Your weekly summary of entrepreneurship news, comment, and features. Sent by the Centre for Entrepreneurs (home of StartUp Britain). Sign up here. Read the original newsletter here.
News
22% of small business employees wish to be self-employed
Startups.co.uk: Nearly a quarter (22%) of UK employees in small firms and 27% of those in medium-sied firms want to become self-employed, according to polling by Co-operatives UK. Read more
Santander UK teams up with Kabbage to offer fast loans to SMEs
FT (£): Santander UK has joined forces with Kabbage – a US fintech company – to speed up the underwriting process so businesses can potentially access working capital of up to £100k online on the same day. Read more
UK firms dominate FinTech50 2016 list unveiled at Money20/20
Tech City News: Some 31 UK FinTech companies have made Europe’s FinTech50 list, unveiled at Money20/20 in Copenhagen. Read more
Lloyds Banking Group and UKTI work together to help new exporters
Gov.uk: UKTI’s global commercial partner, Lloyds Banking Group has pledged to support 25,000 first-time exporters by 2020. Read more
McDonnell aims to create 20,000 entrepreneurs a year
LabourList: Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell used a speech this week to propose the roll out of government-funded “Strategic Entrepreneurial Hubs” to provide workspaces and support for an additional 20,000 entrepreneurs at a cost of £25m per year. Read more
Opinion
Two entrepreneurs reflect on this week’s introduction of the National Living Wage which raises the minimum wage for workers over 25 to £7.20/hour.
- Blame George Osborne as restaurants choke on new minimum wage (Iqbal Wahhab, Roast Restaurant)
- If you can’t take the National Living Wage heat, get out of the business (Charlie Mullins, Pimlico Plumbers)
Related commentary from over the pond: The $15 minimum wage wins where Silicon Valley fails hard (Davey Alba, WIRED)
The Lisbon startup scene has come to life
Lisbon’s startup scene is still in its infancy but with Web Summit coming to the Portugese capital this summer, it suddenly looks set to explode, writes Adam Pescod (editor, Elite Business). Read more
How can student entrepreneurship be encouraged?
Adi Gaskell (contributor, Forbes) reflects on how universities and schools can support entrepreneurship. Read more
You don’t have to build a scalable startup
Jon Westenberg (contributor, Medium) challenges the “snobbish” and “dangerous” view that working on any business that isn’t high-growth is a waste of time. Read more
Features
Are fintechs helping banks evolve – or planning a revolution?
Guardian: New regulations are dragging finance into a digital world/ Fintech startups are taking advantage but are they disrupting the old guard or helping them into a digital era? Read more
How to set up and launch a business in a day
Business Zone: Rome may not have been built in a day, but that doesn’t mean a company can’t. Tim Barlow runs through how he and Charlie Henderson set up and launched TheWoodPicker.com, a wood pellet fuel comparison search engine, in just eleven hours. Read more