Rishi Khosla saw a problem and wanted to fix it. The fintech entrepreneur and his business partner Joel Perlman had already built one business from nothing to 3,000 staff before they exited. Then they turned their attention to the difficulties scale-ups face borrowing from banks and founded OakNorth, a digitally focused lender to fast-growing businesses, in 2015. They knew how hard it was to get a loan. “We’d experienced the problem and said: we can build something to address this and help other entrepreneurs and scaling businesses,” says Khosla, whose first venture with Perlman, the financial ..read more

Michael Moore sounds like a politician as he lists the travails that have made the past few years the worst of times for VCs. The pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine and the energy crisis that came with it, and the windswept economic landscape – all to blame.  That’s not surprising since the head of the trade body for venture capital (and private equity) is a former Liberal Democrat MP – and Scottish Secretary – in the coalition government. And he has a point.    “It changed the reality on the ground for everybody – whether they were fundraising, building businesses or lookin ..read more

To his detractors Sir Keir Starmer is boring. He is, so say he critics, a limited politician with none of the natural communication skills of Sir Tony Blair, someone who would be more suited to managing a bank than running the country. But to write off the likely next incumbent of Number 10 as dull is to miss the point. As leader of the opposition, Starmer has been one of the most ruthless politicians in recent history. He has taken on the hard left and won, mounted a brutal reshuffle and readily dispensed with flagship policies in a bid to bolster Labour’s economic credentials. His approach t ..read more

Before I co-founded Castore, I had one ‘real’ job, which was in finance. I am not naturally a numbers person, but I did make a point of being the first to arrive in the office every day and doing my best at whatever task I was given. Despite my lack of obvious talent, senior people appreciated my approach to work and would give me advice on where I could improve. Given that many readers of this article will be leaders working with people at the start of the careers in their teams, I want to share the key aspects of what I learnt and hope some people will find these points worth sharing with th ..read more

The heightening anticipation of the football club’s performance and that of its most loved players explodes in song, cheer and jovial jeering between the fans of the competing clubs as the game begins. Their immersion in their clubs and star players, consumed in real time through multiple formats and social channels, has been orchestrated and enabled by the Azzuu platform as it eats into a market with over 4 billion sports-obsessed fans. It’s smart. It’s seamless and, most importantly, says its founder James Thomas, it’s simple. Yet, the path to this platform’s accelerating success has been an ..read more

There seems to be no resolution to the UK’s gender pay gap – the difference between what men and women earn We know these figures because of transparency legislation. Since 2017, the law requires companies with 250 or more employees to reveal their gender pay gap annually. This year marks a significant milestone as we see the gap narrowing to its smallest margin so far. However, with women still earning 91p for every £1 that men earn, is that progress? The gender pay gap can be misunderstood and often misreported as some talk about equal pay, others about equality and many about average gaps ..read more

There had never been a pitch like it. An entrepreneur and his product were tested to destruction by potential investors in front of millions of television viewers. It should have been the last rites for Rob Law’s entrepreneurial dream. Instead, it put his brand of children’s luggage, Trunki, on the map. In 2006, Law appeared on Dragons’ Den in an effort to secure £100,000 for 10 per cent of the business. The designer, who had overcome cystic fibrosis, had already sold 20,000 units of the ride-on suitcase he had designed in his second year at university. At first the Dragons warmed to Law and h ..read more

Politicians cling to how messages “land” in focus groups and polls, businesses to market research, and creatives to recent hit successes. Whatever the sector, the impulse is the same: to discover and understand what’s working right now for other people. But the crucial part of that sentence isn’t “what’s working” but “other people”. Because you aren’t other people and the fact it’s working for them doesn’t mean it will work for you – still less that you should be relinquishing your own unique perspective along the way. “If I’d asked people what they wanted,” quipped Henry Ford, “they’d have sa ..read more

A 13-year-old Yvonne Whiteley, inspired by Jacques Cousteau, wanted to learn how to dive. She was living on a military base her father transferred to with his wife and five children. In her vastly oversized men’s wetsuit, she found solace, a mathematics professor and a deep interest in data. These would eventually lead her to build RED Scientific, a digital engineering services company in Alton, Hampshire. Priming an interest in data Upon arriving at RAF Brize Norton, Whiteley, now 15, introduced herself to the base divemaster, sergeant Jon Mays. Relieved that he had found someone to teach a p ..read more

Virgin Group may be more than 50 years old, operate in 34 countries and employ 70,000 people across its various businesses, but it still has just one shareholder: the Branson family. Sir Richard Branson started Virgin in 1970 and has avoided selling a stake in the main group or brand, instead bringing in partners and investors to work with it on an array of different ventures. In this interview, Virgin Group’s chief executive Josh Bayliss reflects on his relationship with Sir Richard, balancing short- and long-term strategy, and learning from failure. This is an extract from Business Leader’s ..read more