That Friday feeling, by Nick Freer

At the end of a week that has been challenging for so many people as the coronavirus pandemic starts to touch our personal, family and business lives in Scotland, that so-called “Friday feeling” ahead of the weekend is very different this afternoon. In spite of what was already quite a circumspect start to 2020, as Brexit began to bite and the temperature rose on climate concerns, there was still something exciting about entering a new decade - perhaps because there was a whiff of hope that a new chapter in time might equate to better days ahead.

Today, Twitter was awash with film of people across Italy - the video segments I saw were filmed in Naples and Siena - singing from their windows and balconies in unison to raise spirits as the Italian lockdown continues. I went through a few emotions as I watched - it was uplifting on one hand, very sad on the other. There was something beautiful in those voices but I also sensed something underlying more akin to fear. Of course, that could be more about my own fear about our country heading towards a similar place.

Like many, I spend a good amount of time on Twitter every day to see what people are talking about and, in particular, I follow a lot of journalists I either know or whose articles I like to read - it was a tech journalist for the FT in San Francisco who posted the first tweet I saw about the mass community singing in Italy. Journalists, the press, hacks, the media, whatever you want to call what is sometimes termed "the fourth estate", by the very nature of what they do (reporting on breaking news), it's inherent they can’t get away from what is happening in the world; you are always going to be in the thick of it working in a newsroom. 

A journalist from a national broadcaster I spoke to today, a highly-rated reporter who is also a helluva nice guy, shared a similar view: “Most of my colleagues seem to be dealing with it pretty well, although there’s little else being talked or written about in the office. We are all well aware that the way in which we go about our work is going to change. For example, there’s a lot more talk from management about remote working and contingency plans are being put in place.”

The PR world has also sprung into action this week, relaying back to the press how businesses, organisations, communities etc are dealing with the onset of coronavirus here. As you would expect, being in PR, I’ve had lots of conversations across my own client base in recent days and have fielded lots of press enquiries. As the fourth estate know best, PR can sometimes be delivered with spin, smoke and mirrors or even stonewalling. This is not a time for that kind of PR. If ever there was a time for honesty and integrity in communications it is now.  

From a news point of view, the new reality is that editors will increasingly be looking for stories that relate to coronavirus for the foreseeable. I've heard exactly that from more than one journalist in the last couple of hours alone. At the same time, as a rule of thumb, as PR people, let’s make sure these stories are relevant. Now is not the time for ambulance chasing. 

How Scottish tech engaged the world, by Nick Freer

About a decade ago, I remember joining a quite sparsely attended get together in Edinburgh where, primarily young to middle-aged males phoned pizza in, guzzled a few beers and talked computer language. Organised by academics, the developers in the room, guys who were building software and apps for a living, typically sported a good deal of denim, oversized t-shirts and hoodies, while unusual haircuts and facial hair were pretty commonplace. 

Unsurprisingly, the term “tech meetup” originated in the States and the Scottish equivalent took place primarily, like its more established American form, after working hours on a university campus. Fast forward ten years, and venues for these meetups have improved markedly to say the least. While Scotland’s universities continue to play a part, we now have a sophisticated tech incubator in CodeBase and upmarket co-working spaces like WeWork and Spaces. 

Scotland’s once fledging meetup scene has also morphed into a string of internationally-recognised tech festivals that run throughout the year - with EIE, Turing Fest, Startup Summit and DataFest among the highlights. While Turing sprung form the founding team at CodeBase and Startup Summit was launched by a Bridge of Allan teenager in a Stirling schoolroom, EIE was founded by the Informatics Ventures team on the 8th floor of Appleton Tower at the University of Edinburgh.   

Of course, academia and tech have been cheek by jowl since the beginning of the inexorable rise of the technology sector across the globe - think for example of the role Stanford University has played vis-a-vis Silicon Valley or the impact of Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Boston’s tech cluster. In the Scottish context, the University of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt University and the University of Strathclyde are three universities who can claim to have strong credentials when it comes to tech, innovation, entrepreneurship and spin-outs. 

EIE (which stands for Engage, Invest, Exploit) is in fact much more than an one-off festival. The tech investor programme - EIE’s raison d’être is to connect startups with investors who can help to fuel their growth ambitions - runs throughout the year with a focus on making the company cohort as investor-ready as possible. 

Notable startups to have gone through the programme include FanDuel, Two Big Ears, Current Health, Criton, Spire Global, pureLiFi and mLED - only a few of the hundreds of EIE alumnus companies who have collectively raised over £700 million to date. One of the interesting things for me around the 50 EIE20 companies selected to pitch this year, is the number of startups who are either locating operations or relocating wholesale to Scotland - it says something about how the Scottish tech ecosystem is starting to make the right waves outside its own borders. 

I caught up with FanDuel co-founder Lesley Eccles (pictured above) last week when Eccles, who launched relationship app Relish in 2018 and is a longstanding participant and supporter of EIE, said: "I'm so proud of what EIE has become and excited to see the continued buzz about and investment in Scottish startups.”

I always think Scotland’s tech festivals do best when they mix indigenous tech talent with industry players from outside Scotland (having attended EIE, Turing Fest and Startup Summit down the years, each does really well on this front) who can give our community here a perspective from larger, more established tech ecosystems - been there, done it, got the t-shirt etc.

At the same time, lessons from say Silicon Valley can sometimes be so far from the reality of busting a gut to get a startup off the ground in Scotland that, at least for some, a northern Californian perspective doesn’t always translate to an early stage technology company here. For that reason, it’s great so see Blackcircles.com founder Mike Welch lined up for EIE20. Welch, who built online tyre retailer Blackcircles from a base in Scotland before the business was acquired by industrial giant Michelin in 2015 for almost £100 million, is now splitting his time between Edinburgh and Miami where he recently launched a new online tire venture, Tirescanner.

Welch noted last week: “Launching a startup is not for the faint hearted. The setbacks, stress and isolation are enough to put most off! But if you get it right, the rewards can be so much greater than that achievable from a ‘normal’ job. A big part of getting it right is choosing a group of investors that you can develop a working relationship with.” 

An edited version of this article was published in The Scotsman on Monday 2nd March

The role of the CMO in fast growth tech, by Nick Freer

The Chief Marketing Officer, or CMO, is an integral member of a company’s leadership team including in fast-growth tech companies. At the same time, particularly in Scotland, finding the right person for the job can be a tough nut to crack. 

Nicki Denholm, Chair of Denholm Associates who specialise in finding CMOs explains how much weight should be ascribed to the role: “An experienced CMO should have a wide remit, with the insight and experience to represent the voice of the customer and the ability to challenge the CEO. A good CMO will also be able to help engineer the necessary pivots that most high growth startups will go through.”

Denholm’s view is supported by recent research from Accenture, which found that outperforming CMOs ensure the customer is central to their thinking and vision, not just in the services they provide but in how they react, change course and adapt as a company. 

There is something of a ‘chicken or the egg’ dilemma for tech startups here in Scotland - do these companies bring a CMO on board as they plot for scale or do they wait until they reach the scale-up stage? Even when the decision to hire a CMO has been made, word on the street indicates that there is a distinct shortage of talent available to our most ambitious young tech ventures. As one tech founder put it to me last week: “you would be lucky to count scale-up standard CMOs in this country on one hand.” 

Perhaps one way forward would be the establishment of some kind of CMO academy in Scotland. A collective of top CMOs from Scotland, London and the international scene would allow us to pool experience and share collective know-how. Assuming the sum would be greater than the parts, this could help take our budding marketeers to the next level.   

So, what are the key characteristics of a CMO in the tech space? Danae Shell, former CMO at health tech Care Sourcer who secured one of the largest ever investment rounds by a Scottish startup in 2018, opines: “For me, the CMO role in a fast-growing company is all about collaboration - you are often sitting at the intersection of functions like product, finance and sales, and the job is to make sure that you’re staying aligned and supporting each other towards a common goal.”

Catching up with Edinburgh-born Leela Srinivasan, CMO of Silicon Valley-headquartered survey software provider SurveyMonkey, also a previous Director of Marketing at US tech giant LinkedIn and a former startup CMO, Srinivasan commented: “Many people underestimate the sheer scope and multifaceted nature of the CMO remit. I guide a team responsible for driving online business growth, feeding our sales team, determining how we articulate our value to the world, and equipping the entire organisation to spread that message. We partner with HR on inspiring our employee base, drive emotional connection at scale with our customers, influence pricing and packaging decisions, decide where to invest tens of millions of dollars - and we're on the hook for measuring those outcomes. Marketing leaders have to be both left-brained and right-brained, strategic and executional powerhouses. It’s not a job for the faint of heart - and I love it.”

Last summer, UserTesting, the on-demand human insight platform that is used by around half of the world’s leading brands, became the first Silicon Valley tech company to open an international office in Edinburgh. According to UserTesting’s CMO Michelle Huff: ”Technology alone doesn't often win markets. It's the ability to pair technology with a need in the market. Companies must communicate simply and clearly that their technology solves a problem in a way that folks understand. That's the role of a CMO and why the CMO is so often one of the most critical components of a successful tech company."

An edited version of this article appeared in The Scotsman on Monday 24th February 2020

CodeBase: the heart and soul of Scotland's tech scene, by Nick Freer

No one in the room was surprised when CodeBase lifted the Ecosystem award at the recent Turing Fest-run Scottish Tech Startup Awards in Edinburgh. Since launching in 2014, the tech incubator in Scotland’s capital makes a strong case for being the heart and soul of the city’s startup scene and in many people’s eyes the Scottish tech scene overall. 

Deliveroo's Scotland lead Andy Robinson is one of the tech incubator's many plaudits: "CodeBase's value to the Edinburgh tech ecosystem cannot be understated. It's been a fantastic source of advice and support for hundreds of individuals for years, so it's great to see their enormous value recognised." 

Shame on the naysayers (I have met a few) who have branded CodeBase a “property play” over the years - it was always so much more than that and in 2020 it is a bona fide tech cluster and a veritable beacon for so much of the great stuff going on in Scottish tech. Again, no surprise that big name corporate brands like Barclays and PwC have fallen over themselves to secure tie-ups with CodeBase - which now has three core sites in Edinburgh, Stirling and Aberdeen - PwC announced a partnership with CodeBase in March 2017 and Barclays Eagle Labs, a platform to connect the UK’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and drive digital skills development, was launched in Scotland at CodeBase in January 2018  

The team has carefully built a culture partly by design and, as I’m sure the guys would admit, partly by way of evolutionary flow at Argyle House in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle. Like it was yesterday, I remember the day of the official launch when Scotland’s First Minister opened the building and we ushered in press and photographers when the paint was still drying on app developer Kotikan’s shiny new HQ (Kotikan was a keystone tenant at CodeBase and was subsequently acquired by fantasy sports site FanDuel in 2015). [You can read the BBC's coverage of the March 2014 launch here].

As the saying goes, the sum is greater than the parts and CodeBase tenant companies have collectively raised over £600 million to date. Other metrics show how much has been achieved - over 400 companies are currently being supported and the CodeBase team is delivering programmes and mentoring across 24 cities in the UK.  

Catching up with Edinburgh tech ecosystem mainstay Russell Henderson last week - Russell, former Director of Growth at mobile app and web developer Bemo, has helped to organise tech community initiatives like ProductTank, ScotStartups and StartupSurf (aka CodeBase’s surf club) - Russell shares his views on the subject in more eloquent terms: “The Scottish startup scene has gone through a phase change and CodeBase has been present throughout; sometimes as a catalyst, often as a champion, invariably as a protector and most importantly as a curator of community. Theirs has been a unique perspective which means they are now increasingly recognised as the go-to repository for all things startup.”

In May, CodeBase launched a creative industries accelerator - Creative Bridge - in partnership with University of Edinburgh, Napier University and Creative Edinburgh - and in November the team brought LawTech Bridge, which had already tasted great success in London, to Scotland offering a opportunity-rich environment for collaboration between law firms and startups. Watch this space for further industry sector announcements in 2020.

CodeBase’s Head of Partnerships, Oliver Littlejohn explains: “2020 is going to be a pivotal year for CodeBase. We're putting together these meetups as part of a larger effort to work much more closely with partners from the whole tech ecosystem. The meetups will be a place where startups, scaleups, creatives, corporates, academia and the public sector can all get together to learn startup thinking.”

Over the next fortnight alone, alongside yoga classes and coffee mornings, a couple of events taking place at CodeBase catch the eye. On the 23rd, coding initiative Digital Skills 4 Girls (established by CodeBase Stirling) rolls into Argyle House. Claire Wheelan from CodeBase's marketing team explains a bit more about DS4G which is supported by Deliveroo Engineering: "We're so excited to launch DS4G in Edinburgh, it's a safe space for girls to explore a range of creative digital skills and get them thinking about where they fit into the digital world. What's also interesting is that we have also seen an increase in the number of girls attending our mixed coding club since we launched DS4G and we now have a 50/50 split."

The following week, on the 28th, the first in a new series of CodeBase Edinburgh Meetups kicks off aimed at bringing the tech community together to discuss best practice in building startups. Tech.eu’s Natalie Novick, Dropbox’s Abhishek Lahoti, Bemo’s Matt Farrugia and Creative Edinburgh’s Briana Pegado feature on the panel for this month’s inaugural event. You can sign up to a monthly newsletter from CodeBase that has more detail on this and all the other wonderful things taking place in Edinburgh, Stirling, Aberdeen, London and elsewhere.  

An edited version of this article appeared in The Scotsman on Monday 20th January 2020

Raising a glass to 2019, by Nick Freer

There’s a line in the recently released Martin Scorsese movie The Irishman where Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa, played by Al Pacino, asks truck driver and budding mafia hitman Frank Sheeran, played by Robert de Niro, “I heard you paint houses?” Word of mouth has passed through the underground crime world of the Eastern Seaboard of 1950s America and Frank Sheeran’s currency is set for an inexorable rise.

Without wanting to draw too many comparisons between the dark arts of killing people for a living and running a PR agency, word of mouth has been the most important factor in building the Freer Consultancy into a bona fide player on the Scottish PR scene since I launched the business after losing my job in the wake of the financial crash just over a decade ago. 

Following my wife (as she is now) to Edinburgh, when I arrived in this city I knew no one, literally no one, professionally or socially, when I got off the train at Waverley one chilly afternoon (it was midsummer at the time).

By translating my experience of advising FTSE listed companies on the London Stock Exchange (I spent ten years with Maitland in London) to the Scottish context, I found a niche advising fast-growing SME companies like online travel search site Skyscanner (acquired by Ctrip in 2016), online tyre retailer Blackcircles.com (acquired by Michelin in 2015) and tech incubator CodeBase around corporate PR; helping each to build a narrative in the press that would raise profile en route to milestone events like VC funding, M&A, IPOs and other significant events on the corporate timeline. 

When one of my first ever clients asked to meet me at the office at home I had exaggeratedly told him about, which in reality included the matrimonial bed, a 6-month old baby and a battered old laptop, I remember spending a frenzied couple of days rearranging the house and spending a stupid amount of money on furniture and furnishings to make the place look less like the misrepresentation I had made it out to be. From memory, I think I may also have put the baby in a cupboard.

Fast forward almost ten years and my agency is doing much the same (the PR stuff rather than the stuffing babies in cupboards bit), namely supporting SMEs and entrepreneurs around PR strategy and delivery. In terms of the business, 2019 has been another good year. It’s been fun too - I think in the main because of the people I’ve had the chance to work with. People like Cortex CEO Peter Proud rank highly here, watch this space in 2020 for all things Cortex, and Carolyn Jameson who switched from Skyscanner to Copenhagen HQ-ed customer review site Trustpilot. Overall, we now have a good mix of what I describe as old and new economy clients (although in truth, software and digital transformation have begun to blur the lines).

Among the highlights from the old economy: supporting one of Scotland’s oldest but most dynamic law firms, Anderson Strathern, in what was a record year for the firm; advising the EICC team including around the venue winning the much-coveted TEDSummit; raising profile for the UK’s newest private bank, Hampden & Co, and; handling PR for property specialist Rettie & Co’s push into the build-to-rent sector. Meanwhile, Freer Consultancy clients like Tayburn, Denholm and MadeBrave have reinvented each of their own agencies with digital-led propositions.

Among highlights from the new economy: working closely with UserTesting, the first Silicon Valley tech company to open an international HQ in Scotland; advising Cultivate (one of the many tech startups and scale-ups we have worked with over the last ten years) and Deliveroo as the latter acquired the former this July; supporting entrepreneur Mike Welch as he launched his new tire venture Tirescanner in the US; advising second-time founder Paul Reid's new venture Trickle; handling PR around Money Dashboard’s record-breaking crowdfund; guiding PR activity for digital skills academy CodeClan; supporting Turing Fest around the Scottish Tech Startup Awards; handling Care Sourcer’s joint announcement on funding with Scottish Enterprise and; supporting global tech advisory bank GP Bullhound around acquisitions in Scotland.  

As we reach the end of the year (and the decade), we'd like to thank all of our clients, suppliers, associates, mentors and peers not only for all their support over the years but also for the many lasting friendships that have been made along the way. Together, we've been through the ups and downs, as well as the highs, that come with business life and life in general. While there has been occasional blood, sweat and tears, this has been the exception rather than the rule. So, a moment to reflect and raise a glass on New Year's Eve or Hogmanay as we call it in Scotland. To another year, to another decade and let's hope it's a roaring good 20s for us all! Slàinte mhath!

An edited version of this article appeared in The Scotsman on Monday 23rd December 2019

The importance of a strong startup community, guest post by Turing Fest CEO Brian Corcoran

Next week, on November 28th, the Turing Fest team will stage the second annual Scottish Tech Startups Awards in Edinburgh. After recently unveiling the finalists for the awards, it is clear that in 2019 we’re seeing a continuation of an encouraging trend in Scotland’s technology economy: Scottish founders and their teams are building ever stronger and more ambitious businesses that can generate huge economic impact.

There are many awards ceremonies on the business calendar, but this is the only one by and for the startup community; for the people who dream of building the next Skyscanner or FreeAgent. Like Turing Fest, the Startup Awards are an investment in developing a community that will benefit all of us, and we’re expecting over 600 people on the evening of the 28th at The Jam House.  

Tech ecosystems are collective organisms that are in effect startups themselves, where the strength of the community is a key determinant of success. It takes time and effort to cultivate, but a strong startup community can better attract and retain skilled people and new capital, develop a self-perpetuating skills funnel, and nurture entrepreneurial ‘folk wisdom’. Everyone in Scottish tech will benefit from investing in and nurturing the national startup community.

Since coming to Scotland to build my first software startup in 2010, I’ve watched Scotland’s tech economy grow in leaps and bounds. There is still much to do if we are to truly become a global tech hub, but we’re beginning to see more Scottish businesses reach the milestones that create a virtuous circle: talent and capital returning to the ecosystem to launch new ventures. Ambition has skyrocketed and learning cycles are shortening.

It’s increasingly clear that technology will be at the heart of the future of the Scottish economy. There is much work to be done — attracting and retaining technical and leadership talent in Scotland, ensuring access to the right types of investors, better connecting with other ecosystems, and further building our collective understanding of how to scale. This will enable Scotland’s technology sector to fulfil its promise and drive growth in the broader economy.  

Since last year’s awards, we have seen Scotland’s tech ecosystem continue to mature. Tech leaders and people with hard-won experience scaling have left later-stage tech companies like Skyscanner, FanDuel and FreeAgent to join earlier-stage tech companies like Care Sourcer, Current Health, Airts and TravelNest.  The currency of our fintech sector has risen, healthtech is in great shape and mobile technology is moving fast.    

American entrepreneur and venture capitalist Brad Feld developed the ‘Boulder Thesis’ — named after the tech community he helped forge in Boulder, Colorado, that in spite of a small population has become one of the leading startup hubs in the US. Essentially, the Boulder Thesis illustrates how tech success can be built far from Silicon Valley.  

Feld emphasises the roles of ‘leaders’ and ‘feeders’. Crucially, leaders must be entrepreneurs — who demonstrate long-term commitment, remain actively involved and put the ecosystem ahead of short-term interest. Our own leaders in Scotland are people like Gareth Williams, Mark Logan and Carolyn Jameson — all from Skyscanner alone. 

‘Feeders’ are all of the other actors in the ecosystem that, though not company builders, nonetheless play a significant role: government, universities, investors, mentors, incubators, accelerators, service providers and corporates. Again, we have some of these building blocks — the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics, CodeBase, CodeClan and Silicon Valley Bank, among others. The core philosophy of the Boulder Thesis centres on giving before you receive and thinking about network above hierarchy.

Chris McCann, founder of one of last year’s award-winning startups, Current Health spells it out like this: “Everyone in the tech community who can should be at the Awards; it is really the only night of the year when we can all come together to celebrate the whole ecosystem.” The more the merrier!  

An edited version of this article appeared in The Scotsman on Monday 18th November

Raison d'être is to bridge Scotland's digital skills gap, guest post by CodeClan CEO Melinda Matthews Clarkson

This week sees the 4th anniversary of CodeClan and like a birthday we’re very excited and will be raising a glass or two with friends to mark the occasion. 

Over 800 people have graduated from our software development and data analytics programmes, with the majority going on to work in technical roles with over 250 employer partners - large corporates, financial institutions, public sector bodies, scale-ups, and startups.  

CodeClan’s raison d’être is to bridge Scotland’s digital skills gap and we know how successfully we advance digital skills in this country will be key to how Scotland competes and prospers in the 21st century.    Commentators agree that we don’t know what more than 50 per cent of our jobs will look like in the future, such as the pace of technological change.  This means we need to be ready to adapt to tech trends in areas like data science and machine learning.  

Industry research tells us that the most successful companies require access to skilled workers and the European Commission has said that there could be almost a quarter of a million unfulfilled jobs in the European ICT sector by 2020.  Globally, the World Economic Forum forecasts that there will be over 100 million new roles generated by the Fourth Industrial Revolution by 2022.

In Scotland, it’s important that we keep abreast of global trends and ensure that we are equipping the nation’s people with the tools they need to compete not only at home but on the international stage.  In an increasingly data-driven world, we must keep ahead of the curve. 

Founded in 2015 with support from the Scottish Government and its enterprise agencies, we have progressed to a self-funding model while retaining our not-for-profit status.  CodeClan now has growing campuses in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Inverness.  We know the links to the Scottish industry through our employer network - commercial and public sector organisations who hire our talented graduates - are crucial not only to our own success but, more importantly, to the future success of Scotland’s economy.  

At a recent Scottish Chambers of Commerce dinner, I was thrilled to hear from John Swinney that the Scottish Government considers CodeClan to be one of its greatest achievements of recent times where the public sector and industry collaborated for the greater good.  This week, we look forward to being joined by digital minister Kate Forbes as we celebrate four years in business.

When I joined CodeClan as CEO from IBM in 2017, the nation’s digital skills academy was already providing a new way to help people reskill and retrain.  The last couple of years have seen our team push on and build what I believe is an even better product with a stronger market fit. We have added essential 21st-century meta-skills or soft skills to the programme.  Our partners have given us feedback and looking at the most successful companies in today’s market - being able to be problem solvers, open to new ideas, resilient to change and most of all to be able to manage one’s personal health (mind and body) is the key to success in a career and the ecosystem of digital.

Operating highlights in 2019 for CodeClan have included the opening of the Highlands Campus in Inverness in April, Learning and Wellbeing sessions added to the programme, partnerships with charities and not for profits that need technical assistance,  a strategic partnership with technology recruitment specialist Eden Scott to provide career support to CodeClan graduates after 18 months in a job and the strengthening of CodeClan’s leadership and instructor team.  

It's a testament to the whole team, our graduates and our employer partners that we look ahead with even greater optimism on the occasion of our 4th anniversary.  Our people, our graduates and our employer partners combine to form a virtuous circle that makes CodeClan work and we’re excited to be delivering real impact on the Scottish digital scene. 

An edited version of this article appeared in The Scotsman on Monday 4th November

Scotland's DNA built on innovation, guest post by FutureX CEO Bruce Walker

The entrepreneurial world brings with it its own glossary of jargon. One of the most well worn is the ‘entrepreneurial ecosystem’: the local environment and network affecting new businesses.

Seven years ago, as an emerging entrepreneur, I took note of the support available within that ecosystem but felt that it was somewhat fragmented. Entrepreneurs like me were hungry for a cohesive community that could support them in their business ambitions.

When I first took charge of Startup Summit, I hoped to bring those elements together and see the ecosystem laid out in front of us. By the second year of running the event, we started to see those pieces connect and the foundations of the current network forming.

Since then, with a massive collective effort from across the country, the entrepreneurial ecosystem has gained momentum. The environment – inter-sector support – and network – a cohesive community of organisations – have matured, creating a space primed for the future of business and the challenges and opportunities that entails.

An empowering network

As those fragments have connected, the community has formalised into Scotland CAN DO, connecting over 100 organisations across Scotland. It is a focal point as we work together, share support and resources, and create a culture that empowers people to develop new initiatives. 

Alongside this community, support from public and private sector organisations enables new companies to succeed. Scottish Enterprise, Business Gateway, Entrepreneurial Scotland and Scottish EDGE, among others, have cemented themselves as pivotal support and funding groups in this network.

Tying these together is how closely the Scottish private and public sectors work together by exchanging data and analysis. The Data Lab, in particular, plays a fundamental role in this data exchange. The public sector supports their work, benefitting from the analysis they provide, while The Data Lab has the flexibility to work with the private sector. 

Scottish culture & connection

While this close collaboration is new, Scotland's entrepreneurial spirit is not. From television to penicillin to modern geology, Scotland's DNA is built on innovation. 

Successful Scottish businesses, like Skyscanner and BrewDog, had to blaze the trail, leading the way and showing where opportunities and challenges lie. They also became role models for success and growth: if they could become global businesses, so could other Scottish entrepreneurs.

These examples of high growth companies and the emergence of a thriving community are encouraging more talented people to relocate to Scotland. The country benefits from both its intimate size and global reach, boasting a high quality of life with a successful blend of lifestyle and career.

Increasingly, international investors and companies are looking to Scotland. London and European-based VC’s, including Octopus Ventures, Episode 1 and ADV, are interested in Scottish businesses and will be speaking at Startup Summit this week about startup investment. Other Startup Summit speakers, from Google for Startups UK and Starling Bank, have voiced interest in increasing their representation outside of their London base - and see Scotland as a perfect opportunity.

What’s next?

As we look forward to the future of entrepreneurship in Scotland, we need to act with intention. We are moving into an era of further digitisation, AI and increased personalisation. While opening new opportunities in Scotland, we must always keep ethics, purpose and people at the heart of our decision making.

We've set the foundations of a healthy, supportive and encouraging entrepreneurial ecosystem. Now, we need to make sure we move into the next phase of building robust companies prepared for investment and growth.

We're delighted to be back this week for the eighth Startup Summit and continue to champion the Scottish and European entrepreneurial ecosystems. While it may look a little different than 2012, the driving force remains the same: to create a cohesive international community of ambitious entrepreneurs building sustainable and scalable companies. 

An edited version of this article appeared in The Scotsman on Monday 28th October

Titans of Tech and the Scottish tech scene, guest post by Hugh Campbell, Managing Partner, GP Bullhound

2019 has been another incredible year in the global technology sector.  Tech’s transformative effect has touched every corner of the planet and we have witnessed its commercial, social and political impact as never before.  

At GP Bullhound, we have strengthened our track record of working with entrepreneurs at world-leading companies who understand the enabling power of technology and we are optimistic about what technology and its leading proponents can achieve.  From smart retail and last mile delivery to blockchain and artificial intelligence, we are continually mapping the trends and innovations set to drive future growth.    

In Europe, we now have more billion-dollar tech companies than ever and 2018 saw the largest year of fundraising on record.  Released earlier this year, our sixth annual Titans of Tech report analysed the growth, strength and velocity of Europe’s leading tech businesses, the investment landscape fuelling this growth and identified the likely tech successes of tomorrow.

Scotland has of course produced billion-dollar valued tech companies of its own.  These successes have played an important role in helping the nation’s ecosystem to mature and move to the next level, underpinned by world-class universities, internationally-renowned informatics schools and one of the most sophisticated angel communities around.  

Recent weeks and months have seen Silicon Valley companies like UserTesting and OnScale open international offices in Glasgow and Edinburgh and these developments are testament to how far Scotland’s technology hub has come.

Only last week, in another notch for Scottish tech, Edinburgh-based gaming analytics company deltaDNA was acquired by San Francisco-headquartered Unity Technologies,  a deal in which we supported deltaDNA’s CEO Mark Robinson and his team as lead advisors.  

With a global network, supported by offices across Europe, Asia and North America, we are increasingly sourcing M&A and capital raising opportunities for Scotland’s most highly-rated tech companies by combining high level advisory services with bridgeheads into places like Silicon Valley and increasingly Asia.  

While we know it can be hard for UK technology hubs outside London to build profile, recent investor activity certainly illustrates that more corporates and funds are examining Scotland for investment opportunities.     

While M&A transactions like Skyscanner and FreeAgent are well documented examples of large and mid-range deals in recent times, talk on the street says that companies to watch in the Scottish tech space include TVSquared, Indigo Vision, Care Sourcer and TravelNest.  Perhaps one of these companies will reach the heady valuations achieved by Skyscanner and FanDuel before.  

Our Titans of Tech report this year showed that Europe’s billion-dollar or “unicorn” tech companies are growing faster than their US counterparts - by 28 per cent against 20 per cent - with the total number of unicorns up to 84 this year from 30 in 2014. Interestingly, as a group these businesses are also much more profitable – and some would therefore argue, more stable – than their US or Asian counterparts. This could be an important characteristic if, as WeWork experienced, we see funding and IPO markets tighten up.

Of course, the tech scene is about so much more than billion-dollar companies and tech founders must navigate a series of funding rounds before anyone can even think about lofty valuations.  In parallel, incredible value can still be achieved for founders and investors at much lower levels.

Think of Blackcircles.com, founded by Mike Welch in Edinburgh and sold to Michelin in 2015, the deltaDNA deal we advised on this year or another one we handled when Scottish data analytics specialist Aquila Insight was bought for £40 million by US marketing group Merkle in 2017.

Scaling a technology company brings the greatest reward to startup founders, their teams, investors and ultimately the economy.  As with Europe as a whole, we see the tech curve rising in Scotland and we are optimistic that there will be many more successes to come in the months and years ahead. 

An edited version of this article appeared in The Scotsman on Monday 7th October 2019

The future of open banking, guest post by Domenico De Fano, Senior Product Manager, Revolut

There’s a reason why there has been a boom in attention and growth in fintechs and it’s largely due the speed at which innovation and user-centric solutions are released to consumers. As fintech startups continue to deliver great products, customers expectations get higher, making it even harder for incumbents to catch up.

Since Revolut for Business launched two years ago, thousands of businesses in Scotland have joined us, and we welcome more daily. What businesses love about Revolut for Business, is that the platform isn’t just an add-on to the retail product, but is in fact a dedicated service where all of a company’s financial needs are met in one seamless package. Add to that our Open API and integrations, and you’ve got something that’s even more flexible.

We built our first Open API over 2 years ago, when open banking was still a term for the few industry experts, because we understood the need for modern businesses to move data between different online platforms and automate their banking operations.

Today, we’re excited to see that open banking is revolutionising how we access and interact with financial products and services, creating a more personalised digital experience in financial services, and helping millions stuck on the wrong financial product. 

Some key examples of FinTech services and products enabled through open banking include financial data aggregation platforms, and money-advice products able to provide new insights about spending and savings patterns. Through open banking, you can allow third-party apps to show you how much you’re spending on shopping or public transport, or even to prompt you when it’s the optimum time to exchange your hard-earned pennies for those holiday euros. This functionality is now commonplace, and yet some of the more traditional high street banks are only just starting to catch up. Just as we at Revolut are once again pulling away.

Many more opportunities remain yet unexplored, including cardless online payments, which could make the payment experience much more secure, traceable and slick. Or how we might never have to fill paperwork providing our financial information when applying for a loan, a mortgage or when opening a new bank account. We are excited to see the activity across the whole industry and it is only just beginning for us at Revolut.

The road ahead is long and challenging - since open banking launched two years ago, most high street banks have just delivered the bare minimum to comply with the regulations, failing to see further opportunities for innovation. That being said, what has been done has laid the path for the emergence of startups that could not have existed before open banking and together with other innovators in the field such as Revolut, are already at work on the next iteration of innovative products for customers and businesses.

The opportunities in this space are vast and varied, making this is an exciting race to not only develop these products quickly, but also to deliver them with the utmost standards of quality and reliability. It’s integral to our own success that our clients and network of developers are involved. Our product has been led by clients and we are always listening to their thoughts and feedback. This is, in our opinion, where some of the incumbent banks may have lost their way. We intend to stay on track, to grow alongside our clients as both a trusted service and partner.

We look forward to the opportunity to contribute to conversations around open banking specifically to Scottish businesses and consumers, at a roundtable discussion at the upcoming fintech summit at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh later this week. If you’re around, come and see us. We might even drop some tidbits about our upcoming product roadmap.

An edited version of this article appeared in The Scotsman on Monday 23rd September 2019

What the tech sector can learn from Brewgooder, guest post by Glen Manoff, Chief Communications Officer, Trustpilot

The Scottish technology sector is in rude health and with the right approach can help define and lead the Internet’s next wave.

Beyond the usual networking and tech start-ups seeking funding at the recent Turing Fest in Edinburgh, we discussed a rather huge topic: what’s the role of the tech sector in building a better world for all of humanity. 

The Internet is just over a quarter century old and has exceeded even its founder’s wildest expectations to become the most expansive and powerful technology the world has ever known. But while its first chapter, written largely in Silicon Valley, has delivered incredible innovation and wealth creation it has left a highway of harm and destruction too. 

Technology that was supposed to bring us together in open collaboration has too often been used to drive us apart, destroy trust in each other and our institutions and exacerbate the existential challenges facing our planet. 

In Edinburgh we discussed how to build the Internet’s next wave based on a single unifying thought: humanity.  

More specifically, we discussed the unifying principles that every tech actor can adopt to ensure that whatever technologies they’re designing, they should have positive social and environmental impacts built in from ground zero and not after the fact. 

The ‘Copenhagen Letter' launched at the city's Tech Festival in 2017 and discussed again there last week is a manifesto for “all actors who shape technology” to design a better Internet by adhering to some shared core principles. 

 It starts: “It’s time to take responsibility for the world we are creating. Time to put humans before business. Time to replace the empty rhetoric of building a better world with a commitment to real action. It is time to organize and to hold each other accountable. Tech is not above us.”

One of its core principles is “designing for trust’ via ‘true transparency’ so we can all be digital citizens not mere consumers. 

Another says simply “we must design tools that we would love our loved ones to use.”  And that means we will no longer tolerate “design for addiction, deception, or control.”

These are simple ideas that any tech actor, big or small, can apply. 

Brewgooder is a wonderful example that all of tech can learn from. Founder Alan Mahon is building a business to not only make great beer but to have positive net impact by investing profits to provide the fresh water that will improve the life chances of young people - particularly young women - in water deprived areas of Africa. 

Not every company is trying to solve global problems in this way as part of its mission. But everyone can apply the principle of “designing for humanity” to their own business. If Silicon Valley had adopted such principles when the net was in its infancy the world might look very different today. 

Imagine if Apple became the world’s richest company not only by making beautiful transformative devices but building them to last a decades rather than contributing to a billion rapidly disposable devices devouring the earth’s scarce metals. 

Or if Facebook had not focused its energy on extracting maximum monetary value from its users by packaging and selling their personal data to the highest bidder but stayed focus on bringing billions of people and communities closer together. 

The Googles and Amazons of tomorrow are being built today. If the Internet’s first chapter taught anything it’s how fast companies can rise. 

 If every company designed from human-centred principles, we have a fighting chance for the Internet’s next chapter to more fully realise its founder’s vision.

Silicon Valley may yet figure this out but the signs are that there is a long way to go.  So, the technology revolution needs inspiration and leadership from elsewhere too. Why not Scotland?

An edited version of this article appeared in The Scotsman on Monday 9th September 2019

Tech tales from Turing, by Nick Freer

Turing Fest 2019 at the EICC last week had an American flavour, with an array of Stateside speakers, including the inventor of the hashtag and featuring one of Silicon Valley’s most highly-rated near-unicorn companies who recently set up an international office in Edinburgh. 

Chris Messina, formerly of US tech giants Google and Uber, came to the conclusion that what he describes as social technology was going to be “a really big deal” as long ago as 1998 and showed photos of him with Twitter founders Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey in San Francisco back in 2007.

Messina ran through some illuminating stats. 72 per cent of adults engage with social media in the United States, 85 per cent of U.S. teens are regulars on YouTube and, in a nod to his own creation, 200 million hashtags are used every day in the States, equating to 2,300 hashtags every minute. But, says Messina, in the race to connect everyone together we have started to see a social media fallout. The inventory of effects include digital addiction, mental health issues, breakdown of truth, polarisation, political manipulation and superficiality. 

Messina quoted Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan, whose work forms a cornerstone of media theory and observed that “we shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us”. Messina believes founders can effect real change. “Founders’ culture informs the values and, in turn, values inform product design choices. Cumulatively, design choices define products that make it out into the world. Products impact users’ behaviour, which in turn becomes mass culture”.

Messina cited a few U.S.-based startups who are trying to drive change in this space - including Beam who are developing an “online gym for mental fitness” and Maslo, a Los Angeles startup who believe that technologies should help us grow into better people.  

UserTesting, the San Francisco-headquartered tech firm with a customer experience platform used by around half of the world’s leading brands, flew one of its senior team in to talk about the importance of empathy in product development. Janelle Estes explained that in the age of data overload, companies that forget about empathy do so at their peril: “All the statistics in the world can’t measure the warmth of a smile”. 

Fred Destin of venture capitalist Stride added an investor’s view at Turing. Before painting a picture of the “world of chaos” we live in in the early 21st century, Destin drilled into the job of the CEO of a technology startup. “Make decisions under conditions of uncertainty”, “define the mission”, “focus only on the mission”, “move the ball down the field every day” and “do the five things you have to do every day.” Destin says it is a must to obsess about culture. “You need to define it, live it every day”. 

Destin says today’s founders must harness complexity to scale infinitely. Digitally native companies like Uber are taking over the world. The ride-sharing startup raised $4 million at seed round before going on to be worth $4 billion 4 years later. Humans are not designed to live with this kind of pace of change, so the biggest winners work out how to survive and thrive amidst chaos.

At a panel Q&A hosted by social enterprise Brewgooder's founder Alan Mahon, senior executives from Skyscanner (SVP Growth, Shane Corstorphine), Monzo (Head of People, Tara Mansfield) and Trustpilot (SVP Communications, Glenn Manoff) discussed how tech can be characterised as something of a double-edged sword: while it has eroded public trust worldwide and presents sustainability issues on a massive scale with 1 billion resource-hungry smartphones and devices in circulation, the tech world also has the inherent ability to bring about real and lasting change. More so than any other industry sector or Government. 

Supporting Scotland’s top-rated healthtech company Care Sourcer on day one of Turing around its announcement of Scottish Enterprise funding that will help it further scale and increasingly tackle the UK’s chronic care crisis, I’m reminded of how tech can indeed be a harbinger of positive change.

An edited version of this article appeared in The Scotsman on Monday 2nd September

Why my company says here's to Scotland! Guest post by Janelle Estes, Chief Insights Officer, UserTesting

For my Silicon Valley-based company, UserTesting, this has been the Summer of Scotland. In late July, we announced the opening of our first international office. Not in London or Paris or Frankfurt, but right here in Edinburgh.

And, coincidentally, when one of Europe’s top conferences - Turing Fest - takes place in Scotland’s capital Aug. 27-29, I have the privilege of speaking about one of the most important topics in business today: "Integrating Customer Empathy into the Product Creation Process.”

So why did UserTesting choose Auld Reekie for its European headquarters? Mostly for compelling business reasons, though another factor was some interesting personal connections that our CEO, Andy MacMillan, has with Edinburgh.

First, the business reasons.

Our 12-year-old, San Francisco-based company, whose human insights platform helps companies create better customer experiences, decided we wanted to be closer to our customers in the UK and across Europe. More than 10 percent of UserTesting’s growing customer base of 1,200 customers is in Europe, with 60 percent of those in the UK.

We could have picked any city. 

Naturally, we had been aware of Edinburgh’s buzz as a rising tech hub – for example, the 2018 Tech Nation report that proclaimed it the best place in the UK for tech companies to scale up and do business in. We knew about the city’s reputation as a magnet for millennials -- a crucial tech talent pool. We understood that it’s cheaper to operate out of Edinburgh than in a saturated, high-cost market like London.

But when we dug deeper, we also were blown away by the world-class tech talent coming out of Edinburgh’s universities and the strong commitment that the UK and Scottish governments have shown in infrastructure and tech investment, such as the City Region Deal, the University of Edinburgh’s Bayes Centre for data science and artificial intelligence, Heriot-Watt University’s GRID research center, and the BioQuarter.

All of this showed that Edinburgh has what it takes to support our ambitious goals to grow from nine employees in the city now to 30 by the end of this year to more than 100 within a few years. The new office is led by our new European regional vice president, Edinburgh’s Bruce Hunter, a 20-year software industry veteran.

And what were the CEO’s personal connections to Edinburgh I mentioned earlier?

Several connections that Andy MacMillan already had to Scotland made Edinburgh even more of a natural choice for UserTesting to look into. Andy’s father is a Scottish immigrant to the US. As a young woman, Andy’s grandmother worked as a maid for Sir Alexander Walker II. His grandfather was a caddie at Royal Troon. And Andy earned his MBA from the University of Edinburgh in 2003.

Edinburgh was simply a perfect match.

As Chief Insights Officer, I help lead UserTesting’s efforts to help businesses better see, hear, and understand customers so they can deliver the best experiences possible across a range of digital touchpoints.

My talk at Turing Fest will offer practical advice on how companies can integrate human empathy into the design and development of their products at every stage.

This is important because how well businesses cultivate memorably positive emotional connections with customers defines their success in today’s world where consumers have so many choices and can switch brand loyalty with a tap on their phone or a mouse click.

Numerous studies have shown that customer experience leaders – those that understand they’re offering not just a product but an experience -- outperform competitors. In fact, I’d argue that the ability to deliver a delightful experience is no longer a mere differentiator, businesses must think of it as the very foundation of everything it does.

I’m very much looking forward to my visit… and to all the wonderful things in store for UserTesting in Edinburgh.

An edited version of this article appeared in The Scotsman on Monday 26th August

Scotland delivering as tech hub, by Nick Freer

I was chatting to a technology startup founder the other day who, after we compared notes on whose golf game was in a more woeful state, reminded me that “you can’t get the product wrong”. “You can get everything else wrong”, he said, “but not the product”.  

I had the good fortune last month to support the CEO and PR team of San Francisco-headquartered UserTesting, a Silicon Valley tech company that has developed a product so successful that around half of the world’s leading brands use its on-demand customer insights platform, as the company announced that it was opening its first international office here in Edinburgh. 

UserTesting’s CEO, Andy MacMillan, remarked that he and his team see Edinburgh and Scotland as one of Europe’s next great tech hubs. In meetings we lined up with the press, MacMillan expounded the case for choosing the city ahead of other metropolitan candidates in the UK and Europe - with the computer sciences talent coming out of multiple Scottish universities and the standard of public-private partnerships among the factors that counted in Edinburgh’s favour. 

At a small private dinner we organised at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, we were joined by senior figures from Scotland’s enterprise agencies, venture capital and university scenes to discuss, albeit on a very informal level, the opportunities and challenges for Scotland’s technology ecosystem. Over some fine food and a drop or two of the national nectar, we heard some spellbinding stories straight from Silicon Valley and by the end of the night the bridge between our ecosystems didn’t seem as big as many of us may have previously thought. 

Fast forward a week and my agency handled another announcement that is evidence of how far Edinburgh and Scotland has come in the UK and international tech stakes when a longstanding client, software development studio Cultivate, was acquired by Amazon-backed food delivery scale-up Deliveroo. One of Europe’s fastest-growing technology companies, Deliveroo plans to invest in an Edinburgh tech office at CodeBase, with Cultivate’s Andy Robinson heading up the team.  

When you consider that cities like London, Amsterdam and Dublin have received a lot more metaphorical love through inward investment by U.S. and European tech giants, it’s great to see Edinburgh getting a slice of the action and I feel privileged to have helped to tell the story around these recent announcements. Perhaps, we are on the verge of a tipping point in 2019. That could be the really exciting bit: if the commitment and ambition shown by UserTesting and Deliveroo to our tech ecoystem leads to a critical mass of international technology companies landing in Scotland.

In turn, a critical mass of large, scaling technology companies would keep more students and graduates in Scotland, while attracting more talent from outside, including Scots who have brain-drained to London because of a lack of quality tech jobs at real volume here. As young people increasingly desire lifestyle and wellbeing over material gain and Edinburgh shoots up the global charts as a desirable place to live and work, I get a strong feeling that things will continue to trend to our advantage.

Industry commentators regularly relay statistics around how rapid technological advances mean that most kids in school today will end up in jobs that don’t yet exist. Having what UserTesting’s Andy MacMillan describes as “one of the next great tech hubs” here in Scotland will mean our future economy will be positioned to support the next generation with highly-skilled jobs. Win-win.  

This week I will be handling announcements for Heriot-Watt University around its graduate apprenticeship programme - the largest of its kind in Scotland - and Robotical, a tech startup who are teaming up with one of Scotland’s top football clubs to teach kids digital skills in the local community; with both initiatives representing building blocks that will help to create a world-class entrepreneurial society in Scotland. 

An edited version of this article appeared in The Scotsman on Monday 19th August

The search for Elon MacMusk, guest post by Gibb Bulloch

No one needs to convince me about the merits of spending time taking stock of your career—or that Scotland is the right place to do it. I’ll tell you why in a minute. But without sounding like I’m representing the Scotland’s tourist board, there are many reasons why it’s even easier today to combine career, health and wellbeing and be in one of the most beautiful parts of the world. 

In the mid-1980s, I left my childhood home in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute and set off to study in Glasgow before taking the well-worn path to the bright lights of London. So called “brain-drain” has affected many rural communities, not only in Scotland, but across the world. It’s a trend that has continued throughout my working career. I was saddened to hear of Argyll and Bute’s population dropping by a staggering 4% in 2017 alone. At the same time, Edinburgh saw double-digit growth in its population, while London continues to act as a lightning rod for young professionals from north of the border.

Despite these worrying statistics, I’d suggest that the grass may no longer be greener in the concrete jungles of our modern cities. Bute’s isolation, lack of access to employment and rural tranquillity were clearly underlying factors in the ongoing exodus of its younger generation. But with modern connectivity we’re entering the age of the “digital nomad”— individuals who can connect to the global economy to make a living, irrespective of their physical location. The lure of affordable housing and a safe, cohesive community could offer the island something of a renaissance—rebalancing the urban mix.

But in a paradoxical twist, I believe it’s the very isolation and ability to completely detach from the demands of a digital age that might offer the greatest potential for regeneration. I’m convinced these erstwhile drawbacks could, in fact, become comparative advantages that should be capitalised upon. 

The lure of a life in the business fast lane and a well-paid corporate job comes at a price. As companies have downsized, those who are ‘lucky’ enough to be kept on find themselves in ever-expanding roles and a 24/7, always online lifestyle that doesn’t respect weekends. Small wonder that there’s a mental health crisis emerging in the workplace—a topic where I have a bit of form.. The constant distraction of technology, results, busy roles, and tight deadlines means that the business world is suffering from a kind of collective Attention Deficit Disorder or ADD. What if we were to slow down a little— take the time to breathe and to focus less on what we’re doing and think more about where we’re going? 

Last year, I decided to trade my two-bedroom flat in London for a derelict farm on Bute which I am renovating as Scotland’s first “Business Decelerator”— a place that offers busy executives the chance to temporarily disconnect from their day jobs to reconnect with themselves. The space will create a fusion between big business and the transformative power of art, music, nature and community. Craigberoch is a venue that seeks to balance the typical business professional's bias for doing, with the power of just being.   

So, why here and why now? Scotland has a proud history of applying innovation for the benefit the planet—from Sir Alexander Fleming’s penicillin to the modern television invented by John Logie Baird. Besides the obvious benefits of resilience, wellbeing and employee engagement, I envision the business decelerator being a catalyst for social innovation—in our “always on” culture, it’s well overdue. 

Scotland could play an important role in awakening a generation of dormant Elon (Mac)Musk-type social intrapreneurs and innovators inside the corporate world—unlocking commercial value for our companies and social and environmental impact for the planet. On a personal level, I hope that Craigberoch plays a part in that important journey.

Gib Bulloch is the author of The Intrapreneur: Confessions of a Corporate Insurgent and is the Founder of the Craigberoch Business Decelerator.  He will be speaking at the FutureX’s Future Business Forum at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, 17 September 2019. 

Eureka, Edinburgh's new Enlightenment, by Nick Freer

This week, TEDSummit rolls into Edinburgh’s EICC and with it some of the world’s greatest thinkers and agents for change, including around 150 past TED Talk speakers. TED describes itself as “a global community of people interested in how ideas can improve the world” and the chances are that many of us have watched and been impacted by a TED Talk, arguably an internet phenomenon since its inception.

Two of my favourite TED Talks are by Professor Harald Haas, Chair of Mobile Communications at the University of Edinburgh and founder of pureLiFi, the wireless technology company. Professor Haas’s first address, at TED Global in 2011, “Wireless Data from Every Light Bulb” has been watched over 2 million times his second TED Global lecture in 2015 on the use of solar cells as LiFi data detectors gives further evidence of why TIME Magazine has rated Haas’s inventions as some of the most pioneering of recent times.   

Edinburgh beat off worldwide competition to land this year’s summit and it’s fitting that the country which gave birth to the Scottish Enlightenment in the 19th century continues to be heralded for its place in the world at the beginning of the 21st. In science, medicine, business, technology, creative industries, social enterprise, education, culture and sport, Scotland has proven that it can lead the way, be at the top table; less of a follower, more of an influencer. 

If you think of Scotland as a brand, it is a pretty cool one. I remember thinking this not long ago when I was speaking to one of my brothers who runs the O Street agency in Glasgow that has been instrumental in the design process for Royal Bank of Scotland’s new £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes. O Street and its collaborators factored in Scotland’s people, artists, writers, poets, landscape and wildlife and it was great to see the end results. My favourite remains the fiver, with Scottish author Nan Shepherd on one side of the note and a mackerel eating a midge - with the small, biting insect admittedly being something of a drain on Scotland’s summertime brand - on the reverse. 

Of course, Scotland as a brand may be hard for many natives to see; there’s that old saying about not seeing the wood for the trees. Perhaps it is the views of people from other places who choose to spend time here that are most telling when we think about Scotland as a brand. 

Speaking to Natalie Novick, the research editor of Tech.eu, a European media and market intelligence company dedicated to startups and the emerging technology industry, Novick says: "Something I admire about Scotland and the Scots is their true sense of optimism and positivity about the future, which certainly plays into the innovation environment here. There's an independent streak in the country's innovators, whether it's Lockerbie's MacRebur, who built their company on micro-investment and now builds roads across the world, or Edinburgh's Project Heather, working to rewrite social finance. Scots are proud to stand for what they believe in, which can give a country of it's size an outsize impact.” Formerly based in Germany and the United States, Novick moved to Scotland in 2018 with her partner who works at the University of Edinburgh.

Canadian tech investor Rita Nguyen, who splits her time between Scotland and Myanmar, says: “I chose Edinburgh as my second home for a lot of reasons, not least of which that it’s one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Scottish people are innate storytellers and hugely entertaining and there are very few cultures in the world which are so strongly ingrained in the psyche of its people.” 

“I’m in the technology startup world and it’s interesting to see how founders in Scotland address their unique market challenges. Scotland itself is a relatively small market so in order to scale, Scottish entrepreneurs need to look beyond their borders.”

An edited version of this article appeared in The Scotsman on Monday 22nd July

To unplug or not to unplug on vacation, by Nick Freer

Last month, my wife and I celebrated our 10th anniversary with a night away at the recently reopened Fife Arms hotel in Braemar. Owned by renowned Swiss art dealers and, on the evidence of the array of sports cars with international license plates parked out front, clearly attracting high net worth clientele from across Europe, it lived up to its billing as a luxurious stay in the heart of the Scottish Highlands.

Word must have travelled that it was a special anniversary as we were upgraded to a suite on arrival, one from which you could see the river Clunie rushing past in all its glory; most definitely a room with a view. We were going to go back to the hotel in Mallorca where we got married but circumstances - leaving the kids at home in Scotland for the first time and the fact that we had already booked a family holiday on mainland Spain not long after - meant a short weekend break better fitted the bill. 

Now sitting by the pool at our villa near Cadiz in southwestern Spain, we’ve had a nice break in the sunshine with relatives who are over from New Zealand and work hasn’t got too much in the way. I’ve kept true to my out of office message and only checked the inbox occasionally, done a couple of conference calls that were already in the diary and fielded a few calls about press stories and announcements in the workings.

For me, this is about as much as I can switch off anyway. I would probably freak out if I turned my phone off for a week, so I’m okay with keeping an eye on things while making sure I get some time away from the inbox and seemingly never ending email trails. A bit like politics, a week is a long time in PR world and, as the saying goes, time and tide wait for no man. Or something like that.  

I message a friend from the business world, Geneva-based Scot Gib Bulloch, to ask him what he thinks about balancing vacations with time away from the office. “As the scope of corporate roles has grown even larger”, says Gib, “ and the ‘always online’ 7 days a week culture becomes the norm, it’s more important than ever to carve out the time to totally unplug while on holiday - to disconnect in order to reconnect to a deeper sense of who we are.” 

I think Gib makes an important point here, namely around reconnecting with one’s self. Sometimes you need a change of scenery to get a bit of perspective and vacations, holidays or breaks - whatever you want to call them - can undoubtedly be good for the soul. 

Bulloch is taking this concept a step further by creating what he calls a business ‘decelerator’ on his native Isle of Bute. Craigberoch was initially conceived by Gib during the process of promoting his seminal book, The Intrapreneur: Confessions of a Corporate Insurgent, and you can hear him talk about his writings, Craigberoch and other interesting tales in person at FutureX’s Future Business Forum in Edinburgh this September.  

As I’m replying to Gib, a call comes in from a client CEO who happens to be staying only an hour up the road in Seville. He is excited because his company is on the cusp of launching a new, retooled product and wanted me to be one of the first to know. It’s a fantastic company, with a brilliant and very likeable team and world-beating technology, so it’s great to shoot the breeze and hardly a hardship when I’m sitting poolside in beach shorts.  

As we wrap up, I see there is a wee boy and a slightly older girl in Barcelona tops who want to kick around the new football we bought in the local supermarket yesterday. A gentle reminder of the really important stuff in this life. 

Scotland's crypto scene on the up, by Nick Freer

I remember drinking a pint of ale in a pub in the West End of Glasgow a couple of years’ back, a pub where you could pay for your drinks by Scotcoin - an alternative to bitcoin - via a smartphone application. I even had some Scotcoin in a digital wallet although I fear I have misplaced it somewhere in the ether that is the web. I remember hearing from someone more in the know on all things cryptocurrency around that time, that there were only a few thousand people globally who really understood the workings of blockchain technology.

Fast forward a few moons, and I had the opportunity to speak to a handful of the wise men who have made cryptocurrency their specialist subject when they descended on Edinburgh last week. Titan Ventures co-founder Michael Nye, Charles Read and Andrew Strong were in Scotland to address the latest cohort of companies invited onto the Wayra Blockchain and AI accelerator run at the University of Edinburgh’s Bayes Centre.  

Cryptocurrency, or crypto, has been a blockbuster financial news story over the last few weeks ahead of the launch of Facebook’s new cryptocurrency Libra. Libra is a development in money transfer that many commentators believe will disrupt the banking sector, central banks and possibly even rival the dollar as a new global unit currency unit. It’s also the view of many in the know, that what some have described as the “first everyday implementation of crypto” could spark the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies.  

By the same token, excuse the pun, other industry observers have asked questions about Facebook’s motivations, whether or not Libra is really about financial inclusion for the developing world and how fellow tech and payment giants who are not partners to the project, Amazon being an obvious example, will react. 

The Geneva-based not-for-profit Libra project backed by eBay, Mastercard, Visa, PayPal, Spotify and Uber, among others, faces significant privacy and security challenges and US and EU regulatory authorities have already marked their intentions to challenge Libra at every turn. 

When I caught up with the Nye, Read and Strong, the Libra story wasn’t too far from any of their lips. Nye says he sees “both positives and negatives” with Libra, while admitting that an individual’s financial data is “highly vulnerable”. Read opines that Libra will “take a lot of power away form central authorities” and talks about Facebook’s potential given its multi-platform offerings like Instagram and WhatsApp. Strong thinks Libra is a good thing because it will “bring awareness [of crypto] to the man in the street”.  

Nick Jones, CEO and founder of the soon to be launched Zumo Money app, says: ”As a founder, it's great to see the Blockchain and crypto community developing so rapidly in Edinburgh. There is a massive opportunity for Scotland to establish itself as one of the global centres for this emerging sector, especially in fintech with the depth of experience in the space. Having Michael Nye and other top influencers visit the Wayra accelerator is a real bonus for us as alumni as we can access their expert knowledge. As we prepare to publicly launch Zumo and prepare to scale from our current team of 20, its reassuring to see that Edinburgh can attract top talent in this area. A second high quality intake of startups starting the Wayra program really validates this.”

In conversation with Jones and Wayra accelerator mentor Daniel Lesnick, both identified a few of the exciting startups to watch from the current cohort. Sage City is creating a Blockchain network that utilises so-called sidechains to help organisations improve efficiencies and lower costs, Ocyan is an infrastructure platform that enables cloud applications to scale up in the Blockchain space and Trace is helping businesses locate, protect and visualise data. 

Fintech: to disrupt or not to disrupt?, by Nick Freer

At a developer conference in the US last month, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said: “Payments is one of the areas where we have an opportunity to make it a lot easier. I believe it should be as easy to send money to someone as it is to send a photo.” Facebook insiders say the team developing the new currency, a digital coin linked to the value of the dollar, has reached out to crytpocurrency exchanges - through which users could store their coins safely or convert the Facebook coins into other cryptocurrencies - and registered a new company in Switzerland to develop the required software and infrastructure. 

When I was discussing this story with Scottish entrepreneur, adviser and investor Richard Braidwood last week, Braidwood made some interesting points about the generally accepted terminology in the sector. “You could argue”, says Braidwood, “that there is a continual over use of the term ‘disruptive Fintech’. In the conversations we’ve had with investors and potential clients and partners, we repeatedly have to position ourselves as a non-disruptive enabler that is looking to work across the Financial Services industry.” 

Braidwood’s latest venture, Visible Capital, where he is a co-founder alongside Ross Laurie and Christian Burgin, uses PSD2/Open Banking data to automate the information required to onboard customers in the wealth sector, aiming to reduce friction for customers, providing accurate insight for investment managers and moving the whole market toward real-time customer insight.

We proceeded to talk about the whole definition of Fintech. Startups who use technology to offer existing financial services at lower costs with better customer experience? Technology companies who provide payment services (commentators are predicting that Facebook will release its cryptocurrency later this year)? Or incumbent financial firms investing billions into innovation? Braidwood references Lloyd’s at this point, with the banking group in the process of transforming its digital banking experience, as part of a £3 billion investment programme that will create 500 new jobs in Edinburgh. On this basis, Braidwood suggests that we should perhaps be thinking of Lloyds as Scotland’s largest Fintech based on the existing broad definition of the sector. 

Visible Capital’s co-founder also takes issue with the term disruption. “Disruption entered the startup ecosystem as a cultural ethos within small tech businesses who believed their innovation would gain them large market share from incumbent organisations. But, for me, disruption is causing upheaval with a lack of positive contribution, in fact it frequently destroys, while innovation is about improvement to an existing process, product, service or sector. Most Fintechs are not disruptive, instead they are enabling ways to improve the customer journey and experience, innovating to remove operational inefficiencies, and streamline and enhance regulatory compliance.” 

I was curious to hear who Braidwood is most excited about on the Scottish scene and was not too surprised by his answer, Blockstar Developments. Blockstar is in the final pre-launch phase of its Zumo app, having been one of the first companies invited onto Wayra’s Edinburgh Blockchain accelerator. Zumo will enable customers to easily acquire crypto currencies, store them securely and exchange them with traditional currency seamlessly within its digital wallet. A Convertible Debit Card will allow users to spend crypto just like ordinary money. Having raised £1.5 million in seed money last July, the team is set for a significant series A round later this year. 

On the international scene, Braidwood identifies Ripple, a California-based global Blockchain settlements network that provides liquidity for foreign exchange reserves and allows companies to make cross-border payments in XRP, the cryptocurrency developed by its founders. “It will drastically reduce cross border payments remittence from days to seconds while reducing the cost to the end consumer, says Braidwood. Ripple has over 200 clients worldwide, including some of the world’s largest banks and commentators point to the company as being well positioned to serve as a world reserve currency. 

An edited version of this article appeared in The Scotsman on Monday 3rd June

Building a funnel of high growth companies in Scotland, by Nick Freer

There was some unfortunate news from the Scottish tech scene last week, with the announcement that IT network deployment specialist Hutchinson Networks had gone into administration with the loss of around one hundred jobs. I spent some time engaging with the company last year around its communications requirements and, like many others I’m sure, got the impression that things were pointed in the right direction with growing UK and international sales.

At the same time, the company was only a year on from securing a £2 million plus financing round that came seven years after Hutchinson was founded. So, as a friend from the tech community remarked this week, perhaps sales were not quite as strong as advertised. Whatever the case, hopefully Scotland’s industry skills shortage means that the Hutchinson folks who lost their jobs will find new employment in the near term.  

While this episode is a lowlight for Scottish tech, there are encouraging signs of Scottish tech scale-ups on the verge of making significant breakthroughs. In areas like cloud computing, healthech and fintech, the collective hope is that Scotland’s most promising scale-ups can reach what might be described as pre-unicorn status - in other words, technology scale-companies that can realistically move towards $1 billion valuations.  

High calibre venture capitalists I have spoken to about the subject say that other UK tech hubs outside London, including Manchester and Cambridge, are doing a better job of producing these pre-unicorn candidates but that the stars are starting to align for Scotland - we just need to move a lot quicker. We might learn some lessons from LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partners partner Reid Hoffman who writes about “blitzscaling, the lightning-fast path to building massively valuable companies” in his latest book.

Of course, tech ecosystem success in Scotland is not going to rely on how many unicorns we produce but the general consensus seems to be that a much stronger bedrock of £50-100 million-valued companies (described as a “funnel of high growth companies” by an entrepreneur and startup investor contact yesterday) would be a big step in the right direction. In reality, you would expect companies to be taken out at this level - by way of acquisitions or IPOs - so Scottish unicorns may prove to be truly mythical beasts in the years ahead.   

At the E2E #ScaleUp2Success event at Spaces in Edinburgh last Wednesday evening, Scottish Business Network founding director Russell Dalgleish shared the generally accepted definition of a scale-up (which comes from the UK’s ScaleUp Institute) as a company with 5 or more employees, north of £1 million in revenues and turnover growth of at least 20 per cent for three years straight.  

Clyde Blowers Capital CEO and chairman Jim McColl, who revealed news about his new banking venture positioned to support SMEs, talked about having a “big vision” and getting “the right people who will find the way ahead”. “If you have 1 per cent of the market”, said McColl, “you need to think about how you get to 3 per cent”.

Cortex Worldwide Founder and CEO Peter Proud said tenacity is integral to scale-up success. “Build something that is scaleable”, said Proud whose company counts Microsoft as its main customer, “hire well”, “aim high” and “keep going”. Five years on from starting up, Cortex has built a market-leading technology platform, a high quality team to match, is self-funded by revenue and has credentials in spades to be one of the next big things in Scottish tech.    

There was some great news for Scotland’s creative industries scene last week with the launch of the Creative Bridge accelerator at CodeBase. Through priming candidates with entrepreneurial and digital skill sets, the exotic mix of creative talent and technology could lead to powerhouse companies of the future.