Tax Incentives Needed to Encourage Tech Investment in UK

A top tech founder has urged the Government to create tax incentives to encourage partnership investment and drive investment in the sector. Speaking ahead of International Women’s Day, Dash Tabor, co-founder and CEO of TUBR, also told how female entrepreneurs still face being “stereotyped and dismissed”.

In an interview with TechRound, Dash said: “The reality is that women running businesses can still often find it much harder to raise funds than male counterparts. It’s not right but it’s the reality and there are lots of statistics out there which underline this.

“I was once told by a male VC: “I don’t believe in tokenism but ‘ego manic’ men just smash it.” He bragged that he had “two women” in his portfolio which I thought was a strange comment to make. Fundraising is never easy and in order to get the funding you have to put in the work, but the rare occasion where investment is made “off deck” it almost exclusively happens to men. We need to see more risk-averse investments for women and underrepresented founders in the earliest stages of business.

Founders also need to be aware that the unconscious happens. I don’t believe any investor, male or female, goes into a meeting with prejudices but without understanding that there is an unconscious bias then its impossible to change the status quo.”

Sharing her tips on how women can succeed, Dash continued: “Spend time understanding the dynamics of the space and don’t natively expect a hand up. Learn the psychology and how to best play the game. Remember to prioritise your mental health. Every day is a battle as an entrepreneur but know your truth, believe in yourself and keep your mind healthy. Get ready for great highs and tremendous lows but the outcome is beating imposter syndrome and getting that “I-got-this” feeling.

You also need to know when to pivot. If something isn’t going as planned then be prepared to pivot and change your direction or approach. Pivoting is not failure, pivoting is being able to determine when another path is better for your success and mental health. There are times where a complete change is not possible but a slight pivot in how you view your situation can help you determine the value or things you can learn that might help you further your goals later on.

Understanding a situation isn’t exactly the way you want it to be but knowing you’re still gaining something from it can help balance frustration to maintain a positive mindset. But as well as taking proactive steps individually, Dash says there are also things the Government could do.

“Ministers could better help women trying to balance entrepreneurship and family pressures. The tax credits that are provided in the UK are really helpful to encourage early stage investment but often lead to bad terms for the businesses. I would encourage the government to create tax incentives to encourage partnership investment. Provide tax cuts to entrepreneurs that help with family and house matters in order to drive innovation. The UK is a very risk averse environment and that stifles innovation. We’ll see technology really boom if the government can encourage and support women and underrepresented founders in ways that matter.”

TUBR is building better, faster and more frequent predictions with less data. Dash and her team wanted a solution for tackling the frustrations born from busy commutes but realised that in order to solve the problem with data, technology would need to be advanced to predicting with smaller data sets.

Their time-series machine learning algorithm can process only a fraction of the data normally required making near real time predictions possible across dynamic rapidly changing environments, like the London Underground. The team has designed a London based-app helping people find the optimum time to travel in order to have the best journey experience. Their mission is to improve how we utilise our spaces to improve every day experiences and solve those “small data” problems.