This morning in London, the UK’s answer to Startup America launches, titled – guess what? – Startup Britain. That similarity aside, the initiative has been put together by a number of existing UK entrepreneurs and is not being backed by any government money, unlike the Obama initiative. Instead, we have here a ground-up entrepreneur-led initiative which is seeing over 60 leading brands offer services to up-and-coming startups in the UK. This is not specifically about tech startups – but it may well appeal to that sector.
The campaign is being launched by Prime Minister David Cameron, who is known to be very pro-enterprise. The UK has 270,000 businesses that start up every year but many fail due to a lack of support. So in effect the Startup Britain initiative is doing a few things much more differently. It’s offering a package of discounts and free trial on business services like insurance, broadband, advertising, office space and more. The claim is that this amounts to over £1,500 in value for every startup company in Britain. Startup Britain is a portal site to a package of these services.