GUEST COLUMN:
Richard Theo
Co-founder and CEO
Zero
Starting and growing a business is never easy, but the challenges of the past year have made it harder than ever for entrepreneurs to get the backing they need. The uncertainty in global markets, the shifting priorities of investors, and the reluctance of decision-makers to put entrepreneurship at the heart of economic growth are all barriers to building the next great Welsh success story.
And yet, this is exactly what we should be focusing on if we want long-term prosperity.
I have been an entrepreneur in Wales for 35 years, having founded and scaled businesses including Wealthify and ActiveQuote. My latest venture, Zero, is taking on traditional banks with a clear environmental mission – ensuring that customer deposits are never used to invest in anything harming the planet. The idea behind Zero emerged three years ago, and we have spent that time building a business that is now live, with significant investment backing.
Raising that investment, however, has been far from straightforward. Last year, the economic climate made it particularly tough. The uncertainty surrounding the UK General Election, speculation about tax changes, and a wider lack of confidence meant that angel investors largely disappeared from the landscape. Venture capital firms, meanwhile, turned their attention almost entirely to AI, scrambling to make up for what they saw as a missed opportunity in backing the sector earlier.
As an entrepreneur with a track record of building businesses, I was fortunate to have access to funding networks, and in some cases, I had to step in personally to ensure we could keep going. But for a first-time founder? The challenges of securing early-stage backing in this environment would have been almost impossible.
Wales needs more businesses to start, scale, and thrive, yet the support available for ambitious entrepreneurs is nowhere near what it should be.
There are positive aspects to the Welsh investment landscape. Organisations like FinTech Wales have done a great job in positioning the country as a strong base for financial services businesses. We also have a remarkable diaspora – Welsh people who have built successful businesses or careers elsewhere in the world, who are proud of Wales and interested in supporting the success of Wales internationally. We’ve had support from Welsh investors based overseas.
But what we don’t have in Wales is enough investment capital that is both willing and able to back early-stage businesses. The Development Bank of Wales plays a role, but we need something far more progressive than that. We need funds dedicated to backing the most exciting Welsh start-ups as far as Series-A, and we need the right environment to attract private investment into the ecosystem.
Most of all, we need political leadership that understands and prioritises entrepreneurship. The conversations around economic growth in Wales remain largely focused on job creation and job protection, rather than on backing the businesses that will create sustainable, high-quality jobs for the future and thereby prosperity in Wales. If we want more businesses to emulate the successes of prior Welsh success stories like Admiral Group, Go.Compare, Iceland Foods or IQE, we need to change the way we think about nurturing business in Wales.
The world is changing fast. AI presents both an opportunity and a threat, and we are not acting quickly enough to respond. If we want Wales to be a place where great businesses are built and stay for the long term, we need to ensure that entrepreneurs have access to capital, expertise, and the right conditions for growth.
We should be supporting entrepreneurs to start great businesses in Wales because that is where long-term prosperity comes from. If we fail to act now, we risk losing yet another generation of talented founders to places that offer them a better chance to succeed.
