This is perfectly ordinary entrepreneurship.
The usual picture has capital in it, networks and a big stage. That exists, and it is one part of it.
We want a country full of people who try things, who solve problems, who inspire others with an idea, or who simply build something that lasts. That’s what entrepreneurship means to us.
We want more people to be able to take that step. And what it takes, we’re working out together. By trying it.
Taking responsibility
For yourself and for others. Entrepreneurship is learned there, not in a seminar.
Making something
Putting something into the world that wasn’t there before. That’s the work, not the trappings.
Because it matters to you
Doing something you care about enough to stay with on the bad days.
Making a good living
An income that holds up is a goal in itself. Not a staging post on the way to something bigger.
And enjoying it
Work you look forward to is one of the reasons to start at all.
Why now, and why like this?
A lot of us are working out how we want to live and work in the new normal, with all its uncertainty, its pace, its complexity and its contradictions. And how we might change it for the better ourselves.
Our education system, our labour market and our funding logic come from a time when most people were employees for life. That world is disappearing. We’re building the infrastructure that makes entrepreneurial capability a basic civic skill.
AI absorbs standardised work
Precisely the tasks that training and degrees prepare people for are increasingly automatable.
Demographics sharpen the shortage
What is missing is no longer skilled staff for existing organisations, but people who build new ones.
Concentration slows renewal
Large companies buy up the small ones and grow more efficient and more profitable, but not necessarily more innovative.
A gap between a grant and an investment
Between the start-up grant from the employment agency, a loan and large investments, there is no suitable funding in small and mid-sized amounts.
CVs are more varied than the ways in
Biographies, experience and circumstances decide what any of us starts with. Experience is built in second careers, in caring for a family, after moving country, and in work that didn’t exist ten years ago. Little of that fits a CV, and a CV is what decides who gets in.