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Last updated on October 14, 2026
Britain is brilliant at producing founders who build, scale and sell great companies but what happens after they have exited? Ahead of the Autumn Budget, Founders Forum Group is calling for a new Repeat Entrepreneur Relief that would keep more of them within the founder ecosystem, starting and scaling the next generation of UK success stories.
Here’s what you need to know:
- New research commissioned by Founders Forum Group finds that only one in eight UK founders who sell a company go on to build another. Companies started by experienced founders have been shown to raise 61% more capital and be 25% larger by headcount than comparable firms.
- Our Repeat Entrepreneur Relief policy, as covered in The Times, would cost the Treasury around £22,500 per reinvesting founder, but each new business it helps create would generate an estimated £740,000 in employment taxes over ten years – making it a revenue raiser for the Government.
- The research finds that the relief pays for itself if it persuades fewer than one in 200 exited founders to reinvest who wouldn’t otherwise have done so. If it lifted the proportion of founders who go again from 12% to 20%, each year’s group of exits could generate around £47m in employment taxes over ten years, against £3.6m in relief.
Ahead of our submission to the Treasury, we wanted to make sure that the proposal for Repeat Entrepreneur Relief – a capital gains tax deferral if profits from an exit are reinvested into UK scale-ups or growth funds – would actually work, which is why we commissioned Beauhurst Insights to dig into the data and explore the evidence for doing more to encourage repeat entrepreneurs.
Our research found that only one in eight exited founders have chosen to reinvest in a new venture. In the UK, there are around 10,200 founders that have built and sold a company and not returned. Each of them have the networks and the hard-won experience of starting a business, and many of them are no longer building.
At Founders Forum Group, we see what repeat founders bring every day. They know how to raise investment, how to hire and how to avoid the mistakes that cost first-time founders years. There’s also a correlation between repeat founders and greater success: companies started by experienced founders also raise 61% more capital and are typically 25% larger by headcount than comparable firms in the same sector, region and founding year. Through Founders Pulse, 72% of the founders we polled told us Repeat Entrepreneur Relief would make them significantly more likely to build again.
Keeping British success in Britain
Every year, around 800 UK founders sell their companies, and many of those deals put significant capital into the hands of British entrepreneurs. But with the rate of those founders reinvesting their profits into the next generation of startups, scale-ups and investment funds so low, there needs to be an incentive to encourage them to go again.
Our proposal – Repeat Entrepreneur Relief (RER) – would introduce a targeted Capital Gains Tax (CGT) deferral for founders who reinvest exit proceeds into new UK-headquartered businesses or growth vehicles. Capped at £250,000 of reinvestment, in line with the SEIS lifetime funding cap, the mechanism would be a real instrument for investment.
Other countries have already shown what these incentives can achieve. The US Qualified Small Business Stock scheme is widely credited with creating Silicon Valley’s culture of reinvestment, and France offers a similar deferral for founders who reinvest their proceeds.
A policy that pays for itself
We know that this Budget comes against a backdrop of tight fiscal constraints, which is why we asked Beauhurst to model the policy’s cost against its returns.
It would cost around £22,500 per reinvesting founder to the Treasury – but each new business that this policy creates would generate an estimated £740,000 in employment taxes over ten years. That’s more than thirty times the cost of the relief provided, and doesn’t take into account other revenue to the Government including corporation tax, VAT or the potential increased success of that business due to the experience and know-how of having a repeat entrepreneur at the helm. Nor does the modelling consider the return on investment for the UK economy if funds invested into alternative growth funds of vehicles were also subject to RER.
For this policy to breakeven for the Treasury, it would have to persuade fewer than one exited founder in 200 to reinvest when they would otherwise not have done so.
And if it lifted the refounding rate from its current 12% to 20%, you would generate employment taxes over the next ten years of around £47m against the cost of the policy of £3.6m.
Carolyn Dawson OBE, CEO of Founders Forum Group said: “We know the founders who often build Britain’s strongest companies are those who’ve done it before. Repeat Entrepreneur Relief helps them do it again, here. Keeping capital in the UK, supporting the next cohort of successful British businesses makes this one of the simplest decisions for the Treasury to make in this Budget”.
Our wider call to government
Repeat Entrepreneur Relief is one of our four key policy asks which we submitted to the Government earlier this month to truly help British companies to grow faster and stay within the UK as they scale. The others are:
- Further expand the Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) scheme to reflect the size and growth ambitions of UK startups and scaleups today and allow them to continue to attract top talent.
- Introduce a Digital Adoption Tax Credit to reflect that the biggest cost to a business of effectively adopting digital tools and AI solutions is often the technical staff to oversee its rollout to the organisation, and ensuring it actually delivers real-term productivity gains.
- Introduce an ‘investor route’ to the Global Talent Visa to allow successful investors looking to put capital into UK scale-ups or regulated growth funds to enter the UK, boosting the capital available for fast-growing businesses.
We’ve also passed on a clear message from our community on Capital Gains Tax. Increases to CGT as part of this Budget will discourage those entrepreneurs taking risks and will push entrepreneurs out of the UK. It benefits the UK to have an economy where founders want to start, scale, and keep their businesses – given the net contribution they make in tax and jobs. Raising Capital Gains Tax does the opposite of this.
Britain already produces world-class founders. With the right incentives, more of them will choose to build their second, third and fourth companies here.
Read Founders Forum Group’s full Autumn Budget submission here.
