Happy reading and scaling!

The Evidence Gap:  public and private sector organisations identify, target and evaluate their support to scale-up companies

• Apply now for the Smith and Williamson Scale-Up Business of the Year Award, in association with the National Business Awards. The award targets scaling businesses with a robust plan for sustainable, future performance.

• The EU Commission is holding a public consultation to hear the views of entrepreneurs and start-ups, as well as all other stakeholders, on how to improve the environment for start-ups in the EU. The consultation launches the Start-up Initiative announced in the Single Market Strategy. The consultation period runs until 30 June 2016 and the survey can be found here. This is an important piece of evidence gathering, so do submit your views.

• The House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology is welcoming written submissions on robotics and artificial intelligence. Among other issues, the Committee wants to hear views about skills, funding, research and innovation landscape for these technologies in the UK.  The deadline for submissions is Friday 29 April.

• The fourth annual FinTech50 2016 was announced. This list is selected from across Europe by a panel of experts and investors; more than half of the featured companies coming from the UK. It’s exciting to see so many companies achieving scale and growing their customer base. The report says that this year is “pivotal,” as large banks and financial institutions begin to collaborate more closely with these new players. While 29 of these companies are based in London, the growth of the fintech sector in Edinburgh was the subject of this welcome article in the New Statesman.

• Inspiring to read about several inspiring women in this Sunday Times article, which draws upon Doteveryone and Founders4Schools research. This shows that there are approximately 760 women-led firms in the UK that are growing at a median rate of 30 per cent. Leeds tops the table of cities with most female-led businesses. Almost 70 per cent of fast-growing businesses run by women are based outside London. The article also quotes Baroness Lane-Fox: “It’s important to flush out the myth that women are not creating companies that grow."  

• The second of the Digital Catapult’s Scaleups programme takes place on 27 April. The free event  session focuses on maximising your company’s global potential. Do sign up to  attend

• It’s well worth reading this article on “Building weatherproof companies” by Lars Dalgard, who is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz.  
  • Entrepreneurs have “a bigger opportunity than ever before” to build long-lasting and important technology companies, he says. But in order to do so, they must grow, personally and professionally, to a higher level than they have previously experienced. “Doing so,” he says, “means committing to building a company that can go ‘all the way’ on its own.” The five key lessons that he makes are: learn how to learn fast; build a culture that will sustain the company through good times and bad; build a real board of directors - and use it; build the right meeting cadence; and “kill the monsters of the mind” (in other words, always test your thinking and always use data as a reality check).
• While this article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review is focused on the scale-up of educational social enterprise in Africa, it contains lessons for many other entrepreneurs.

• There will be a significant amount of Government sponsored export-focused activity later this month as UKTI hosts the Exporting is GREAT week between 18-22 April. All the information is available here.

• ‘Government SME procurement encouraging but still a work-in-progress' from Informed Solutions’s Global CEO Elizabeth Vega. She reflects upon the NAO’s recently published report and how this sits with techUK’s recent survey on Government SME procurement

The Finance Gap: Accessing the right combination of finance

• It was fascinating to read about the world’s first venture fund that will focus on space. The UK space industry has been growing at an annual clip of eight per cent over the past five years, hence the launch of an £83m fund by Seraphim Capital. The fund is backed by seven corporates: Airbus, Thales Alenia, Avanti Communications, Surrey Satellite Technology, Telespazio, ComDev and e2v. The fund is also being supported by the UK Space Agency and the European Space Agency. It will invest in both software and hardware. Read more about the fund here and also a wide-ranging article about scale-up companies developing in the space market. 

• The British Business Bank announced its investment in the first close of Atlantic Bridge III, a new €140m fund for cloud, big data, augmented and virtual reality software technology companies with global market scalability.

• For an interesting and provocative perspective on the UK finance landscape, read this interview with Mark Payton, chief executive of Mercia Technologies who leads us towards scale-ups in the Midlands.

The Infrastructure Gap: Navigating Infrastructure

• Cities must be flexible and listen to the needs of smaller businesses, not just big ones. This article cites the European Digital City Index (which places London as the number one city in Europe for scale-ups).

• Encouraging to read about the success of the Nottingham Creative Quarter Fund, a partnership between Nottingham City Council and First Enterprise, a not-for-profit organisation, and how it is funding the region’s creative sector.

• There’s an interesting proposal in this Nesta blog, based on some recent work it has conducted with the National Institute for Economic Social Research, in which it argues how the Government can better boost economic growth by focusing on supporting disruptive scale-up firms rather than ‘startups’ or ‘smes’.  

   

Happy Scaling!

Sherry Coutu CBE