CEOs should get out of the board room spend time on the shop floor October 2, 2018 In a recent study, nearly 80 per cent of consumers stated that the average brand doesn’t understand them. This hints at a worrying disconnect in business, particularly at a time when changing attitudes among consumers and workforces mean leaders should be connected to what is going on outside of their office door. The day-to-day demands [...]
How London can fend off the European hotspots vying for its fintech crown October 1, 2018 Flash back to the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote. “London has committed suicide as a leading fintech centre,” tweeted Traxpay, a German payments platform. Catchy advertising urged startups to “keep calm and move to Berlin”. Read more: Meet the startups in the Treasury-backed Tech Nation fintech accelerator Over two years later, and it’s French [...]
London companies dominate list of UK startups where professionals most want to work, new analysis reveals October 1, 2018 London dominates the UK’s startup scene, new analysis from LinkedIn shows. All but one of the country’s 25 top startups are based in the capital, the social media site found. The analysis uses searches and company page views from LinkedIn’s half a billion users, over 25m of which are in the UK, and shows the [...]
London-based automation startup Softomotive scores $25m series A September 28, 2018 Business automation startup Softomotive will today reveal a $25m (£19m) series A investment, led by London investor Grafton Capital. Softomotive, which specialises in robotic process automation (RPA) plans to move its headquarters from Athens to London’s Spitalfields area with the new funds. Chief executive Marios Stavropoulos said that while the business is expanding across [...]
Darktrace lands $50m in series E funding, boosting its valuation to $1.65bn September 27, 2018 Homegrown cyber security success story Darktrace will today announce the close of its series E funding round to the tune of $50m (£38m), raising its valuation to $1.65bn. The round was led by Vitruvian Partners, with participation from existing investors KKR and 1011 Ventures. The funding will be used to fuel international expansion and [...]
Ignore self-help books about working a four-hour week, embrace the corporate lifestyle September 26, 2018 There's so much literature available on the market about how to find happiness in running (or working for) startups and small companies that you’d think the only way to be happy with your job is to start your own venture. Books like the cult hit “The 4-Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferris aim to persuade [...]
London coding security startup Snyk lands $22m series B from Accel September 25, 2018 Open source security startup Snyk today closed a $22m (£16.7m) series B funding round, led by Accel with participation from GV. Existing investors such as Boldstart Ventures and Heavybit also joined the round. With big names such as ASOS, Skyscanner and Auth0 among its clients, enterprise developers use Snyk to vet the security of [...]
Businesses should become radically transparent, open, and honest – even about salaries September 19, 2018 Slowly but surely, the secretive, paternalistic corporate culture of the past is being infiltrated by a new approach that embraces the concept of radical transparency. There’s a new breed of organisation that thrives on the notion of having no secrets from its employees, its customers, or any other stakeholders. These companies share every last detail [...]
Why settle? Britain can learn from copying international competitors September 17, 2018 From the record number of business startups to historically low unemployment, there are many things that the UK gets right. Indeed, a report by Forbes late last year declared that Britain would be the best country for business this year, citing technological readiness and the size and education of our workforce as key factors. But [...]
British scaleups must leap the confidence gap to achieve growth September 13, 2018 It's a well-worn fact that small businesses are the backbone of Britain. It’s also well-known that they have a high failure rate, as four tenths of SMEs fail within five years. Far less well explored are the reasons behind this failure rate. To better understand the challenges facing these businesses as they attempt to scale, we [...]