed my immigrant parents. Then I built Dropbox, an $8 billion company
• Forbes: Software unicorn GitLab’s CEO warns you’re probably doing remote work wrong
• Sifted: Sir Ronald Cohen: “The VC industry has to wake up”
• FT: What can Silicon Valley expect from Joe Biden?
• The Economist: China takes aim at its entrepreneurs
• BBC: The dads getting entrepreneurial in lockdown

News

• Business secretary urges businesses to prepare for the end of the transition period (gov.uk promoting gov.uk/transition)
• More than half of UK business angels continued to invest post Covid-19 (British Business Bank launches latest report with UK Business Angels Association)
• SMEs cut off from bounce back loans as banks close to new customers (CityAM)
• Majority of UK businesses to scrap working from home post-pandemic (CityAM covers ONS survey of 5,500 businesses)

Opinion

• Business schools: Your country needs you… to save our SMEs (Lord Young, patron, Small Business Charter)
• Crowdcube Seedrs merger – what it means for raising money (Rob Murray Brown, publisher, ECF.Buzz)
• Government must allow hospitality businesses to recover (Roger Wade, CEO and founder, BOXPARK)
• Chief diversity officers are pointless (secret founder, Sifted)
• Boohoo is on the wrong side of history when it comes to business ethics and sustainability (Abbie Morris, chief executive and co-founder, Compare Ethics)

Features

• BBC: The graduates launching startups in lockdown
• Sifted: Startup hiring in the pandemic: The unicorns, compared
• GDS: What happened when we stopped having meetings and sending emails

Company formations sustain growth

Company formations in the first nine months of the year are 9.5% higher than January to September 2019. To date, 572,882 companies have launched in 2020.  Every English region and devolved nation saw year-on-year growth in company formations in September, averaging 29% across the UK and creating a four-month run of growth. Scotland saw 29% year-on-year growth in September, helping it recover from the sharpest fall in the UK to an overall 12% year-on-year increase since Covid took hold in March. Only Wales and Northern Ireland continue to see fewer company formations since Covid swept the UK (-4% and -8% respectively). Download the full regional and sector data

News

• Government to protect small businesses with action on late payment (gov.uk announces consultation to give Small Business Commissioner more power)
• MPs slam ‘inconsistency and incompetence’ as SMEs struggle to get Bounce Back Loans (CityAM)
• Almost half of staff at UK offices had returned before new advice (Guardian covers Morgan Stanley Alphawise data)
• Legalise e-scooters to cut number of cars on UK roads, MPs urge government (Independent covers Transport Committee report)
• Crowdfunding platforms Seedrs and Crowdcube announce plans to merge (CityAM)
• Leadership in ‘laggards’ key to post-Covid productivity gains (new ERC research)

Opinion

• Productivity in SMEs: A tale of the tortoise and the hare? (Caroln Stanfield, research associate, Enterprise Research Centre)
• Why Klarna — not Revolute or Monzo — represents the winning fintech strategy in a pandemic (Leon Gauhman, chief product and strategy officer, Elsewhen)
• Coronavirus or not, remote work is here to stay (Matt Clancy, lecturer, Iowa State University)
• Venture capital? I’m loving angels instead (Lord Flight, chairman, Flight & Partners Recovery Fund)

eatures

• Computer Weekly: Most influential women in UK tech 2020
• Oxford Foundry: Universities: Drivers of prosperity and economic recovery (new report)
• Sifted: Too many startups are failing and this new members’ club wants to help (profile of Startup Garage)

News

• Reforms to Companies House to clamp down on fraud and give businesses greater confidence in transactions (gov.uk announces identity verification for directors, in line with CFE’s recommendations)
• Support for entrepreneurs critical for post-Covid recovery (Enterprise Research Centre features Global Entrepreneurship Monitor research)
• Business groups urge chancellor to unveil autumn Budget policies early (CityAM)
• Small businesses handed lifeline as court rules insurers should pay out on some Covid-19 claims (Independent)
• Sunak mulls tax break for businesses to boost investment (Growth Business)
• John Penrose MP to lead review exploring how to bolster UK competition policy
• (gov.uk)

Opinion

• How the government can put enterprise at the heart of the recovery (Andrew Griffith MP, former chief business advisor to Boris Johnson and former COO, Sky)
• Rishi Sunack’s Kickstart scheme can help blunt the impending youth unemployment crisis (Michael Houlihan, CEO, Generation UK)
• How higher education can support local ecosystems of innovation (Alexander Kolokotronis, PhD candidate, Yale University and Onyeka Obiocha, managing director, Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking, Yale University)
• Post-covid-19 recession looms over tech startups (Robert Whitby-Smith, partner, AlbionVC)
• Why sleep problems boost entrepreneurial intentions (Mona Mensmann, assc prof, Warwick Business School)

Features

• Sifted: “Unicorns, who cares?”, French founders tell Macron
• BBC: The woman who started businesses in lockdown
• Forbes: Filling a vacuum – The entrepreneurs stepping out of Dyson’s shadow

News

• Half a million UK job losses forecast this autumn (FT features Institute of Employment Studies)
• Coronavirus insolvency measured must be extended, says IoD (CityAM)
• Local lockdown business grants ‘not enough’, warn lobby groups (BBC covers BCC)
• Lloyds rapped for forcing Bounce Bank Loans borrowers to open accounts (SmallBusiness)
• New diversity ‘standard’ for VC firms launches (Sifted)

Opinion

• London’s startup scene is under threat – here’s how we can safeguard our entrepreneurs (Andrew Roughan, managing director, Plexal)
• One size doesn’t fit all in terms of R&D and innovation (Stephen Roper, director, Enterprise Research Centre)
• Schools should start early on training the next generation of entrepreneurs (Sam Dumitriu, research director, The Entrepreneurs Network)
• Let’s call time on the capital’s tech ‘not spots’ (Russ Shaw, founder, Tech London Advocates)
• Smiling and sharing (Iqbal Wahhab, founder, The Cinnamon Club and Roast)
• Entrepreneurs are an asset to grow. The government must give them time to thrive (Michael Hayman, co-founder, Seven Hills)
• Startups: Call out bad investor behavior (secret columnist, Sifted)

Opportunities

• Appointments: Small Business Commissioner

Features

• FT: Changes forced by lockdown create rare opportunity for small business
• Fast Company: Miss the camaraderie of the office? Try one of these clever remote team-building ideas

News

• New productivity institute part of £37m investment to boost UK wage growth and living standards (gov.uk)
• Future Fund publishes diversity data of companies receiving convertible loan agreements (British Business Bank)
• UK businesses grow at fastest rate in seven years as economy reopens (CityAM)
• Government being urged to change rules on business support grants before schemes are closed at the end of the week (Daily Mail)
• UK fintech founders want greater support from government and regulators (Sifted covers Digital Finance Forum survey)
• Half of businesses fear staff at risk of pandemic burnout (CityAM)

Opinion

• Attending a remote startup accelerator is absolutely worth it (UC Berkeley SkyDeck Sprinig 2020 cohort)
• Britain’s business schools are joining the Covid-19 recovery battle but what role will they play? (Trevor Clawson, contributor, Forbes)
• This A levels and GCSEs exams crisis exposes government’s technology problem (Daniel Korski, co-founder, PUBLIC)
• Startups are sitting on a mental health powder keg (secret columnist, Sifted)
• Diversity and entrepreneurial activity – changing fortunes? (Richard Roberts, professorial research fellow, Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship)
• Why do European companies buy so few startups? (Maija Palmer, innovation editor, Sifted)
• The UK has £10bn skills gap, so investors must back the ‘edtech’ boom (Youri Doeleman, partner, Antler)

Features

• Stanford Social Innovation Review: The B Corp movement goes big