Jack Parsons, CEO of YourFeed, a digital platform that creates a platform for communication between rising talent and innovative brands to showcase skills, personality and ambition, will be one of a group of selected small businesses from around the UK to be featured by the EU Small Business campaign across a range of social media channels in the final few weeks of the campaign.
“Europe’s very important if you’re a start-up,” says Jack. “There’s a massive skills shortage in the UK in tech and if you haven’t got the best talent, you can’t compete. So having access to coders from all over the EU makes it possible to do business. What’s more, being part of the EU brings more investment opportunities. Mainland Europe pumps money into London –I’ve raised investment from the continent but tech firms would suffer if London’s status as Europe’s financial capital were thrown away.”
Jack’s position has received support from the Secretary of State for Business, Sajid Javid, who says:
"A quarter of our small businesses export to the EU or supply companies that do. They and the companies they supply can trade freely without tariffs, quotas or custom checks with the world's largest single market. There is wide consensus that withdrawing from the EU and it's single market would cause an economic shock in the UK. Our small firms would be on the front line of that shock. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. Let's not risk breaking that backbone with a leap into the dark.”
The EU Small Business campaign says that the simple truth is that we don’t know what the implications would be of a vote to leave or how long that uncertainty would continue. Michelle Ovens from the EU Small Business campaign says:
“One thing above all that small business owners need is certainty – a vote to leave would unquestionably usher in a period of uncertainty, which could be bad for all small business owners, if people and other businesses decide to reduce or stop spending until stability returns. Small firms suffer the most when credit freezes up and confidence in the economy slumps. ONS data says there was a 25pc spike in business failure in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 recession. No one wants to see a return to a time when self-starters struggled to raise money.”
