When budgets shrink, the first thing to get cut is often the learning spend. No more courses. No more conference tickets. Forget upskilling—just ship the sprint.
I’ve seen it happen at pre-seed startups and post-Series B scale-ups alike. Survival mode kicks in, and learning becomes a “nice to have.”
But here’s the kicker: the teams that don’t keep learning? They stagnate. Then they slip. Then they’re replaced by teams who never stopped.
So how do you build a learning budget when cash is tight?
Start by ditching the idea that it needs to be expensive.
One founder I advised gave each team lead a £200 quarterly learning budget. That’s it. But with clear expectations—“bring back one insight, tool, or tactic the rest of the team can use”
Those £200 investments paid dividends. A $50 Udemy course fixed a key technical bottleneck. A cheap ebook reshaped their onboarding flow. A free cohort-based course on security standards helped a junior engineer spot an issue.
The point isn’t the spend. It’s the culture. If you can justify SaaS fees for tools, you can justify micro-budgets for skills.
It’s simple;
- Set a fixed line item—even if it’s £50 per head per quarter.
- Require a one-pager or Loom summary to share learnings.
- Prioritise skills with direct ROI: automation, security, selling…
Don’t wait for surplus to start investing in people. The ROI on learning compounds faster than most features you’re shipping.
Tight cash shouldn’t mean tight minds. Keep the muscle sharp. Even if the gym is YouTube.
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