BUDGET COMMENT: Chancellor’s Budget risks putting further pressure on small businesses and young entrepreneurs

In reaction to the Government’s Autumn Budget, please see below commentary from Vann Vogstad, CEO of COHO, a UK shared living marketplace platform supporting more than 6,000 HMOs and 55,000 tenants across the UK.

“The Chancellor’s 3.9% increase in the National Living Wage and National Minimum Wage risks putting further pressure on small businesses, while potentially making it harder for young people to enter employment.”

“Supporting entrepreneurship shouldn't just mean rewarding success or helping established businesses grow faster. It should mean giving more people, regardless of their background, the opportunity to start something and helping good businesses survive long enough to succeed.”

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“The Chancellor’s 3.9% increase in the National Living Wage and National Minimum Wage risks putting further pressure on small businesses, while potentially making it harder for young people to enter employment.

“With 981,000 young people currently not in education, employment or training, we should be making it easier for businesses to take a chance on inexperienced workers. AI is already changing employment economics, allowing businesses to achieve more with smaller teams of experienced people. Increasing the cost of employing someone with little experience risks widening that gap even further.

“However, I'm genuinely encouraged by the new Young Entrepreneurs Allowance. Having founded several businesses myself, I know the hardest part is often simply surviving financially while developing an idea. Giving young entrepreneurs breathing space to build a product, find their first customers and secure funding could be transformative.

“Not every successful business needs to become a billion-pound company, and even those that eventually do rarely look like one when they're starting out.

“While I welcome the ambition to encourage more female entrepreneurs, I think it’s important that support is focused on addressing the barriers that prevent women from starting and growing businesses in the first place. The aim should be to create an environment where everyone has the opportunity to succeed, regardless of gender. For me, one of the biggest priorities is helping more women feel confident and supported enough to take that first step into entrepreneurship.”

“Whether through financial insecurity, childcare responsibilities, confidence or access to networks, we should focus on removing those initial barriers. The real opportunity is helping more women reach the starting line, as well as giving an additional advantage to those already running the race.

“Founders' Relief is also welcome, recognising the personal risks entrepreneurs take and rewarding those who build successful businesses. But I'm more cautious about the emphasis on increasing investment through traditional growth funding and venture capital.

“Venture capital can be brilliant, but its incentives favour rapid growth and exceptional returns, sometimes at the expense of sustainability. A fund can afford for several investments to fail; an individual founder often cannot. And a profitable business employing twenty people is still an enormous success, even if it would never be considered venture-backable.

“What many founders actually need isn't millions to accelerate growth, but modest financial support to cover their own time and perhaps their first employees. I've experienced those difficult early days myself. Good businesses can fail before they've had a fair chance, simply because their founders can't afford to keep going.

“Overall, there are some genuinely positive announcements here. But supporting entrepreneurship shouldn't just mean rewarding success or helping established businesses grow faster. It should mean giving more people, regardless of their background, the opportunity to start something and helping good businesses survive long enough to succeed.”

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Editors notes

COHO is a marketplace platform used by landlords, property managers, tenants and prospective tenants to run shared homes more efficiently. Used by over 6,000 HMOs, it is one of the UK’s leading systems for managing, marketing and maintaining shared living properties.