Interview: Lastminute.com founder Brent Hoberman on why it’s time Britain embraced risk again
In the TV adaptation of Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels, Hugo Weaving’s sinister patriarch purrs a line that captures a very British sense of upper-class comfort: “What one aims for is ennui.”
That pretentious excerpt might seem a world away from a discussion of the struggles of UK tech. But speak
with serial entrepreneur and Lastminute.com founder Brent Hoberman, and it captures a problem that has plagued British business success in the modern age.
British entrepreneurship, Hoberman argues, has been historically scuppered by a deep-rooted suspicion of effort and self-motivation from the wealthy classes. As a result, our great national products are in danger of becoming not fintech, AI and space travel, but schadenfreude and tall-poppy syndrome.
“The psychology of the British – particularly if you look historically at the aristocracy – [is people] who are bred to be very comfortable and not to be strivers,” Hoberman tells Morning Wire in an interview.
“It used to be that entrepreneurs were seen as people who are challenging class structure, so they were a negative force,” he adds. That mindset has created in his view a “national psyche” that “revels in the failures of others”.
But, he argues, it is changing. Entrepreneurs are now “very much seen as part of a modern meritocracy” and the UK is on the path to righting those wrongs.
Tall poppies
Shifting the British mindset is a task that is not only puzzling Hoberman but a host of top City and political figures, as they look to reinvigorate the UK’s international appeal for tech and improve the country as a place to do business.
A recent report commissioned by stock exchange chief Julia Hoggett’s Capital Markets Industry taskforce for example will, as one of its central objectives, try and instil “cultural and mindset change” in the City and beyond. Big names from M&S chair Archie Norman, Sir Nigel Wilson of L&G and Schroders chief Peter Harrison have recently called for Brits and investors to embrace more risk and the ups and downs of the markets.
Hoberman is still optimistic the change is happening – as serial entrepreneurs are. He set up Lastminute.com in 1998 amid the dot com boom and has since gone on to found a host of firms including Made.com and mydeco.com.
He now splits his time between his early-stage venture capital firm Firstminute Capital, start-up accelerator Founders Factory and business network Founders Forum Group, which this year snapped up the assets of collapsed Tech Nation and will kick off its annual London Tech Week next month.
While he admits the UK’s tech and business scene now faces threats from across both the Atlantic and the Channel, he says the challenge is “really healthy”.
“The competition between Paris and London I think is fantastic,” Hoberman says. “The French are doing lots of really smart things, and they’re coordinating very well. And I think we need to see this as an arms race in that sense, and keep the links between business and government working more tightly together.”
Strained links
Keeping the links together is not entirely easy at the moment though. Hoberman has served on business advisory councils under both Gordon Brown and David Cameron and now sits on the advisory board of the government’s digital service, but he sees ministers and business as out of step in the current climate.
“I think there’s a lot of change in government,” he says. “I mean, we had a minister of science, technology [and innovation] and we now have another one already.”
While the government has in name said it wants to turn the UK into a ‘tech and science superpower’, the plans have come under fire from much of the industry over the small pots of capital backing them. Venture capital investors and tech figures have also slammed the plans for having far too little meat on the bone.
Hoberman says there needs to be a point at which Sunak’s team finally puts their money where their
mouth is.
“It’s still a relatively new team. They’ve had to fight a lot of fires. But now, we do really need to see some
action.
“We’re hoping that London Tech Week could be a good flagship moment for the UK to say ‘here are all the positive things we’re doing’.”
Policy missteps
Ministerial churn and a lack of movement though pale in significance to what he sees as the policy missteps damaging business in the current climate.
Tech firms and start-ups thrived on a healthy stream of international talent before 2016 which has been threatened by Brexit – and he argues we are in danger of scaring away top talent.
“I don’t want to bang on about Brexit, but obviously that’s been a negative. And then, within that, I think the bigger issue is the rhetoric about immigration [which] is really confusing internationally,” he says.
“I think ignore the hard right of the Tory party who say immigrants are bad. Go back to saying the best entrepreneurs are immigrants. We need more of them in the UK. They need to feel welcome here. We need to make this the place where they want to come.”
Changing mindset
It would be quite the shift in mindset, but Hoberman argues a necessary one after a bruising period in which the UK has not been painted as a promised land of technology and business.
In business terms, he argues that the fear of being outcompeted can conversely be a healthy thing,
however.
“Great business leaders have a healthy paranoia, an energy, and they use stress productively,” he says.
“Short-term bouts of adrenaline and stress get you out of bed and get you doing exciting things.”
Hoberman will now be hoping that the UK can adopt that mindset and begin putting its stress to good use.