A supplier delivers the work, raises the invoice and waits. The customer’s terms say 90 days. On day 91, the customer queries a line on the invoice, and the clock starts again. Nothing unlawful has happened, and the supplier has, …
Factor Rate to APR: How to Work Out the True Cost of a Business Cash Advance
A merchant cash advance offer rarely mentions an interest rate. It quotes a factor rate, such as 1.2, or a fixed fee, such as £2,000 on £10,000, and it tells you what percentage of your card takings will be collected …
How Much Does the Innovator Founder Visa Cost in 2026? The Full Three-Year Budget
When founders ask me how much the Innovator Founder visa costs, they usually mean the application fee. It is the number on the front page of GOV.UK, and it looks manageable at £1,357. Then the endorsement fee arrives, then the …
Is Your Business Ready for the Innovator Founder Visa? The Standards We Apply Before Taking On an Applicant
Endorsing bodies assess a business, not a visa application. Yet most of the Innovator Founder enquiries I receive start with the document: the founder wants a business plan to get them endorsed, and the business behind it is still an …
Innovator Founder Visa Success Rate 2026: What the Home Office Data Really Shows
The first question most Innovator Founder applicants ask me is about their chances. They have usually already found an answer online, often a reassuring one somewhere above 85%, and they want me to confirm it. The trouble is that the …
UK Innovator Founder Visa Statistics 2026: 60+ Official Figures
This page collects the figures people most often need on the UK Innovator Founder visa, each with its source. Sections 1 to 6 are based on SGI’s analysis of the Home Office immigration statistics for the year ending June 2026, …
UK startups Funding Statistics 2026: 180+ Sourced Figures
This page collects the figures that founders, journalists and researchers most often need on UK startups funding, each with its source. Sections 2 to 8 draw on SGI’s own UK Pre-Seed Funding Index 2023-25 and our analysis of Companies House …
Raising startups Funding Outside London in 2026: What the Data Shows
Founders in Leeds, Bristol, Nottingham and Aberdeen tell me the same thing in almost the same words: that everyone who raises seems to be in London. They read about rounds of £1m and more, see investors posting from Shoreditch, and …
Who Backs UK Start-Ups First? The Most Active Pre-Seed Investors on the Register
When founders show me their first investor list, it usually reads like a roll call of the venture capital firms they have seen in the press. The problem is that very few of those firms appear on the share registers …
Invisible Capital: Why Companies House Shows Only Part of the UK Angel Market
Founders regularly show me investor lists they have built by hand. The method is almost always the same: search Companies House for start-ups in their sector, open the share registers, copy every individual name into a spreadsheet, then add whatever …