Our latest Three Big Ideas roundup is now out! This week: 🍄 @Philip_Salter on why entrepreneurship can’t be left to chance 🛩️ @MannVirdee on why teams can be more resilient than solo entrepreneurs 🌱 @iannghh on making self-employment a route into work

🩺 Christina Davis qualified as a doctor, then went full-time on her marketing business Presell Studio in Newcastle. She matched her salary within three months: "AI gives me access to capabilities that would previously have required a team."

🧽 Olivia Regan left school without GCSEs and launched Crystal Clean in Solihull in 2024. It now brings in up to £10,000 a month and supports a team of freelancers: "Starting a business can be a real route into work."

💷 @Cebr_uk modelled what would happen if 5% of NEET young people (around 50,000) started businesses between 2027 and 2029. The answer: almost £4bn in additional output by 2029.

🚀 Meanwhile, around 193,000 16–24-year-olds are now self-employed, 27,500 more than in 2022/23 and the highest level in more than a decade. The youth self-employment rate rose from 4.5% to 5.4%.

🍽️ The fall is concentrated in the jobs that usually give young people their first experience of work. Hospitality and other services account for 55% of the drop in under-25 payroll jobs in Sage's data.

📉 Using @sageuk payroll data and analysis by @Cebr_uk, we found employees aged 16–24 fell by 129,200 between 2022/23 and 2025/26 (–3.7%), while employees of all ages rose by 1.7%.

This afternoon we launched Job Creators 2026, our annual report on the foreign-born founders building Britain's fastest-growing businesses, with @Penningtonslaw We were delighted to be joined by @JoshReynoldsSL6, Matthew Martin and @pat_saini.

🇿🇦 Alexandra Birch-Mayne co-authored a 2016 paper on a technique now used in most large language models, then co-founded Edinburgh AI firm Aveni. She described the immigration system as “very expensive and unfriendly to people who are high value.”

🇦🇺 Tim Chong moved from Australia and co-founded fintech Yonder. When delays hit his settlement application mid-growth, the Global Talent Taskforce stepped in: “Without their help, the uncertainty would have significantly impacted the business.”

🇫🇷 Tamar Gomez came from France for a PhD at Imperial, then co-founded AI research platform Ankar AI in London. Getting her co-founder here was complicated: “Our skilled workers get a visa way quicker than my co-founder did.”

🗺️ This year’s founders come from 35 countries across six continents, up from 29. After France topped the table last year, the US is back in first place with 9 founders, followed by Italy (8), then Germany and India (7 each).

⏩ Using @Beauhurst data, we found that 54 of the 100 fastest-growing companies in the UK have at least one foreign-born founder, matching last year’s record since we began tracking in 2019. Together they’re worth £15.84bn, 70% of the top 100’s combined valuation.

Our latest Three Big Ideas roundup is now out! This week: ⚗️ @MannVirdee on why AI means ideas are no longer the bottleneck in science 🔍 @Philip_Salter on why Innovate UK needs to track the firms it backs 🗺️ @iannghh on why clean power might level up Britain

This morning we launched our JVF Female Founder Ambition Series report with the Jessica Vollman Foundation. Thank you to Kajal Sanghrajka, Juliet Gouldman and Geeta Sidhu-Robb for speaking. Read the full report: tenentrepreneurs.org/female-…

Our latest Three Big Ideas roundup is now out! This week: 📈 @Philip_Salter on zero-sum thinking as a result of slow growth 🌾 @MannVirdee on what US seed patents could teach Britain about breeding crops ⤴️ @iannghh on why the Scale-up Fund mustn't become a ministerial wish list