It marked the beginning of a professional relationship that culminated in Depledge being appointed the Treasury\u2019s first entrepreneurship adviser this year. <\/p>\n
How to scale up<\/p>\n
Her brief for the current role, which will end after the budget on November 26, is focused on high-growth scale-ups. \u201cI spoke to a handful of people who had been inside No 10 and inside government before and asked, \u2018What do I need to know?\u2019 The best advice I was given was to really tightly define my scope,\u201d Depledge recalled. \u201cSo I did. I said, \u2018These are the three things I think we need to deliver in the next budget for scale-ups.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Taking the position required some thought, as Depledge is chief executive at her second business, Resi, an AI-powered architecture firm with 65 staff. The first person she called was Jules Coleman, her co-founder. \u201cShe was like, \u2018You\u2019ve got to do it.\u2019 \u201d The pair had previously started and run Hassle.com<\/a>, a company providing domestic and commercial cleaning services, which was sold for \u20ac32 million in 2015 to Helpling, a German rival. <\/p>\n Depledge said the Resi team and board gave her their blessing, with her No 2, Joe Whitworth, head of technical operations, stepping up to assume some of the day-to-day running of the business. <\/p>\n She was enticed by the opportunity to work more closely with Reeves, who has benefited from the insights of an entrepreneur. \u201cI think Rachel recognised that she didn\u2019t have any business expertise around her, per se, because, let\u2019s be really honest, you don\u2019t expect \u2026 business to be pro-Labour. It\u2019s not like the Tories, who can pull on all of these different demigods of business to help them.\u201d<\/p>\n Depledge, who added that she was a swing voter, said: \u201cI\u2019m not loyal to Labour; I\u2019m loyal to Rachel, because I really like her. I think she\u2019s super well-intentioned and she listens.\u201d<\/p>\n Depledge, who is separated from her husband, also has to juggle care for two young daughters and a non-executive board position at Persimmon, the FTSE 100 homebuilder. \u201cI\u2019m working about six and a half days a week at the minute. The way I described it to my kids is that sometimes in life, you just need to knuckle down and get a job done, and then you know you can get [the time] back on the other side. So I\u2019m just heads-down now until the budget.\u201d<\/p>\n Depledge describes herself as \u201ca bit informal and sweary\u201d<\/p>\n VICKI COUCHMAN FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES<\/p>\n Hunt for growth<\/p>\n Reeves faces a significant challenge in balancing the books. With the UK economy flatlining and borrowing costs surging, the government has limited room for manoeuvre without breaching its self-imposed fiscal rules. To add to the chancellor\u2019s woes, the Office for Budget Responsibility is expected to downgrade its growth forecasts.<\/p>\n Some of the UK\u2019s growth could come from Britain\u2019s young companies, which, Depledge argues, already punch above their weight. There are about 34,000 scale-ups in the UK, according to the Treasury, which is equivalent to just 0.6 per cent of all small and medium-sized enterprises<\/a> (SMEs) \u2014 yet they generate \u00a31.4 trillion in turnover, contributing 55 per cent of all SME revenues. <\/p>\n Depledge argues that these businesses could grow even more quickly and create more jobs if they were given the conditions needed to thrive. This requires some focus on key sectors. \u201cThe uncomfortable truth is that our economy is out of kilter. We are service sector-based and consumer-based, and that means you\u2019ve got no defensibility when things take a turn for the worse.\u201d <\/p>\n She suggested that \u201cwe need to re-orient back to making things and becoming world-leading\u201d in certain sectors: \u201cLife sciences, advanced manufacturing, creative industries, financial services, and that\u2019s before you get to AI and [quantum computing]. These are all things that we have the potential to be really good at.\u201d<\/p>\n Escape the valley of death<\/p>\n While Depledge is reluctant to be drawn on the details prior to November\u2019s budget, she said she is pulling together \u201ca coherent narrative about why you should start, scale and stay in the UK\u201d. A criticism frequently levelled at British technology companies is that they sell too early after being trapped in the \u201cvalley of death\u201d, where many promising start-ups, starved of vital investment, can also end up going bust. <\/p>\n \u201cThe economics are sometimes difficult to make work in the UK because we don\u2019t have the depth of markets like the US does,\u201d she said. \u201cSo we\u2019ve got this valley of death, where people either die in it or they sell too early, or they move to the US.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Alex](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/\/dd757ef2-1575-4e9e-8e24-2cce721f1b7c.jpg\")
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