‘We Don’t Just Need AI Policy, We Need an Entrepreneurial Reboot,’ Says Sean Kohli
Venture investor and Young Entrepreneurs Forum chair Sean Kohli is calling for a “Californian-style reboot” of the UK’s approach to entrepreneurship, warning that Britain risks becoming a footnote in the global tech race without urgent structural and cultural change.
Writing in City A.M., Kohli draws from first-hand experience of Silicon Valley’s ecosystem - hacker houses, founder-friendly universities, and fast-moving investors - to highlight how far behind the UK has drifted. “In the UK, we often talk about ideas. In California, they get built, funded and scaled,” he writes.
The need for reform isn’t abstract. New figures from The Entrepreneurs Network and Public First show only four per cent of British founders believe the government understands their needs. More than eight in ten say the system is fundamentally broken, with major complaints including slow access to capital, restrictive immigration policies, and high taxes on growth.
“We are placing hurdles in the path of risk-taking and innovation,” Kohli warns. “Naturally, ambitious founders are being drawn elsewhere.”
Funding friction and flight risk
According to the survey, 75 per cent of UK founders say raising capital is difficult, especially for AI and deep tech startups. That lack of early-stage capacity is driving talent abroad: one in ten founders say they expect to leave the UK within the next year, while one in six plan to sell or shut down.
The trend is particularly stark in AI. In 2024, the US poured over $130 billion into AI startups, more than half of all global VC funding, while UK companies struggled to compete, both on capital and infrastructure.
As Zestic AI founder Irina Pafomova notes, “Unlike in the US, the UK market has neither the speed nor sufficient capacity to support ambitious businesses. Founders are distracted by piecemeal fundraising instead of building.”
Lessons from across the Atlantic
Kohli’s article isn’t just a critique; it’s a playbook. Drawing on the success of Stanford’s pause-and-return entrepreneurship schemes, he calls for UK universities to become founder factories, not finishing schools. That means sabbaticals for student entrepreneurs, integrated spin-out support, and clearer on-ramps to return to study.
He also pushes for a cultural rewire: failure, he argues, must be destigmatised. “In Britain, failure is treated like a personal flaw. In the US, it’s a badge of resilience.” Without normalising experimentation, Kohli warns, “we’ll never create the conditions needed to build bold.”
A roadmap for reform
Kohli outlines three urgent areas where UK policy must shift to close the gap:
- Tax: Avoid further hikes and introduce reliefs that reward long-term innovation. “If you want innovation,” he writes, “you must reward risk, not penalise it.”
- Funding: Speed up capital access and expand early-stage support. Kohli argues the UK needs more founder-led accelerators, public-private capital pools, and a rethink of how British Business Bank and Innovate UK operate.
- Universities: Repurpose higher education institutions into engines of entrepreneurship. That includes spinout support, sandbox regulation, and partnerships with venture funds.
Kohli also calls for visa reform, a key issue, with 88 per cent of founders rating immigration policy as critical to the UK ecosystem. Talent, he argues, must be mobile: “Some of the brightest people I work with can’t get visas to build here. That’s madness.”
Urgency, not nostalgia
While Labour’s leadership has echoed Harold Wilson’s “white heat of technology” rhetoric, Kohli argues warm words are not enough. “Unless that translates into real policy, it risks going the same way: warm words, no structural reform.”
His mission with the Young Entrepreneurs Forum is to help shape the conditions, not just support founders within a broken system, but redesign it from the ground up.
“We have the talent,” Kohli writes. “But talent needs traction. That means fixing tax. Fixing finance. Fixing regulation. And above all, backing the next generation of British founders to build.”
In a global economy moving at breakneck speed, Kohli’s message is simple: If we want to play a leading role in the next technological revolution, we need to start acting like it.
Adrian Jennings is a writer for Comment Central.
