Mark Pascall, co-founder of The Wellbeing Protocol, recently published an account of governance experiments being run through hum, a platform managing shared community treasuries. Although these are not investment funds, they are managing a familiar problem: how groups decide where capital should be allocated. The first governance model, Gov1, was straightforward where every member could propose spending and every member voted equally. In theory it was highly democratic. I

Picture two founders, both running businesses that make money and make a difference. One has built a climate hardware company and can issue shares like any other startup. The other runs a care provider structured as a Community Interest Company, with an asset lock and a dividend cap baked into its c

Picture a founder outside the story everyone is telling. She is not building a large language model. She is building a climate hardware business in Sheffield, or a healthtech tool in Cardiff, with early revenue and a plan to grow. This week the British Business Bank published the numbers that descri

One of Britain's best known fintech names is trimming its workforce, and the reason it gives says a good deal about where the sector is heading. Starling Bank is cutting about 130 jobs, roughly three per cent of a workforce of more than 4,000 people, as it restructures its banking and technology tea

When the conversation turns to how founders raise money, it almost always turns to equity. Who led the round, at what valuation, on what terms. It is worth pausing on the quieter alternative, because on 29 June a new pot of it opened. Innovate UK is inviting UK registered organisations to apply for

Picture a founder in Bradford with a working product, early revenue and a plan to grow. She has never raised institutional money before, knows no one who has, and has no warm route into a London fund. For years, the honest answer to whether she gets funded has been decided long before she opens her

London Tech Week in review. Instead, in line with the current mood in Number 10, much of the headline address was given over to a lecture and a warning. Tech firms were told they had three months to prevent children accessing, creating and sharing harmful material or face new legislation, with the Prime Minister telling the room that the pace of change cannot be an excuse for harm and that nobody is getting a free pass. Protecting children online is an entirely legitimate pr

The model widened who could invest. The next one has to fix what it left unsolved: liquidity, selection, and the cost of staying in.

Picture a founder in Leeds with a working product, paying customers and a credible plan to grow. She has no warm introduction to a fund, no prior raise on her record, and no one in her immediate network who has done this before. New UK data suggests her single biggest disadvantage is not her idea, h

A founder building a women's health product, a food system fix or a financial inclusion tool in the UK today is working on exactly the problems the country says it wants solved. New data suggests they are also among the hardest founders in the market to fund, and the reason is not returns. It is inf

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, y

From 6 April 2026, the income tax relief available to investors in Venture Capital Trusts dropped from 30 per cent to 20 per cent. The change was announced in the 2025 Autumn Budget and took effect in the new tax year. Two months on, the implications are still being absorbed by the startup ecosystem

For the second time in three years, London has claimed the top position in Europe's technology ecosystem rankings. Dealroom's Global Tech Ecosystem Index 2026 has placed London ahead of Paris and every other European hub, ranking the UK capital fourth globally behind the Bay Area, New York and Bosto

The legal case unfolding in a London court between the founder of Cognism and five of its investors, including Balderton Capital and AVP Capital, would be notable at any time. A court hearing this week appears to have dealt an early blow to the investor defendants, according to reporting from Sifted

In a courtroom in London, a judge has determined that a startup founder's claims against five of his former investors carry a real prospect of success. It is a procedural ruling, not a final verdict. But for founders who have faced pressure from their backers, the Cognism case is already one of the

Category: FOUNDER ACCESS & CAPITAL REFORM

The European Commission announced on 18 May 2026 that it had selected Swedish investment firm EQT to manage the new Scaleup Europe Fund, a vehicle with a target size of €5 billion designed to back the continent's most promising technology companies at the growth stage. The fund will invest across th

18 May 2026 | Category: FOUNDER ACCESS & CAPITAL REFORM

The statistic that frames this announcement has not changed in a decade. Female founders in the UK receive less than 2% of all venture capital deployed. Despite numerous initiatives, codes, commitments and pledges from investors, the number has barely shifted. Against that backdrop, the British Busi

There is a cost that does not appear in any startup's profit and loss account, that no investor has to justify on a returns attribution sheet, and that no regulatory framework currently requires anyone to measure. It is the cost of raising a round.