What are the common challenges startups face in equity tokenisation?

The most common challenges include navigating FCA regulatory requirements, selecting the right tokenisation platform, structuring the legal framework for tokenised equity, educating investors unfamiliar with digital securities, and ensuring compliance with the UK Digital Securities Sandbox rules.

What are tokenisation platforms and how do they work?

Tokenisation platforms are regulated technology providers that convert equity or other assets into digital tokens on a blockchain or distributed ledger. In the UK, platforms operating under FCA oversight include those participating in the Digital Securities Sandbox. They handle the technical issuance, custody, and transfer of tokenised securities.

What financial insights should founders know before tokenising equity?

Founders should understand the cost structure of tokenisation (legal, platform, and compliance fees), the valuation implications of fractional ownership, how tokenised equity differs from traditional equity crowdfunding, and the tax treatment of digital securities under UK law.

What investor strategies apply to tokenised equity?

Investors in tokenised equity can benefit from fractional ownership of high-value assets, improved liquidity through secondary market trading on regulated platforms, portfolio diversification across early-stage UK startups, and participation in deals previously accessible only to institutional investors.

What is the UK regulatory landscape for equity tokenisation?

The UK regulatory landscape is governed primarily by the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) and HM Treasury. Key frameworks include the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, the Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS), and ongoing FCA consultations on the treatment of tokenised securities. The UK is positioning itself as a global leader in regulated digital securities.

What is equity tokenisation?

Equity tokenisation is the process of converting ownership rights in a company into digital tokens recorded on a blockchain or distributed ledger. These tokens represent shares or equity stakes and can be transferred, traded, or held digitally, subject to regulatory compliance. In the UK, tokenised equity is treated as a regulated financial instrument under FCA oversight.

Capital Formation Reaches the Main Stage at London Tech Week. Tokenisation Is Still Waiting in the Wings.

Shawn Jhanji
Jun 3
5 min read

When London Tech Week opens its doors at Olympia on 8 June, a founder sitting in the audience of the new Founders Stage will hear a question asked out loud that, until recently, was mostly muttered in private. Do I really need to raise? For a decade the assumption ran one way. You built something, you raised a seed, then a Series A, then you handed over board seats and preference stacks in exchange for the fuel to grow. The 2026 agenda suggests that the assumption is finally being interrogated on the biggest tech stage in the country.

That matters, and it matters most to the founder who has never had a warm introduction to a fund. The capital formation debate is no longer the property of specialist conferences. It has reached the mainstream. The interesting question for this publication is what is still missing from the conversation.

What London Tech Week is actually putting on stage

London Tech Week 2026 runs from 8 to 10 June, and the organisers have built a dedicated Founders Stage around the realities of building in a tougher market. The session titles tell the story on their own. The New Reality of Startup Value. Do I Really Need To Raise? From Bootstrapped to Unicorn. Where Will The Next 100 Billion Pounds of Spinout Value Come From? Is The Value of Venture Capital Changing?

The speaker list is not a fringe gathering either. Carrie Babcock of the British Business Bank shares the bill with Ben Blume of Atomico, Suranga Chandratillake of Balderton Capital, and Bryan Kim of Andreessen Horowitz, alongside twenty unicorn founders. When that calibre of investor agrees to sit on a panel titled Is The Value of Venture Capital Changing, the premise of the question has already been conceded. Something in the model is shifting, and the people who built the old model know it.

This is genuine progress. A founder in Leeds or Cardiff watching the livestream is being told, by the institutions that set the terms, that raising a traditional round is now a choice rather than a rite of passage. The discipline of the current market has done something a decade of advocacy could not. It has made ownership and control part of the mainstream founder conversation.

The mechanism is at the other events

Here is what is missing. Walk the London Tech Week agenda for the word tokenisation and you will not find much. The conversation about whether founders need to raise, and on what terms, is taking place on one set of stages. The conversation about the infrastructure that could actually change those terms is taking place on another.

That second conversation is busy. TOK26, the London Tokenisation Summit, gathered policymakers and institutional investors in the city in January. City Week ran a Future of Digital Assets Summit in May. The London Blockchain Conference returns to Olympia in October, and Tokenize LDN lands at ExCeL in December. The UK Tokenisation Summit covers the same ground across multiple sectors. The plumbing is being discussed in detail, just not in the same room as the founders asking how to build without surrendering control.

The two debates have not yet been introduced to each other. That is the gap, and closing it is the point.

Why the two conversations belong together

Consider what the Founders Stage is really asking. Where will the next 100 billion pounds of spinout value come from, and how do founders capture more of it? How do you grow without a traditional Series A and the governance trade that comes with it? These are not abstract questions. They are precisely the questions that tokenised equity and a working secondary market are positioned to answer.

The regulatory scaffolding is being assembled in parallel, which is what makes the timing notable rather than speculative. The Financial Conduct Authority has published its final fund tokenisation rules. The FCA and the Bank of England set out a shared vision for tokenisation in UK wholesale markets in May and are gathering industry input until July. PISCES, the framework that allows private company shares to trade on an intermittent, regulated basis, gives founders a route to offer liquidity to early backers without forcing a full exit or a fresh priced round.

Put those pieces together and a different model of capital formation comes into view. A founder builds on tokenised foundations. Early supporters gain the prospect of liquidity through a regulated secondary venue rather than waiting a decade for an acquisition. The founder raises incrementally, on their own timetable, without handing a board seat and a liquidation preference to an institution at every step. The power dynamic in a capitalised company starts to move back towards the person building it.

That is the structural argument, and it is bigger than a cheaper cap table. It is about who holds power in a company once outside money arrives.

A position, not just an observation

This publication takes a clear view. The capital formation debate reaching the main stage at London Tech Week is the first half of a story. The second half is the infrastructure that turns the new questions into new options, and that infrastructure is tokenisation combined with a functioning secondary market under frameworks like PISCES. The two halves are currently being discussed in different buildings. They will not stay separate for long.

None of this is a finished answer. Tokenisation is one emerging route among several, the secondary venues are early, and the evidence will accumulate over years rather than months. A founder reading this should treat it as a reason to understand the mechanics now, not as a prompt to act tomorrow. But the founder who connects the question being asked on the Founders Stage with the answer being built at the tokenisation summits will walk into their next funding decision with more options than the founder who only heard half the conversation.

London Tech Week has done the harder thing. It has put the question of founder control and capital efficiency in front of twenty thousand people. The work now is to make sure the people building the answer are invited to the same table next year.

Key Takeaways

London Tech Week 2026 runs from 8 to 10 June and has built a Founders Stage around capital formation, with sessions openly questioning whether founders need to raise and whether the value of venture capital is changing.
The presence of British Business Bank, Atomico, Balderton and Andreessen Horowitz on those panels signals that the institutions that set the terms now accept the model is shifting.
Explicit tokenisation and RWA sessions are largely absent from the main agenda and sit instead at satellite events such as TOK26, City Week, the London Blockchain Conference and Tokenize LDN.
The questions the Founders Stage is asking about ownership, control and incremental growth are precisely the questions tokenised equity and PISCES enabled secondary trading are positioned to answer.
The editorial view is that these two conversations belong together, and founders who connect them early will face their next capital decision with more options and more control.