Virgin StartUp: “It’s time to ‘fix the front door’ to entrepreneurship”

Virgin StartUp is pushing ministers to open up entrepreneurship, and its latest Founder Barometer gives that argument plenty of fuel. The split in confidence is stark: 67% of founders from lower socio-economic backgrounds say they feel unsupported by government, versus 33% from upper-middle backgrounds.

The pressure isn’t just financial. One in three founders overall say their mental health is getting worse, up from 18% last year, but that rises to 43% among founders from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Among higher socio-economic founders, it’s 15%. That gap turns a broad start-up problem into something much more uneven, and much more personal.

Money still sits at the centre of it all. Just 27% of founders from lower socio-economic backgrounds feel financially confident, compared with 70% of those from higher socio-economic backgrounds. Cost-of-living pressure remains the biggest worry for many, cited by 47% of founders overall and 59% of those from lower socio-economic backgrounds. In the North East, 63% say that is their biggest concern.

The report also points to who gets left out of the start-up story altogether. Only 37% of founders think the start-up world supports female entrepreneurs, while the figure is 33% for ethnic minority founders and 25% for neurodivergent founders. Virgin StartUp says the government should treat support for new businesses as an economic priority, not a side issue.

There’s a practical side to the story too. Nearly six in 10 UK SME founders are prioritising sales growth over the next 12 months, and 53% say they’ve already changed their business after last year’s Budget. AI is spreading, but unevenly: 35% of SMEs are not using it, rising to 39% among founders from lower socio-economic backgrounds, compared with 11% among higher socio-economic respondents. The message from the report is plain enough: talent is there, but the door still opens more easily for some people than others.