Startup founder? Here’s your guide to deciphering the election manifestos — Form Ventures
As a busy startup founder you can be forgiven for tuning out from the UK general election circus. But contained in hundreds of pages of…
As a busy startup founder you can be forgiven for tuning out from the UK general election circus. But contained in hundreds of pages of manifestos are pledges that could transform the size and shape of the market you are tackling.
While you probably can’t afford the time to read them, you definitely can’t afford to be unaware of what they hold in store for your business. So here’s a quick Form Ventures cheat sheet on how to cut through the waffle and find out what matters.
Look beyond “tech policy”: most of the tech world commentary will focus on cross-cutting things like the regulation of the internet, the visa system and what to do about the FANGs. Clearly these things are critical for the development of the UK ecosystem as a whole, and they are rightly the focus of the tech lobby groups. But none of them are likely to be the defining issue for your startup. So don’t spend too much time searching for this stuff — you’ll get it in a newsletter soon enough.
Think laterally: forget your self-identification as a tech company for a moment and think about the channels of policy exposure you have. Doing residential proptech? Think housing, sure, but also personal taxation. Micromobility? Yes, the section on transport, but also plans for local government funding. Social care? Again, have an eye on personal taxation (especially inheritance tax), as well as broader social care policy.
Browse efficiently: forget trying to read these things top to bottom — they are written in a hurry, repeat themselves and are divided into meaninglessly-titled sections (like “We Will Put You First”!). Ctrl-F is your weapon here. It’s much easier to open the full manifesto pdf files (links below) and Ctrl+F based on a selection of keywords than it is to try to browse the section-by-section online layouts.
Find the numbers: all major parties are now publishing details of their tax and spend plans alongside the main manifesto document, and in some cases they are much more specific and revealing. Heavy user of R&D tax credits and baking these into your financial forecasts? Spot the fact that Labour’s “reform” of R&D funding — vague in the main manifesto document — in fact reduces support by £4bn per year. Trying to get a handle on the quantum of a promise? When you put these costing docs side by side you can see that, for example, the Lib Dem pledge on early years childcare is the biggest single spending pledge made by any party on any issue. Want to work out when changes take effect? You can see that the Conservatives’ new plastic packaging tax doesn’t kick in until 2022/23.
Parse for implementation challenges: a promise is one thing, but making real policy change is another. Some plans can be enacted more or less overnight (such as tax changes via a Budget) but others can take years, and may simply not get done before the next election. It can be tricky to work this out, but key questions to ask are: does it require primary legislation (i.e. an Act of Parliament)? Does it contain operational complexity, such as nationalising an industry? Is it premised on finding cross-party consensus, such as the Conservative social care pledge? More simply, how much of a priority is this for the party — does it top the list or is it a nice-to-have if time allows?
Think about electoral scenarios: there is a real chance that no party ends up with a majority on December 13th. So a final thought process is to work out what might get done in the context of a minority or coalition government. Here, very partisan or contentious policies get a big discount (such as nationalisation, or leaving the EU in January 2020), whereas ideas that appear in some or all manifestos (more skills funding) look set to get done.
This could take you as little as 30 minutes depending on the market you’re operating in and the business model you’re running. Some will encounter new opportunities (such as a big new public funding stream to tap or a regulatory change that opens a new market) and others will spot risks (such as a tax hike on your product or the government stepping in to do something you do).
Getting this perspective doesn’t just open up better ways to plan and execute. It allows you to pre-empt questions from investors at your next funding round, and from customers who might wonder what policy change means for them. Like any other variable, political change is one that can be optimised for, and a little bit of research goes a long way.
Want to check your analysis or compare notes on where the manifestos leave your startup? We’d love to hear from you, so drop us a line at info@formventures.vc, through our website (formventures.vc) or our LinkedIn page (linkedin.com/company/form-ventures ).
Manifesto links
Labour manifesto landing page and read-online: https://labour.org.uk/manifesto/
Labour manifesto (pdf): https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Real-Change-Labour-Manifesto-2019.pdf
Labour policy costings document (pdf): https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Funding-Real-Change-1.pdf
Conservative manifesto landing page and read-online: https://vote.conservatives.com/our-plan
Conservative manifesto (pdf): https://assets-global.website-files.com/5da42e2cae7ebd3f8bde353c/5dda924905da587992a064ba_Conservative%202019%20Manifesto.pdf
Conservative policy costings document (pdf): https://assets-global.website-files.com/5da42e2cae7ebd3f8bde353c/5ddaa257967a3b50273283c4_Conservative%202019%20Costings.pdf
Lib Dem manifesto landing page and read-online: https://www.libdems.org.uk/plan
Lib Dem manifesto (pdf): https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/libdems/pages/57307/attachments/original/1574267252/Stop_Brexit_and_Build_a_Brighter_Future.pdf?1574267252
Lid Dem policy costings document: https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/libdems/pages/57307/attachments/original/1574351201/Stop_Brexit_and_Build_a_Brighter_Future_COSTINGS.pdf?1574351201
Originally published at https://formventures.vc on November 25, 2019.