By the time most companies have finished their Monday stand-ups, Rebecca Kelly is already shipping product. It’s 2025, and the founder and CEO of VenueScanner, a London-based platform that helps people discover and book venues for events, meetings, and experiences across the UK, has traded bloated meeting schedules for real-time execution – and it’s working.

“This year, our strength lies in focus and pace,” she says. “We’ve tightened our team structure, which has enabled us to scale sales more efficiently and bring new products to market faster than ever. The way we now operate – where ideas move directly from founder conversations to engineering sprints – is something that wouldn’t have been possible a year ago.”

VenueScanner’s transformation is a story of intentional subtraction. What’s gone: unnecessary meetings, outdated processes, the myth of arriving at some perfect startup equilibrium. What’s replaced it: speed, alignment, and a belief that less noise means more signal.

“We’ve drastically cut down on meetings. It sounds small, but it’s been transformational. By analysing the actual output of meetings, we realised how much time was being spent talking rather than building.” Even Friday afternoons have been reimagined – no longer for admin catch-up or quiet quitting, but for experimentation and AI deep dives. “It’s an investment in our people that’s already paying off,” Kelly explains. “The team’s technical skills and creative thinking have massively improved, and it’s fueling faster experimentation.”

Her clarity is refreshing in a sector still addicted to hype. Rather than aiming for elusive finish lines, Kelly has embraced a founder truth that often goes unspoken: “I used to believe there was a point where you ‘get there.’ But that’s just not how startups work. The trick isn’t reaching the end, it’s staying in the game long enough – and staying grounded – to build something that lasts.”

In an era of AI acceleration and capital constraint, she believes the overlooked edge for UK founders is not vision, but execution. “We are brilliant at getting things done,” she says, “and we do it with fewer resources and more constraints. That’s an advantage in 2025.”

Kelly sees the next decade as a make-or-break moment for Britain’s start-up ecosystem. Her vision? A truly borderless hub that rivals global tech capitals – not just with lifestyle perks, but with smarter infrastructure and policy. “If we want world-changing companies to emerge from the UK,” she says, “we need to create an ecosystem that supports relentless innovation, rewards risk, and builds community around ambitious thinking.”

At VenueScanner, that future is already being prototyped – not through flashy headlines, but in how a small team moves faster, thinks deeper, and acts with conviction. A startup culture not just optimised for scale, but for staying power.