PROFESSOR DYLAN JONES-EVANS

Over the next few weeks as we approach the Senedd elections in May, many organisations will be putting forward ideas on how the next Welsh Government can make a difference to the nation. Given the importance of new and smaller businesses to the Welsh economy as we emerge out of the pandemic, our next group of politicians should read the recent proposals from Purple Shoots, a not-for-profit micro finance organisation that provides small business loans at fair rates. With an impressive track record over the last seven years, they have helped to fill a real gap in access to finance to the newest and smallest firms and, in doing so, have made a real difference to the ambitions of those from the poorest communities who want to start their own businesses. One of their suggestions is to divert one per cent of the £270m recently given to the Development Bank of Wales by the Welsh Government towards funding new microbusinesses employing less than ten people. Using their own success as an exampl...

One of the major concerns from the tech sector when the Covid-19 pandemic hit was that the availability of funding into those businesses that can grow quickly in knowledge-based sectors would be dramatically curtailed as individual and institutional investors withdrew from the market. This was the main reason why the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced the £500m Future Fund to provide government loans of £125,000 to £5 million to equity-funded UK-based companies which would then be matched by investors. Whilst this intervention would have been largely targeted at formal venture capital companies, very few informal individual investors would have directly benefited given the lower levels of funding they provide.  However, these business angels are critical to any economy as they often are the ones who will put up the money for high risk investments into new exciting companies that the banks tend to ignore. More importantly, the better angels not only invest money but often, as fo...

Last Thursday I was privileged to be at the brilliant Tramshed Tech accelerator in Cardiff for the launch of the latest “State of the Nation” report from Tech Nation, the UK’s network for ambitious tech-based entrepreneurs. Yet again, there were some fascinating statistics including about the situation here in Wales with the report showing that there are currently 3,605 Welsh digital tech firms employing 45,000 people and having a total turnover of over £1 billion. However, the emphasis this year was not to look inward but to examine the performance of the UK tech economy on the global stage and how our innovative companies, entrepreneurial communities and ground-breaking technologies are making an impact across the world.  And rather focusing on start-up firms that usually are at the core of most research studies into the tech sector, the report focuses on those high growth scale-up firms which currently account for 80 per cent of the £6.3bn of tech investment into UK firms in 201...