Today marks the public launch of Common Path, a programme created to get graduate talent from low-income backgrounds into startups, and to challenge an industry that prides itself on meritocracy to prove it.
Graduates and employers alike can register interest in being involved at common.ventures/talent. Common Path is backed by a coalition of the UK’s most influential names in social mobility and venture capital: the Sutton Trust, The Hg Foundation, Atomico, Phoenix Court, as well as support from upReach.
For all the talk of disruption, UK tech has a social mobility problem. Just 9 per cent of the country’s tech workforce comes from a low-income background. In financial services, the figure is 29 per cent, and in law, it is 26 per cent. When it comes to the people hiring this talent, only 18 per cent of startup founders come from working-class backgrounds, compared with 45 per cent of the UK population.
Private school startup founders are approximately 500 per cent overrepresented compared to the wider population. The sector that most loudly promotes modern workplaces, diversity of thought, and low barrier to entry is actually one of the hardest to break into without the right schooling, the right network, or the right postcode.
