What UK Founders Want From the Autumn Budget | Founders Pulse

As the Autumn Budget approaches, Founders Pulse reveals what UK founders say they need most – from stability and investment incentives to a system that helps them scale.

The Autumn Budget arrives at a pivotal moment for UK tech. Global competition is intensifying and leading tech founders in our Founders Pulse community are watching closely for signals of long-term stability and growth. 

Over the past months, through our regular Founders Pulse surveys, and hundreds of conversations with founders across the UK, one message has been consistent: this Budget needs to back ambition, not dampen it.

Founders Pulse exists to give policymakers an unfiltered view of what builders actually need. And our latest results are clear: founders want simplicity, predictability, and a government genuinely committed to helping them scale.

The Top Priorities: Incentives, Simplicity, and Growth Capital

When we asked 300+ UK founders what would help their business most in our pre-Budget Founders Pulse survey, their priorities came through loud and clear.

• 70% want stronger incentives to invest in UK companies.
  
• Almost half want a simpler tax system.
  
• 3 in 5 want tax relief schemes – especially R&D credits – cleaned up and made predictable again.

Founders we surveyed said the UK needs stronger government co-investment in high-growth companies. Others pointed to the importance of better IPO pathways, secondary markets, and crucially talent – founders want to bring great people in, quickly, and without friction.

Underneath it all is a theme we hear constantly from our founder community: Give us a system that rewards risk, simplifies the rules, and lets us get on with building.

Unlocking UK Investment: ISAs, Pensions, and a Stronger Scale-Up Pipeline

If there is one opportunity founders keep pointing toward, it’s unlocking more UK capital for UK innovation. And we’ve been working closely with founders and HM Treasury on two areas with significant potential: ISA reform and pension fund allocation.

This month, more than 50 founders of the UK’s leading growth-stage companies signed our open letter, urging the government to ensure ISA reforms actually direct British savings into high-growth UK businesses. The message was simple: reducing cash ISA allowances only works if people have accessible options to invest in British innovation, backed by clearer guidance on how to invest and the upsides.

On pensions, founders supported a proposal from the London Stock Exchange calling for pension providers to allocate 25% of default funds to UK investments – a practical way to give scale-ups access to the late-stage capital they struggle to find domestically.

This echoes the message shared by our CEO, Carolyn Dawson, in a recent City AM op-ed: If we want more homegrown success stories to stay and scale in the UK, we need domestic capital that can back them through to IPO.

Talent is also central to the UK’s ability to scale world-class companies. Founders consistently tell us that access to skilled talent, especially in AI, is one of their biggest obstacles to growth. The Home Secretary’s commitment to fast-tracking settlement for entrepreneurs is a welcome signal, but founders say the UK must match global competitors on speed, clarity, and ambition if we want high-growth companies to scale here.

What Founders Want Gone: Short-Termism and the Exit Tax Debate

1 in 2 founders we surveyed highlighted short-term policymaking as the single biggest drag on growth – and nothing captures this more sharply than the Exit Tax proposal.

In our polling, 100% of founders said they opposed an Exit Tax on unrealised gains – one of the strongest signals we’ve seen from the community. Many said they would reduce hiring or investment in the UK if it were introduced, and a number told us they would consider relocating entirely.

• “The introduction of an exit tax turns off any entrepreneur from starting a business in the UK.”
• “It’s not really messaging ‘sunny uplands’ when you have to try and lock people in to stay here.”

Alongside the Startup Coalition, we put these views forward to the government, and signals from the Chancellor that the policy has been axed are broadly welcomed.

Looking Ahead to Budget Day

Despite their concerns, many founders we spoke to emphasised the UK’s strengths: a collaborative ecosystem, strong technical talent, and a track record of producing globally recognised companies. 

There’s hope that with clear and consistent decisions, the Autumn Budget can help make the UK a stronger place to build and scale a company.

At the heart of it, founders want one thing: a UK that backs them as boldly as they back their own companies.

Add your voice to Founders Pulse. We’ll be running a post-Budget Pulse to gather founders’ instant feedback and pass these insights directly to the Government.