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www.entrepreneur.com October 2026 United Kingdom Edition GOING GLOBAL / Jagdeep Rai on making the leap abroad P.10 HOUSE RULES/ Lord Leong on business, ambition and Britain’s future P.36 THE BEAUTIFUL WHIRLWIND/ From local roots to global routes P.22 £6.99 £6.99 WHAT MEL MORRIS KNOWS ABOUT BUILDING GLOBALLY P.40BET THE NEXT
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5 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / Contents/October 2026 P.40 The Next Bet MEL MORRIS ON STAYING AHEAD OF CHANGE FEATURES
October 20, 2026 Guildhall, London Under the Patronage of CONNECT WITH UK–GCC DECISION-MAKERS The Business Year presents a high-level forum convening a select group of senior UK and Gulf government and business leaders to discuss shared economic priorities and the next phase of UK-GCC cooperation. More details
55 Making Room for Growth Katie Keith is reshaping the global entrepreneurial journey ‘TREPONOMICS IN THE LOOP Contents/October 2026 28 Britain’s Banking Export How Starling’s technology is going global 36 House Rules Lord Leong’s vision for business, ambition and the UK BUSINESS UNUSUAL STARTUP SPOTLIGHT 60 THE GLOBAL COMPANY Built for the world from day one 10 The New Rules of Going Global Jagdeep Rai on HSBC and UK ambition 22 The Beautiful Whirlwind From local roots to global routes 7 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / FEATURES EDITOR Patricia Cullen patricia.cullen@bncb2b.com CEO Wissam Younane wissam@bncpublishing.net MANAGING DIRECTOR Rabih Najm rabih@bncpublishing.net ART DIRECTOR Simona El Khoury EDITORIAL TEAM Tamara Pupic, Aalia Mehreen Ahmed MEDIA SALES MANAGER Olha Kovalova olha.kovalova@bncb2b.com CONTENT MANAGER Viktoria Walkowiak viktoria@bncb2b.com REGIONAL DIRECTOR Andy B. CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Omar Hamdi CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Christoph Klink and Jonathan Selbie SUBSCRIBE Contact subscriptions@bncb2b.com to receive Entrepreneur United Kingdom every issue. COMMERCIAL ENQUIRIES sales@bncb2b.com WWW.ENTREPRENEUR.COM/EN-GB Access fresh content daily on our website All Rights Reserved 2026. Opinions expressed are solely those of the contributors. Entrepreneur United Kingdom is officially licensed exclusively to BNC B2B In United Kingdom by Entrepreneur Media Inc. No part of this magazine may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher. Images used in Entrepreneur United Kingdom are credited when necessary. Attributed use of copyrighted images with permission. All images not credited otherwise Shutterstock. 20 Wenlock Road, London, N1 7GU entrepreneurMediaUK entrepreneurUK entrepreneurmedia-uk entrepreneurmedia.uk → June Angelides, helping a new generation understand what their time is worth, credit: Kiran Gidda and Me + Em
8 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 Editor’s Note/ WHAT TRAVELS NOW Entrepreneur United Kingdom T he most interesting thing about entrepreneurship today may be how little it has to do with geography. A good idea can be developed in one country, financed in another and reach customers almost anywhere. Talent moves. Technology travels. Networks have become as important as markets. And increasingly, the people building businesses are thinking globally long before their companies actually are. That came through in the conversations behind this issue. Mel Morris has seen that transformation first-hand, from King and Candy Crush to his work today with Corpora.ai. Sam Everington is taking another route, looking at how the technology developed at Starling can become a platform for a new generation of banks beyond the UK. But technology is only one part of the picture. The less visible infrastructure around a business matters too. Jagdeep Rai sees this through her work with SMEs at HSBC UK, where access to finance and the right support can make the difference between an ambition and its next stage of growth. Lord Leong brings another perspective, drawing on his own experience as an entrepreneur as well as his role in government, where the conditions in which small businesses operate are part of a much bigger conversation. Then there is the question of who gets access to opportunity in the first place. That is something June Angelides has made central to her work through MyPholyo and Levare Ventures, championing founders and opportunities that can too easily be overlooked. I was also struck by Katie Keith’s work with Global Chamber London and her creation of Invarah House - a focused space for experienced women to have the kind of conversations that challenge and move them forward. Taken together, these stories suggest that global entrepreneurship is becoming less about expansion for its own sake and more about connection: connecting people to capital, ideas to markets, technology to new applications and experienced leaders to one another. Because while the world may be more connected than ever, knowing how to make those connections count is becoming a business skill in its own right. Enjoy the read! Patricia Cullen Features Editor, Entrepreneur United Kingdom
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The New Rules of Going Global 10 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 THE OPPORTUNITY IS TO MAKE MORE VIABLE FOUNDERS VISIBLE, CONNECTED, AND READY TO TURN THAT MOMENTUM INTO REAL SCALE, JOBS AND PROSPERITY ACROSS EVERY REGION ACROSS THE UK” “ “ In the Loop/ A s Managing Director and Head of UK Client Coverage, SME Business Banking at HSBC UK, Jagdeep Rai meets ambitious business owners across the country every day. What she sees is a UK with no shortage of ideas, optimism or entrepreneurial nerve. The challenge, she believes, is turning that ambition into something that can last: businesses that are ready to finance growth, ready to scale and ready to take on the world. There comes a point when a business stops being just an idea and the questions become more practical. The customers are there. The opportunity is there. Perhaps the next big contract is within reach, or a new market is opening up. But what happens next? Can the business afford to grow at the pace it wants to? Is there enough cash to support it? Are the margins right? Does it have the people and processes in place to deliver? And, perhaps most importantly, can it keep growing without everything resting on the founder? For Rai, these are not theoretical questions. They are conversations she has with business owners across the UK every day. A A great idea may have been enough in the past, but it is no longer enough on its own, she says. What she does see, however, is plenty of appetite. “One thing that you can't fault is ambition, that desire for entrepreneurialism,” Rai says. “There's a massive resilience.” You can hear the enthusiasm in the way she talks about the entrepreneurs she meets at HSBC events around the country. These are business owners coming together to learn, compare notes and make connections - and Rai clearly enjoys being in the room with them. “They're ambitious, they're positive,” she says. “I just get so energised when I talk to all of them.” That optimism is striking, particularly after the economic shocks and uncertainty businesses have had to contend with in recent years. But Rai doesn't confuse optimism with readiness. For her, the next step is making sure businesses have the foundations to turn determination into sustainable growth. “ The UK has the entrepreneurial momentum, that's not the challenge,” she says. “The opportunity now is helping more viable SMEs get finance ready early on so that they can turn that growth ambition into scale and jobs across the country.” For Rai, being “finance ready” is about much more than securing funding. It means understanding the numbers, proving customer demand, having credible forecasts and cash-flow plans, putting proper governance in place and building a business that can grow without everything depending on one person. Entrepreneurship has always had a soft spot for the idea. The lightbulb moment. The founder who sees something everyone else missed. The product that
11 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / → Jagdeep Rai, Managing Director and Head of UK Client Coverage, SME Business Banking at HSBC UK
12 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 changes an industry. The company that starts around a kitchen table and ends up operating across continents. Rai isn't dismissing any of that. But once a business starts to grow, she says, the focus has to shift. The founder needs to know whether the business can actually support the vision behind it. That means understanding unit economics. Knowing how much it costs to acquire and serve customers. Watching cash carefully. Proving that demand is real. Putting governance around the organisation. And, increasingly, building a team and infrastructure capable of repeating the founder's success without requiring the founder to personally intervene in everything. T he distinction becomes even more important when the ambition is international. A founder may be able to run a £1m business through instinct and sheer force of personality. Running a £10m business is different. Running one across several countries is different again. At some point, the organisation has to become bigger than the individual who created it. Rai talks about the importance of “repeatable execution.” Rather than relying on one person to hold everything together, the business needs “the right infrastructure around them.” Founders are often celebrated for doing everything themselves. They make the sales calls. They negotiate with suppliers. They know the customers. They understand the product intimately. In the early days, that can be exactly what a business needs. But what works at the beginning can become a weakness later. If everything depends on one person, the company hasn't really scaled. The founder has simply become very good at carrying more. The businesses that make the transition are the ones that start building the organisation around the growth. Rai has a neat shorthand for what she sees as the foundations of that process: the three Ds - Demand. Delivery. Discipline. “The businesses that we see scaling internationally or globally are the ones that get the fundamentals right.” F irst comes demand. Not assumed demand, but evidence. Are customers buying? Are they coming back? Is there genuine traction and retention? Then delivery. Can the organisation fulfil what it has sold? Does it have the right people, processes and operational capacity? And finally, discipline - particularly when it comes to money. “Having that cash discipline, really credible forecasting and that governance to manage growth without overstretching themselves is vital.” It is easy to underestimate how quickly growth can consume finances. A larger order may mean buying inventory before the customer pays. A new market may mean employing people before revenue arrives. International customers may work on longer payment terms. Foreign exchange movements can affect margins. A business can therefore look extremely successful from the outside while feeling quite different from the inside. “The best founders are those that see scaling is an organisational challenge, not simply a sales target.” The question is what happens underneath the sales figure. Who is delivering the product? Who is making the decisions? What happens if demand doubles? Where does the cash come from? And what happens when the founder isn't there? “Winning more customers and getting more business through the front door only creates value if the business can continue to serve them well.” T hat distinction - between growth and scale - runs through much of Rai's thinking. Growth brings in more business. Scale means having an organisation capable of absorbing it. Rai also advises businesses to have the finance conversation before they need it. One of the mistakes she sees is businesses waiting until the need for money becomes urgent before thinking about how to obtain it. By then, the conversation has changed. “The best- prepared SME founders are the ones who are really clear about what the finance is going to unlock for them,” she says. It starts with a basic question: what is the money for? Working capital? Equipment? Entering a new market? Longer-term growth? Being clear about that forces the entrepreneur to think through the business itself. How much is needed? When is it needed? What will it generate? What evidence exists to support the plan? Rai says businesses can come under pressure when they leave those conversations too late. “Where we see businesses struggle is when they leave the conversation about finance until it's really urgent.” P reparation gives businesses options. It also gives a potential funder something to work with: a track record, credible forecasts, management information, realistic cash flows and a clear explanation of what the company is trying to do. “And that story is really important.” But Rai is keen to move the conversation beyond money. “Finance is one thing, but also that capability support is equally important.” That means knowing where to get advice. Finding mentors. Meeting other founders. Learning from people who have already made mistakes that you would rather not repeat. It is part of the thinking behind SCALING INTERNATIONALLY ISN’T JUST SELLING MORE. IT’S BUILDING THE CAPABILITIES, THE FUNDING AND THE HEADROOM TO OPERATE REALLY RELIABLY IN NEW MARKETS” “ In the Loop/
13 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / HSBC UK's Small Business Growth Programme, which Rai says has reached more than 2m SMEs in the last year, providing training, events and insights alongside financial support. For a small business owner, those connections can be particularly valuable Sometimes the most useful thing another entrepreneur can give you isn't money. It is five minutes of experience. There is a more uncomfortable question running through Rai's thinking, however. Who gets the chance to build these businesses in the first place? “Opportunity definitely isn't evenly distributed.” S he points to significant disparities in access to venture capital and investment for female-only teams and Black founders, as well as the barriers reported by disabled founders. The figures she cites are stark: female-only teams received just 2% of venture capital in 2024, while Black founders captured 0.9% of investment value between 2013 and 2023. Disabled founders, she says, are reported to be 400 times less likely to secure investment. T hese statistics need to be understood carefully and in context, but Rai's underlying point is straightforward. A country's entrepreneurial potential cannot be measured only by the businesses that are already visible. There may be viable founders who have not yet found the right networks, advisers, customers or sources of capital. And if those people remain invisible, the economic cost is potentially much wider than the fortunes of individual businesses. “The opportunity is to make more viable founders visible, connected, and ready to turn that momentum into real scale, jobs and prosperity across every region across the UK.” It is a striking formulation. Not simply funded. Visible. Connected. Ready. Those three words broaden the conversation about access. Money matters, obviously. But so does knowing where to find it. So does having someone who can explain the process. So does meeting the customer who might become the breakthrough account. And so does having a network that isn't limited to people who look, sound or operate like you. F or Rai, some of the answers may already be sitting inside existing systems. “One of the biggest missed opportunities isn't necessarily a shortage of money,” she says. “It's actually not making full use of the pathways and the support that's already available.” She points to existing institutions and programmes, the expansion of Community Development Finance Institutions, better use of public data and changes to business support. Her conclusion is provocative precisely because it is not simply another demand for more capital. “Backing more viable business through better pathways. Not necessarily through more money.” The temptation to expand internationally is understandable. Once a business has proved itself in Britain, the world can look like the obvious next step. But Rai's view of international growth is much less romantic. I nternational expansion brings logistics, payment terms, foreign exchange exposure, longer cash cycles and working capital requirements, she says. There are different regulatory and commercial environments, different customer expectations and, potentially, an organisation that becomes much more complicated almost overnight. The strongest businesses don't simply take their UK model and drop it into another country. “They choose those markets deliberately,” Rai says. They test demand. They think about how the proposition will work locally. And, crucially, they build relationships. “The strongest ones we see really look at their local market and how that will work with their local partnerships.” Being global doesn't mean behaving identically everywhere. A business may have a global product, but customers are still local. Regulations are local. Business culture is local. Distribution is local. The companies that understand that distinction have a better chance of building something that lasts. There is another trap, too: trying to conquer too much territory too quickly. Rai sees businesses enter too many markets at once, underestimate the operational complexity and fail to put enough resources behind the move. It is a
14 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 In the Loop/ reminder that ambition can have a downside. You can want something very badly and still not be ready for it. “Scaling internationally isn't just selling more,” Rai repeats. “It's building the capabilities, the funding and the headroom to operate really reliably in new markets.” T he implication is almost counterintuitive. Sometimes the most ambitious thing an entrepreneur can do is move more slowly. Pick one market. Prove the model. Build the local relationships. Make sure the business can finance the journey. Then go again. It is inevitable that the conversation comes back to HSBC. But Rai's definition of the bank's role is broader than simply providing capital. “A bank's role goes well beyond money.” HSBC UK supports more than 675,000 SME customers, according to Rai, and she describes the bank's role as helping businesses understand finance readiness, strengthen the information behind their plans and navigate the different options available at different stages of growth. That can mean lending. It can mean broker routes. It can mean pre- approved lending. And where conventional finance isn't appropriate, it can mean referrals to alternative providers. Rai highlights Community Development Finance Institutions as one route that can help broaden access for underserved communities. The principle is that there should be a clearer route to the right finance, at the right time, for the right business. But perhaps the more interesting part is what happens around finance. HSBC's Small Business Growth Programme continues to expand, alongside its Strategies for Success programme and the women's business growth initiatives. There is a growing emphasis on events, information and connections. And Rai clearly enjoys this part of the work. She talks about travelling around the country and seeing local entrepreneurs gather in the same room. They are, she says, “hungry for knowledge, hungry to meet new people”. For all the talk of capital, forecasts and governance, the thing that seems to energise her most is people. Founders talking to founders. Business owners asking questions. Entrepreneurs comparing experiences. Someone discovering a new route into a market. Someone else hearing about a mistake they can now avoid. It is the human infrastructure of entrepreneurship. And Rai is clearly a believer in it. S o what happens next? What will distinguish the entrepreneurs who thrive in a more competitive global economy? Rai's answer begins with a word she admits is one of her favourites. “Execution.” There are more fashionable words in the entrepreneurial vocabulary. Innovation. Disruption. Transformation. But execution is where all of them become real. “I think the successful founders of the future who will thrive will innovate. They'll build resilience. They'll be very adaptable.” They will remain disciplined around cash and customer value. They will build proper governance. They will use the networks and support systems around them. And they will understand that being international does not mean losing touch with the individual markets that make up that international business. “They'll be globally minded, but locally rooted.” It is perhaps the cleanest expression of Rai's philosophy. The global entrepreneur of the future will need to think beyond their home market while understanding it better than ever. F or Rai, the entrepreneurs who will thrive in the next phase of the global economy won't be defined by ambition alone. They will be the ones who can turn ambition into something tangible: a business with the customers, cash discipline, people and infrastructure to support its growth. And perhaps that is the real opportunity for Britain's entrepreneurial economy - not simply to produce more great ideas, but to help more of those ideas become businesses capable of going the distance. “ Ultimately the global winners will be founders who pair ambition with execution, who can prove viability in a way that unlocks that capital partnership and long-term scale.” “ULTIMATELY THE GLOBAL WINNERS WILL BE FOUNDERS WHO PAIR AMBITION WITH EXECUTION, WHO CAN PROVE VIABILITY IN A WAY THAT UNLOCKS THAT CAPITAL PARTNERSHIP AND LONG-TERM SCALE”
15 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM /
16 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 → June Angelides, founder of MyPholyo and Levare Ventures, credit: Kiran Gidda and Me + Em
THE GLOBAL ENTREPRENEUR The new rules of building a career - and a company by ENTREPRENEUR UK STAFF In the Loop/ F rom Lagos to London, from venture capital to her latest fintech venture, June Angelides has spent her career questioning the rules of work, money and entrepreneurship. Now she believes the next generation will build careers - and companies - very differently. For most of the 20th century, the recipe for a successful working life was reassuringly simple: do well at school, go to university, get a job, work hard and, if things went well, stay there. Angelides thinks that model is changing. Not because people have stopped wanting careers, but because the world of work has evolved. A job can disappear. An industry can be transformed almost over- night. Artificial intelligence (AI) is already redrawing the boundaries of what people do for a living. And increasingly, the people best equipped to weather those changes may not be those with one immaculate career ladder, but those who have built a portfolio of skills, relationships and income streams. Angelides has a name for them: the ‘multi-income earner.’ It is also the thinking behind MyPholyo, the company she is building after years as an investor and entrepreneur. Its purpose is straightforward: to help people understand what their skills are worth, where their income is coming from, what they should be charging and, crucially, which opportunities are actually worth their time. As she puts it, “the labour market has changed faster than the infrastructure that exists to support it.” In 2026, a mortgage applica- tion still asks for one income. A CV tells the story of one career. Yet more people are now working across jobs, projects and businesses. Angelides has met people juggling seven things at once, often undercharging or taking on work simply because it looks good on paper. One woman had taken a role with 17 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM /
18 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 In the Loop/ BAFTA. “The logo sounds amazing,” she said. But it wasn’t paying enough for the time involved. The answer isn’t to work harder, but to understand what that time was worth. That thinking sits behind MyPholyo, which is building data around portfolio careers to help people benchmark their rates and spot where they may be leaving money on the table. So far, 65% of MyPholyo users didn’t know their effective hourly rate. More than 300 have used the Mapper, with 59% targeting over £100,000 in revenue this year. This isn’t a side-hustle crowd. It reflects a wider shift in global entrepreneurship: people are building careers around their skills, rather than a YOU CAN’T JUST ASSUME THAT YOU WIN IN ONE MARKET AND YOU’RE GOING TO WIN IN THE OTHER” single job. “We don’t talk about money enough,” Angelides says. MyPholyo aims to give people better information about what their time is worth - from speaking fees to board roles and fractional work. “I’m not saying go and do 10 jobs,” she says, “but do the actual jobs that compound and make sense for you.” Angelides’ career reflects her belief in learning and access. She began in banking, working with early-stage technology businesses, and in 2015 decided to learn to code while on maternity leave from Silicon Valley Bank. With a toddler and baby at home, she attended the General Assembly while her sister waited outside with the baby. “She cried the entire time,” Angelides recalls. Realising there had to be a better way, she approached Code First Girls about creating a programme for mothers. They introduced her to ThoughtWorks, which offered her space to run the pro- gramme. Angelides then approached contacts across the technology industry to see if they would teach, and they agreed. What began as a maternity- leave project became Mums in Tech, teaching women to turn ideas into products through coding. Angelides ran 12 cohorts and taught 250 women before leaving Silicon Valley Bank to build it full time. Raising investment revealed another problem: women and underrepresent- ed founders struggled to access funding. “There just wasn’t a playbook.” Angelides “
→ June Angelides, helping a new generation understand what their time is worth, credit: Kiran Gidda and Me + Em 19 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM /
→ June Angelides, on building a career without following the usual rules, credit: Kiran Gidda and Me + Em 20 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026
21 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / began asking how many promising businesses never got started because the right investor was never found. Her answer was to move to the other side of the table. Today, Angelides invests in early-stage businesses through Levare Ventures, with a focus on opportunities beyond the main markets. Africa is one. Having grown up in Nigeria in an entrepre- neurial family, she has long admired the resourcefulness of founders there. “There are a lot of problems and a lot of talent. All that’s missing is capital.” She has invested across Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa and Senegal, but stresses that Africa is not one market. Each country has different customers, regulations, payment systems and cultural expectations. “You can’t just assume that you win in one market and you’re going to win in the other.” For Angelides, it is a lesson in global entrepreneurship: a business that succeeds in one country cannot simply be copied elsewhere. Angelides points to Airbnb and Uber as examples of companies that expanded market by market, learning how each worked rather than assuming the same formula would apply everywhere. “Every expansion is a start-up starting all over again,” she says. She believes global founders need humility, recognising that the rules change with geography. The same applies to investors, who must be willing to back businesses before success is obvious. “You are taking a bet on something you believe will have an outsized return.” She cites fintech company Raenest which she backed early and says has since delivered more than an eightfold return. For Angelides, the point is to spot opportunities before everyone else does. The UK has great talent, entrepre- neurs and universities, but Angelides believes it lacks enough long-term capital. UK companies can reach the point where they need serious funding and find deeper pools of investment in the US, potentially moving their headquarters with it. How do we keep entrepreneurs in the UK and UK-owned? She believes the UK should become a stronger customer for its own technology, particularly AI, using it to improve productivity and keep more economic value at home. “We’ve got great talent,” she says, “but who’s relying on the UK?” Angelides sees AI as making entrepreneurship more accessible. She used AI-assisted software to build the first version of MyPholyo, testing the idea before investing heavily. However, she is wary of businesses built on little more than someone else’s AI model. “There is a lot of AI slop on there,” she warns. For investors, Angelides believes the strongest businesses need more than technology. Proprietary data, distribution and trust can create last- ing advantages in global markets. For MyPholyo, data is central to understanding what professionals charge, what different roles are worth and how people build multiple income streams. Angelides sees this as part of a wider shift in entrepre- neurship and careers. The traditional model of one employer and one income is no longer the only path. She describes her own approach as a “career stack”, combining investing, public speaking, fractional work and building companies. “If one falls away, I will be okay,” she says. But it’s not just about financial security. It gives her the freedom to take on new opportunities. Angelides is less interested in turning everyone into an entrepre- neur than giving people agency. That idea runs through her career: when she couldn’t find a way to learn that worked for her, she built Mums in Tech; when she saw women struggling to access funding, she became an investor; and when professionals struggled to under- stand the value of their work, she began building a platform around it. Her approach is simple: find what isn’t working and build something better. She is also comfortable admit- ting she doesn’t have all the answers. “I wouldn’t be serving anyone if I sat here and said I know it all,” she says. Angelides’ career has been about spotting opportunities before she has all the answers. Mums in Tech, investing and MyPholyo all grew from seeing a problem and doing something about it. The same thinking applies to global business. Careers are becoming less linear, while companies are being built across markets, borders and cultures. Success no longer comes from simply copying what works elsewhere. It comes from knowing when to adapt. The opportunity, she believes, is in seeing the change early. “EVERY EXPANSION IS A START-UP STARTING ALL OVER AGAIN. YOU ARE TAKING A BET ON SOMETHING YOU BELIEVE WILL HAVE AN OUTSIZED RETURN”
22 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 In the Loop/ → Zandra Moore, founder of Zygens
23 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / W hen Zandra Moore talks about her mother, she talks about technology. Not in the way you might expect. There is no grand story of a childhood spent taking computers apart, or of a mother who mapped out a career in technology for her daughter. Moore’s mother left education as a young teen. She found her way into tech because she needed to work, and went on to have a successful career at the dawn of the internet. What Moore remembers most is not what her mother taught her, It is what she showed her. “My mum went to work in tech very early,” she says, “she fell out of education at 14.” She never seemed fazed by the new. When the internet arrived, she embraced it. Later, after being widowed in her 60s, she went online dating. “She is not afraid of the internet,” Moore says. It is a small detail, but it explains a great deal about Moore herself. “I didn’t realise my path into tech and entrepreneurship was that I could see it. I had a role model. Most women don’t.” The Beautiful Whirlwind From local roots to global routes by ENTREPRENEUR UK STAFF F or Moore, possibility was visible from the beginning. Technology was not an intimidating world occupied by other people. It was simply something her mother did. Something that could be understood. Something you could have a go at. “I just didn’t see the risk because I always thought I could do it,” she says. “I could believe in myself because of what I could see.” That belief has taken Moore a long way. She has been self-employed since her twenties, built and scaled technology companies, employed people and made them redundant, expanded businesses and had to scale them back. She has spent much of her career in data, machine learning and SaaS, and now, in what she describes as her “third rodeo”, with Zygens, she is building again. This time, the territory is artificial intelligence. But Moore’s story is not simply about technology. It is about who gets to imagine themselves building something in the first place - and what happens when they do. She is candid about the advantages she had. “My privilege was having a role model.” For all the talk about encouraging more women into technology and entrepreneur- ship, Moore believes the problem is not a shortage of ability, it is a shortage of access: to networks, capital, childcare, opportunity and, crucially, to other people who have already done it. “It’s not a lack of capability for women but a lack of access and networks.” That conviction has become part of the work she does alongside building businesses. Moore was involved in the taskforce with Anne Boden, founder
24 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 direction and wondering whether the thing you have poured years into is still the thing worth pursuing. “I’ve been through the mire,” she says. “I’ve grown and scaled a company, I’ve employed lots of people, I’ve had to make people redundant, I’ve had to scale things back, expand them out.” But there is another lesson in all that experience: entrepreneur- ship can be lonely. M ore men start businesses than women, and the numbers become smaller again when you look at women building compa- nies with the appetite and potential to scale. “If you look at that high growth bit, the bit where women have the appetite, the ambition, the will, and the business that can scale, there are so few of us.” Because the hardest business decisions aren’t found in a textbook. They are about people, timing, money, ego and instinct. Sometimes you need someone who’s been there to see what you can’t. “We all need to know when to let go of the things that aren’t good for us,” Moore adds. It is one reason she believes so strongly in peer networks. Coaches can help, but there is a particular honesty that comes from sitting with people who understand the experience because they have lived it themselves. Most of the time, she says, the conversation is about difficult things. “The stuff that’s on our mind, that’s draining our energy, that’s keeping us up at night.” T here is something almost addictive about that pressure. Founders can want to step away from the intensity while simultaneously being unable to imagine doing anything else. Moore knows that feeling. And she knows that sometimes the way forward is not to push harder, but to let some- thing go. She has an almost physical dislike of the word “pivot.” The word makes changing direction sound like an enormous act of corporate manoeu- vring. Moore sees it differently. “To pivot is just being prepared to let your ego get out of the way.” That may be one of the hardest disciplines of entrepreneurship. Founders become attached to ideas because they have invested so much of themselves in them. They build teams around them. They give them names. They tell other people that this is where they are going. Then something changes. The market moves. The customer changes. The technology makes the original idea less relevant. “You’ve got to be prepared to step back from the decisions you’ve made, the investments you’ve made, the people who might no longer be right, and move towards what is.” Moore has had to do that herself. Her previous company, Panintelligence, grew from a management buyout into a data and machine-learning business, and Moore spent years working at the intersection of software, data and prediction. Then generative AI arrived and the market began moving again. Rather than watch the shift from the sidelines, she stepped into it. “I wanted to be on the AI side of the conversa- tion,” she says. That “I JUST DIDN’T SEE THE RISK BECAUSE I ALWAYS THOUGHT I COULD DO IT. I COULD BELIEVE IN MYSELF BECAUSE OF WHAT I COULD SEE” of Starling Bank, and went on to establish The Whole Point, a network designed to support women growing and scaling companies. It now has boards across five UK cities. The fact that those networks are outside London is important to Moore. “I’m unapologetically regional, not in London, because I’m a Leeds lass,” she says. Being outside London can make entrepreneur- ship harder, she argues. It can be harder to find other women like yourself, harder to access capital, harder to build the right relationships and harder to become visible. But why should women have to leave the places where they are building businesses, employing people and raising families simply to find the networks that might help them grow? Moore’s answer has been to bring the network to them. She believes that the people best placed to overcome an obstacle are often individuals who have actually lived it. Those of us who are at the coalface, who have lived with the problem, understand how to solve it, she says. However, she has little interest in pretending that entrepre- neurship is a smooth ascent. Her own experience has included the parts that rarely make it into a founder’s biography: difficult decisions, redundancy, scaling back, changing In the Loop/
25 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / → Zandra Moore, on building, scaling and starting again
26 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 decision led to Zygens, her latest venture, focused on helping organisations understand where AI can genuinely create value rather than simply adding another piece of technology to the pile. Moore calls some of what she sees “AI theatre”. It reminds her of the early internet. Back then, businesses were told they needed websites. Many built them without really understanding why. They had a digital presence, but not necessarily a digital business. Moore remembers those early days vividly because she watched them unfold at home with her mother. “I remember sitting with my mum the first day we got the modem in the house, watching the screen for the ICI chemical polymers just slowly appear.” Then came the page: white background, blue URLs and a pixelated logo. “It was just hyperlinks to another page with some text on it, a bit like Wikipedia for you today.” The technology was primitive. The possibilities were not. In the Loop/
27 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / M oore sees AI going through a similar stage now. People are experimenting. Companies are trying things because they have been told they should. There is plenty of noise, and not everything being built will matter. But that is how technologi- cal revolutions work. The maturity comes later, when people stop asking what the technology can do and start asking what they actually need it to do. That is the thinking behind Zygens. Moore starts with the business strategy, then the problems standing in its way, then the potential use cases. Only after that does she consider the technology. The question is not simply whether AI can be applied. It is whether applying it will drive value. For Moore, the question goes beyond AI: is this still working, is the team still right, and is what we’re doing actually creating value? That, she says, is where entrepreneurship is less about bravado and more about judgement. For women, there are still added barriers, but the fundamental difficulties of building a company are not gender- specific. “I think sometimes we need to separate the challenges of gender from the truth of building a business,” she says. Cash flow does not care who you are. Markets change for everyone. Every founder eventually has to make a decision they would rather avoid. What differs is who has someone to call when that happens. Moore believes that bringing more people into those conversations - women, people from minority backgrounds, people without inherited wealth or elite educational networks - is not simply a question of fairness. It is an economic one. “If people that aren’t already in those circles are not in the same rooms, that slows our economy down.” That is why the networks matter. And why role models matter. Moore knows what it means to see someone like yourself doing the thing you had not yet imagined doing. She also knows the responsibility that comes with becoming that person for someone else. W omen who become successful are often encouraged to be more visible, more vocal, more available. They are expected to speak, mentor, advocate and inspire the next generation, even while they are trying to run their own companies. Moore feels that pull herself. “We have a massive compulsion to show up and be role models and be visible because we know that’s part of the problem.” But visibility has a cost. “If you want more women scaling companies, we also need to not put loads of pressure on the women that are scaling companies.” If we want more women to build ambitious companies, we cannot make being a role model another full-time responsibility. There is a generosity to Moore’s thinking. “Legacy’s really important,” she says, “it’s not about money, it’s about putting the ladder down, making it easier for others to climb up.” Like mother, like daughter. Her mother showed her what was possible; Moore has spent her career following that example, from the early internet to the leading edge of AI. Technology keeps changing. Moore keeps moving. Her mother always called her a “beautiful whirlwind”. It is hard to think of a better description. At 50, Moore is already onto her next company, working in a field that is changing almost by the week. She laughs about the chaos of it. Then she gets back to work. LEGACY’S REALLY IMPORTANT. IT’S NOT ABOUT MONEY, IT’S ABOUT PUTTING THE LADDER DOWN, MAKING IT EASIER FOR OTHERS TO CLIMB UP” “ → Zandra Moore, on the influence of her first role model
28 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 BRITAIN’S BANKING EXPORT How Sam Everington is turning Starling's technology into a global platform for the next generation of banks by ENTREPRENEUR UK STAFF → Sam Everington, CEO of Engine by Starling B Disruptor /
29 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / “BRITAIN’S STRENGTHS INCLUDE GENUINELY DEEP ENGINEERING TALENT AND A REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT WHICH ENABLES AND ENCOURAGES POSITIVE INNOVATIONS” B anking was built on decades of accumulated technology, regulation and infrastructure. But what if the next generation doesn’t have to inherit any of it? Sam Everington was there from the beginning of Starling, helping build the technology that powered one of Britain’s most influential digital banks. Today, as CEO of Engine by Starling, he is taking that architecture beyond Britain - from Romania and Australia to Canada, New Zealand and the Gulf - giving established institutions and emerging markets the chance to leapfrog legacy banking systems altogether. His ambition is bigger than exporting software. It is to export a blueprint: a radically different way to build, operate and scale a bank in the digital age. For this Global Entrepreneurship edition, Everington discusses why ageing infrastructure has become banking’s innovation ceiling, why emerging markets may have the advantage, and how British fintech could turn one of its greatest technological success stories into a global industry.
30 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 }You were part of the team that built the technology powering Starling from the ground up. What did that experience teach you about how banking could be built differently? I joined Starling back in 2016 as a software engineer, building the systems and apps behind the current account launch. What that experience really taught me is the difference in impact you can have between digitalising an existing process and designing the ideal journey from the customer and employee perspectives. Most banks are trying to bolt modern capability onto core foundations that are twenty to forty years old. We got to start by focusing on solving the problem at hand - build- ing on modern foundations that can operate intelligently, with full content to deliver real-time outcomes for everyone. That’s what convinced me the technology itself is the thing worth exporting. Engine is now taking technology developed in Britain into international markets. What made you believe that what worked for Starling could work for banks around the world? The proof point for me is Salt Bank in Romania. They went live on Engine in under twelve months - a fraction of the time it would take to compose component systems, yet alone build a proprietary core banking system from scratch. We’ve seen the same pattern with AMP in Australia, and are now delivering this for Tangerine in Canada and SBS Bank in New Zealand. The basic needs of people, families and businesses are the same everywhere. Further, almost every financial institution, regardless of geography, is dealing with the same rigid, ageing core infrastructure that is trying to meet the needs of ever modernising tech savvy customers. If the platform solved that once in the UK, there was every reason to believe it can solve it again elsewhere. Could countries with less established banking infrastructure actually leapfrog the UK and build the next generation of banks faster? Yes, and I think that’s an underappreciated point. “EVERYWHERE WE LOOK, THERE ARE HUGE OPPORTUNITIES. PERSONALISED AND MORE HUMAN BANKING CAN BE THE FUTURE, AT A SCALABLE PRICE-POINT, WITH TECHNOLOGY BUILT ON THE RIGHT FOUNDATIONS”
31 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / Markets that don’t have the same decades of legacy spaghetti, don’t have to go through what I’d call the graveyard phase - the years banks spend trying, and frequently failing, to wrap their cores and replace all the components around. Incumbency can be as much a liability as an asset. A market building its banking infrastructure today can start where the world’s best digital banks are right now, rather than where we started decades ago. What has expanding Engine internationally taught you about what Britain does well in fintech - and where it needs to improve? Britain’s strengths include genuinely deep engineering talent and a regulatory environment which enables and encourages positive innovations. From real-time payments, to open banking, to AI in financial services, Britain has set new standards of expectation. London is where our tech stack was built, and it’s still where we’re investing, including our new HQ. While we’ve expanded beyond the UK, London remains a hub for innova- tion for us. Where British fintech needs to improve: for all the sleek apps UK neobanks have built, relatively few of us have become customers’ primary bank account. There is a huge opportunity in the UK for deepening customer relationships, with digital players expanding into primary accounts by building high-trust products customers can rely on. The Middle East is investing heavily in financial innovation and building new digital econo- mies. What opportunity do you see for Engine - and for British fintech more broadly - in the region? The Middle East is a key region for Engine which is why we opened our first Engine officesin the region last year. The GCC is deploying real capital, both financial and political support, into digital-first financial capabilities, which makes it a natural fit for a platform-led approach of enabling the uplift and rapid modernisation of existing institutions. We’re already running a genuinely international, cloud-native operation across Canada, Romania, Australia, and New Zealand — the Gulf is a real focus for us, and one where we feel both our technology and operating experience can have a significant impact on growth. Are traditional banks becoming increasingly constrained by the legacy technology they have spent decades building around, and what does that mean for the future of banking? The core banking software market is dominated by a handful of incumbent providers, and plenty of bank executives have tried to replace their core systems and failed. But legacy technology isn’t just a cost problem, it’s an innovation ceiling. It’s often expensive just to deploy real-time payments, yet alone give breadth of context to AI tools at speed, if the core under- neath can’t support it. Everywhere we look, there are huge opportunities. Personalised and more human banking can be the future, at a scalable price- point, with technology built on the right foundations. Could Engine ultimately become bigger than Starling - and if it does, what will you have changed about banking around the world? We’ve set ourselves a target of £100m in annual recurring revenue, and we’re well on track to get there soon, off the back of our footprint across the UK, Canada, Romania, New Zealand and Australia. Engine is still a smaller business, relative to Starling’s overall Group revenue today, but it’s highly scalable and it’s asset-light. Engine gives the wider group real resilience and fee income, and all clients the benefits to learn from the experience of a community of like-minded banks. If we get this right, what I’ll have changed is proving that a handful of banks built on Engine can deliver both high levels of customer satisfaction and operating efficiency. We’ll have effectively exported the blueprint for what a well-built digital bank looks like, instead of every institution attempted to reinvent it.
E min Can Turan, founder & CEO of Pebbles AI, has an unusual answer to the question of where he gets his instincts from. His mother was a philosopher, his father a physicist, and there is a long history of military intelligence in the wider family. Now he is building an AI company between London and Lviv, where his team has worked through blackouts and air-raid sirens. Turan is convinced that the next generation of AI will have to do more than produce convincing answers: it will have to reason. We talked about what that means, what war does to a company, and why he thinks small teams can still take on giants. Code, Conflict and Conviction 32 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 → Emin Can Turan, founder & CEO of Pebbles AI Can you tell us a little about your background? I was born in the Netherlands to two academics, my mother in philosophy, my father in physics, so I could be proven wrong empirically and morally at the same table. There is also a long line of military intelligence in the wider family, and the apple, I’m afraid, does not fall far from the tree. Since then I’ve lived in 10 countries, been featured as a primary case study in an Oxford University Press publication, and spent a decade in B2B go-to-market across FAANG, unicorns and decacorns, and B/Intelligence Inside the start-up building through war in Lviv by ENTREPRENEUR UK STAFF
startups, one thing was always true: everyone was building point solutions. But you cannot move the commercial needle with a point solution, one tool for email, another for outreach. Go-to- market is an intercon- nected, collaborative effort, management and strategy, marketing, sales, even product, all pulling in the same direction. So we built GTMOS™, an operating system for the entire commercial team to collaborate, cut friction and hit their KPIs. Underneath it sits our neurosymbolic AI. A reasoning system, not a chatbot. Where most point solutions are thin wrappers or template agents over a generic model, ours genuinely reasons. This is also 33 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / early-stage startups. Seeing companies at every stage taught me what the ones that succeed have in common: the recurring human mistakes, the systems you truly need, and how much science-based, systems-level thinking mat- ters. Pebbles is my second venture; the first was a boutique strategy consul- tancy, effectively a McKinsey for SMEs, which took more than 30 companies to market. What made you believe Pebbles AI needed to exist? At its heart, this is David versus Goliath. Big tech and the Tier-1 strategy consultancies can afford the top 1% of talent and diabolically expensive technology to dominate their markets, which quietly squeezes the small and mid-sized businesses that make up most of the economy. The elite go-to-market know-how the giants take for granted should be within reach of every SME, and closing that gap is the whole reason we exist. I saw it from the inside. Across big tech, unicorns and decacorns, and small WHEN YOU’RE YOUNG AND UNKNOWN, NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR VISION, SO AT FIRST ALL YOU HAVE IS AN IDEA. BUT I ALSO DID NOT ASK ANYONE TO JOIN A BLANK PAGE” → The Pebbles AI team
34 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 why, step by step, we go from automation toward genuinely reliable autonomous capabilities, at a precision, accuracy and efficacy the best base models cannot match. Not even close. Who are the people behind Pebbles AI, and what makes the team special? The core engineering group is the whole story here, and they are extraordinary. Our values set the tone: hard work, focus, real camaraderie, and strict meritocracy, where the best idea wins, not the most senior title. The company culture is a cocktail of Dutch directness, British polish and Ukrai- nian grit. The result is what I can only call a Navy SEAL squad, a small unit of elite operators who out-build teams many times their size. Between them, this group has built centaurs and a unicorn, trained as mathematicians and applied scientists, competed at Olympic level and been headhunted by Google, with pedigrees spanning Cisco, HubSpot and Philips. And it shows in what they build: at public launch, Pebbles reached number 2 out of 1,097 on Product Hunt at launch beating even Kimi K3 (ranked 3), and the top 10% of all time launches to date. Furthermore, some of our investors mentor us closely: from renowned entrepre- neurs to senior executives spanning London, Lucerne and Lviv, our own triple-L axis. We are blessed to have such a supportive and intelligent angel group. How did you build such an exceptional team in Lviv from scratch? It was brutally hard. When you’re young and unknown, nobody cares about your vision, so at first all you have is an idea. But I also did not ask anyone to join a blank page. Before a single line of code was written, I spent 2 years doing PhD-grade research that became the blueprint for our entire neurosymbolic AI. That IP is one of the real reasons the best people said yes: they could see genuine foundations, laid by domain experts, before they ever arrived. I have taken no salary in over 3 years, everything goes to the team. Each of them is an A-player who also cut their own salary, and in several cases moved countries and left a comfortable big-tech job, to build something truly innovative. Our capital efficiency and discipline shows up in the numbers: over 75,000 hours of validated engineer- ing delivered, roughly £7 of output for every £1 we spend, and is reflected in the company’s value. What has it been like building a company through a war? We ship on time, every release cycle, through power cuts, air-raid sirens, and the occasional Shahed drone overhead. 3 years in, we’ve never missed a shipment. These are conditions that forge a team, not break it. A favourite memory: during one raid the team took shelter, and instead of the drone, IT IS A TOP-LEVEL SPORT: PUNCH AFTER PUNCH, THE ROLLERCOASTER RIDE ALL FOUNDERS KNOW TOO WELL, REGULAR PAIN. YET WITH AN INCREDIBLE TEAM BESIDE YOU, YOU BECOME RESILIENT” “ B/Intelligence
35 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / worried about the release, kept working, closing tickets from the bunker, shipped on schedule, and had delicious noodles. Why has the London–Lviv model worked so well? London brings the commercial polish and the go-to-market instinct; Lviv brings world-class engineering and a work ethic built under conditions most teams will never face. Outside Silicon Valley, the best engineers on earth are in Ukraine, that isn’t sentiment, it’s observable fact. Pair that with London’s commer- cial nous and you have an unfair advantage. Others have noticed: Google made an exception to grant us a substantial allocation of Google Cloud credits normally reserved for venture-backed scale-ups, and Mountside Ventures, Europe’s leading early-stage accelerator, admitted us as one of just 20 companies from 514 applicants. Looking back on your journey as a founder, what has sur- prised you most, and what are you most proud of? The war is devastating, there is nothing good to say about it, and I would never diminish what it has cost Ukraine and its beautiful people. But building a leading neurosymbolic operating system is its own kind of war, and in truth we have been fighting 2 at once. It is a top-level sport: punch after punch, the rollercoaster ride all founders know too well, regular pain. Yet with an incredible team beside you, you become resilient. What surprised me most is that the war did not weaken us. It made us stronger, more focused, and more united than ever. And if next winter means trading our state-of-the-art set-up for candlelight, Starlink and EcoFlow batteries, so be it.
36 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 → Lord Leong, Minister for Small Business and Enterprise
37 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / HOUSE RULES LORD LEONG on business, ambition and Britain’s future by PATRICIA CULLEN L ong before entering public life, Lord Leong was an entrepreneur. As co-founder of Cavendish Publishing, he built an independent business from the ground up - an experience that continues to shape his perspective as Minister for Small Business and Enterprise. In this Entrepreneur UK interview, he reflects on the realities facing entrepreneurs, from finance and late payments to AI and regulation, where the UK can improve, and his vision for business - and his own legacy - by 2030. You co-founded and built Cavendish Publishing into a successful independent business. What did that experience teach you about building and growing a company, and how has it shaped your approach to policymaking? Building Cavendish Publishing taught me that a successful company is never built on a good idea alone. It takes courage, resilience and relentless execution - and, above all, it takes good people. We had to understand our customers, manage cash flow carefully, invest before the returns were certain and constantly adapt as the market changed. It also taught me that culture matters. My guiding principle has always been: “Happy staff equal healthy profits.” If people feel trusted, valued and connected to a shared purpose, they will do extraordinary things. That experience profoundly shapes how I approach policymaking today. I try to look at every policy through the eyes of the person running a business: Does it solve a real problem? Is it practical? Is the cost proportionate? Will it help them invest, recruit and grow - or simply give them another form to complete? Government cannot - and should not - run businesses. But it can create the conditions in which enterprise succeeds: fair markets, reliable infrastructure, access to opportunity and a stable environment that rewards ambition. My experience at Cavendish taught me that behind every business is a founder who took a risk, employees whose livelihoods depend upon it and families who made sacrifices. That is the human reality I bring to policymaking - and why I believe Britain cannot succeed unless its entrepreneurs and small businesses succeed. What do you believe the UK needs to do now to become one of the world’s best places to start, scale and build a globally successful business? The UK is already a great place to start and grow a business. We have a strong entrepreneurial culture, world-class universities, a determination to innovate, and are seen around the world as open for trade. Building on these strengths, we now need to create the conditions that turn ambition into sustainable growth that is felt in every postcode of this country. That means making it easier to access finance; business advice and
38 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 support; helping firms adopt new technologies to improve productivity; whilst reducing unnecessary barriers whether through regulation or tackling late payments. By creating the right conditions for growth, we can help more UK businesses become more globally successful. AI is giving small businesses capabili- ties once available only to large corporations. Could it level the playing field for entrepreneurs, and what must the government do to make that happen? I believe AI can play a role in providing SMEs with more resources and capabilities that once required huge teams and significant investment. This can free up entrepreneurs from routine administrative tasks and instead help them focus on innovating, competing, and ultimately growing their companies. Our ambition is for the UK to be the fastest adopter of AI in the G7, helping to unlock growth and productivity across the economy, and generate new opportunities for workers. With AI Minister Kanishka Narayan and the Prime Minister’s new AI Taskforce leading this agenda, we are focused on harnessing the opportunities of AI to drive productivity and growth across the UK economy. So, my role is to work with industry to help remove the barriers that hold entrepreneurs and smaller firms back: by helping businesses with practical support, whether that be AI skills, guidance, and access to expertise on how to use AI to boost productivity. We’ve already committed over £200m to help UK businesses adopt AI so they can realise this opportunity – and my department wants to work with industry to equip 10m workers with essential AI skills by 2030 through the AI Skills Boost initiative. The UK has no shortage of entrepre- neurial talent, but we have often struggled to turn promising start-ups into global scale-ups. Where, in your view, are we still falling short? You are absolutely right to praise the amount of talent we have on offer in this country. It’s a concern to me that far too many promising businesses have to relocate abroad to countries such as the United States to get the investment they need to grow. One of our biggest focuses in Government is how we make the most of that and ensuring scale-ups have the funding and business environment they need to stay and grow in the UK is central to that. Over the summer we announced that major pension funds were coming together to explore setting up a dedicated UK Scale-up Fund worth around £1bn. This would provide substantial investment to British scale ups that are desperately needed, keeping them here along with any jobs and supply chain boosts that come with that. Through the Industrial Strategy and Plan for Small Businesses, we’re also unlocking capital, expanded tax incentives, overhauled public procurement and strengthened our public finance institutions, all to give scale-ups every opportunity to grow into global leaders. Late payments can be existential for a small business. Do you believe enough is being done to tackle the culture of late payment, and what more needs to change to give entrepreneurs greater financial security? I am determined to tackle late payments between businesses. It is such a significant problem, causing the closure of 38 businesses a day and costing our economy £11bn per year. This is personal to me. I spent 45 years in business before entering Government. I know cash flow is the lifeblood of every enterprise. In my own business, we paid suppliers on time because it was the right thing to do – and it was good business. Suppliers remember those who treat them fairly and provide their best service to customers they trust. I am currently leading the Commercial Payments Bill through the House of Lords. This is the most significant legislation to tackle late payments in over 25 years and will give the UK the strongest laws on late payment in the G7. It will impose strict maximum payment terms of 60 days and mandate the payment of interest on all late payments. It will also give the Small Business Commissioner new powers to adjudicate payment disputes, to investigate companies with poor payment practices, and to fine persistent late payers. Beyond our late payments legislation, we are continuing to improve access to finance, through programmes such as Start Up loans, Growth Guarantee Scheme and support for under-served founders. Entrepreneurs increasingly have to navigate geopolitics, supply-chain disruption, regulation and rapidly changing global markets. What do you see as the biggest opportunities - and the biggest challenges - for entrepre- neurs over the next five years? Entrepreneurs are operating in an increasingly complex world. From geopolitical uncertainty and supply- “WHEN WE LOOK BACK FROM 2030, I WOULD LIKE ENTREPRENEURS TO SAY THAT 2026 WAS THE YEAR THE GOVERNMENT BEGAN MAKING BRITAIN THE BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD TO START, BUILD AND GROW A BUSINESS - NOT SIMPLY THROUGH WARM WORDS, BUT THROUGH PRACTICAL CHANGE”
39 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / chain disruption to emerging technologies, businesses face a wide range of challenges that can affect their confidence, resilience and ability to grow. Our focus is on helping businesses navigate that complexity by reducing regulatory barriers, improving access to support and finance, and ensuring the voice of small business is central to policy making. Through our SME Regulatory Taskforce, we are reducing regulatory burdens by 25% and the Business Growth Service is making it easier for businesses to access support and advice they need. We recently launched the Supply Chain Centre to bolster the UK’s supply chains and growth ambitions, as well as safeguard us against disruption. We established a dedicated response team to the Middle East crisis and recently released guidance for businesses on how they could manage challenges arising from the conflict. We will continue to work in partnership with industries and business leaders to get ahead of any future disruption. If any business needs advice and support around supply chain issues, our new Economic Security Advisory Service is more than happy to help. If you had £1bn to invest in the UK’s entrepreneurial future, where would you put it - access to finance, skills, technology, infra- structure, exports or something else - and why? If I had £1bn to invest in Britain’s entrepreneurial future, I would invest it in turning potential into productivity - particularly among small businesses outside the usual centres of opportunity. Access to finance would be central, but finance alone is not enough. Giving a business capital without the skills, technology or market access to use it effectively risks treating the symptom rather than unlocking its full potential. I would therefore create an Entrepreneurial Growth Fund combining patient finance with practical management support, digital and AI adoption, and help to export. A significant share would be delivered through trusted local partners - business groups, universities, further education colleges and regional finance institutions - because entrepreneurs need support that understands their sector and community. I would particularly focus on founders who have historically struggled to access capital, including women, ethnic-minority entrepreneurs and businesses in regions often overlooked by traditional investors. The goal would not be to subsidise businesses indefinitely. It would be to give ambitious firms the tools to become more productive, win new customers, enter international markets and create good jobs. Every pound of public investment should be designed to attract additional private capital and generate a lasting economic return. Britain does not lack ideas or ambition. What we too often lack is the bridge between starting a business and scaling it successfully. I would use that £1bn to build that bridge. Looking back from 2030, what would you like UK-based entrepreneurs to say this Government changed for the better - and what would you like your legacy as Minister for Small Business and Enterprise to be? When we look back from 2030, I would like entrepreneurs to say that 2026 was the year the Government began making Britain the best place in the world to start, build and grow a business - not simply through warm words, but through practical change. I want them to say that we listened to the realities of running a business: the pressure on cash flow, the struggle to secure finance, the time lost navigating regulation, the challenge of adopting new technology and the difficulty of breaking into new markets. I want them to feel that the government became a partner in enterprise - opening doors rather than placing obstacles in their way. Success would mean more small firms being paid on time; more founders able to access the finance they need to scale; more businesses adopting digital technology and AI; and more British companies exporting with confidence. It would also mean entrepreneurs in every region and from every background believing that opportunity is genuinely open to them. My own legacy as Minister for Small Business and Enterprise is not for me to declare – it will be judged by the businesses we serve. But I would be proud to be remembered as a Minister who listened, understood and then acted; who brought the voice of the entrepreneur into the heart of government; and who never forgot that behind every business statistic is a human story - a founder taking a risk, a family making sacrifices and employees depending upon that business to succeed. Above all, I would like entrepreneurs in 2030 to be able to say: “The Government gave us the confidence and the conditions to grow - and then trusted us to get on with it.” Because when small businesses succeed, communities prosper, opportunity spreads and Britain succeeds.
40 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 THE NEXT BET WHAT MEL MORRIS KNOWS ABOUT BUILDING GLOBALLY by PATRICIA CULLEN
41 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / }} ← Mel Morris CBE, entrepreneur and technology investor
42 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 H is career has moved from early computing and internet dating to gaming, cybersecurity, search intelligence and now artificial intelligence and frontier energy technology. But the thread running through it is consistent: he is drawn to problems that other people have either dismissed, misunderstood or decided are too difficult. His first major lesson came with uDate, the internet dating business he built at the turn of the millennium. The company was preparing to float when the dot-com crash arrived, transforming the fundraising landscape almost overnight. Instead of the huge nine-figure sum they had expected, they raised only a more conservative seven-figure amount. Within months, the money was disap- pearing. The technology worked, the platform was monetising, but there wasn’t enough capital to market it properly. Morris asked his CFO and COO how long they I CAN TREAD WATER AND DIE, OR I CAN TRY AND SWIM TO SOME YET UNSEEN ISLAND” “T here is a particular kind of entrepreneur who becomes more interesting after the big exit. The obvious route is to slow down, invest, advise, sit on boards and tell stories about the companies that made the fortune. Mel Morris appears to have little interest in that version of retirement. He is still looking for the next thing - and preferably not the obvious thing. ↑ Mel Morris CBE, entrepreneur and co-founder of Corpora.ai
43 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM /
44 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 A COMPANY’S BUSINESS MODEL IS A KEY FACTOR AMONG SEVERAL THAT DISTINGUISHES THOSE THAT SUCCEED AND CONTINUE GROWING” “ had left. Three or four months, perhaps a little longer. Then came the choice that would become emblematic of his approach to entrepreneurship: “I can tread water and die, or I can try and swim to some yet unseen island.” He went looking for that island and found another dating business with something uDate lacked - a much larger customer base. The business itself had less money, but together the two companies could potentially become something stronger. Morris structured a deal using stock and a loan note, effectively asking the seller to bet on the combined business. The gamble worked. The merged company was profitable from its first quarter, the seller was paid out within nine quarters and the company became the number two dating site in the world. Looking back, Morris is candid about what went wrong in the first place: “We hadn’t learned the lesson of not spending quickly.” A simple observation perhaps, but it says a great deal about the entrepreneur behind it. When the obvious route disap- pears, Morris doesn’t seem to spend much time mourning it. He starts looking for another route. That instinct would become even more important when King Games entered the picture. Today, it is almost impossible to discuss King without immediately saying Candy Crush Saga, but Morris’s version of the story begins almost a decade earlier. In 2003, he became chairman of what was then Midasplayer, alongside people including Riccardo Zacconi and Toby Rowland, who had previously worked with him at uDate. They had a gaming business, a talented team and a proposition they believed in. What they didn’t have was investors willing to back it. Morris and the team spent months travelling around Europe, talking to venture capital firms and trying to raise relatively modest amounts of money. Three million. Five million. Ten million. Twenty million. “No one wanted to know,” Morris recalls. By Christmas 2003, the company was running out of money. So Morris wrote the cheque himself. He remained chairman through the company’s eventual public listing in 2014, and one of the great misconceptions about King’s rise is that it was somehow an overnight Candy Crush phenom- → Mel Morris joined UCR Group’s advisory board in September 2025
45 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / enon. It wasn’t. There were more than ten years between the company’s foundation and its flotation. The break- through came from understanding that the game itself was only part of the proposition. King had been making tournament games in which thousands of people could compete and one person could walk away with a significant prize. Morris saw the problem immediately: one winner had a reason to talk about the experience; almost everybody else did not. The model couldn’t generate the kind of virality the company needed. The thinking had to change. Instead of games that ended, build a game that could continue indefinitely. Instead of a new title every year, create more levels. Instead of competing against strangers, compete against your friends. And instead of simply selling the game, create a mechanism where players could wait, pay or invite friends when they ran out of lives. The genius was not one particular feature. It was the combina- tion. The user became part of the acquisition strategy. The game became a social network. And the business model became more impor- tant than the game itself. “A company’s business model is a key factor among several that distinguishes those that succeed and continue growing.” It is probably the single most important lesson he took from King - and it is one he believes is even more relevant now. AI is changing the rules of entrepreneurship again. The ability to build is becoming dramatically cheaper and faster. A small team can now create software, websites, marketing material and prototypes that previously required significant technical and financial resources. That is an extraordinary democratisation of capability, but Morris sees a corresponding problem: if everybody can build, what makes one company difficult to displace? His answer is uncomfortable, but it’s hard to argue with. “Accept the fact that you’re never going to have a moat around what you’ve done,” he says. Instead, the company has to keep moving. “You have to innovate constantly, making it better, pushing the boundaries. Don’t sit on your laurels.” It is a very different philosophy from the classic start-up model of building something defensible and then protecting it. Morris believes the defensibility may increasingly lie in the speed of innovation itself. The company that survives isn’t necessarily the one with the most sophisticated technology on day one; it is the one that can keep improving after everybody else has caught up. That thinking feeds directly into his current interest in AI and energy. Morris is involved as an adviser and minority shareholder in a company developing what he describes as a highly advanced solar technology designed to significantly increase the usable output from solar panels. The first scaled installation is planned for his own home and is expected to be roughly a third of a megawatt - large enough, he believes, to demonstrate whether the technology can move from laboratory proposition to something genuinely scalable. His interest isn’t simply technological. It is strategic. The UK wants to become an AI powerhouse, but Morris believes the country has overlooked a fundamental constraint: energy. “How can you exploit AI if you can’t afford to power it?” he asks. That question sits at the centre of the work being developed by UCR Group (Universal Collaboration Research), the UK frontier deep-tech company working across advanced scientific electrical and materials engineering, including solar energy capture, power conditioning and advanced ceramic materials. Keith Cook, founder and CEO of UCR Group, describes the proposition simply: to generate more energy, lose less of it, and strengthen the infrastruc- ture that carries it. “Our Alvolt Solar Capture technology is designed to increase useful generation from solar PV, particularly under the low-irradiance and diffuse-light conditions, which are typical of much of the UK, and exactly where conventional systems tend to underper- form,” Cook says. The company is now moving from validation into scaled UK reference installations, where performance can be measured under commercial operating conditions. Alongside this, UCR Group is developing a proprietary ultra-low-energy ceramic synthesis process with applications across the energy sector in electrical infrastructure. According to Cook, the technology is intended to improve component durability, strengthen grid interaction and reduce transmission losses. The wider proposition, Cook says, is energy security. Electricity demand is expected to rise signifi- cantly, not least from AI and data-centre infrastructure. “Accept the fact that you’re never going to have a moat around what you’ve done. You have to innovate constantly, making it better, pushing the boundaries. Don’t sit on your laurels”
46 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 New generation and grid capacity take years to plan and build, so getting more from existing assets can be an important part of addressing that constraint. UCR Group believes that technology developed, validated and manufactured in the UK to address a national energy challenge represents “a sovereign capability worth owning.” The company’s research also extends into the way frontier research is conducted. “Our work sits at the frontier of established research,” Cook says. He adds that UCR Group’s partnership with Corpora.ai, where Morris is CEO and co-founder, has become an important part of how the company works, enabling it “to interrogate the scientific landscape faster, identify unrealised cross domain pattern correlations, and build stronger academic and literature based foundations for our collaborative research and validation programmes.” AI requires computing. Computing requires energy. If energy remains expensive, the cost of developing and running AI remains high. The UK may have outstanding universities, researchers and technical talent, but none of that matters if the underlying economics prevent businesses from scaling. For Morris, energy is therefore not a side issue in the AI race. It is part of the race itself. For Morris, becoming genuinely global means more than taking a successful British product abroad. The economics have to work, the service has to travel and, increasingly, technology has to remove the friction of international expansion. Candy Crush is a useful example. It was simple, required little explanation and barely needed translation. You opened it and played. That simplicity became a global advantage. AI could create similar opportunities elsewhere, allowing smaller teams to automate customer service, produce marketing, build software and enter international markets. But lower barriers also mean more UCR GROUP’S PARTNERSHIP WITH CORPORA.AI, HAS BECOME AN IMPORTANT PART OF HOW THE COMPANY WORKS, ENABLING IT “TO INTERROGATE THE SCIENTIFIC LANDSCAPE FASTER, IDENTIFY UNREALISED CROSS DOMAIN PATTERN CORRELATIONS, AND BUILD STRONGER ACADEMIC AND LITERATURE BASED FOUNDATIONS FOR OUR COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH AND VALIDATION PROGRAMMES.”
47 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / months. Give them their PhD in nine months.” It is provocative, but it captures the instinct that has run through his career: judge the outcome, not the tradition. So what would Morris do if he were starting again at 20? Build around AI, make it scalable, accept that someone will copy you, and keep innovating. That sounds simple, but it means accepting that there is no longer a point where a business is finished or secure. Technology, competitors and customer expectations move too quickly. The answer, for Morris, is permanent movement. His career reflects that. uDate survived a funding crisis through a different deal structure. King struggled to attract venture capital when online gaming was unfashionable, so he invested himself. When tournament gaming failed to generate enough engagement, the model became a league that never ended. Candy Crush then showed how product design, social behaviour and monetisation could combine into a global business. Now, with AI, Morris is looking beyond the obvious questions: what will power the technology, what will make AI businesses durable when everyone has the same tools, and how quickly can institutions adapt? His instinct is to look one step further. He is drawn to ideas that initially seem slightly unreasonable - rockets to Mars, new forms of energy, technologies and businesses that are difficult to value. “If you think you’ve got something valuable, have the confidence to stay with it,” he says. It may be the clearest summary of his philosophy: entrepreneurship is not about knowing you are right. It is about having enough evidence, conviction and resilience to keep going while everyone else is still deciding whether you are wrong. What stands out about Morris’s career is not just the companies he has built, but the questions he keeps coming back to. What happens when the obvious route closes? Where is the demand? What is the business model? Can it scale? And what comes next? That approach has taken him from the early internet to mobile gaming and now into AI and frontier science. It also explains why he seems more interested in what is still unresolved than in looking back at what he has already achieved. That has been a theme through- out his career. uDate needed a different route when funding dried up. King needed a business model that investors did not yet understand. Candy Crush became much more than a game. Now AI is opening up a different set of questions around energy, education, competition and scale. For the next generation of entrepreneurs, Morris thinks the tools will be more powerful and the barriers to entry lower. But that also means more competition. Having good technology will not be enough. The business model, distribution, timing and people will matter just as much. And so will persistence. The future rarely looks obvious at the start. Someone has to be prepared to move before everyone else can see where things are going. Morris has spent much of his career doing that. TECHNOLOGY, COMPETITORS AND CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS MOVE TOO QUICKLY. THE ANSWER, FOR MORRIS, IS PERMANENT MOVEMENT. competition. For Morris, the challenge is building businesses that can withstand it. He is also critical of the UK’s failure to turn world-class research into world-class companies. The talent is there; what is often missing is the machinery to take ideas to market. Universities face a similar challenge. AI is disrupting a system built around the gradual accumulation of knowledge when information is now instantly accessible. Morris argues that institutions need to judge outcomes rather than cling to old timelines. If someone can prove a thesis in nine months, why wait three years? “In my book, they’ve done the job,” he says. “They’ve proved the thesis. They did it in nine
Think Global, Act Local Global growth starts with understanding local markets by ENTREPRENEUR UK STAFF ‘T/Expansion F or Salman Shaheen, building a global business was never the plan. A journalist for a decade before moving into communications, he eventually became Chief Communications Officer at T4 Education, where he learned a crucial lesson about international growth: global success depends on thinking locally. “I was a journalist for a decade, before turning to the dark side,” he jokes Based in London, Shaheen already had strong relationships with UK journalists. T4 Education operated across dozens of markets, so he built a global team of PR experts in approximately 50 countries. Campaign strategies and messaging were developed centrally, while stories were pitched locally by people who understood their markets. “I’ve learned that there is no one-size-fits-all model if you want to do global PR well,” he says. ↓ Salman Shaheen, founder and CEO, Carter Fleet T he results were significant. In 2024 alone, the team secured almost 4,000 articles for T4 Education in major news outlets, with a combined readership reach of 11.6bn. For Shaheen, the lesson extends far beyond communications. Entrepreneurs expanding internationally can easily assume that what works at home will work elsewhere. “A lot of companies and organisations that may be sitting on a gold mine of potential news stories across many different countries don’t stick the landing because they just put out one generic global press release from their HQ in London or San Francisco,” he says. The answer is localisation: “Telling bespoke stories, tailoring them to all the different individual markets, based on local knowledge, understanding what journalists are looking for in those countries and what’s going to cut through, and then pitching locally with a local PR expert.” That experience eventually led to Carter Fleet, the global PR business Shaheen now leads. The company emerged almost by accident. Other organisations began approaching T4 Education after seeing what its global communications operation was achieving and asking whether the team could work with them. “Initially, we kept having to say no, 48 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026
49 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / because T4 Education wasn’t a PR firm,” he recalls. “But over time, it dawned on us that we’d ended up building a PR firm without ever intending to.” Shaheen eventually partnered with Vikas Pota, founder and CEO of T4 Education and executive chair of the Education Leaders Forum, to turn that unexpected opportunity into a business. Carter Fleet has been selective about the organisations it represents. For Shaheen, effective PR starts with believing in the story. “Despite the reputation of PRs for being soulless, I believe you have to believe in the story you’re telling to tell it well,” he says. “We specialise in telling good stories about good people and good organisations who are doing good, and we make them look good.” His experience at T4 Education demonstrated how a local story can become an international one when given the right platform. The World’s Best School Prizes uncovered stories including a Polish school educating Ukrainian refugees and helping prepare them to rebuild their country after the war. The team arranged for BBC World and the Telegraph to visit, giving the school a global platform. In Soweto, children danced in the streets when their school won. In Chile, a winning school attracted a visit from the country’s president, who announced a new policy to scale up its work. “By telling these stories, and gaining international media coverage, we are able to spread their best practices and help improve education,” Shaheen says. The challenge of getting noticed has only increased as the media landscape has become more crowded. Shaheen points out that there are now six PR professionals for every journalist, with reporters potentially receiving hundreds of press releases every day. “They are looking for a news story,” he says. “Finding the way in – to make what you’re doing news – is the magic of good PR.” It is also why Shaheen believes relationships will remain valuable as AI changes communications. “Having good contacts who will pick up the phone to you” remains vital, he says. “With all the changes being brought about by AI, that’s something a machine can never replace.” Carter Fleet is now applying the same principles to its own expansion. The business remains bootstrapped and profitable, with much of its growth coming through word of mouth. In 2026, it worked on global PR for organisations including Cambridge University Press & Assessment’s Partnership for Education team, HP and AIA, with plans to steadily expand its client base and team in 2027. For Shaheen, going global is not simply about getting bigger. It is about knowing what should remain consistent and what needs to change. “In PR, as in journalism, you’re only as good as your last story,” he says. For entrepreneurs looking beyond their home market, his experience offers a simple lesson: global ambition needs local understanding. A LOT OF COMPANIES AND ORGANISATIONS THAT MAY BE SITTING ON A GOLD MINE OF POTENTIAL NEWS STORIES ACROSS MANY DIFFERENT COUNTRIES DON’T STICK THE LANDING BECAUSE THEY JUST PUT OUT ONE GENERIC GLOBAL PRESS RELEASE FROM THEIR HQ IN LONDON OR SAN FRANCISCO” “
50 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 The Next Global Giants T here has never been a better time to be a founder in Europe. Nor has there been a harder time to raise early-stage capital. According to our research based on 81,055 European funding rounds and 760 unicorn founders, record levels of founding activity and international investor appetite have given rise to a new class of 33 ‘rocketship’ unicorns. Those companies were founded in 2020 and have reached billion-dollar valuations in an average of just two years. In addition, Europe is now home to more than a dozen decacorns, private companies worth more than $10bn, a breed that did not exist in Europe prior to 2020. But, with lots of attention on fixing the growth stage funding gap, we may be overlooking a problem much earlier in the funnel. While global Tier 1 VCs compete increasingly for these breakout hits, the number of active pre-seed, seed and Series A investors across Europe has fallen by over 40% since 2022. As a result, the number of pre-seed through Series A rounds is down by 40 to 50% since 2021 and Seed-to-Series A conversion rate has plummeted from a historic baseline of 23% down to just 9%. In other words: the number of new companies founded keeps steadily increasing while the number of those that successfully raise capital is in steep decline. Crucially, the data reveals that capital is concentrating around two very specific company and founder archetypes: Juggernauts: Technology-heavy deep tech, defence, and frontier labs like Ineffable Intelligence, Helsing and AMI Labs. These founders average 37 years when starting their companies; 66 per cent have technical backgrounds, 39% hold PhDs, and 35% come from Big Tech or research labs. Jets: Hyper-efficient, lean AI-native companies that exhibit steep revenue growth unlike anything we have ever seen. Think of Lovable or Legora. Their founders are young, on average 31 years old when starting out; 71% are technical, 81% have held prior leadership roles, and none of them come from Big Tech or research labs. Across all rocketships founded since 2022, 78% of founders hold formal technical degrees - a significant rise from 52% among pre-2020 ‘T/Capital Europe’s next generation of companies faces a funding crunch by CHRISTOPH KLINK
51 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / unicorns. If your company does not show early growth spikes like today’s genera- tion of Jets or you do not have the pedigree of a frontier researcher, the funding market appears increasingly narrow. All the while founder experi- ence and skillsets are steadily increasing. More founders than ever have scaled companies from Seed through Series C before and bring an unparalleled breadth of technical expertise. So why are fewer of them attracting investor interest? Efficient use of AI will enable some founders to bootstrap to growth, making them independent of investor interest. And with the cost and bar to building software products drop- ping, it is also likely that a higher share of companies is started without strong market validation. Yet, I firmly believe that a fair number of companies meet all conditions of a strong investment prospect - they just cannot stand out in today’s environment. The early-stage cliff is driven by a drop in active investors, not a drop in founder quality. To navigate a market where fewer investors are making fewer deals, founders must adjust their fundraising play- books. This is what our data and experience suggests. Level up technical differentiation With 80% technical founder share on rocket- ship cap tables today, VCs are prioritising more technologically differenti- ated deeper tech deals, therefore often ignoring generalist founding teams. Distribution is still the make or break for early stage companies, but today’s outliers are more technically differentiated than the previous decade’s unicorns. Therefore, generalist founders need to complement their skills with technical co-founders more than ever. Build capital-efficiently Juggernauts account for $22.6bn across 60 rounds because their underlying infrastructure demands immense capital. If you are not building frontier compute or energy hardware, do not try to emulate Juggernaut fundraising strategies. Follow the “Jet” blueprint instead: build AI-first to run lean, unlock early ARR growth, and prove cash- flow efficiency so that you can raise, but do not have to. Your fundraising success will largely depend on commercial momentum. Raise when your numbers are strong, until then prioritise cash efficiency. Build relationships early Post-2020 rocketships have almost twice as many A FAIR NUMBER OF COMPANIES MEET ALL CONDITIONS OF A STRONG INVESTMENT PROSPECT - THEY JUST CANNOT STAND OUT IN TODAY’S ENVIRONMENT. THE EARLY-STAGE CLIFF IS DRIVEN BY A DROP IN ACTIVE INVESTORS, NOT A DROP IN FOUNDER QUALITY” investors on their cap tables at Seed and Series A compared to their pre-2020 unicorn peers. Capital is concentrating in a much stronger way. At the same time, a lot more founders are trying to get in front of fewer and fewer active investors. Building trusted relationships with as many of the right investors early, before you raise capital, helps to get the visibility you need once you need it. Repairing this early-stage funnel across Europe with the potential of adding an additional 10 European unicorns every year requires an estimated $8bn in capital - just 10% of what European tech start-ups raise every year. Until investor partici- pation recovers, founders who understand these structural shifts can position themselves to survive the crunch and secure the right to scale. Christoph Klink is a General Partner at Antler based in Germany. He is responsible for Antler’s investments across Continental Europe, spanning multiple sectors around the core themes of AI, resilience and deeptech. Many of these start-ups are now recognised as the most promising start-ups in the region, including Peec AI, NeoCarbon and Voltrac. ← Christoph Klink is a General Partner at Antler
T he world is full of markets. That does not mean they are yours. For Avril Millar, one of the first mistakes an entrepreneur can make when taking a business abroad is assuming that a good idea will travel simply because it worked at home. “What travels is a genuine, validated need - not a good idea, a proven one.” At 74, Millar has had five careers, built and exited a wealth-management business, worked across financial services and emerging markets, and rebuilt her financial independence after what she describes as a series of disasters. She began as an engineer in the late 1960s, later moving into physics teaching, financial services and, from 2009, what she calls going “portfolio”, working largely with SMEs. Her career has taken her across sectors and markets, making her an interesting guide to the current enthusiasm for global entrepreneurship. Not because she has a formula for expanding overseas. Quite the opposite. She is suspicious of formulas. “What doesn’t travel is a passion project someone built because they liked making it, then assumed everyone else would want it too.” The World Is Not Your Oyster S he has little time for asking friends and family whether an idea is good. “They’re about as useful as a chocolate fireguard.” The work, she says, is finding out what people actually want. “You rarely need something wholly new - doing something a bit better than the local incumbent is usually enough to make a market switch to you.” Crossing into another culture, however, is anything but straightforward. “Culture, every time,” Millar says ‘T/Opportunity Avril Millar on why going global starts with understanding where you are by ENTREPRENEUR UK STAFF ← Avril Millar, founder of Andersen Charnley and author of FERAL. 52 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026
53 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / when asked what founders most often underestimate when entering a new country. “English-speaking countries feel deceptively familiar - even different US states are worlds apart.” Her answer is to assume difference from the start. “Treat everyone you meet as genuinely foreign in your head, work out what motivates them, and you stand a chance of them letting you in.” She is equally sceptical of countries being described as ‘less developed’. “Big mistake. Much of what’s happening there isn’t shackled by our history of industrialisation and management-speak. Put the backpack down.” The global entrepreneur is not necessarily the person arriving with the most confidence. It may be the person prepared to recognise what they do not know. Millar is also sceptical about the idea that international business depends on having an enormous network. “I’ve never built networks - I’ve built deep relationships with a handful of people who happened to move to other geographies, and that’s the better long game.” When she wanted work in the Middle East, she called three or four people she had known and helped for two decades. “Same principle moving sectors: deep trust beats a wide contact list.” She has watched networking become an industry in itself, but is not convinced by the result. “Networking events themselves are a blunt instrument, often a room full of people shouting and selling.” What matters is what happens over time. “Time compounds everything, but what compounds is the value you’ve actually brought to someone, not how many cards you collected or LinkedIn contacts you made.” Millar’s own experience in investment has also left her wary of some of the language surrounding ambitious businesses. She built a substantial wealth-management company before exiting it and remains a director of an investment business specialising in emerging- market corporate debt. When founders send her proposals, she is looking for whether the numbers stand up and whether the idea has a market. “I’m sense-testing the numbers and gauging fit between the idea and actual market appetite, not doing deep diligence.” It is perhaps no surprise, then, that she has become less convinced by the current fixation with scale. “What I’m increas- ingly unconvinced by is scalability itself as the goal.” The start-up world has made the billion-dollar company seem like the natural endpoint of entrepreneurship. Millar sees the distortion. “Most businesses are SMEs, most people work for SMEs, and the god-like status of tech giants has skewed what we think a business is for.” There are other ways to build. A company can work across several markets without trying to dominate them. A specialist business can have loyal customers. An owner can build something profitable and independent without turning it into a global household name. “Some- times the question isn’t how big the market is - it’s how devoted your customers will be.” That thinking connects with another part of Millar’s work. Her book, FERAL, challenges the expectations placed on women at work and the energy women spend trying to fit systems that were not designed for them. Millar began her own career in an era when women in engineering were unusual. She has spent much of her working life as “the only woman in the room, or one of very few.” “I’ve never been a small cog in a corporate machine,” she says. She watched women try to compete by making themselves more like men. “It doesn’t work, and I’m completely convinced the system doesn’t give a s**t about women.” The argument in FERAL is that women have to stop spending so much of themselves trying to fit. “I wrote FERAL because if women can understand and control themselves, they can control their lives far better than by leaning into the system.” Nor does she see women as a single group with a single experience. “There are women across Africa, the Middle East and Asia building and leading businesses hugely successfully, with far less self-doubt than we carry here.” That is particularly interesting when applied to international entrepre- neurship. People do not leave their assumptions at the airport. They take them into boardrooms, partner- ships and new markets. Millar says she “turned feral” in her sixties. Looking back, she realised that she had spent years rebuilding her financial independence after a difficult period in her life. “I’d refused to engage with the system at all.” Instead, she concentrated on what she knew she could offer: “a strong opinion, a clear mind, a good work ethic, and the ability to see what others couldn’t.” She has no interest in turning that expertise into a huge business. “What I do isn’t a scalable skill, and it doesn’t need to be.” Entrepreneur- WHAT TRAVELS IS A GENUINE, VALIDATED NEED - NOT A GOOD IDEA, A PROVEN ONE” “
54 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 ship is routinely presented as a pursuit of bigger markets, faster growth and ever higher valua- tions. Millar’s measure is more personal. “It’s me and a small audience of people who want someone like me, and that’s produced a financial situation beyond anything I hoped for when my world went to s**t in my forties.” The same applies to money. “We’re also burdened by the idea that we need to be rich. What we need is enough - health, relation- ships, and enough money to feel secure.” For founders thinking about international expansion, Millar is reluctant to offer a neat formula. What she does have is a rule of thumb. “Find good people, and give it long enough to actually judge their integrity and intentions, and to let them judge yours.” And don’t make every conversation a business conversation. “My rule of thumb: go and make friends wherever you’re considering, and have conversations that have nothing to do with business.” Then: “Be interested in people, the stranger the better.” Global business may now move at extraordinary speed. Relationships do not. Markets can be entered quickly; understanding them takes longer. A business can be replicated across borders in months. Trust cannot. Millar’s career offers no neat model for building the next global company. Instead, it suggests that knowing people may matter more than knowing the system, curiosity can be more useful than certainty, and a business does not have to become enormous to matter. The world, after all, is not your oyster. It belongs to the people who already live there. And if you want to do business with them, Millar’s advice is simple. Listen first. ‘T/Opportunity I’VE NEVER BUILT NETWORKS - I’VE BUILT DEEP RELATIONSHIPS WITH A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE WHO HAPPENED TO MOVE TO OTHER GEOGRAPHIES, AND THAT’S THE BETTER LONG GAME” “
55 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / Making Room for Growth Katie Keith is reshaping the global entrepreneurial journey by ENTREPRENEUR UK STAFF → Katie Keith is the founder of Invarah House, a private advisory platform for women in business W hen Katie Keith moved from Australia to the UK 10 years ago, she arrived with two suitcases and a sense of adven- ture. “I didn’t know a soul,” she says. “I just threw myself into it.” That instinct to take the leap now defines her next chapter. After almost three decades in the corporate world, including nearly 20 years in banking and seven years in international payments, Katie has built Invarah House - a new advisory platform bringing experienced women in business together to challenge their thinking, make better decisions and unlock their next stage of growth. K atie’s route to this point has been anything but linear. After almost two decades in financial services, she began questioning what she wanted from the next stage of her career. “I just felt like I needed to do something more,” she says. “I almost became institu- tionalised in corporate.” She returned to study, completing a Master’s in coaching and behavioural change at Henley, and left banking for a senior leadership role in international payments. The pandemic brought another turn when she lost her job. It was a pivotal moment that led her to build her own business and take on the leadership of Global Chamber S Growth /
56 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 S Growth / London, a role she held for five years working with businesses around the world. Across this work, she began noticing a recurring theme among experienced women who had achieved a great deal, but lacked a place to step back, chal- lenge their thinking and consider what came next. “A lot of the women I work with are in mid-stride,” Katie says. “They’ve been around the block for a couple of decades at least and are ready to take on the world.” Success, Katie argues, can create its own paradox. The more established leaders become, the more connec- tions and opportunities they have - yet difficult decisions can still feel lonely. “They’ve run successful businesses or been in the industry for a very long time, but connection is lacking,” she says. That observa- tion led Katie to launch Invarah House, a curated peer advisory environment for experienced women who have outgrown the spaces that give them access to better thinking and stretch. It gives members a trusted space to test ideas, challenge assumptions and draw on the perspective of peers facing similar decisions. For Katie, the value lies in having people who will ask difficult questions, chal- lenge assumptions and bring different perspectives. She is also careful not to assume women share the same experience. “Just because we’re women, there’s a general bias there that we’ve all had the same ALOT OF THE WOMEN I WORK WITH ARE IN MID- STRIDE. THEY’VE BEEN AROUND THE BLOCK FOR A COUPLE OF DECADES AT LEAST AND ARE READY TO TAKE ON THE WORLD” “ ← Ariel Renous is the co-founder and CEO, Augment
57 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / experience. We haven’t.” At the heart of Invarah is what Katie calls discern- ment: making better decisions while staying aligned with what you are building. Her methodol- ogy brings together three elements - the woman, the business and the wider system around them. “All three cannot exist without each other.” Katie’s international career has shaped her understanding of how quickly external condi- tions can affect a business, but she believes the biggest constraint is often closer to home. “They’re always the biggest bottleneck in their own business.” For many of the women she works with, the goal is not simply growth but financial fulfilment and greater freedom. “That’s always one of their burning ambitions,” she says. In one recent case, she helped a founder shift her model “from fractional to advisory in the C-suite space.” Katie sees these decisions as part of a wider question about women, business and investment. She points to the Working Mums Club, a modern thinking childcare and co-working business who is raising investment to expand nationally, and asks why solutions to major social problems can struggle for attention compared with fashionable technology ventures. “We don’t take it seriously, because she’s not AI, because she’s not tech, because it’s not sexy.” For Katie, some barriers to growth are deeply rooted. “These women are carrying ancestral beliefs through to their businesses today,” she says. Her response is to create spaces where women can challenge those assump- tions and make better decisions. Katie sees an opportunity to rethink traditional executive peer networks who have been in existence for many years. “Why can’t we have something which is transformed for the female mind? That’s what Invarah is.” Her ambition is international: to build a model where experienced female leaders can run and facilitate their own advisory circles. “I want to expand into multiple coun- tries around the world,” she says, creating new opportunities for women to build six-figure advisory businesses of their own. For Katie, the next chapter is about more than helping women grow their businesses. It is about changing who gets to build the rooms where those decisions are made. Her own journey - from Australia to the UK, from banking to coaching and now entrepreneurship - has taught her that experience is not always enough. Sometimes what matters is having people around you who will question the obvious, challenge the comfortable and ask what comes next. That is the space Katie wants Invarah to occupy. “I’m building rooms that I wish I had.” “Why can’t we have something which is transformed for the female mind? That’s what Invarah is”
58 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 E arly in my career, I was an engineer at Red Bull Racing. With my peers, we strived to find ways to make our cars the best performing, fastest vehicles on the grid come race day. From improving aerodynamics to under- standing how tyre temperature affected traction, in Formula One, every aspect of perfor- mance is measured and analysed. The quality of the data directly shapes the decisions that follow. In a roundabout way, this time at the peak of motorsport led me to think about how else we could apply hyper-local- ised data and track performance, with a focus on improving the built environment and creating a safer, better road network for everyone. I want to share the lessons I’ve learnt about entrepre- neurship: how to look at emerging technologies differently, not just asking what they can do, but where else they can be applied to solve real-world problems. Innovation doesn’t always mean reinventing the wheel. Sometimes, it is about looking at the resources already available and finding new ways to apply them. For me, that problem was how we monitor and maintain our roads. The scale of the challenge is enormous. In England and Wales alone, the backlog of road repairs has now reached £18.62bn, with roads resurfaced on average only once every 97 years (RAC, 2026). The World Bank has also projected that an additional 1.2 billion cars will be on the road by 2050, doubling today’s total (World Bank, 2025). Billions of people rely on road networks every day, but most authorities still have limited visibility over the infrastructure they are responsible for. Inspec- tions are often infrequent, sometimes with years between assessments, and resource-intensive, allowing small defects to develop unnoticed into problems that are expensive to fix and become a public hazard. Coming from F1, that struck me immediately. You would never make decisions about a race car based on a snapshot of what happened six months ago. Collecting data is one part of the job, the real challenge is then working out what the data is telling you and where there is opportunity to improve. In the UK, for example, potholes are estimated to cause more than 26,000 breakdowns each year (RAC, 2025). With modern technology, why should we settle for this? With this in mind, I joined the Swedish artificial intelligence and computer vision company Univrses in 2018. My initial assumption was that monitoring an entire road network would require dedicated fleets of inspection vehicles along with in-built sensor systems. But as I took a step back, the resources were already there. Waste collection trucks, taxis and passenger cars are travelling through cities every single day. By combining technology with the resources that already exist, we could apply a new approach to an old problem. At Univrses, that idea became our 3DAI product suite, using computer vision and AI to turn what cameras capture into actionable insights about BEYOND THE TRACK Taking racing technology into new markets by JONATHAN SELBIE S Innovation /
59 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / the roads and wider highway infrastructure. As vehicles move through a road network, the cameras capture their surround- ings. Algorithms process the footage as the vehicles follow their daily routes. In Helsingborg, Sweden, we work with waste management vehicles, which cover most of the city’s roads every two weeks. We’ve also collaborated with major automotive manufacturers, with our technology now deployed in production vehicles including the Polestar 3 and Volvo EX90 to help them interpret their sur- roundings. The camera sees the same things as a driver, but our algorithms process the footage to anticipate where potholes could emerge, deteriorating road markings, delayed roadworks, and obscured traffic signs. The results speak for themselves. In Helsing- borg, a city roughly the size of Portsmouth, our technology reduced the number of potholes from around 3,000 to 900 in just six months. Checking roads in the city used to take days and could now be completed in an hour. The journeys were already happening and the vehicles needed were already on the road. AI and computer vision have turned what previously existed into impactful information. Our collaboration with Pirelli and its Cyber Tyre technology follows a similar logic. Pirelli integrated sensors into tyres to capture road conditions. A camera can identify what is coming ahead, including damaged or uneven surfaces, while sensors within the tyre detect the physical structure of the road. Bringing those perspectives together gives a deeper understanding of the condition of road maintenance. We are now applying this approach in projects in Puglia, Italy, and elsewhere. Applying technology to real- world issues is not just about finding the right combination. It is also about understanding how that solution needs to work in different markets. We work with road authorities across six European countries, including National Highways in England, Trafikverket in Sweden, and in the Netherlands the Road Monitor project (ROMO). Each collaboration comes with its own requirements. It became clear, very quickly, that we couldn’t build something in one market and replicate it in another. In the Netherlands, for example, the focus is on understanding when road markings have deteriorated to affect lane-keeping systems. In England, we have used computer vision to build an inventory of more than 110,000 streetlights. Both show how the underlying technology can be adapted to different requirements. It is crucial to listen to what local authorities need and shape the service around their priorities. That relationship is just as important as the technology itself. Safety and trust are a huge part of this too. As vehicles become increasingly capable of sensing and processing the world around them, privacy is a priority. Registration plates and faces are encrypted: technology also has to work in a way that people are comfortable with. For me, that is central when taking emerging technology from an idea and making it work in practice. Throughout my career, the opportunity has often started with understanding a problem, looking at what tools are at my disposal, and then working out how to deploy new technology effectively and safely. We have more data and technol- ogy at our fingertips than ever before, but having access to it is only the starting point. The real challenge is understanding what it can tell us and how to turn it into something that works in the real world. Those connections are not always the most obvious. Finding them can take time and curiosity, but also a willingness to look beyond the industry that technol- ogy was originally designed for. That, in my experience, is where some of the most interesting entrepreneurial opportunities begin. Jonathan Selbie is a former Formula 1 engineer at Red Bull Racing, with a background spanning aerospace, autonomous systems and deep tech. He now leads Univrses, a Stockholm-based company using AI and computer vision to transform how roads and infrastructure are monitored and maintained, as well as make vehicles smarter and safer. “We have more data and technology at our fingertips than ever before, but having access to it is only the starting point. The real challenge is understanding what it can tell us and how to turn it into something that works in the real world”
60 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 The Global Company “ International for me isn’t just about selling in many places,” says Matt Acton Davis, Partner and VP, Revenue at Revolut Business. “A global business is one that thinks from a platform perspective.” A company can sell into several countries without truly being global. Its technology, operations and culture may still be designed around its home market, with international expansion added on afterwards. A genuinely global company, by contrast, builds with multiple markets in mind from the outset. “Truly global companies think globally from the moment they build,” F or decades, the conventional route for a company with global ambitions was predictable: build at home, prove that customers want it, raise money and then begin the slow, expensive process of expanding overseas. First, the UK. Then, Europe. Then perhaps the US. That playbook is starting to look increasingly dated. For internet-native businesses, the world can be the market from the moment they launch. Payments, foreign exchange, international employment and digital infrastructure are becoming easier to access, while artificial intelligence is reducing the cost of tasks such as translation, localisation and customer support. The result is a fundamental change in how companies can be built. Built for the world from day one by ENTREPRENEUR UK STAFF says Acton Davis. “They don’t bolt it on later when they expand.” Global by design Revolut itself is an example of the model. Founded in 2015, the company initially tackled the cost and inconvenience consumers faced when exchanging currencies while travelling or sending money abroad. It subsequently expand- ed its product range and geographical footprint, building a financial platform designed to operate across markets. Revolut Business followed in 2017, after business customers began asking for the same kind of experience in their professional lives. The problems were familiar: expensive foreign exchange, cumbersome international payments and the difficulty of managing cards, employees and finances across multiple countries. Today, businesses can use Revolut Business for payments, foreign exchange, cards and other financial services, bringing functions that might previously have required multiple providers into a single platform. That matters because the nature of the modern company is changing too. An app, software company or online marketplace can acquire a customer in another country almost immediately. The customer can arrive long before the business has established a traditional physical presence there. “Companies launching nowadays aren’t stuck in one → Matt Acton Davis, Partner and VP, Revenue for Revolut Business ‘T/Markets
61 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / market,” says Acton Davis. “If you think like an app or a marketplace or a SaaS product, typically they’ll launch globally from day one.” Historically, that would have created a significant operational problem. Entering a new country might require local banking relation- ships, payment providers, payroll infrastructure, foreign exchange capabil- ity and a host of adminis- trative arrangements. Increasingly, those layers can be accessed digitally. “You’re actually contract- ing that all into one motion very early on,” Acton Davis says, “which means the business can scale much quicker than they would have previ- ously.” But geography has not stopped mattering. If technology can make international expansion cheaper and faster, what remains difficult? For Acton Davis, the durable advantage increasingly lies in understanding the market itself: trust, regulation, customer expectations, cultural nuance and what he describes as ‘taste.’ Global infrastructure can get a company into a market. It cannot necessarily tell the company how to win customers there. When Revolut launched in New Zealand, for example, its central teams brought the company’s existing product and technology infrastructure into the market. But it also hired locally, including in marketing and operations, to develop what he calls “that sense of taste, that sense of connection to the local market”. The lesson for founders is important: globalisation does not necessarily mean making every market identical. It means separating the things that should be globally consistent from the things that need to be locally understood. The AI effect That distinction is becoming even more important as AI changes the economics of running a company. AI can reduce the time and cost involved in translation, localisation, customer support and producing market-specific content. Tasks that once required additional employees, agencies or specialist providers can increasingly be handled with software. Acton Davis believes this means a relatively small team can operate with the reach and responsiveness that would previously have required a much larger organisation. At some point, growth isn’t about adding more employees; it’s about having people who deeply understand the local market, culture, and customers. In other words, the scarce resource is moving. For years, one of the principal constraints on international growth was the cost of doing business across borders. Banking relationships had to be established. Employees had to be paid. Currency had to be converted. Customers had to be supported. As those costs fall, the competitive question becomes less about whether a company can technically enter a market and more about whether it understands the people already operating there. That could have profound consequences for British entrepreneurship. The internet weakened the traditional barriers to international growth. Cloud computing weakened more. AI is now attacking another layer. Financial infrastructure is following the same trajectory. Revolut Business says it now has more than 800,000 business customers globally and operates across the UK, Europe, the US, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand. In 2025, Revolut Business accounted for $365bn (£277bn) of transaction volume. The company is therefore both a participant in and a beneficiary of the shift it describes: building infrastructure that allows smaller businesses to operate in ways previously associated with multina- tional companies. But access to better technology does not guarantee success. Instead, Acton Davis sees the emerging formula as a combination of global efficiency and local relevance. “The winning formula from my perspective would be the global efficiency,” he says, “which is driven by one platform that caters to all of the fundamentals that a business will require, and then the local relevance.” That may be the more important lesson for founders than simply ‘go global’. The opportunity is to design a company so that international growth does not require it to reinvent itself every time it crosses a border. “We underestimate how fast global business will become the default,” says Acton Davis. The next gen- eration of companies may therefore be defined less by how many offices they have or how many people they employ, and more by how easily they can move into their next market. The question for the next British founder may no longer be when to expand overseas. It may be why the business was designed as a domestic one in the first place. “Truly global companies think globaly from the moment they build. They don’t bolt it on later when they expand”
62 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 Built to Roam Running a thriving business while sailing the world by ENTREPRENEUR UK STAFF C hristina Handasyde Dick has had an unusual route to entrepreneurship. From competing at two Olympic Games to scrubbing toilets and eventually building a multi-million-pound franchise business, her career has taken some unexpected turns. Along the way, she has built Guardian Angel Carers into a business that can run without her being tied to an office - allowing her to pursue another ambition too. Today, Christina runs the growing UK franchise network while sailing around the world with her husband and children. Young sailor Despite her first trip in a boat with her father at the age of seven ending in near disaster, ‘we tipped the boat and nearly sank’, Christina was a talented sailor from a young age, qualifying to represent GBR three times at the International 420 World Championships, but her father refused to let her compete, saying: “Not until you’re good enough to win it”; which she did, on her first attempt at the age of 18. Sailing success continued with two Olympic Games appear- ances, Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008. Then things took a turn, putting Christina through ‘a very dark time.’ Within weeks of returning from Beijing, her father died, her sailing partnership ended and she split up with her boyfriend. As she rallied to bounce back, a friend, who knew she was ‘a super-organised, clean freak’, suggested she play to her strengths and offer people a lifestyle management or home organisation service; as often happens, while contemplating the idea, a family friend reached out for domestic help, their own father’s cleaner couldn’t get to him, so Christina stepped in. Promotional postcards offering odd jobs were made and handed around the village and the jobs rolled in. Hard comparisons Despite now having a fledgling business, it was hard for Christina not to reflect on how far she’d fallen (her words not ours). As her former team mates prepared for the next Olympics, she was cleaning toilets. It was a tough pill to swallow. Little did she know those toilets were about to change her life. Those menial cleaning jobs became her first business, Task Angels. Initially she did all the work herself, then employed sub-con- tractors until finally taking on her first member of staff, all within 12 months. Christina describes the challenges of those early days: We were the classic jack of all trades; every- thing relied on me, pricing, sourcing the right people, checking the work; it was → Christina Handasyde Dick MBE, founder & CEO, Guardian Angel Carers S Freedom /
63 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / exhausting, unsustainable and ultimately unprofit- able.” Having grown up with two grandmothers in the house, Christina quickly recognised that some of her older clients also needed help with cooking, companionship and personal care. She realised she could create a business offering all those services, that would allow them to stay in their homes for longer, and, with guidance from her new boyfriend (now husband) who was a doctor, the pieces fell into place and Guardian Angel Carers was born. Funding Having borrowed £10,000 from her cousin to get Task Angels off the ground, a figure she repaid within the first year, Christina was receptive when she received an offer to invest in her company for a 20% share of the business; she was flattered and her confidence was given a much-needed boost. On reflection she says the percentage was ‘a lot for the value contribution’ and she ended up having to remortgage her house to buy them out, but they then doubled their initial investment, leaving her with a “clear growth plan with 100% equity gain.” With an eye firmly fixed on the future, Christina set about building Guardian Angel Carers so it could be run by a head office team in the UK, with her working from anywhere in the world. Having already done some research about using the franchise method to grow a business, in the winter of 2020 with three compa- ny-owned branches and a pilot franchisee, Christina officially launched the franchise opportunity. Travel dreams She explains why she built the business to run without her physical presence: “My husband Andrew and I had decided we wanted to sail to New Zealand after visiting in early 2020. Everything I did was focused on building the business so it could operate as if I was on a boat. We got there, just. Sometimes I wasn’t sure we’d actually make it, there were some bumps along the way, including the MD I had brought in to run the company, starting a competing company on our doorstep, but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I’d looked at franchising for Task Angels, so was aware of the concept and researched other care franchisors and utilised information from the BFA (British Franchise Association) for further guidance.” Fourteen years after its launch, Guardian Angel Carers now has 11 franchisees operating out of 17 territories, with a monthly network turnover of £1.58m, and in 2022 Christina was awarded the MBE from the Queen for ‘Services to Homecare during COVID’. And the plan to travel worked: Christina, husband Andrew and children Izzy (11), Jasmine (9) and Oscar (7) have been living aboard their floating home Freya for nearly two years and are currently based in Santa Marta, Colombia, for four months, while the kids attend a local school and learn Spanish. Communications With Starlink, Christina says: “I have better connectivity sailing across an ocean than I do walking through Chichester”; and although she is five to six hours behind UK time and meetings are taken with children waking up around her and a mug of coffee in hand, she’s forging ahead with ambitious growth plans, including recruiting more franchisees who want to build care businesses in their local communities and to become the most human, tech-enabled care company in the UK. The company is also launch- ing nursing services through their home branches; a new service for the brand. Goals achieved As she gets ready for another day of online meetings, Christina says: “The Olympics taught me discipline, resilience and focus, but business taught me something equally important: Confidence doesn’t come first. You take the next step, then the next and eventually you look back and realise how far you’ve come. I’m not the biggest homecare franchisor in the country and that’s ok. Success for me is leading an incred- ible team remotely, whilst sailing around the world with my husband and children, knowing we’ve built a business that changes lives daily, for our clients, our colleagues and our franchisees.” “Confidence doesn’t come first. You take the next step, then the next and eventually you look back and realise how far you’ve come”
64 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 S Perspective / Knowing Your Market S ome businesses begin with a grand idea. Panther began with Ashling Coyle noticing that the way an entire industry worked simply wasn’t good enough. Years later, the company has grown far beyond that original frustration. Now, with another stage of growth ahead, Coyle is looking at where Panther goes next. Entrepreneur UK finds out more… → Cas Paton, CEO and founder of rapidly scaling British tech business, OnBuy. P anther has filled more than 40m shifts in the UK. As you look at what’s next for the business, what has building that scale here taught you about what it’ll take to compete in a new market? I’d say reaching this kind of scale has taught me the importance of focusing on the details. With every single shift you fill, so many things have to be in place and go right for it to go through seamlessly. You need to look at qualifications, certifications, which documents are in date, what the correct rates are at that hour on that day in that location. Getting all of this right can mean the difference between a shift that goes smoothly – patients get treated, meals get served, classes get taught. Getting it wrong can be disastrous, from people not getting paid to people’s health and wellbeing being endangered. You can get this right once with enough time and concentration, but doing it at scale and volume is incredibly complex and difficult, which is why the depth of the software is so important. So when I look at a new market, I don’t tend to think about scale, more about how different the rules and requirements are, and whether we understand them well enough to be trusted with them. If it’s a new country, that can mean a totally new compliance regime, new ways of paying people. To win there, you can’t turn up with what worked in a different market, you have to learn the market properly first and then build for it. Panther serves sectors from healthcare and education to construction and hospitality. How do you adapt the platform to very different markets and industries? We’ve built one platform that can be configured to the realities of each industry. The amount of information and the depth of capability is something we’re proud of because it means we can help support temporary recruiters and the workers that keep these critical industries running. Each one is very different. And there are nuances within the industries themselves. In healthcare, you might have one hospital that needs thirty compliance Building Panther beyond the UK by ENTREPRENEUR UK STAFF → Ashling Coyle, founder and CEO of Panther Software
65 October 2026 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / documents in place for a single worker – another hospital might need fifteen of those and fifteen different ones. Education obviously has a different set of requirements, with safeguarding at the centre. Construction has certain certifications that are required, and site rules that vary from location to location. Hospitality moves at a bit of a different speed, with shifts changing at short notice. And the rates work differently across all of these, sign-offs work differently, the documents work differently. We have built the Panther platform so all of this can be configured rather than building custom software from scratch. All it takes is for a client to set the rules for their sector and their business, and the system holds every booking to those rules so nothing gets missed when filling a shift. The reason we can do that is that the people who built the software, myself included, have worked in these sectors. We have not guessed the requirements of temporary recruitment – we have lived with them. There are different requirements even across Scotland and England and Wales. As you think about expanding further, what should stay consistent and what needs to be localised? The core of the platform will stay the same, with clean and connected data so compliance can be checked before someone starts a shift rather than after. Other things like workers being paid correctly and on time, booking processes built to withstand spikes – like the winter pressures in the NHS for example – these are the same across the UK, so that always stays consistent. Where we do have to configure differently is, again, on the detail and the rules. Scotland has a different set up of compliance and documentation to England & Wales so the frameworks, the checks and the rates all have to be localised and they all have to be right ahead of time. Otherwise you could end up with someone turning up to a shift they’re not certified to be on. If you think of that happening in a hospital or a school, it’s not acceptable. So we have to be really on the specific local detail. We built the platform so that the engine, which connects and delivers the data, is consistent, but the rules are configurable. That means we can move into new regions without building from scratch, and without cutting corners on the bits that keep people safe. Panther was born from problems you experienced yourself. How important is that first-hand understanding when building a business for such a complicated, multi-industry market as temp recruitment? It’s everything. It’s extremely difficult to design for problems you haven’t experienced yourself. I think this applies to most successful businesses. I grew up around the recruitment industry, then qualified as an accountant, then I ran my own temp agency. Which is where Panther came IF IT’S A NEW COUNTRY, THAT CAN MEAN A TOTALLY NEW COMPLIANCE REGIME, NEW WAYS OF PAYING PEOPLE. TO WIN THERE, YOU CAN’T TURN UP WITH WHAT WORKED IN A DIFFERENT MARKET, YOU HAVE TO LEARN THE MARKET PROPERLY FIRST AND THEN BUILD FOR IT” “ from. I was trying to scale my agency but everything was still being done on paper – big application packs and timesheets filled in by hand. This inevitably led to people being paid the wrong amount or clients being sent invoices with the wrong job code on them because someone’s writing wasn’t clear. It sounds quite backward because it was. It just wasn’t an efficient, scalable or, honestly, safe way to fill these shifts. But that experience has helped us build software that temp recruitment agencies can genuinely rely on because we know all of the nuances, we know the kind of detail that’s needed and we know the 24/7 support that’s required in 24/7 industries like healthcare and other sectors. Where do you see the biggest opportunities, either within the UK or internationally? Honestly the biggest opportunity right now is here in the UK. Most temp agencies in the UK are still running on spreadsheets or even on paper. For years nothing has been built specifically for temp recruitment, everything is built for the more generic permanent recruitment market, which has very different needs. So there’s still a whole industry that needs bringing up to date. Then of course you’ve got the incoming legislation which is raising the bar on compliance, for instance on the new guaranteed hours rules, which makes doing things on paper both harder and riskier. So the UK will be keeping us busy for a while yet. Internationally, we’ll take it slowly and in that order that I mentioned earlier: understand the market, map the compliance requirements, then build. The US is the one I find the most interesting for the longer term. There was a relatively very small temp market there before COVID but that’s obviously changed and a real market is forming around temp recruitment there now.
66 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / October 2026 ‘T/Predictions The New Luxury of Wellness L ERÉI is a new women-only wellness residence in Knightsbridge, London. LERÉI brings together fitness, recovery, beauty and longevity, with an emphasis on privacy and a more considered approach to wellbeing. Set on the second floor of 171–175 Brompton Road, the residence has been designed by Italian design house Visionnaire. The intention was to create somewhere that feels more like a private home than a traditional wellness club, with the interiors shaped around light, materials and spatial flow The experience is organised around five “rhythms” of wellbeing: Renew, Restore, Replenish, Reconnect and Revitalise. They cover everything from Lagree, Suspended Flow and infrared Mat Sculpt powered by Bon Charge to hydrothermal contrast experiences and restorative movement. Beauty and recovery treatments include enzyme peels, oxygen dome treatments, caviar therapy, Japanese head spa rituals, Brazilian lymphatic massages and ceremonial body wraps. There are also educational talks and intimate seminars. Personalisation is a key part of the offering. LERÉI is collaborating with Dr Mansoor Mohammed, an internationally recognised pioneer in genomics and personalised healthcare. Members will have access to advanced DNA and genomic testing, with their experience tailored around their biology, lifestyle and stage of life. The idea came from the founder’s own search for a different kind of space. “I was searching for a space where fitness and restoration could exist without scrutiny,” she explains. “Somewhere curated rather than crowded, luxurious in its silence, and elegantly feminine in its design.” Privacy is reflected in the membership model. LERÉI is limited to 150 women, and more than 60% of the places were already secured ahead of opening in September 2026. Membership starts at £1,000 per month, with a small number of tiers offering different levels of access. Depending on membership, benefits include semi-private fitness and recovery classes, Korean Glass Hydrafacials, Japanese head spa rituals, advanced facial therapies, lymphatic treatments, hydrothermal access, concierge services and chauffeur transfers. Perhaps the point of LERÉI is what it leaves out. No crowds, no noise, and no sense of wellness becoming another thing on the to-do list. Instead, there is space to exercise, recover and take some time for yourself. In a city that rarely stops, finding a little quiet has its own appeal. Inside Knightsbridge’s most private wellness sanctuary by ENTREPRENEUR UK STAFF → LERÉI’S DRESSING SUITES
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