The podcast showcasing Scottish tech to the world, guest blog by Amy Kelly, a B2B marketing consultant to fast-growing companies and the co-creator and host of The Braw Tech Podcast
/Earlier this year on a rainy day in Edinburgh, I sat in a coffee shop with Louise Mather, the Glasgow-based filmmaker, and shared my feeling that while there is so much great stuff happening on the Scottish tech scene, not enough people know about it, particularly beyond our own borders. “Let’s make films about it then,” replied Louise and, after brainstorming our favourite Scottish words, The Braw Tech Podcast was born.
Our mission is to build a channel for Scotland’s tech sector that shows the rest of the world what’s happening here. And of course, with it being a podcast it’s not just about the tech, arguably it’s as much, if not more so, about the people.
Janani Prabhkaran of Unbaggaged, Gigged.ai’s Rich Wilson, Beena Sharma of CCU International, Forumm’s Dan Marrable, Euan Cameron from Willo and Jamie Anderson, Silicon Valley C-suite executive at UserTesting, were among our first interviewees, and we’ve got to hear so many amazing stories along the way – and with more in the pipeline!
From going up against Dragons, scaling up their operations, internationalising, going global, raising investment, building teams, culture and values, there are always so many bases to cover. And from my own experience as a marketer working for Meta, Google, and UserTesting, we want our podcast to have global appeal.
Since launching, it’s encouraging that we’re building audience and engagement worldwide – including North America and Asia. People tell us they love to hear our “Made in Scotland” stories – we need to do more of this to promote our tech sector to the rest of the world. As a nation that is so well documented for all our historic innovation and inventions, why shouldn’t we be known as much for our present day tech?
So, what have we learnt so far? We go on too much about being “small and mighty”, we need to have higher levels of ambition. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to build more tech companies at the scale of Skyscanner or FanDuel.
We know we have tech founders in Scotland who are shifting paradigms and could be set to revolutionise traditional industry sectors – Willo illustrates that the recruitment sector can move away from CVs and focus on people, while CCU is developing carbon capture technology that could help the corporate world achieve net zero.
In terms of building a successful podcast, the main thing we’re learning is that honest storytelling mixed with creative execution really cuts through and that’s what’s driving engagement on a global level.
And don't forget to have a brilliant audio engineer, we've got one in Jamie Stewart.
From a marketing perspective, when the world is turning to artificial intelligence, the one channel that still speaks directly to an audience in an authentic and human way is a podcast. And through leveraging platforms like Apple, Spotify and YouTube, it’s never been easier for your brand to be heard in all corners of the world.