Risk-averse parents are fueling Britain’s ambition crisis, venture capitalists say

Concerns about a deficit of entrepreneurial ambition in the UK have led some venture capitalists to question the role of risk-averse parents and an expensive education system in depriving young Britons of becoming founders.

Last month, British Business Secretary Peter Kyle said that university students in Britain do not have the same ambition to start their own businesses compared to their peers in America.

“In Britain, if you go to a group of university students, how big does that group have to be before you find someone who says that their choice to go to university…was because they wanted to become founders?” Kyle said at an event hosted by the AI ​​chip maker Nvidia In London.

“The entrepreneurial spirit is simply not there – the drive and energy,” Kyle added.

Harry Stebbings, founder of 20VC, a $650 million fund manager, said one of the main barriers young people in the UK face when they try to get into entrepreneurship is their parents.

“Parents are a big problem. Parents harass you,” Stebbings told CNBC Make It in an interview. “Parents are inherently risk-averse and don’t take risks in the UK, so they say: Hey, get this job. Hey, I went to university. Hey, I paid for all your university. Hey, I’m paying for this. Get that job.”

“And actually, in the United States, it’s much more than that: ‘Start a business.’ Try that. Go and join a startup.” He added: “A completely different mindset towards risks and careers, and I think that’s a really different element to the way a kid starts out.”

Stebbings’ comments are part of a broader debate about whether the UK is fostering a culture of risk aversion. one Forbes 30 under 30 Founder Tom Wallace-Smith, who launched nuclear fusion startup Astral Systems in 2021, previously told CNBC Make It that entrepreneurship seems out of reach for most people in the UK.

Wallace-Smith said he didn’t even know entrepreneurship was a viable career path when he was completing his PhD at the University of Bristol, expecting to end up in academia or a corporate job.

He said the UK had no shortage of successful entrepreneurs, but the government and media could “do a better job of telling founders’ stories” and increasing exposure to startup ecosystems.

“They (young people) still want to go and work at Jane Street. They still want to go and work at Goldman. They still want to go and work at McKinsey. It’s amazing to me, we don’t have anything close to the same entrepreneurial ambitions early on,” Stebbings said.

Private school fees in the UK School prices rose by 22.6% on average in January after the government introduced VAT, according to the Independent Schools Council (ISC). Average day school term fees in January were £7,382 ($9,799), including 20% ​​VAT, according to the ISC, compared with £6,021 last year.

Meanwhile, University tuition fees increased For the first time in eight years in 2025, with the maximum annual fee increasing by £285 to £9,535 next year, an increase of 3.1%.

Although university fees tend to be much higher in the US, salaries also tend to be higher, meaning that successful graduates are likely to take more risks, such as starting their own business, compared to their UK counterparts.

A reconnaissance From the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) and Simply Business in March, it found that nearly 60% of young Britons are interested in starting their own business but cite a number of barriers holding them back.

Only 16% of the 2,079 people surveyed aged 18-34 in the UK had actually taken the leap into entrepreneurship, with most saying a lack of formal business education was an obstacle.

With young people and their parents absorbing high education fees, following the entrepreneurial path does not seem to offer worthwhile rewards.

“The risk appetite then is really a question of: Will I have the opportunity to be financially stable in a cost of living crisis? Will I actually be able to turn this into a career move when it doesn’t work out because entrepreneurship doesn’t always work out,” Satyanathan added.