One in five young Britons now founding, as graduate vacancies fall 43%
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor puts youth entrepreneurial activity at a record 19.6 per cent. Adzuna counted 7,826 advertised graduate roles in September, down from 13,754 a year earlier.
Nearly one in five people aged 18 to 24 in the UK was starting or running a business in 2025. That is the highest level recorded by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, whose UK report was published on 27 October.
A summary of the findings by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Entrepreneurship puts the youth rate at 19.6 per cent.
Across all adults, early-stage entrepreneurial activity rose from 12.0 per cent to 16.8 per cent in 2025. According to Warwick Business School, that is the highest since GEM records began in 1999, with young people and women driving the rise.
The share of new entrepreneurs reporting growth ambitions more than doubled over three years, to 35 per cent.
The same research ranks the UK's entrepreneurial ecosystem 37th globally, down from 29th.
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The Saturday Edition
One email, Saturday morning. A round-up of the week, perfect to go with your cup of coffee.
Registrar struck off 174,269 companies in six months
Nearly half of recent UK company closures were ordered by Companies House rather than chosen by directors, and £129m of leftover assets went to the Crown.
Hospital venture arm backs Bioliberty's €2.95m Series A extension
The Edinburgh and Boston rehabilitation startup has added four institutional investors, including the investment arm of Tampa General Hospital. Its total funding now stands at €12.07 million.
Ministers weigh adding Vinted and eBay to under-16 platform ban
The culture secretary says the government is "looking seriously" at putting second-hand marketplaces inside a ban that starts in March. Any marketplace with a message box is now in scope.
Base44: $10,000 side project to $80m Wix sale in six months
Maor Shlomo built an AI app builder alone, kept all of it, and sold to Wix for $80m in cash six months after launch. SaaStr reports the product now runs at $200m ARR inside Wix.
One 2021 TikTok now a brand growing 57% a year
Mia Lind posted a video about "hot girl walks" four years ago. Inc. reports the idea now runs as a business with a 57 per cent annualised growth rate and brand work with Nutella and Spotify.
Denver café keeps drip at $3.50 while launching tenth city menu
Hot Shot Coffee opens its Hokkaido menu on 18 October, inside a York Street dry cleaner that stood empty for 14 years.
Five questions a former processing executive says to ask before signing
US merchants paid $198.25bn to accept cards last year. The networks' headline rates barely moved. Robert L. Day, who spent a decade selling processing, says the gap is markup you can negotiate.
Earned media now feeds the machines as well as the buyers
Coverage you did not pay for builds trust with customers and puts your name where AI tools go looking. A US business title argues the two now come as a pair.
Vercel's inbound agent now runs on 14 rules, not 1,000 lines
Vercel's COO has described how one engineer at 20% time, a prompt written by the best SDR and six weeks of human checking produced an agent that handles the top of the funnel. The lesson is what came after: most of the prompt turned out to be code.