The Fall and Rise of UK entrepreneurship
Building Redwood Founders
A week ago, I attended the UK’s biggest startup competition in London. It was inspiring to spend some quality time in person with some incredible founders and investors.
During the evening, I struck up a conversation with a popular angel investor (formerly Dragons Den). We got onto the topic of UK entrepreneurship, and went down the how do we inspire more student founder ventures rabbit hole.
These days, the UK government is making it harder to be a founder than ever before. There are so little incentive schemes and opportunities, and that’s all in the context of a rough job market.
As we discussed our strategies for 2025, it was clear the game is changing fast.
So today I’m going to share the progress from Redwood Founders, and how we plan to grow as we move into the new year.
Let’s dive in.
The Big Problem with the UK Startup Scene
When I look at how founders are hiring talent, we see a lot of outdated tactics.
Networking, referrals and generic outreach is becoming less effective.
Why? Because the market is flooded with AI and data-led driven firms like AlphaSights and Dartmouth Partners using every tool in the playbook.
We think it’s more important to identify talent earlier than ever. Whether you’re in an investment bank, consulting firm or a startup. That’s the entire rationale behind why we have spring weeks.
At the same time, in the context of the startup scene, you’ll be hard pressed to find students putting their CV’s out there for some half-baked idea. They want to fill their resume with strong experiences and build a network with like-minded individuals.
So how have we adapted?
Well, there are four things we’ve done that differentiate ourselves from the traditional talent recruitment firm.
1. Summer Launchpad: Quality over Quantity
You can’t put a start-up label on everything and demand cool interns.
Your start-up needs to solve real problems. Create a thoughtful solution instead of just hype and buzz. You want and should focus on developing strong and early client and investor relations.
For example, let’s say you’re in the B2C skincare space. Instead of just publishing your work and findings online expecting customers to find the brand, you can create an entire system to reach out to people with bad skin for interviews. They might end up being interviews, challenges to solve and future consumers.
Now, that system of growth hacking is what we are expecting from our startups in our 2025 Launchpad even if revenue generation at pre-seed is not your priority.
We interview the startups just as much as we do to the students (some members of my team might argue more so)
And last Summer, we offered 52 spots to bright individuals in18 startups across industries.
This year we plan to make it bigger, more diverse and increase the variety of roles and locations. All whilst making it perfectly accessible to students and start-ups from all backgrounds.
We focus on connecting students to the top pre-seed startups.
The best thing is, it’s at no cost — to both startups and students.
So reach out to us if you are interested by dropping us an email at redwoodfounders@gmail.com.
2. Advancing Borders: Hey Berkeley
Start-ups and San Francisco (SF) are pretty much interchangeable in a daily context.
And yes, we had a recent launch into SF with the help of a good friend Ali Khani.
So when we open up our launchpad for applications, expect there to be a (well-deserved) US focus with our very own franchise there.
I guess this goes back to our main point of the UK’s worsening condition for young entrepreneurs (see below)
3. Multi-Channel Integration: Join our Whatsapp Community
Put yourselves in either the shoes of an investor, a founder or a student. You need to have your finger on the pulse.
Our Whatsapp community is just that. Now, I’m not suggesting you ‘spam’ share the link everywhere you can — that would just reduce the exclusivity of it.
Expect conversations around:
- Tools & growth hacks for your own start-up from founders
- Regular updates on the entrepreneurial scene from investors
- Events to sign up to (for non-code people too) with a like-minded community
Check out our Google Form to join now:
4. A Curated List: Work Smarter, Not Harder
AI is going to be a great tool for this in the future. But for now, here’s a manually curated list of the top resources/events shared in our 200 strong community.
Useful Links (from our community chat) curated — check em’ out:
Events:
State School Ventures: Idea -> Launch -> Funding | YC Startup School Europe 2024 | Non-technical & technical Hackathon with EF | Apply for Kickstart Founders under 24 Fellowship
Courses:
Gen AI Intense Course with Google | AI Canon with a16z
Thought Pieces:
Does your startup need to be in San Francisco? | On the importance of journalling | Arbitrage between Amazon & Temu
Other Useful Bits:
YC Application guide | Interface Designs at speed | AI Front-end tool with Webcrumbs | Agent.exe — Claude 3.5 Sonnet | MFM Pitch Deck for Investors (video) | Building a pitch deck — all stages & industries
The Bottom Line:
Entrepreneurship is not an art or a science anymore. It’s about risk-seeking individuals coming together — building multi-channel, value-first relationships.
The founders who succeed will be those who provide real value, with a highly relevant product for their ideal customers. There’s no better way to do that, than to get in touch with the right people early.
Our upcoming events:
15th November — Imperial Startup Exhibition
23rd November — Find Redwood Founders at Startup School YC
And that’s all for this week.
See you next Saturday!
