I attended the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses UK Serpentine Reception this evening, and it’s fair to say it’s become one of those fixtures in the calendar I always look forward to.
Around 300 alumni, partners and supporters turned out on Tuesday to celebrate the resilience, ambition and achievements of the 10KSB UK community, while looking ahead to the opportunities and challenges facing small businesses over the next few years. It’s been a good few years since I was last at a 10KSB Serpentine event — back in 2019 it was the Summer Celebration at the Pavilion, hearing from the likes of Rowan Gormley and Chrissie Rucker. It says something about this community that it still feels exactly as warm and worth showing up for, all these years on.
Ellen White OBE on leadership and pressure
The standout moment of the evening for me was the fireside chat with former England Lionesses striker and Euro 2022 champion, Ellen White OBE. She spoke candidly about leadership, overcoming setbacks, performing under pressure and building winning teams — and it translated far better to running a business than I expected going in.
There’s a lot in professional sport that maps directly onto entrepreneurship: dealing with the setback rather than being defined by it, learning to perform when the pressure is actually on rather than only in practice, and understanding that a winning team is built long before the moment it matters. Hearing it from someone who’s lived it at the highest level was genuinely one of the more useful bits of leadership advice I’ve picked up this year.
Daisy Kelly’s alumni toast
We also heard from Daisy Kelly, CEO of Glow For It and a recent 10KSB UK graduate, who gave a moving alumni toast. She spoke openly about her own entrepreneurial journey and the lasting impact the programme and the alumni network have had on both her business growth and her own personal development. It’s easy to underestimate how much that network matters until you hear someone lay it out so honestly.
How Britain Can Win
The evening also marked the launch of the new campaign theme, “How Britain Can Win,” which champions the role ambitious small businesses play in driving economic growth and innovation across the UK. It’s a good rallying point, and one that feels timely given the conversations happening across the community right now about what’s next for British business.
Reflections
What struck me most, much like it did back in 2019, is that the strength of 10KSB UK has never really been about the programme itself — it’s the people. Reconnecting with fellow alumni, hearing where everyone’s businesses have gone since we last spoke, and swapping notes on what’s ahead is what makes these evenings worth attending year after year.
Thank you to everyone who helped make the evening such a success, and to the alumni who I got to catch up with. For anyone who couldn’t make it this time, I’d genuinely recommend getting along to the next one.
