Pot Luck

The Treasury is planning to change the rules to allow pension pots worth billions of pounds to be invested in start-ups, infrastructure and green energy projects.

If successful it would allow a slice of the UK's £2.2trn pension funds to be invested through the Long Term Asset Fund (LTAF), which was announced in November, with the LTAF becoming a “default” investment option for savers when automatically enrolled.

We’ve long called for this sort of change, most explicitly in our influential Startup Manifesto which we produced with our good friends at Coadec. (We really need to go back through the list of the 21 policies we jointly called for to see which haven’t been adopted yet by the government – many have.)

In another piece of good news for funding, the latest Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) report has some recommendations to improve the administration of SEIS and EIS. As Sam Dumitriu writes on our blog, we advocated a range of reforms in our Unlocking Growth report with the Enterprise Trust to help these vital reliefs function better.

Among other things, the OTS recommends reducing the information requirements for SEIS raises, the requirement for share issuances the day funds are received, and correcting something as simple (and no doubt infuriating) as the fact that the long application forms can't be saved partway through.

While these sorts of processes and regulations might seem immutable, it’s always worth letting us and other business organisations know when these sorts of issues arise, as these things can be changed – though admittedly not always as quickly as entrepreneurs would like or deserve.

House Grown

Like most businesses, we’ve managed to grow with a lot of help from our friends. Whether that’s our Sponsors, Patrons, Advisers, Supporters or Research Advisers, a lot of people have put in a lot of time and a meaningful amount of money to make sure we're able to support entrepreneurs. Like 99% of entrepreneurship, we don’t survive by tooth and claw but through cooperation.

We are not for want of offers of help – a day rarely goes by when I don’t get an offer to partner on something or the other – but I’ve learned over the years to only agree when there really is an alignment of values.

One partnership that’s going from strength to strength is with FieldHouse Associates. Founder Cordelia Meacher is one of our Advisers and because of their extensive VC connections, we’re running a year-long series of virtual roundtable interviews whereby we speak with leading VCs via Zoom about key issues around investment. By “we”, I mean “you”, with entrepreneurs joining us to ask questions.

Next week we have Sharon Vosmek, CEO of Astia, which has to-date has invested over $27 million directly in female-led companies. In August, we will have Michaël Niddam, co-founder and Managing Director of Kamet Ventures to talk about the latest innovations, particularly in healthcare. And in September we will have Stephen Page, founder and CEO of SFC Capital to discuss the importance of supporting startup ecosystems.

Kicking Off

BEIS has got in touch to ask us to promote a couple of schemes regular readers will already know about, but might appreciate being reminded of.

Help to Grow is an executive training programme delivered by some of the UK’s leading business schools, providing senior leaders at SMEs across the country with support, training and mentoring. You can find out more here and watch a discussion with Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng covering it here, which includes three Members of our Female Founders Forum: Debbie Wosskow OBE, Marta Krupinska and Laura Tenison MBE. We’ve been broadly supportive of Help to Grow – particularly as it chimes with the findings of our Management Matters report.

BEIS also wants to make sure you know about the Kickstart scheme, whereby the government funds new jobs for 16-24 year olds on Universal Credit. After loads of people (including us) kicked off about it, you no longer need a minimum of 30 job placements to apply directly for a grant. Businesses may want to read DWP's new employer prospectus or attend one of their employer webinars.

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