Matthias Henze

most venture-backed companies end up in the same place: raised 3-4M seed (or 10-15M series A) built real product got to 300-500K ARR (or 2-3M ARR) VCs stopped caring founders stuck with high pref stack, can't raise more, can't exit, can't even shut down cleanly these aren't bad businesses they're just wrong cap tables the companies could throw off 500K-1M in profit annually hire 2-3 more people and grow to 2-3M ARR actually build something valuable but they're trapped in venture math that doesn't work anymore the discourse only covers two outcomes: unicorn or failure nobody talks about the third path: decent business, wrong structure thousands of quality founders stuck running companies VCs wrote off not because they're bad operators because they picked wrong market size or wrong cofounder or raised too early

I came to office with one deliberate intent: to change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society—from a give-it-to-me, to a do-it-yourself nation. A get-up-and-go, instead of a sit-back-and-wait-for-it Britain. This means creating a new culture—an enterprise culture—which accords a new status to the entrepreneur and offers him the rewards to match; which breeds a new generation of men and women who create jobs for others instead of waiting for others to create jobs for them. That is why this Government has given so much attention to the promotion of the small business. It is not simply that tall oaks from little acorns grow. Small businesses are the very embodiment of a free society—the mechanism by which the individual can turn his leadership and talents to the benefit of both himself and the nation. The freer the society, the more small businesses there will be. And the more small businesses there are, the freer and more enterprising that society is bound to be. So my message to you today is quite simple: we will do our best for you, so that you can do your best for Britain.