How can we champion tech democracy for the small business economy? [On demand]

BaseKit is on a mission for tech democracy for small businesses. We want anyone with a business idea to have the confidence, no matter their expertise, location or background, to start a business and thrive online.

But we cannot do it alone. We want more companies to champion efforts to  cross the digital divide to give anyone with a business idea the best chance to succeed.

To inform our mission, we talked to a nationally representative sample of 529 UK micro businesses (with <5 employees) to understand how to better champion tech democracy. 

We found that there is still a strong digital divide in place. Most micro business owners aren’t actively seeking digital tools, and many don’t know who to trust to support them with digitisation. Micro business owners are looking for speed, understanding and value from digital tool providers, but they aren’t always able to tell whether they will find that value or not.

• 26% don’t have a website
• 77% are unlikely to search for new digital tools
• 39% don’t know who to trust to provide digital tools.

On 10 October at Bristol Technology Festival, UK  we were delighted to unveil our full findings with perspective from a fantastic panel of experts:

• Founder at Dffrnt, Ash Phillips
• Head of Partner Sales at Xero, Ian Phillips
• Founder at FD Works, Jonathan Gaunt
• CEO at BaseKit, Simon Best 
• Discussion chaired by TechSPARK

We discussed the expectations, motivations, technology barriers and loyalty of micro businesses and what can be done to champion tech democracy to ensure the backbone of our economy grows and stays strong in a rapidly evolving society.