Scotland set to support Germany's hydrogen revolution, guest post by David Scrimgeour MBE, who was recently appointed by the Bavarian Government as an adviser on hydrogen opportunities in Scotland

Globally, hydrogen is increasingly seen as a key element in the decarbonisation of industry and transport. Scotland has the opportunity to transition from being an exporter of fossil fuels to exporting hydrogen produced from renewable energy. This week a summary of the Scot2Ger feasibility study was published. The study is an analysis of the potential for building a green hydrogen supply chain for the export of green hydrogen to Germany.

The topic of hydrogen imports for Germany has taken on new significance with the war in the Ukraine and the drastic reduction of gas supplies from Russia. For fifty years German industry has benefited from cheap Russian energy in the form of coal, oil and gas. This dependence has now resulted in an existential threat to the economy with the prospect of the loss of tens of thousands of jobs, particularly in the south German states of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. The German Government has responded by scouring the world for new suppliers and by asking gas customers to reduce their use. 

Germany’s National Hydrogen Strategy envisages over 70% of Germany’s requirement for low carbon hydrogen by 2050 to be met by imports. The Government has allocated €2 billion for establishing international partnerships with countries such as Morocco, Namibia, Australia and Chile. European countries including Norway, Ireland and Iceland are also on the list of possible partners. And Scotland, with its huge onshore and offshore wind resource, has already been visited by a number of delegations from Germany.

The most recent visit to Glasgow and Aberdeen was from Bavaria and led by the Economic Affairs and Energy Minister Hubert Aiwanger. Bavaria is an industrial powerhouse with leading companies including BMW, Siemens, Audi, MAN and hundreds of “Mittelstand” companies which are exporting all over the globe. However, with the closure of all nuclear power stations in Germany by the end of this year and the threat to energy supplies as a result of the war in the Ukraine, Bavaria is now urgently looking for reliable partners for the future supply of hydrogen.

In Glasgow I had the opportunity to present the Scot2Ger study which I have been coordinating. Together with ScottishPower and Wood we have concluded that it will be possible to start exporting green hydrogen and derivatives to Germany by 2025. The initial quantities, produced from onshore wind, will be relatively small and transported by ship. A rapid ramp up after 2030 will be possible when production from offshore wind commences and transport to mainland Europe is by new and repurposed pipelines.

Scotland has a tremendous opportunity to build a domestic hydrogen industry which can also supply the German market estimated to be worth up to €40 billion per year by 2050. There are certainly technological and logistical challenges and enormous investment will be required. However, the benefit to Scotland from this export business in my view will not only be the resulting energy transition of the Oil and Gas industry but also the chance for communities in Shetland, Orkney, Ayrshire and elsewhere to accelerate the development of decentralised energy hubs.

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 25th June 2022

Munich calling and alma mater entrepreneurs, by Nick Freer

It was good to get out with The Scotsman’s business editor during the week.  I don’t think we actually talked that much shop, with the main subject of conversation revolving around our favourite album cover artwork.  For my two cents, Birth of Cool and Sketches of Spain, both by Miles Davis, have got to be in the running.  Just for the record.  Excuse the pun.

One industry related thing we did discuss was the closure of Scottish Business Insider magazine. Thankfully, Insider’s online daily news site remains, although admittedly shorthanded with only one reporter, who doubles as the editor, captaining the ship.

Overall, we’re lucky to have such a strong corps of business reporters in Scotland, and ideally we would have an even greater critical mass, so let’s hope we don’t see too much more contraction.

Munich calling

It was good to meet another friend and contact, David Scrimgeour MBE, over on a business trip from Munich on Tuesday.  David, a former Scottish Government investment representative to Germany who now resides there, has single-handedly driven business links between Bavaria and Scotland in recent times.  Watch this space for a major renewables initiative David has helped broker, set to hit the headlines over the next few days.

From knowing David over the years, I’ve picked up on a few things, not least the strong levels of goodwill that exists in Bavaria towards Scotland.  No surprise then that Scotland has something in the order of 17 towns and cities twinned with Bavarian counterparts, including Edinburgh, with Munich being the first city Scotland’s capital linked up with back in 1954.

Bavaria is an economic powerhouse - just think of BMW and Siemens, only two of the mega corporates headquartered there - and surely Scotland needs to foster this international relationship with even greater attention, particularly when you consider that in the backdrop German exports to the UK have dropped by around 25 per cent since Brexit.

Food for thought the next time you’re devouring a bratwurst, best washed down with a cold weiss (white) beer.

Alma mater

I had a good chat with tech entrepreneur Ross Tuffee over coffee at Contini’s on George Street on Thursday.  Tuffee founded mobile software startup Dogfish at the advent of the smartphone, going on to sell the business in a multi-million pound deal in 2017.

In 2020, on the back of the Logan Report, he was appointed chair of the Digital Technologies Skills Group that supports Skills Development Scotland (SDS) around the advancement of digital skills - a seriously pressing issue for Scotland in 2022.

Tuffee launched Founder.scot earlier this year to further peer-to-peer learning within Scotland’s startup community, with a particular eye on founders who are only a few years into their entrepreneurial journeys.

One of the insightful takeaways from Ross was around the importance of university alumni in sparking entrepreneurial activity at their alma mater.  In fact, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s world renowned entrepreneurial centre only came to life when ten locally based alumni reconnected with MIT and ran seminars which led to the publication of “How to Start Your Own Business” in 1974.

In due course, I fully expect that we will hear more from Ross on the importance of alumni in the Scottish context.

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 18th June 2022

Out of the office, by Nick Freer

When you run a business, it’s hard to really get away from it all, so it was with something short of a full level of commitment that I switched my out-of-office reply on this week while on holiday with the family in Spain.  

A 2019 survey by LinkedIn found that almost two-thirds of professionals admitted to checking in while they were away, with over 80 per cent of Gen Zers emailing or taking calls when on vacation.  

Of course, things have changed since 2019, the pandemic pretty much took care of that.  And because we’ve all spent so much time out of the office, being ‘OOO’ has got a different meaning these days anyhow.  

Because we’ve not been able to vacation abroad for the last couple of years, I think there’s a general feeling that holidays have become more sacred.  But that can also add pressure in wanting to have a perfect holiday, in no small part to make up for all the ones we’ve lost.

While I’ve tried to be quite relaxed about going on vacation (admittedly it helps that my wife organised the whole thing), I definitely had high expectations jetting off to the Mediterranean this time around - from a smooth airline/airport experience (haha, fail), a nice apartment with all the mod cons, good food and wine, a couple of fun day trips and, most of all, for us all to have a nice time together.  

Doing a very small straw poll of my own, I asked my daughter if she was having a good time and what score she would give the holiday out of 10.  “9”, she said.  “What”, I asked her, “would make it a 10?”.  “Not having to share a bedroom with my brother” was her reply.  Standard sibling sentiment.

In his book, the Art of Travel, modern-day philosopher and author Alain de Botton is excited by the prospect of going on holiday to Barbados until the reality sets in that he will have to take his complicated self to his Caribbean destination.  

It’s fair to say the last couple of years have been complicated and, although we homo sapiens are a resilient lot, I do think it has taken a toll on all of us, to lesser or greater extent. 

I was out for a beer with a friend, who also happens to be a well known entrepreneur, a few weeks’ back who was extolling the virtues of personal development coaching.  To work on mindset, stay positive, improve focus on work and home life, and generally live a more fulfilling life.  

To his credit, literally, this gentleman of a guy who I am fortunate to call a pal said he wanted to pay for my first session at a local practice he has used and recommends.  In the week that I celebrate a big birthday, I’m going to take him up on his kind offer.  I can be resistant to change, but also realise the importance of wellbeing, so maybe this old dog can learn some new tricks.

And how did I do at checking my email inbox while on holiday?  I actually got to day four without checking in.  For me, that counts as a personal record.  Small victories. 

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 11th June 2022

They came, they saw, they conquered, by Nick Freer

Stewart Review

They came, they saw, they conquered.  Chapeau to the Ukrainian football team.  As a Scotland supporter in the Tartan Army at Hampden, I didn’t really feel the team or the crowd got into the game.  Ach well, win some, lose some, as they say.  

Speaking earlier in the day to Ana Stewart about her Women in Enterprise Review, Ana was full of anticipation for the game and was looking forward to VIP hosting duties as a board member at the Scottish Football Association.

Three months in, Stewart has just completed the discovery phase of the review, engaging with over one hundred individuals and groups from the business scene, and it was announced this week that Mark Logan will co-author the report due out later this year.  

As an entrepreneur, Ana founded and floated IT company i-design, subsequently acquired by US-based ATM group Cardronics Inc. in 2013, a partner with investment firm Eos Advisory, and an adviser and non-executive director with a number of organisations, Stewart is well placed to lead the review into how lasting improvements can be made to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Scotland.

I think it’s fair to say that everyone who meets Ana finds her to be an exceptionally nice person.  What might be somewhat lesser known, is that Ana played competitive doubles tennis with Judy Murray, and has a Spanish mother, from Jerez in Spain.  

EICC

The Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) featured across global media this week, as Chicago-headquartered Hyatt Hotels Corporation announced plans for a hotel in Scotland’s capital in partnership with the conference venue.  It will be Hyatt’s first hotel in this country, while representing a key piece of the EICC’s evolving business model.  

Hyatt’s press release referenced Edinburgh as “one of the world’s most celebrated capital cities”, while picking out Edinburgh Castle, the National Museum of Scotland, the Old Town, St James’ Quarter, the New Town, and George Street as ‘must see’ spots around town.

Having hosted TED Summits and former US Presidents like Barack Obama in recent times, not many businesses were hit harder than the EICC when the pandemic struck, and in-person business events came to a grinding halt.

Pivoting to become Edinburgh’s main vaccination centre in 2021, while running virtual events until they could welcome conferences and delegates back into the building, the EICC found a way to adapt, underpinned by a tenacious and resilient team, and has come out stronger on the other side.

The hotel and hotel school based near Haymarket will address the delegate demand issues the EICC has historically faced, and provide a pipeline of qualified people for Scotland’s leisure and tourism sector.

Out of office

Partly to celebrate a big birthday, we are jetting off to the warmer climes of the Mediterranean this weekend, our first time abroad since 2019.  It will also be the first time I have switched on my out-of-office reply for what feels like about three years.  

On the subject, it was interesting to read about a campaign by the Icelandic tourist board, where tourists flying into Iceland can get a local horse to trot over a large, custom-made keyboard mat to craft an out-of-office message.  Yes folks, sometimes fact is indeed stranger than fiction. 

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 11th June 2022

Are local funding options for tech ENOUGH? By Nick Freer

Earlier this month, Scottish Enterprise reached a significant milestone with its early stage co-investment activity leveraging over £2 billion of private sector investment since 2003.

In a blog to mark the news, Scottish Enterprise’s Kerry Sharp, Director of Entrepreneurship and Investment, broke down some of the numbers.  Overall, Scottish Enterprise has invested around £770 million into early stage businesses, delivering roughly £6 of economic impact for every £1 invested.

Sharp picked out two companies that have made an impression on her from the hundreds of startups and spin-outs Scottish Enterprise has backed over the years - University of Edinburgh spin-out Speech Graphics, now a scale-up specialising in facial animation technology that counts Warner Brothers and Microsoft among its client base, and Roslin Innovation Centre-based life sciences company Carcinotech.

Constrained by a blog format, Kerry admitted she could have identified many more, but I think she made a couple of strong picks.  Getting to hang out with Speech Graphic’s CEO Gregor Hofer recently at EIE London, and managing PR around for Ishani Malhotra-led Carcinotech’s investment announcement last month, both companies undoubtedly add richness to Scotland’s startup tapestry.

In advising some of Scotland’s prominent investment firms who back early stage companies here as co-investors with Scottish Enterprise - firms like Eos Advisory, TRICAPITAL, and Par Equity - I’ve observed a few trends that indicate our startup to scale-up scene is headed in the right direction.

While, on the face of it, 2021 saw a record level of investment into Scotland’s startup and scale-up scene, scratching the surface I’ve definitely noticed more participation in deals from investors and venture capitalists (VCs) from both the rest of the UK, and further afield.

In the year that COP26 came to Scotland, two investment deals secured by scale-ups with sustainability at their core are noteworthy.  In June, vegan protein startup Enough, formerly named 3FBio and a former University of Strathclyde spin-out that was first backed by St Andrews investment firm Eos, raised £36 million in a Series B funding round represented by investors from the Netherlands, France, and Greece.

In November, on the occasion of COP in Glasgow, vertical farming startup Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) announced a £42 million Series B funding round, backed by institutional investors from Dundee, Chicago, and Switzerland.

We know Scotland can produce innovative technologies that can address global challenges and make impact at scale.  ENOUGH and IGS are two shining examples, and by securing chunky Series B rounds from tier one VCs, they can really go after top people talent, scale at speed, and even look to grow by acquisition.   

So, we know we have a strong pipeline of innovative companies emerging, a strong network of angel syndicates and a supportive enterprise agency to fund our early stage tech companies, and then the bigger cheques from VCs are clearly there when companies have proven they can scale.

What will be illuminating over the next few years, is how many companies we can get from the early stage level to the IGS or ENOUGH category.   Speaking to a well known investment firm last week, its team believe we need better local funding options at Series A to C, and only then will we really start to internationalise our tech sector.

Joining up the dots in the war for talent, by Nick Freer

It can be nice when the dots join up, like this week when one client, fast growth tech group Stellar Omada, announced a tie-up with another, private bank Hampden & Co.  

Colin Frame-led Stellar Omada took on 50 people in the first quarter, and remains in hire mode during 2022.  All good you would think, but it turns out there’s something of a fly in the ointment.  

According to CEO Frame: “While we’ve already brought a load of people into the business this year, we need even more people to come on board.  While there is great tech talent in Scotland, we’re finding that the size of the talent pool is starting to constrain our growth plans, so we’re actively looking at ways we can develop home grown talent.”

Catching up with dynamo developer recruiter Kelli Buchan, who has helped a ton of companies hire engineers, FanDuel, Current Health, and Deliveroo among them, Buchan paints a picture of a glass that is both half full and half empty.

As Kelli puts it: “2021 saw a record level of investment into Scotland’s start-up and scale-up companies.  This is extremely impressive, and is testament to the calibre of start-ups Scotland is producing.  It is also a consequence of the exceptional talent we have harvested in tech.”

“The challenge”, says Buchan, “is that there is not enough talent to meet the hiring demand created by the investment into these companies.  Remote working has opened up opportunities worldwide resulting in higher salaries for employees, and the biggest challenge is that Scottish tech companies now have to compete with this.” 

Of course, tech startups are also competing in the war for talent against more traditional sectors of industry like banking, and against established global tech groups like Amazon who have bases in Scotland.

The war for talent, a phrase coined by a McKinsey & Co executive in the late nineties, is not just about attracting talent, it’s also about retaining it.  

It’s something I had a chat with Denholm Associates CEO and Founder Nicki Denholm about.  Denholm itself has doubled headcount since 2020 and as Nicki commented on the occasion of the recruitment specialist’s annual results earlier this year:

“When you look at areas like remote working, hybrid working, mental health and wellbeing, these subjects, quite rightly, have more importance today in the world of work than at any point before. Employers can’t ignore how these changes are influencing employees’ attitudes to how and where they want to work. Their employer brand is absolutely integral to attracting and retaining people, and their ability to be competitive in today’s war for talent.” 

This week, digital skills academy CodeClan added Skyscanner, DC Thomson, and Sainsbury’s Bank to its stable of industry partners, with these companies sourcing tech talent from the pipeline of graduates coming out of CodeClan. 

Skyscanner’s Vice-President of Engineering, Andrew Phillips, had a nice perspective in the press release we put out on Thursday: “Welcoming our newest cohort of CodeClan grads is particularly special for me.  I joined Skyscanner at the beginning of my engineering career, back in 2009, so I know how much opportunity our grads have to make an impact.”

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 21st May 2022

Which Central bank has the hardest juggling act? Guest post by Aneeka Gupta, Director, Macroeconomic Research at exchange traded fund provider WisdomTree

Central banks are caught between a rock and a hard place. Inflation is soaring globally alongside waning demand. Russia’s war in Ukraine caused a sharp shift in the source of inflation from being demand-led to a more supply-led inflationary environment. A supply-led inflationary environment beckons a different response from policymakers. Investors today are paying the high cost of policymakers delayed response to rising inflation. 

The Russia/Ukraine war continues to raise supply concerns for crude oil, refined products and natural gas resulting in higher energy prices. The knock-on effect of higher energy prices has been felt across the commodity spectrum – including industrial metals and agricultural commodities. 

Russia and Ukraine are the largest exporters of wheat, processed nickel, and fertilizers. As the conflict persists, we expect pressures on supply chains to mount. At the same time, China’s stubborn adherence to the dynamic zero Covid policy has led to reduced mobility, productivity and with that a weaker economic growth outlook. Global supply chains continue to be challenged with congestions at Chinese ports increasing. 

It’s important to bear in mind that each of these central banks – the Federal Reserve (Fed), the European Central Bank (ECB), the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) and the Bank of England (BOE) are on very different journeys in their efforts to quell inflation. On 4 May, the Fed hiked rates by 50 Basis points (Bps) and signalled its intention to deliver an additional 100Bps in rate hikes over the coming months. The US labour market remains healthy, and employment is rising strongly. While the ECB faces a more uncertain growth outlook in Europe, labour markets are not as tight, but inflation is picking up more rapidly than expected. 

As the ECB turns more hawkish, we expect rate hikes to follow in July, September and at the turn of the year. The BOE appears to be caught somewhere between the Fed and the ECB when it comes to policy tightening. The UK growth story is much closer to Europe whilst the UK’s labour market resembles that of the US. The BOE has hiked four times since 2021. The dovish set of forecasts by the BOE suggest the Bank’s tightening cycle will be much less aggressive. 

In contrast, weaker economic data alongside lower inflation should provide a window for policy easing by the PBOC. At the start of 2022, the market expected significant policy support to be announced to bolster the Chinese economy amid a deepening property sector slowdown. However, policy support by the PBOC has not been as generous as seen in previous cycles. The Chinese Renminbi has weakened in the face of Covid lockdowns. The PBOC will want to avoid further depreciation of the Renminbi at all costs. As it has warned before, a depreciating Renminbi would boost exports at the cost of lowering the consumption share of gross domestic product (GDP) by reducing the real value of household income. 

We believe more policy support is on its way, but most of the focus will likely be on credit easing and fiscal stimulus. Infrastructure Capital expenditure (CAPEX) has emerged as a national policy focus, marking a potential inflexion point for China's infrastructure downturn. As we look to H2 2022, it's clear that the role of central banks in quelling inflation without tipping the economy into recession will take centre stage.

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 14th May 2022

Warning: this blog may contain oats, guest post by George Mackintosh, Director of Papple Steading in East Lothian and the Chairman and co-founder of Mackintosh Oats

My new business partner Gregor Mackintosh, who is also one of my nephews, is off to Denmark this week as a delegate on an Opportunity North East [Scotland] mission to see how Denmark has achieved European leadership in food innovation. The Danes certainly have more global food and drink brands than Scotland and as an economy they outperform us on health, education, welfare, poverty and productivity indexes. But are they happier? Just checked: they are!

Gregor has served the Scottish economy well, having built the UK’s largest cold-pressed rapeseed oil business from scratch. It’s an operation proving to be ever more relevant to food supply chains since other plant oils are in extreme short supply because of the war in the Ukraine.

Our new venture in oat “milk” is responding to the upward consumption trend of plant-based drinks and the fact that there’s not a significant Scottish oat drink business. And, there are consumers in the other home nations and overseas countries who would appreciate a Scottish drink with a strict provenance to parallel Scotch whisky.

Allen Walker Read in his book Agricultural History in 1934 reminds us of the observations of a famous English scholar: “The most notable association of a country with a certain food is that of Scotland with oats. The idea found its classic expression in 1755 when Samuel Johnson, in his Dictionary of the English Language, set forth his definition of the word oats: “A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”" Get over being patronised by a Sachanach! Oats are as Scottish as whisky and oatcakes, porridge oats, brose…even better Atholl Brose. Eat up!

Before my interests in agricultural heritage through our restoration of AJ Balfour’s Papple Steading, I used to lobby for British corporates to support tech start-ups by adopting digital inventions. That would help fledgling companies build a profitable home base and propel them toward international sales. That’s happening in places like Israel and the USA. Boy, it’s difficult to get the UK’s big businesses and public bodies to buy new stuff from small businesses. Now with the terrible strife in eastern Europe and the consequential upset to food supply and costs affecting us here in Scotland, we should consider supporting British food and drink produce.

Recently I saw 140,000 hectares being cleared in the north east of Brazil in only one municipal area which is located to the east of the Amazon Basin. Native shrubland is being mechanically torn down and burnt before modern farming techniques are used to grow crops – with two harvests in each calendar year. Soya is the main crop. Soya milk anyone?

We do have bodies that can help us compete with other agrarian economies. I’ve mentioned Opportunity North East and we have the SRUC (Scotland’s Rural College) and Queen Margaret University. So, let’s not jump to regulate or finger-wag. That Brazilian farmer is a nice guy with a family to support. Let’s make decisions that are good for our health, good for the Scottish economy in creating more jobs and prosperity and good for our planet. Grow things that suit our land – rape seed oil, barley, oats, potatoes, carrots, and eat and drink the things we have in abundance. Cheers!

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 7th May 2022

Innovation buzz, guest post by Anna Brow, Head of Comms and PR, Startup Grind Scotland

If you sit down in any coffee shop in San Francisco, I guarantee you will overhear at least one entrepreneur interviewing potential co-founders or pitching investors their latest big idea.

From across the world, visionaries flock to Silicon Valley to pitch the next Uber or Netflix. It is the new American dream - a world built on selling ideas to the highest bidder. It’s easy to see why. There is an electric pull to this slice of the Californian coast: the sunshine, welcoming people, and the buzz of innovation that draws you in. 

I found myself earlier this month alongside twenty of Scotland’s most exciting tech entrepreneurs and the rest of the Startup Grind Scotland team, Dec McLaughlin, Caroline Melendez and Nick Murray. We spent a week immersed in the tech mecca, meeting fellow founders, visiting leading tech companies, and attending Startup Grind’s Global Conference - culminating in a private pitch party with over fifty US-based investors.

From the outset, we envisioned bringing together a diverse group of founders from various backgrounds, walks of life, and ways of thinking. As Tzaritsa Asante, founder of web3 fashion disrupter Tzar!, said, “In such diversity, you are permitted to grow.” This year’s cohort was a true representation of Scotland’s entrepreneurial sector: a shining example of what we have to offer the world. 

In his 2020 report, Mark Logan presented his vision of a world-leading Scottish technology ecosystem. Our programme funding was based on his recommendations, and we are tremendously grateful to the Scottish Government for levelling the playing field and enabling founders from across the country to travel to Silicon Valley. 

As forerunners in innovation, it is clear why we look towards the Valley’s tech leaders to incorporate their way of thinking at home. Nvidia blew us away with the company’s deep capabilities in AI, walking a line between science fiction, reality and ethics. Startup Grind’s Global Conference presented creative web3 applications, from decentralised communities to how the blockchain can ensure inclusion in a historically white and male space. 

But we must not only look outwards: Scotland’s tech leaders have much to offer the world. At UserTesting HQ, CEO Andy McMillan said, "Scotland has a unique tech industry," with more untapped tech talent available than he's seen worldwide. Our next challenge is to ensure that Scottish talent is highlighted on the global map. We're excited to work alongside Scottish Development International to help make this a reality. 

A highlight since our return has been hearing Kate Forbes MSP champion the programme's success to Holyrood. There is more to learn about how the broader impact of this experience will ripple across tech businesses in Scotland. Given the reception that this trip has already had, it's easy to imagine what could be possible with more funding, more founders and more excursions.

Scottish businesses are competing on the global stage. Our entrepreneurs are as driven, unforgiving and innovative as those in Silicon Valley, but their magic lies in their empathy and understanding of their businesses' impact. We may have a lot to learn from the Valley, but we have a wealth to share, too. If this cohort represents the next generation of tech leaders in Scotland, we're in safe hands. 

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 30th April 2022

Scottish tech puts best foot forward in London, by Nick Freer

EIE London rolled into the London Stock Exchange this week following a hiatus of a few years due to…..you guessed it. 

The Scottish technology companies that featured at EIE London were agritech star Intelligent Growth Solutions, ultrasound sensor specialist Novosound, facial animation scale-up Speech Graphics, and online brand protection business SnapDragon.  

SnapDragon CEO Rachel Jones recounted how a car seat for kids her previous company developed was faked, an episode which led to Jones founding SnapDragon to “fight fakes online”.  Half a trillion dollars is lost to illicit trade very year, and fakes lurk in both B2C and B2B said Jones.  The software developed by SnapDragon can help to remove an illicit product or seller from Amazon in less than five minutes, and the company has already saved organisations over £100 million, including the Scottish Government in relation to PPE during the early days of the pandemic.  

Speech Graphics shot to international fame working on music videos with Kayne West and video games like Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, with its facial animation technology now seeing uptake from various industries outside the entertainment sector, particularly around the advent of the metaverse, web3, and avatars.  As CEO and co-founder Gregor Hofer put it, “avatars are a great way to interact with your audience, and increase your chances of concluding an e-commerce transaction”.  With a sales force in San Francisco, a developer unit in Budapest, in addition to the core team in Edinburgh, Speech Graphics is in classic scale-up mode. 

Novosound was the youngest company to present at EIE London, only founded in 2018 as the University of the West of Scotland’s first ever spin-out.  CEO and co-founder Dave Hughes described himself as a “recovering academic”, although in 2022 Novosound has a commercial nous that would many much more established startups would envy.  Customers include GE Aviation, the world’s largest manufacturer of jet engines, and the company has grown headcount to 30, while more than quadrupling year-on-year revenue.

David Farquhar, the CEO of Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) who announced a £42.2 million Series B funding round at COP26 in Glasgow last November, explained how the company’s 42 square metre vertical farms produce the equivalent of 4 hectares, and are one thousand times more efficient than a standard field.  By way of a different explanation, Farquhar says an ISG farm can grow broccoli in 11-12 days, rather than 11-12 weeks.  The company hit £100 million of sales last month, is hiring three people every week, and its technology was recently positioned as one of the 15 technologies that can change the world by The Economist. 

On my way to pre-dinner drinks on my first night in London, I spotted friend and adviser George Mackintosh with two of his young children at a cafe in Covent Garden, a miraculous spot all things considered.  I didn’t know George was going to be in London, a city of however many million people.  On the other side of the street, and in a rush to avoid being late, I didn’t stop to say hello, but somewhat spookily George texted me about a press announcement we’re working on together only a few minutes later.  As they say, what are the chances?

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 23rd April 2022

Wining, dining, and low-rate philosophising, by Nick Freer

Following two years of the pandemic, it’s noticeable from Zoom calls alone that growing numbers of people are back in the office.  I’ve had a few meetings back in client’s offices, although relatively few and far between, and still outnumbered by coffees, lunches and the occasional dinner in the city centre.  

I think there can be a notion that PR people are always out wining and dining and, while this can be true to an extent, I’m always happiest at my desk, getting through the actual work.  Next week, we are handling four, possibly five, client announcements, and there is a lot of groundwork that goes into each.  I love a long lunch as much as the next guy or gal, and there is definitely a place for them, but I prefer to be in control of the ongoing drafts and email chains from in front of my computer screen.   

Pre-pandemic, I can remember days of coffees, lunches, oftentimes a dinner or event the same evening.  On reflection, it was too much.  I would end up way behind the curve, working into the evening, and on the weekends.  Post-pandemic, I know I need to introduce more balance. 

Of course, there can be a downside to spending too much time holed up at home if remote working becomes your thing.  Working from my office at home last week, I realised I had not left the house for a couple of days.  Nor was it the first time, and I’m pretty sure that isn’t recommended or, more importantly, healthy.    

This week, I got to catch up in person with my main contacts at fast growth tech group Stellar Omada.  A mid-morning coffee in the zen-like surrounds of the Roku Gin Japanese garden at Tigerlily on George Street was a nice working break from the laptop, and we agreed that meeting up in person trumped the many video calls we’ve done over the last couple of years.  Caffeined up, I was ready to rip into the ‘to do’ list that afternoon.  

The one dinner I did have this week, at Hawksmoor on St Andrew Square, was a chance to catch up with a client CEO over from New York and the managing director of a media publishing group.  Cancelled flights and damned Covid had scuppered a couple of our previous dinner dates, and shooting the breeze over a glass of wine was the kind of human capital you just can’t replicate when talking through the screen of a device.

Another thing I’ve noticed the last few weeks, was how much I’ve missed seeing clients in person.  Meeting up with the head of PR at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre the week before last, you remember how well you’ve got to know people, how much time you’ve spent with them over the years, the genuine interest you have in how they’ve been getting on with everything going on in the world.

A bit like my blog this week, it’s not always about the ‘business chat’.  While I won’t be giving up my day job to become a low-rate philosopher, surely business will always revolve around people, the human being, and empathy.  Or, something like that.

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 16th April 2022

Startups lagging on ESG, by Nick Freer

Environmental, social, and governance - ESG for short - factors have become an important yardstick in the corporate world over the last couple of years.  On the startup scene, founders need to prioritise ESG because investors, customers, and people talent are all likely to quiz companies about what measures they have in place.  

A study last month by a collective of leading European venture capital firms (VCs) found that while startups are doing okay on the S and the G components of ESG, they are way behind the curve when it comes to the E component, environmental. 

Only 11 per cent of companies surveyed currently measure their carbon footprint, while an even lower percentage, 7 per cent, have a policy and programme in place to achieve net zero carbon.  By way of comparison, the average performance of early-stage startups on environmental metrics is almost 50 per lower than social and governance metrics. 

On the upside, the research found that venture-backed businesses adopt better ESG practices as they scale, with notable progress as they move through various funding rounds.  In no small part, this is because environmental, social, and governance factors have become a key part of investment strategy for VCs. 

As Andrew Noble, a partner with Edinburgh investment manager Par Equity, puts it: “We’ve always sought to help management teams build better companies, and ESG has become an increasingly important lever to achieve this.  Our portfolio companies recognise this too and, over the last two years, they’ve been more engaged on ESG than ever before and at a much earlier stage.  Having a robust approach to ESG is very much part of their value creation strategy.” 

Noble adds: “Not only do we use it for an annual assessment of the portfolio, but it’s now part of our pre-investment diligence, setting a baseline ESG score and helping management teams drive the ESG agenda from day one.”

Karen McCormick, chair of ESG_VC, who carried out the survey, says: “Early-stage companies can feel overwhelmed by a plethora of frameworks, acronyms, platforms, and other solutions.  Companies are, therefore, struggling to feel incentivised to invest the substantial time and resources in getting to grips with this complex topic - particularly when a startup’s environmental footprint may feel less impactful than say a global conglomerate.” 

Catching up this week with Laura Westring, senior communications manager with highly-rated Scottish startup Amiqus, Westring said: “The market for carbon removal is still in its infancy and, for early stage businesses, calculating emissions can take several months, with most to be found within supply chains.”  

“I don’t believe these businesses are ignoring the global call for carbon renewal”, Westring continues, “rather many are asking themselves what can feasibly be implemented for real impact, because it’s not as simple as planting a few trees.  One thing is certain though, it’s easier to ask the hard questions about your supply chain while you scale than it is to re-strategise after.”   

According to the poll, companies do much better when it comes to equality, diversity, and inclusion, and mental health.  31 per cent of companies surveyed already provide equality, diversity, and inclusion training staff, with 58 per cent of companies having a policy in place to provide support around mental health and wellbeing.

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 9th April 2022

All roads lead to Ro... London, by Nick Freer

In last year’s annual Scottish Startup Survey, which we ran in partnership with the University of Edinburgh’s Bayes Centre, 72 per cent of startup founders said they expected their company to come out of the pandemic in a stronger position.  This year, it will be interesting to find out how things have panned out for our most innovative, fast growing companies. 

Most high-growth companies require funding to fuel their rocket ships and, on the investment side, 92 per cent of startups polled in the survey said they were targeting investors outside Scotland.  Along these lines, the EIE investor readiness programme run by a team based at the Bayes Centre, is set to announce its first EIE London event since before pandemic times.

London is a global tech capital, and startups headquartered there raised around $25.5 billion in venture capital (VC) investment last year, a mammoth amount that only trails the San Francisco Bay Area ($98.5bn), New York ($46.3bn) and Greater Boston ($28.3bn).  

London’s total investment figure comes from VC firms across the globe, and the scores of firms who are based in the UK’s capital.  Because of this, London provides a gateway to global finance for Scottish startups and it’s vital that we strengthen links between our ecosystems. 

As Scotland continues to build its own successful tech ecosystem, albeit at a vastly smaller scale than the world’s leading tech hubs, many bemoan what is seen as an investment bias towards London that takes investment away from other regions in the UK.  

The hope around EIE London is that we can fire up the narrative, and design an action plan that moves the dial to the advantage of our most exciting tech ventures here.

Women in business

The gender gap in business has become a common narrative in the media over recent years. 

In my own experience, for every female founder I’ve met that has encountered male bias in the business world, there is another female entrepreneur who has excelled without experiencing prejudice to any great extent.  But no one should be content with the status quo.   

Along these lines, it’s encouraging to hear that Ana Stewart will chair the Scottish Government-commissioned Women in Enterprise review - a report that should get to the heart of the matter in the Scottish context by producing key findings and recommendations around barriers facing women in business. 

Ana previously founded and floated IT specialist i-design Group, subsequently acquired by US-based ATM group Cardtronics Inc in 2013, is a partner with investment firm Eos Advisory, a Non-executive Director with the Scottish Football Association, and also sits on the board of startup Bella & Duke and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Scotland (ICAS). 

Stewart is already close to completing the discovery phase of the review, with findings likely to be published by late September, and will focus on a number o areas including education, access to finance and funding, advice, mentoring, and support.

Another key aspect of the report is around what Stewart describes as “robust and resilient” data.  That’s going to be important, according to Stewart, so that we can benchmark and measure progress in the years ahead.

This blog ran in The Scotsman on Saturday 2nd April 2022

On the tech beat across the pond, by Nick Freer

Last week, Startup Grind Scotland held an evening event at CodeBase in Edinburgh to welcome the 20 entrepreneurs who have been selected to join the Silicon Valley trip next month made possible by the Scottish Government’s Technology Ecosystem Fund. 

Nick Murray, Carolina Melendez, Dec McLaughlin, Anna Brow, Emma Loedel, and the rest of the Startup Grind Scotland team have organised an amazing programme, matched by the quality of startup founders picked for the week-long visit to the world’s most successful tech scene.  

As an agency, we’ve had the pleasure of working with many of the startups heading for California through the years - companies like Administrate, PlayerData, Robotical, Coastr, and R3-IoT, who will undoubtedly put their best foot forward and be shining examples of our own tech community here in Scotland. 

I would have loved to join the Scottish cohort jetting out to San Francisco, but a special family birthday back at home - I guess every birthday is a special one when it’s one of your children - ruled that out.  All the same, I can’t wait to keep up with regular posts when the guys and gals are away, and to hear a few good stories when they return. 

The architect of Scotland’s tech ecosystem fund, Mark Logan, was one of the speakers at CodeBase on the night.  Logan recounted his many trips to the Valley, including at the time of the dotcom bubble, its subsequent burst, and  for the purpose of learning from other companies during his time at Skyscanner. 

When on the ground in Silicon Valley, Logan says you soon learn about the “enormous sense of belief”, a mindset to “take on much larger companies”, a “strong sense of competition”, and “how to scale an enterprise”.  He says there is a palpable reverence for best practice, and these learnings can be brought back to Scotland and propagated.

“Great companies come from great ecosystems”, said Logan, “and great ecosystems come from great companies.”  

Commenting on the make-up of the company cohort, the University of Strathclyde’s Head of Investments, Poonam Malik, also a Scottish Enterprise board member, praised the “diversity of age groups, sectors, stages of development, not just the diversity in terms of gender and ethnicity”. 

Victoria Ross from Scottish Development International’s capital investment team, who are hosting a ‘pitch party’ with local investors and GlobalScots on the last night of the Silicon Valley trip, placed importance on “researching the local market”, “using their terminology”, “making relationships”, and having a short and longer pitch deck available.   

In a reverse of the famous Ottoman saying, “if the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain”, tech news this week shows that early stage European startups don’t always have to go to Silicon Valley to engage with the Valley’s top venture capital firms. 

US venture capital giant Sequoia has just launched an accelerator programme in Europeoia-launches-accelerator-programme/ for seed-stage companies, with 15 companies being selected for an eight-week programme that comes with a $1 million investment from Sequoia. 

Applications close in early April, with the programme kicking off in late May.  It would be great to see Scottish representation in Sequoia’s first European cohort. 

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 26th March 2022

Normalising change, by Nick Freer

I was in a taxi last week on the way home from an event at RBS Gogarburn with a business contact who works at Scottish Enterprise, and was interested to hear that he was going back into the enterprise agency's Edinburgh office for the first time in two years.   What a crazy couple of years we said, living and working through pandemic times.

Chatting to a client at a dinner hosted by the Lord Provost of Edinburgh the previous week at Prestonfield House, we agreed that while there can be a good deal of excitement about getting back to the workplace, you can also have an equal measure of anxiety when it comes to getting back into the old routine.  I guess if there was a spectrum with excitement at one end and anxiety at the other, we all place somewhere on this particular yardstick.  

While some people have flourished during Covid, others have floundered, and employers now need to fully commit to the mental health and wellbeing of their employees.  Pre-pandemic, workplace initiatives around mental health could be filed under ‘nice to have’, whereas now it’s a ‘must have’.  

It was something I spoke to Nicki Denholm about when I met the founder of search and recruitment specialist Denholm Associates earlier this month.  As Nicki puts it: “Mental health and wellbeing has more importance today than at any point before.  The nuances around this area, and other workplace factors that have moved up the agenda since the pandemic, are constantly changing and employers need to be on the ball if they want to attract and retain talent.”

Lisa Thomson, the founder and CEO of PurposeHR, acquired by accountancy firm Anderson Anderson & Brown in 2021, says that “from an employer point of view, it’s vitally important to treat employees as individuals, talk to them, seek their feedback and avoid making assumptions or generalisations.” 

“By ensuring their voices are heard”, says Thomson, “people will feel involved in decisions and planning, which will in turn benefit engagement, wellbeing and retention.”

Paul Reid, CEO and co-founder of Trickle, a venture-backed startup that has developed digital tools to increase employee engagement and wellbeing, supporting organisations like the NHS during Covid, says: “The working world has changed beyond recognition in the last two years – being able to normalise change and make it part of everyday work is now essential for organisations to be successful.  Truly understanding what matters most to your employees day by day, is more important than ever before."

While there are new unwritten rules of engagement around looking after your workforce in the wake of the pandemic, widespread research also indicates that most returning workers don’t want to go back to the kind of traditional office they worked in before Covid hit.

Jordan McCaffery, a partner at surveying and design consultancy HK, who count Skyscanner, Incremental Group, Leith, and Whitespace as clients, agrees that companies need to put a lot of thought into what a workplace looks like following two years of remote working: “There is definitely a consideration around softening the transition from people working at home to being back in the office and, two years on, technology is even more integral to how people work in 2022.” 

'Keys for Kyiv', by Nick Freer

This week, we supported non-fungible token (NFT) specialist VAULT around an announcement on how the startup has partnered with three Ukrainian media companies - Ukrainska Pravda, Noyove Vremya, and Hromadske - to help raise funds to support the reporting of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  

The ten thousand NFT keys made available can be used to unlock a digital vault of content curated from the publications’ English-language coverage.  The fundraiser - ‘Keys for Kyiv’ - was the brainchild of VAULT’s CEO and co-founder, Nigel Eccles, who previously co-founded and led fantasy sports platform FanDuel, and his team who are based in various locations across Scotland and North America.  

As a nation, Ukraine is more switched on than many when it comes to cryptocurrency and blockchain, with other Web3-led initiatives by the country’s crypto-friendly government including a donation scheme whereby tens of millions of dollars in digital currency will acquire military supplies for the fight against Russia.

Out for a coffee with investment firm Eos Advisory partners Mark Beaumont and Ana Stewart on Wednesday, Mark told me how one of his fellow adventurer pals, David Fox-Pitt was en route to the Poland-Ukraine border with a convoy of trucks, where Fox-Pitt and his crew plan to provide one thousand meals a day to refugees.

With a strapline, ‘Make Pizza, Not War’, the project is being organised via social enterprise Siobhan’s Trust, set up by Fox-Pitt in 2020 and named after the late Countess of Dundee.  

Last week, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky tweeted that over 61,000 nights had been booked by users of the platform in Ukraine within 48 hours, at a total gross booking value of almost $2 million, as a novel way to send donations.  

As U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris put it at a press conference with the Polish premier in Warsaw on Thursday, “we have seen extraordinary acts of generosity and kindness” since conflict broke out.

Return to the workplace

As people start returning to the workplace after two years in Covid limbo, a Gallup poll in the U.S. this week revealed that while only 6 per cent of white-collar workers worked from home pre-pandemic, that figure had risen to 65 per cent by May 2020.  

While on one hand this percentage seems relatively low, it does illustrate the paradigm shift that took place over a matter of weeks during the first half of 2020.  

Commenting on the findings of the survey, the director of the Centre for WorkLife Law at the University of California said: “The only thing holding back flexible work arrangements (before the pandemic) was a failure of imagination.  That failure was remedied in three weeks’ time in March 2020.” 

Fast forward two years, and LinkedIn is vastly populated this week with posts about people returning to work.  It’s a joyous occasion for many, for others there is anxiety around settling back into the old routine.  Some have weathered the last two years relatively well, others less so.    

It’s a subject I have been speaking to business contacts about this week, and plan to share some of the feedback next weekend. 

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 12th March 2022

Back on the business beat, by Nick Freer

I was going to write a piece for this weekend on how a Scottish tech founder and one of his latest ventures is set to help fund journalism in Ukraine, but as the initiative is still in the finalisation phase it will be a matter of watching this space. 

Writing this week, it seems hard not to reference horrific events in Ukraine and, for the Ukrainian refugees who land in this country, I hope our nation will welcome them all with open arms.

One of our client executives recently married a Ukrainian national, and God only knows what kind of stress they must be under at the moment worrying about family and friends, while another client, fast-growth fintech startup Stellar Omada, works closely with a development partner in Ukraine.  Collectively, we have so many close links with this country and its people.

Business diary

Even as friends and contacts continue to go down with Covid, there is a definite feeling of things opening up again on the business scene.  Tomorrow evening, I am attending the Lord Provost of Edinburgh’s delayed Burn’s Supper at Prestonfield House.  I can’t actually remember the last time I donned a black tie and dinner jacket, so to say my outfit will need a dusting down is an understatement.  

Next week, the companies selected for this year’s EIE22 investor conference gather at RBS Gogarburn, while the following week Startup Grind Scotland, and Equity Gap are each holding events of interest. 

Funded by the Scottish Technology Ecosystem Fund, Startup Grind Scotland is taking twenty entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley in April for what will be a fantastic opportunity to connect with fellow founders, investors and tech groups based in the Valley and San Francisco.  The architect of the ecosystem fund, Mark Logan, will address the lucky guys and gals who have been picked for the trip to California at a closed-door event at CodeBase.  

Equity Gap’s ‘Leaders’ Club’ get together at The Royal Society of Edinburgh is open to founders or CEOs of high-growth, technology-led, early stage companies.  The word on the street says that co-founders from both Skyscanner and FanDuel will feature on the day.  

On the last weekend in March, the organisers of tech conference Turing Fest are running a careers event at the Biscuit Factory in Edinburgh, billed as an opportunity to network with some the UK’s most exciting startups who are looking to hire.  Open to tech professionals of all levels, companies featuring on the day include Trustpilot, FreeAgent, and Machines With Vision.

Day job

Back at the coalface, this week we handled press announcements for Scottish legal firm Anderson Strathern, who appointed former Deloitte partner Mike McGregor as its new Non-executive Director while posting strong annual results, and Glasgow-based Smart Things Accelerator Centre (STAC), Scotland’s first Internet of Things (IoT) accelerator.

Next week, look out for announcements by Scotland’s largest creative agency, a fast-growing online pharmacy business that is in expansion mode in the UK and Europe, and a former private banker from Edinburgh who has co-founded a fashion tech startup in London.  

An edited version of this blog ran in The Scotsman on Saturday 5th March 2022

Moving past the narrative of the tech groups that earned us our spurs, by Nick Freer

2021 saw a record level of investment into Scotland’s technology startup and scale-up companies, with the total amount estimated to be in the region of £650 million.  The upward curve is indicative of global trends, with investors stepping up their investments into innovative tech during pandemic times. 

While the country’s earlier stage startups still rely heavily on the Scottish bedrock of angel syndicates, private investors, and Scottish Enterprise support to fuel their rocket ships, increasingly we are seeing investors outside Scotland invest in our most promising fast-growth companies.  

As we develop a reputation for being a bona fide startup nation, arguably with Edinburgh at its epicentre, it is also important that we move past the narrative of the tech groups that earned us our spurs - Skyscanner and FanDuel.  

While both remain integral to our technology ecosystem, years on from each company achieving an exit - Skyscanner was acquired by Ctrip in 2016, and FanDuel merged with Paddy Power Betfair in 2018 - some wonder when Scotland will start to produce more tech companies valued in the hundreds of millions of pounds. 

Encouragingly, there are signs that our ability to build tech businesses at this kind of scale will be more than a flash in the pan.  Last October, digital health startup Current Health was acquired by US consumer electronics retailer Best Buy for $400 million.   Edinburgh-based investment firm Par Equity led the original seed investment into Current Health, initially branded Snap40, a press announcement we handled for the Chris McCann-led healthcare startup in 2016.

With an eye on the potential for Scotland’s burgeoning healthtech sector, Par Equity plans to invest around 20 per cent of its overall funding of approximately £25 million this year into digital health technologies, evidence of the potential for Scotland’s life sciences and health tech sectors. 

One investment announcement we handled this week was for Clare Wareing-founded Cumulus Oncology, Europe’s first oncology biotech accelerator, which secured a £5.6 million raise led by St Andrews-based investment firm Eos Advisory. Now chaired by GlobalScot and GlaxoSmithKline veteran Dr Russell Grieg, Cumulus definitely sits in the ‘one to watch’ category. 

Research group Beauhurst recently ranked Edinburgh as the UK’s top innovation city, albeit some way behind number one ranked London.  The University of Edinburgh’s informatics school was referenced as one of the central building blocks of of the city’s tech ecosystem, with world-leading expertise in areas like artificial intelligence (AI) and data.  

One of the locally based companies featuring at the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week is Net AI, a University of Edinburgh spin-out developing artificial intelligence to improve efficiencies for 5G network providers. 

Hopefully, Net AI’s CEO and founder Paul Patras and team can create a bit of buzz in Barcelona and get onto the radar of some of the right people in the right places.   

Net AI was one the companies selected for last year’s EIE21 investor readiness programme, run out of the Bayes Centre at Edinburgh University, and with the new EIE22 cohort of startups soon to be announced, it will be interesting to see the next wave of bright young startup stars emerge from the Scottish firmament.  

This blog ran in The Scotsman on Saturday 26th February 2021

The Big Game in crypto, by Nick Freer

Last weekend’s Super Bowl at the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles has been coined the first ‘crypto bowl’ by commentators, with a number of cryptocurrency-related ads featuring among the more traditional adverts for beer, potato chips, movies, and cars.  

A common theme in the cryptocurrency ads was around crypto being the future, as the industry’s main players try to tempt a more mainstream demographic into becoming users of the digital payment system that is integral to the next generation of the web, widely termed Web3.  

Los Angeles Lakers superstar basketball player LeBron James starred in Crypto.com’s ad, revisiting his younger self in the year 2003, with a young LeBron finding it hard to believe that there will be cordless headphones, that people will be able to “watch movies through their phones” or, as he puts it, that “y’all will be driving electric cars”.  

The crypto ad that got the most laughs was FTX’s one minute long advert, where Larry David of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” fame is seen turning down or balking at some of the world’s greatest inventions and advancements at their advent - including the wheel, Thomas Edison’s lightbulb (“Edison, can I be honest with you, it stinks”), the moon landing, and portable music.

The commercial, with a production that included over 100 actors, seven stage sets at a Hollywood studio, and is thought to have cost something in the region of $7 million in airtime alone, ends with David rejecting cryptocurrency exchange FTX, before the ad closes with: “Don’t be like Larry, don’t miss out on the next big thing.” 

As a New York Times columnist wrote this week, “because Larry David doesn’t get crypto, that makes him the perfect pitchman”.  At a time when there are still virtual currency detractors and skeptics aplenty, FTX may have played a masterstroke with one of the most talked about Super Bowl ads in 2022.   

Being in the marketing team at FTX must be full on, but fun.  The virtual currency exchange only launched in 2019, is already valued at over $30 billion and, with an eye on the sporting arena and popular culture, has launched multi-million dollar campaigns in recent months with iconic figures like Tom Brady and uber cool music festival Coachella.  

In January, the Bahamas-based exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried established a venture capital arm, FTX Ventures, with $2 billion to invest in startups working in the social, gaming, fintech, software, and healthcare sectors. 

Closer to home, FTX was one of the lead investors backing Scotland-headquartered BetDEX in November, with the $21 million raise, the largest ever seed investment round secured by a UK startup, backing BetDEX’s mission to create the world’s first decentralised global sports betting protocol.

Commenting on the investment on the occasion of the announcement, Bankman-Fried said: “We are thrilled to be backing a team with deep industry expertise to transform the sports betting experience, and are excited to partner with BetDEX to bring this vision to reality.” 

Currently hiring people from a base in Scotland, BetDEX is set to be a standard-bearer for blockchain and Web3 in the Scottish context. 

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 19th February 2022

Purpose and perspective, by Mark Beaumont, Eos Advisory partner, record-breaking athlete, author, and broadcasater

These days, I often joke about spending half my life in lycra and half in a suit.  Although, like most readers, my suit gets less outings than it used to.  Whatever the attire, I have always maintained that there are far easier ways to make a living.  For sure, profit matters, but purpose is important.  Everyone strives to balance those two P’s. 

Here is another P – perspective.  Last week I was in Spain, training with the Novo Nordisk pro cycling team.  They chewed my legs off in the beautiful Alicante province, taking on legendary climbs like Col du Rates, as if gravity did not apply to them.  Like all athletes, they strive for personal bests, and on some days that is enough to win.  But this team is unique, they are all type 1 diabetic.  They race to educate and to inspire a global fan base that you can still take on your dreams with such a life-changing condition.  I was completely inspired.  

Whilst Team Novo Nordisk knows its audience and has a purpose that is greater than winning. I saw a powerful metaphor for barriers that we all perceive.  You don’t need a medical diagnosis to think that you can’t do something, barriers are all around us, real and imaginary.  

Thinking about my own ‘purpose in lycra’, there was a stage in my career when it was all about trying to break records and scrape a living from doing so.  But, as I near my 40’s, I’ve used my profile to continue to push the limits of ultra-endurance, whilst putting a spotlight on important topics.  For example, if you have time to watch Maiden Race on YouTube, the documentary about a 2000km British gravel race, we could have made this all about racing and winning.  Instead, we showcased the importance of sustainability, equality and breaking down barriers for people.  

Thinking about ‘purpose in a suit’, I’ve been a part of Eos Advisory for four years, investing in predominantly Scottish innovation that’s tackling issues including climate change, quality of life, and food and water security.  I have worked in private equity for much longer, which absolutely has its place in business growth.  But it is the entrepreneurs and innovators who so often answer the big questions of our time, and as I’m not a scientist able to found one of these important companies, the next best thing I can do is put a spotlight on them, invest in them and help nurture their growth.  

Clearly, I can’t do this on my own, and neither did I cycle around the world by myself.  But in terms of purpose, it’s exiting work.  I often think that investors might only have ten per cent of their portfolios in early-stage innovation, but these are the businesses that dominate their enthusiasm and their conversations with friends.  That is because we all want to have purpose in our lives.  Making money is vacuous without it.  

I’ve returned from Spain re-energised for the year ahead.  And, for a team living with a diagnosis that could have stopped them in their tracks, they will tell you that whilst they aren’t the biggest or most successful team, that they have something that is the envy of the peloton, purpose beyond winning and massive impact globally.

Something to aspire to.

This blog ran as an op-ed in The Scotsman on Saturday 12th February 2022