Start Up Loans Reviews 

My advisor Suzy was excellent, always in my corner. Always explained things well and really fought my battle for me! My loan took a little longer than expected but Suzy was always reassuring and explained things in great detail! I couldn’t recommend her or Start up loans anymore!

I would like to express my sincere appreciation for the excellent service I received throughout my loan application process. The company has been truly outstanding, demonstrating professionalism, efficiency, and clear communication at every stage.
I would especially like to acknowledge Christianah Alokan for her exceptional support. She was consistently helpful, knowledgeable, and attentive, making the entire process smooth and reassuring. Working with her has been a pleasure, and I am genuinely grateful for her guidance.
Thank you once again for the high-quality service and the positive experience.

Wonderful experience, amazing advisor that helped me through this process.

Everything went smoothly from start to finish. Our admin team and business manager Habib were incredibly helpful offering plenty of advice and support. The initial paperwork is quite extensive but if you organise yourself and have your business plan in place it all works out. Thank you so much! Our journey begins now. :)

I rarely write negative reviews, but my experience with Virgin StartUp has been so disheartening that I feel an obligation to warn other entrepreneurs.

What was promised as a 4–6 week support process turned into 16 weeks of silence, delays and confusion. My advisor repeatedly took 15–20 days to reply, often asking for the exact same documents I had already supplied a clear indication that my application was not being read or properly handled.

Despite providing a full business plan, financials, supplier agreements and trading history, there was no meaningful engagement, no guidance, and no real support. Even worse, my project was poorly represented - if at all - to the lender, which left me feeling completely ignored.

Throughout this entire process, I acted professionally, met every deadline, and provided every requested document immediately. Yet I was met with indifference and an overwhelming sense that my application was being pushed aside with no accountability.

This experience has not only wasted months of my time - it has affected my business operations, my suppliers, and my growth plans. Startups rely on momentum, and this process did the opposite:
it drained my momentum, my motivation, and my trust in a system that claims to support founders.

If this is the level of “support” offered, then aspiring entrepreneurs deserve far better. No founder should be made to feel invisible as they try to build something meaningful.

I could not recommend Muhammad strongly enough. He has been an incredible source of support throughout the entire application process. His competence and expertise were truly invaluable. He took the time to explain the importance of specific details I needed to include in my application and guided me through each step with patience and clarity. I am grateful for his help, which ultimately contributed to a successful outcome.

Muhammad’s dedication and professionalism made a significant difference, and I’m very thankful for all his support.

Habib was fantastic, he was considerate and worked with us and more importantly took great interest in the business

The process is a masterclass in business planning and incredibly valuable, no matter the outcome. The whole team are proactive, knowledgeable and an absolute pleasure to work with. I'd like to especially mention John, Sarah and Michele and thank them for their ongoing support. I cannot recommend them enough.

quick and easy. very supportive,

Unfortunately, my experience with this organisation has been very disappointing. Despite their advertising about efficient and supportive processes, the reality is quite the opposite. The process is extremely slow, and staff often show little care or urgency.
They promise updates within seven working days, but in my case, it has been several weeks even months without a single proper response to my emails.
Overall, the level of professionalism and communication is far below expectations. I would not recommend this organisation to startups or founders seeking timely funding or business support. You’re much better off reaching out directly to lenders or other startup support agencies.

I wish to express my deepest appreciation to Samuel Okide for his assistance and professionalism during my application process. All information has been explained clearly and presented smoothly, with all processes functioning flawlessly without any complications. His communication facilitated an effortless and comprehensible procedure.

I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to advance through this program and further grow my business with the assistance of the Start-Up Loans team.

From the moment I applied the process was fantastic. My initial advisor was warm and friendly, anything advice I needed I was given. Once I had completed the initial assessment I was then handed over to Jane my loan specialist. Don’t get me wrong there is no messing round when it comes down to assessment of personal bank statements. However this is dealt with professionally and with decency. Jane was FDA basic from start to finish, always available and even went as far as responding to me when she was off on leave. I can’t thank her enough. Thankyou Jane.

Poorly organised, no respect for someone's time and overall unprepared staff.

A great way to start a business with a fair interest percentage, unfortunately the limit might not be enough for some kind of business.

Nearly three months of silence before anyone reached out — an extremely frustrating and disappointing experience.

I would like to follow up on my previous negative experience, in which I mentioned that no one had contacted me for more than a month. My documents remained submitted with no response — no replies to my messages or emails.

After almost three months of complete silence, I was suddenly contacted just a few days before my 90-day application period expired. At that point, my assigned Start Up Loan advisor, Mahdi, began calling several times a day, despite me clearly stating on multiple occasions that I could only communicate via email or outside of my working hours. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible for me to answer phone calls, and due to time constraints, I couldn’t always reply to emails either.

As someone who works full time, is a single mum, and is trying to build a small business, I spent a lot of time preparing all the requested documents, including a full business plan. That was precious time taken away from my children — and yet, despite all the effort, no one considered it necessary to respond.

It feels extremely disappointing and unfair to be treated this way, for reasons that are unclear and unexplained. I have still not received any response to my previous post — only a request to “get in touch”. However, I believe a public response here is necessary. On what basis are applicants being prioritised? Is there a payment involved, or are people being selected for some other unknown reason?

For anyone interested, I encourage you to read other people’s posts to see how quickly they received responses or updates on their applications.

I applied for this loan as genuine support to start my business. The whole purpose of a start-up loan should be to help people begin, not to rely on their past. Instead, I felt the process was focused more on reasons to decline than to support me.
I have a good credit history, no debts, a credit card, an overdraft facility up to £3,000, and some savings. Yet none of this was seen as sufficient. I was left confused as to why someone with a clear financial record and determination to work is not considered suitable for support.
What surprised me most is that instead of encouraging me to build a business and move forward, I was indirectly encouraged to remain on benefits—when the point of this loan is supposed to be the opposite. The approach taken felt discouraging and dismissive of the potential investment and growth I could create by starting my business.
This experience left me disappointed, as I could not see genuine assistance or support in the process. If these loans are truly meant to help people start working and become independent, the way applications are handled should reflect that mission more clearly

Really horrific experience when as a bootstrapped startup have not received any communication back for 5 weeks.
Promised by the mentor to be contacted multiple times, no response whatsoever.
I am at risk now to loosing 10k in assets because they have taken so long to respond and it's just appalling this is happening in England, where they say that they support startups.

Complete waste of time and nerve-racking, I had to be chasing the application multiple times, no response on emails for 3-4 weeks.

It would be a comedy show, if it's not tragic and affecting actual people's lives and a team of 5 people.
We got innovate grant approved for our innovative project, they have been great, but start up loans has been the opposite so far.

From start to finish, everything was amazing! My advisor, Greg Tipper, was absolutely amazing. If you are thinking about starting your dream business and need somewhere to start, this company is the best!

this by far was the easiest loan application i have ever done, the process was direct and smooth, as far as you have a good business plan, every other thing is easy, they have a good business manager to help you out at stage 3, they respond well without delay. and finally stage 4, that 10 days wait for the panel to make a decision is well worth it. so happy to have gotten the loan needed for my business.

I had a wonderful experience with extremely helpful and caring assistance. Letitia has been truly amazing, very thorough, very detail orientated and all together exceptional.