Scything down tall poppies, *a la* Gainsborough

Britain is exceptional at inventing things, but not very good at turning them into businesses. I think this is as much a cultural problem as it is an economic one.

The internet, the jet engine, the telescope, the telegraph, the vaccine, carbon fibre, the lithium ion battery, stainless steel (and the bessemer process), animal cloning and many many many more all came from this green and pleasant land. Even the first light bulb patent was filed in the UK - by Joseph Swan, just under a year before Edison’s design in New York.

But much like many after him - Swan never managed to turn that idea into a lasting economic success.

Swan electric lamp | Science Museum Group Collection — the Swan light bulb

How many of these incredible inventions ended up in UK-domiciled companies that captured the value of the original innovation? Deepmind is the modern example I often refer back to - Demis is arguably one of the greatest brains the UK has produced, at the helm of a world-leading AI-research lab that solved protein folding, generalisable AI models, animal communication and more. Yet it exited for ~£400m to Google before things really got going - with all that ongoing value captured by the US.

And why do I care about this, you ask? Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, things aren’t that wonderful right now - growth is non-existent, inflation is persistently high, consumer and business confidence is low, public services are faltering, and we’re lacking ideals and role models to push the nation forward - what do we stand for, who are we, where are we going etc.

So I take this personally. If we have the ideas and the talent, but not the economic benefit, we’re losing something in the process.

There has been much written about the structural challenges to capturing the value from innovation - our stock market is sclerotic and values current unit economics over potential upside, we lack the deep institutional capital seen in the US, our investment community behaves more like landed gentry minimising downside than swashbuckling risk-on venturers, and we’re simply not a big enough market to build monstrous companies without going abroad.

Is the London Stock Exchange IPO market hotting up in 2021? | The Motley Fool UK

But I don’t think this is all of it. Small countries capitalise on local innovations and build great businesses in the 21st Century - look at Estonia, Switzerland or Sweden right now.

I think the elephant in the room is that we’re uncomfortable with entrepreneurs. We quietly resent them, and we cut them down like tall poppies.

I posit that we have a deeply engrained mistrust of success. For someone to be acceptably successful in Britain, they have to go through a redemption arc - the gauntlet of growth into failure back into growth. Lazarus-like, from the ashes. This isn’t just with entrepreneurs - look at David Beckham, James Dyson, Lewis Capaldi, Martha Lane Fox, Andy Murray, Kate Moss, Amy Winehouse, Hugh Grant, The Gallaghers, Ben Stokes, Tyson Fury, Lily Allen etc. We build you up, watch you soar, resent the success, cut you down and can only accept the person who comes out of that - like the process was a necessary hazing ritual to be acceptably successful.

Tom Blomfield of Monzo talks about this in an interview on Secret Leaders, explaining how the British press hyped him and Monzo up on the rise, created a huge buzz, then cut them down, “delighting” in the process of telling their readers that this new bank was going to lose all their children’s money.

I think a lot of this comes from a deeply entrenched class system. One that looks at wealth as either a source of inherited status (to be resented), or as someone usurping their position (also to be resented). Either way we can’t abide by it - as if the sheer concept of social mobility is anathema.

But what this resentment does is it suffocates our great entrepreneurs, and stifles the creation new ones. We don’t celebrate them - because that’s not our way. We resent anything that looks like self aggrandisement, and in not celebrating those we have, we remove the role models for those coming through, hampering the growth of those on the way up.

Consider this - who is our current best known British entrepreneurial success? Steven Bartlett? An impressive guy no doubt, but one as hated as he is adored. Known for? A podcast and a media company. As close to being an influencer as you can be without actually admitting it.

This needs to change. We need more entrepreneurial role models. We need success stories. UK tech, an inherently entrepreneur-driven sector, adds an estimated £286bn (2024) to the UK economy (+13% of GVA) and employs nearly 3m people (5% of the workforce). This is before you consider the value of all the non technical entrepreneurs across consumer, manufacturing, the arts, life sciences etc.

Wayve: Pioneering a New Era for Automated Driving — a Wavye car in London, 2024

Having been raging against this for a while now, I think we need to triple down on a few key areas.

We need a generation of story-first entrepreneurs. Like him or loathe him, Musk controls the narrative. Bartlett is a PR machine. YCombinator start-ups have been pioneering content first strategies across both B2B and B2C in recent years, and we need more of this in the UK. Marc Andreessen calls it creating a “cult of personality both inside and outside of the organisation”. It goes against our innate British desire to under-sell ourselves, but it’s holding us back. And if the media won’t support founders and tell their stories, they need to do it themselves.

There is considerably more thinking required around this - how this plays into education (across all ages) primarily - something that merits further analysis.

But we also need a new media landscape that can tell these stories - specifically aimed at celebrating entrepreneurs and innovation. The founders are the core ingredient, but the media is the catalyst. If the traditional press won’t do it, we need more TPBN, Substack authors like the Generalist, Plugged, London Founder House, Digital Frontier (RIP), podcast hosts, TikTok channels, YouTubers. We build robots and reactors and drones and large models and self driving cars in this wonderful country. Tell these stories and inspire the next generation of founders.

AUAR's robotically assembled dwelling is at once beautiful and affordable — Automated Architecture, building houses using robots, across Bristol and London

As Josh put it to me recently, “we need to smash the the consultancy-industrial complex” where our best and brightest are funnelled into low risk high status jobs that do little to nothing for our economy. We agreed this is happening in part because they don’t see the opportunity or the viability of a more risk-on, independent lifestyle.

Tied to this, I want to see more Matt Cliffords, Greg Jacksons and Poppy Gustafsons - brand name entrepreneurs having a go at being in the public eye. Being out there, taking the flak, selling the vision, and themselves as role models. Building the policy and the narrative from the inside out.

And frankly, we need to take a long hard look at ourselves and how we view success. We are a deeply ambitious, wonderfully creative and eccentric bunch. The nation of Isaac Newton, Greyson Perry, Cole Palmer and Adele. We punch above our weight so heavily it’s absurd. But we need to get over this frankly teenage jealousy and discomfort with those who are brave enough to stick their heads above the parapet. Because it’s only our futures at stake.

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I’ve been thinking about this a lot, but I don’t have all the answers. Ideas? Drop me a line. Thanks to Josh, Andrew, Leone for input here.

Max Bray

Tall poppies