The Founder Can Leave. The Business Should Be Able to Grow.
We have an oddly sentimental way of discussing entrepreneurship. We celebrate founders for creating something valuable, then sometimes treat their decision to sell it as a failure of character.
The Financial Times article “Number of UK founders choosing to sell not scale hits eight-year high”, published on 22 October 2026, raises a more useful economic question: why does continuing to grow become less attractive than selling?
Original article:
https://www.ft.com/content/52b728a2-3075-4310-bffb-4f17b587724d
The report cites 5,774 business sales in 2025, against 5,684 in 2024, and a roughly 70% increase from 2018. The latest annual increase is therefore about 1.6%. A long-term rise deserves investigation; it cannot, by itself, demonstrate a sudden change in entrepreneurial temperament.
The article also reports median turnover at exit of £15.9 million. Turnover is revenue, not the price received by the seller.
My interpretation is that the central question concerns the transfer of responsibility. Who can finance the next stage? Who can operate it? How much risk can the current owner reasonably bear? Where will the resulting economic activity take place?
A transaction changes the ownership of a business. Its effects on growth must be established separately. The buyer may introduce better management, capital and distribution. It may also overpay, overload the company with debt or reduce competition. Counting deals cannot distinguish those outcomes.
The US comparison is useful when it moves beyond stories about national confidence.
The UK government’s 2026 venture-capital evidence pack puts Britain’s 2025 share of global late-stage investment at 5%, compared with 48% for California’s Bay Area. Its late-stage category covers funding rounds above $100 million. The Bay Area is one highly concentrated ecosystem; it should not stand in for every American company.
A separate ECB analysis estimates aggregate venture-fund size at around €930 billion in the United States and €150 billion in the EU. It identifies particular weaknesses in European later-stage financing and notes the stronger participation of US pension funds and foundations. These figures describe capital stocks and market structure, rather than annual funding flows or the entire economy.