Craftwork, by Nick Freer

Working for top-rated financial and corporate communications agency Maitland in London for a decade from the mid-Nineties, at one stage we were advising around a quarter of the FTSE 100.  Unsurprisingly for an agency that was having so much success, there was regular speculation about several global media groups wanting to snap up the Angus Maitland-founded firm.  

Sir Martin Sorrell’s WPP was never too far removed from the mounting speculation, but ultimately it was French advertising giant Havas that secured a controlling stake.  Fast forward twenty years, and Maitland is now a central piece of Havas’s global financial PR network, AMO, a network that covers every continent and advises on hundreds of M&A deals valued at hundreds of billions of dollars on an annual basis.  

It was a hard decision to leave the agency, particularly when global expansion was afoot, but I was determined to relocate back to Scotland.  From my own perspective, I think the PR scene here is much stronger today than when I landed back north of the border, and I’d like to think I’ve played a small part in that evolution.    

Domestic agencies like Charlotte Street Partners have really helped to move the dial, in a mould not too dissimilar to the agency environments I remember from London.  Charlotte Street’s founding partners Andrew Wilson and Malcolm Robertson have set the standard in the Scottish context, not unconnected to the fact that both guys have gravitas in spades.

As a CEO, founder, or director, the public or media-facing profile of your company is a big deal.  How that corporate reputation plays out is going to be significantly determined by how you handle press relations, and how that translates to resulting coverage in column inches or on the airwaves.  

With this in mind, next week we are going to announce the appointment of an associate partner to run dedicated media training for our client base.  We think we’ve found a great person to take on the role, a former BBC broadcaster who has spent years advising the financial services, professional services, and technology sectors - a strong overlap with the sectors we already work in - on connecting better with various audiences when it comes to external communications.

So, that could be preparing for a milestone press announcement, dealing with crisis comms, carrying out a broadcast interview, pitching to investors, or delivering a keynote address at an industry conference.  While we already cover these disciplines to an extent, the rationale for the appointment is to supercharge our existing offering.

If PR can be considered a craft, then I think it’s natural to want to continually improve that craft.  Not to rest on your laurels, and all that.  I have a friend from Jeddah, the Saudi Arabian port city on the Red Sea, who talks passionately on the subject of craft.  As an institutional and private investor, he strongly believes you must continually work at your craft no matter what you do for a living, and I hope he will share his insight in this column in the not too distant future.

If craft is important in life, it’s equally important to graft.  Talking of which, it’s time I got back to the grindstone. 

Deciphering a tech ecosystem, guest post by Robert Gelb, startup founder and adviser

I attended the TechScaler launch event in Glasgow last month and wasn’t really sure what to expect. The announcement on CodeBase securing the £42 million contract to run the government’s TechScaler initiative, as with the appointment of the Chief Entrepreneur, have certainly generated headlines.

But for founders like me, our focus is on our businesses, and often (with good reason based on experience) we’re used to ignoring the latest initiative announcement, usually assuming it to be a showcase of buzzword mastery popular with politicians and professional services firms.

Cynical, I know! But Scotland’s tech ecosystem has long suffered from tribalism, with a sometimes uncomfortable rivalry between groups who all purport to be aligned on helping entrepreneurs succeed, but without much in the way of collaboration, openness to feedback, and public self-reflection. Often, more barriers are built than removed.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad there's movement. I'm glad the government has tasked an ecosystem leader to solve an ecosystem problem. It builds on the very positive introduction and expansion of the Scottish Growth Scheme that helps empower venture capital (VC) firms like Techstart Ventures to actively invest in pre-seed and seed stage companies. A game-changer for startups needing early institutional capital.

I’m hopeful that Tech Scalers might have similar impact addressing unmet needs that previously were unmet responsibilities of public institutions. But as founders, we don’t really focus on initiatives until we think they directly affect us. It’s easy for us to sit back atop our perch and moan about the latest initiative, judging and whining about the lack of founder inclusion.

So how do we get more founders off that perch and involved with the process? We think it’s by giving them an opportunity to express their perspective. So, that’s why a group of us came up with The Founders Survey and Awards, precisely to give founders in Scotland that voice.

We want to highlight what’s working, what isn’t, and provide direct and actionable feedback so that Scotland’s startup ecosystem becomes world-class.

Our first questionnaire (which is live now) covers the Scottish investment landscape for early stage startups. Who are the most helpful angel investors? What funds offer founder-friendly terms? What syndicates are respectful of a founders’ time even if they decide not to invest? With this data, we’ll announce a series of awards recognising the best angels, funds, and syndicates in Scotland based on founders’ views, along with a report on the state of the landscape. 

Each quarter we hope to run more awards including around evaluating the best local professional services providers, ecosystem partners, and unsung heroes helping startups.

The current Founders Survey is available at www.founderssurvey.com. It’s open to any founder that’s taken or applied for funding from Scottish-based angel investors, VCs, family offices, and syndicates. The survey closes at the end of September.

Scotland’s ecosystem is only as strong as the intent, humility, and self-reflection that everyone involved brings to the table. Our hope is that the Founders Survey and Awards elevate and celebrate progress, while identifying opportunities to improve the ecosystem in a productive way.

Generation R, by Nick Freer

WeWork founder Adam Neumann was in the business news last week, with lofty venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz backing his latest venture, Flow, to the tune of $350 million - equating to the VC firm’s largest ever investment, and turning Neumann’s fledgling residential property play into an instant unicorn with a $1 billion valuation.  

Renowned for being an extrovert party animal (just Google to find out more) and equally persistent businessman, Neumann founded WeWork in 2010, with the co-working behemoth going on to be valued at almost $50 billion ten years later in 2020.  Today, its value sits at around $4 billion.  In spite of a shocking decline in valuation, WeWork has played a central role in an area commonly described as the future of work. 

Neumann’s new startup Flow aims to rethink the future of living by addressing the housing crisis in the States, and the fact that many cities are pricing out talent.  Sound familiar?  Flow already owns apartment blocks across the US, is expected to offer concierge type services to its tenants via an app, management services to third party landlords, and has plans to launch a digital wallet that can store cryptocurrency. 

So, very much a bricks-and-mortar business, underpinned by technology, and playing to a well documented saying of Neumann’s: “As the world becomes a more digital place, we cannot forget about the human connection”.  

Neumann’s big name backer, Andreessen Horowitz principal Marc Andreessen famously penned an essay in 2011, “Why software is eating the world”, although in 2020 he had revised his thinking somewhat, saying it was “time to build”, with particular reference to schools, hospitals, and homes.  

In the Scottish context, on the Edinburgh scene, we have an entrepreneur who has been building companies in a not dissimilar vein to Neumann, although with a character makeup that is much more agreeable.

Alex Watts is the CEO of Kingsford Group and Let Tech, with Kingsford running business and co-working space around the city, and Let Tech an emerging property technology startup that is digitising the whole letting journey. 

Catching up with Alex this week, he reminded me that Kingsford was one of the very first Scottish operators of Build to Rent, a category of housing provision that is much more prevalent in the US and Europe.  The 75 designer apartments Kingsford Residence operates at the former Broughton High School building on McDonald Road in Edinburgh, deliver a new way of living for professionals who demand an altogether higher level of service.  It’s a demographic that Neumann describes as Generation R, with the ‘R’ being for rental.  

As Alex puts it, “the fragmented rental market requires seismic change, the archaic status quo is ripe for rebooting and upgrade, and it’s such an important area when you consider that residential real estate is the single largest asset class there is.” 

If you don’t know Alex Watts, in addition to his entrepreneurial acumen he also throws a great party.  One of those happened this week, with an evening of bands playing live music at his Kingsford Business Club.  Sadly, yours truly was on babysitting duty and had to miss what I gather was a good old fashioned knees-up.  

In the thick of it, by Nick Freer

In July 2019, our agency supported San Francisco-based tech group UserTesting around the launch of its European headquarters in Edinburgh, and then the follow-on Scottish Enterprise grant to support the development of the company’s R&D function here.  Our strategic media relations support was a nice feather in the cap, in terms of getting to work with the CEO and in-house PR team on what was the first Silicon Valley tech company to set up shop here. 

While I remember the large amount of prep we carried out got somewhat in the way of our summer vacation that year, it was the kind of press announcement that doesn’t come along every day of the week so, as a PR adviser, you always want to be in the thick of it.  We advised on similar announcements, with Deliveroo, also in 2019, and then with Trustpilot the following year, and it is something of a sweet spot in terms of our strengths and capabilities as an agency. 

When tech companies from outside Scotland land here, journalists always want to know about the level of ambition around growing a team here.  It’s pretty much the first question reporters ask, after the general opener, “why Scotland”? 

UserTesting made its first hire in Scotland in April 2019.  Fast forward three years, and Andy MacMillan-led UserTesting now has around 150 people in its European division.  That makes it the company’s largest office outside its Atlanta base, and even bigger than its San Francisco HQ.  

If you ever get the opportunity, a visit to UserTesting’s Exchange Plaza office in Edinburgh is an eye-opener.  Scrawled above the bar area is a blue neon sign, “UserTasting”, with free-flowing beer taps serving ethical lagers and ales by Brewgooder, rows of ergonomically arranged desks, and breakout office rooms named after Scottish islands.  Very Silicon Valley, with a Scottish touch. 

Putting the bells and whistles to one side, what could be most impactful for Scotland is the precedent that UserTesting has set.  CEO MacMillan recalls how when he made a case to his US venture capital firm backers for launching in Scotland, it didn’t take long to convince them of the rationale, including access to talent, living standards, and proximity to the company’s customer base. 

While MacMillan says he was already espousing the strengths of having operations in Scotland to VCs stateside, his appointment as a trade envoy for the Scottish Government earlier this year has added a bit more formality to Andy banging the drum for our tech ecosystem.  

Effectively, UserTesting provides a case study for VC-backed tech companies setting up here.  Particularly, when the allure of being based in Silicon Valley is on the wane.  While we talk about building unicorns like Skyscanner and FanDuel from scratch here, unicorns from the US growing operational bases here can only help to take our ecosystem to the next level.  That, you would think, should also help to take our tech ecosystem to the tipping point outlined in the Logan Report.   

Separately, we are working on another interesting tech inward investment story which is currently in the wings, so watch this space. 

Graphic equalizers and turning up the ecosystem dials, by Nick Freer

At Turing Fest last week, one of the most anticipated speakers was CodeBase’s chief strategy officer Steven Drost, a couple of weeks on from the tech campus being awarded the £42 million Tech Scaler contract to establish seven startup hubs across Scotland.  

In his talk - ‘The Tech Ecosystem Graphic Equalizer and What is a “Tech Scaler”?’ - Drost reminded the audience that while the term “startup” was first coined in the 1930s by British botanists Arthur Roy Clapham and Sir Arthur George Tansley, it wasn’t until the early Nineties that the term mapped over to the business world.

Writing for the Harvard Business Review in 1993, James Moore penned a piece, ‘Predators and Prey: A New Ecology of Competition’, in which he set out a new metaphor for competition drawn from the study of biology and social systems.  Moore suggested that a company be viewed not as a member of a single industry, but as a part of a business ecosystem that crosses a variety of industries.  In a business ecosystem, companies “co-evolve” around a new innovation, working cooperatively and competitively to support new products and satisfy customer needs.  

From Moore’s paper: “Successful businesses are those that evolve rapidly and effectively.  Yet innovative businesses can’t evolve in a vacuum.  They must attract resources of all sorts, drawing in capital, partners, and suppliers.” 

In a blog posted on Medium in 2019, Snap Inc’s Joseph Darko wrote: “Think of any strong and thriving regional tech ecosystem and you will more than likely see all six entities play a major role: a strong developer community, accelerators and tech hubs, tech focused startups, established businesses and companies, engagement and connection, and universities and schools.”

After referencing venture capitalist and entrepreneur Paul Graham’s 2006 essay ‘How to be Silicon Valley’, in which Graham stated, “I think you need two kinds of people to create a technology hub: rich people and nerds”, CodeBase’s Drost suggested that in 2022 there are “different focal points” when you talk about ecosystems, including around ethics, diversity, inclusivity, social impact, and sustainability. 

If Drost has a metaphor of his own, it is what he describes as the “graphic equaliser”.  If you think of a graphic equaliser, there are different dials with which you can adjust sound and frequency.  Put in simpler terms, you could turn up the drums, or turn down the bass.  

On the display of Drost’s graphic equaliser, the dials show startups, the state, academia, agencies, big corporations, and investors.  In every ecosystem, these moving parts play lesser or more important roles.  By way of a crude example, in North Korea the dial is turned right up when it comes to state involvement, and turned all the way down on startups and investors.  

In Scotland, the role of government is still important, but not in a dominant way, we have world class universities, but the dials are down fairly low when you look at the number of startups we are producing.

The collective hope is that the tech scaler initiative will help lay the ground for the transformation of Scotland’s tech ecosystem.  You can hear Steven Drost talk more eloquently on the subject, compared to my second hand account, over on his Startupification podcast. 

Ecosytem building... Scottish style, by Nick Freer

Tech conference Turing Fest at the EICC this week seemed to hit all the right notes, and there was a real buzz about the conference centre, in no small part because there were so many international delegates in situ this time around. 

Diversity and inclusivity were among the big themes at Turing, and one of the breakout sessions I found most informative was a roundtable organised by digital skills academy CodeClan and online travel site Skyscanner. 

The ‘Building an Inclusive Team’ conversation covered the importance of unconscious bias training, and on the gender front it was interesting to hear that Skyscanner plans to have women in 40 per cent of its senior management roles by 2025.   

One of the main fixtures at Turing was a Q&A with the Scottish Government’s recently appointed Chief Entrepreneur Mark Logan, with Logan interviewed by global tech news site TechCrunch’s editor-at-large Mike Butcher. 

There was some amusing preamble, including how Mark found one of his first tech jobs in a newspaper ad for a company whose hiring policy seemed to revolve around appointing “odd people, because they thought if you were odd you were intelligent”.  The startup, Atlantech, was acquired by Cisco for $180 million in 2000. The chat quickly moved on to building successful tech ecosystems, with Logan confirming his well-documented view that Scotland is still pre-tipping point and has yet to achieve a key yardstick for success, namely true network effect.  

In terms of reaching the tipping point, education, infrastructure, and investment are key pillars for Logan, first outlined in his 2020 Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review, but these three descriptors are nuanced.  “If you had to choose an order though”, said Logan, “it would be education first, infrastructure second, then investment”.  

There is also an X factor, agreed Logan and Butcher, which is serendipity.  I have seen this first hand, with a number of startups, including one of our most celebrated tech companies which was only founded here because the CEO followed his girlfriend to Edinburgh and then settled in Scotland’s capital. 

As the Scottish Government and its Ecosystem Fund, born out of the 2020 Logan Review, moves through the gears in its backing of Scottish tech, Logan reminded the audience how Silicon Valley “was always supported by government, and still is”.    

What else does our tech scene need to work on, in order to reach the transformative tipping point phase?  “Belief”, said Logan.  “Don’t accept mediocrity, believe we can be as impactful and successful as any other ecosystem.” 

So, how do we get there?  Logan continued, “Ecosystem builders, mentors, and founders will take us to the tipping point”. 

Earlier this month, the Scottish Government announced its ‘Tech Scaler’ initiative, via a £42 million contract awarded to CodeBase to create tech scaler hubs across Scotland.  

Enter stage right, and next up at Turing was CodeBase’s Chief Strategy Officer Steven Drost, outlining his own definitions around the terms ecosystem and tech scaler, and laying out how CodeBase and its multiple partners are going to drive this unique and pioneering opportunity to add serious rocket fuel to our most promising startups and scale-ups. 

More on that next week…

Putting the 'E' in CEO, by Nick Freer

Fresh off hosting last week’s Scottish Government tech scaler event at Barclays Tech Campus in Glasgow, the good people over at Startup Grind Scotland have lined up a fireside chat with UserTesting CEO Andy MacMillan in the first week of August.

MacMillan, who has Scottish heritage on his father’s side and was born and raised in the States, led San Francisco-headquartered UserTesting through its initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange in November, a couple of years on from the tech group opening it European HQ in Edinburgh.

MacMillan, who was appointed as a trade envoy by the Scottish Government in April, has credited Scottish tech talent as a key factor powering UserTesting’s growth, helping to scale the company to unicorn status.

I liked a press headline in the San Francisco media recently, where Andy remarked that the ‘E’ in CEO stands for empathy, a clever comment from a chief executive whose team develops software that helps around half of the world’s top brands to better understand their customers.

Next week, Turing Fest, billed as “Europe’s top cross-functional tech conference”, rolls into the EICC and, while I’m going to be there as much for the networking and post-event parties, the two-day conference is primarily positioned to enable attendees to learn and connect, and gain practical insight into the art and science of building, growing, and leading successful startups and high-growth tech businesses.

At what I’m pretty sure was the very first Turing Fest, or certainly its precursor, I got to have an extended chat with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.  What did we talk about?  Ice hockey.  I still can’t remember quite how we got onto the subject, but I am lifelong fan of the Detroit Red Wings, and Wozniak has an obsession with his local ice hockey team in California, the San Jose Sharks.  What I can remember is that we definitely didn’t chat about cross-functional tech.

Because we are running the Scottish Startup Survey again this year in association with the EIE team at the University of Edinburgh’s Bayes Centre, it will also be useful to get some firsthand views from tech leaders at Turing on how their companies are faring in 2022.

While it’s not the best saying these days as the global pandemic lingers, there is that adage “when America sneezes, the world catches a cold”, and as the valuations of many U.S. tech groups are squeezed, and venture capital investment is down, albeit against a record year in 2021, it will be illuminating to get a sense of sentiment from tech executives on this side of the pond.   

By their very nature, startups have to be a plucky type of beast.  By taking a different tack through disrupting traditional industries, they are always up against it, must have strong belief, and even harder skin.

What is certain is that technology will be the great enabler to address the most pressing societal and environmental challenges faced by the world twenty-two years into the 21st century.  What is exciting is the possibility that we can produce tech companies of scale in this country that become part of this narrative.

Startup pixie dust, by Nick Freer

On a family break up in Sutherland this week, we managed to escape the good weather elsewhere in Scotland in exchange for a wind-ravaged landscape and brooding skies.  Assynt and the surrounding region is one of my all-time favourite places come rain or shine, so it was all good.

My ‘getting away from it all’ moment came when riding white horse waves into a deserted beach, surrounded by a cathedral of heather-covered mountains that stooped down into the sea.  I was thankful for every millimetre of thickness in my wetsuit, as a cauldron of freezing cold water erupted and threw me out of the breakers onto the sand.  Mother Nature, Scottish style, at its most majestic, and a short-lived moment of serenity in an otherwise hectic life.     

One event back in the lowlands that I was sorry to miss, was the ‘Tech Scaler’ reveal announcement by the Scottish Government at Barclays’ Glasgow HQ.  Tech campus CodeBase, which originally opened its doors in the heart of Edinburgh back in 2014 and now operates UK-wide, will now lead the development of a network of tech scaler hubs around Scotland - in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Stirling, Inverness, and Dumfries.

In spite of our remote location and associated reception issues, I was able to have a few chats with CodeBase CEO Stephen Coleman as he and the team prepared for the media announcement.  Without pomp and ceremony, as I said to Stephen, CodeBase has quietly gone about its business over the years, becoming the motherlode of Scotland’s startup scene.

Skyscanner founder Gareth Williams put me in touch with Stephen’s elder brother, Jamie Coleman, almost a decade ago, as Jamie was looking for PR support ahead of CodeBase launching at Argyle House, and in light of the incumbent PR agency, as Jamie put it, “going around our tenant companies, knocking on doors to offer their services.”  To put it mildly, he wasn’t pleased, and the PR firm was shown a door of its own.

Over the years, as an agency, we have advised multiple startups headquartered at CodeBase.  But I always remembered Jamie’s words, only engaging with startup founders when I was recommended.  I think, in part, that was because I recalled Jamie’s former glory as a successful amateur boxer.   

On my first meeting with Jamie, as he sat amongst crates of Dewar’s whisky bottles (another story in its own right) at the precursor to CodeBase, he explained his vision to create a “factory in the cloud".  “In Scotland, we are used to doing the hard lifting, think of our engineering heritage”, he said, “only now we are building world-class software.”

That vision has been carried forward by Stephen Coleman and his team - CodeBase is all about the education piece, shared learning and insight, mentoring, having a critical mass of startups that grow stronger in no small part because of their proximity and connectivity to each other.    

If you’ve ever been in a CodeBase campus, you may even have noticed the pixie dust in the air, an intangible characteristic that is perhaps closer to spirit or soul.  It is great news for Scotland that so many of our startups will now get the chance to be coated in this special dusting.   

An eureka moment for Scotland's IoT scene, by Nick Freer

I first met Professor Harald Haas in 2013, when Professor Haas was chair of mobile communications at the University of Edinburgh and co-founder and chief science officer at one of the university’s spin-out companies - PureVLC, which was soon after rebranded as PureLiFi. 

Haas has been credited with being the so-called “father of LiFi”, an emerging technology at the time which essentially turns standard light fittings into wireless data transmitters as an alternative to traditional WiFi.  

I was brought in to advise the company by its lead investor as it went through a senior management reshuffle, while laying the ground for a transition from a R&D-focused venture to a commercially-minded business.

I had heard of the term the ‘Internet of Things’ at the time, but it was Haas that explained it to me in a way where I could really understand the translation of the technology to industrial and domestic applications.  

We were preparing for an interview with a global business publication, and by chance, in our preparation for the interview, I teased out an interesting story from Harald.  While Alexander Graham Bell is famed for inventing the telephone, at one point the Scottish scientist believed his ‘photophone’, with a signal sent by a beam of sunlight as opposed to a wire, was going to be his greatest achievement.  Alas, it turned out that Scotland’s meteorology was always going to be a hindrance for a technology relying on sunshine.  

While our Internet of Things (IoT) scene was very much in its nascent phase in 2013, fast forward a decade and, while PureLiFi is now venture capital-backed and winning commercial contracts worldwide, there have been interesting developments in the space which point to IoT being an important cog in the wheel of Scotland’s future economy. 

In June last year, an old school friend who is a director at accountancy firm Anderson Anderson Brown (AAB) put me in touch with Paul Wilson, who was set to launch Scotland’s first IoT accelerator programme.  The Smart Things Accelerator Centre, STAC for short, opened its doors at Skypark in Glasgow last August and in under a year has made incredible strides.  More than that, it’s the ambition of Wilson and the programme that deserves most attention. 

While local firms like AAB and law firm Burness Paull, who both boast strong tech credentials, in place as sponsors and supporters of STAC, the global perspective engendered by Paul Wilson and his team is best illustrated with international corporate giants like Intel and Twilio also backing the IoT accelerator. 

This week, Scottish Enterprise committed to the long-term support of STAC, with a focus on funding and resourcing the growing number of early stage companies being supported by STAC - now up above 20. 

Why is this initiative so important?  The answer probably comes best from STAC CEO Paul Wilson’s own words on the occasion of the Scottish Enterprise strategic partnership announcement we handled this week: 

“Through STAC supported companies we will retain Scottish product development talent, who today almost exclusively study here, but then leave Scotland to take jobs elsewhere either in the UK or internationally.”

The only way is up for Scotland's startup nation, by Nick Freer

The Scottish Startup Survey launched this week, a survey of Scotland’s fastest-growing early to later stage technology companies.  Run by the EIE investor readiness programme team that is now based at the University of Edinburgh’s Bayes Centre, as an agency we have been involved in the survey since its genesis in 2017. 

Scottish startup and scale-up founders and CEOs are being quizzed about investor engagement, valuation, growth strategy, commercialisation, internationalisation, economic outlook, Scottish ecosystem support, hiring plans, returning to the office, new ways of working, the wellbeing of their people and, overall, how they are navigating their way out of pandemic times.

The strength of the survey relies on how much engagement we are able to drive, and having a deep, quality sample of startup respondents across the country.  As Novosound CEO Dave Hughes put it in our press release: “The results of the startup survey are a great barometer of the Scottish tech ecosystem.  It has helped me to navigate our next stage of growth and, as a founder, realise that other founders share many of the same aspirations and concerns.”

It's always good to hear that our annual findings can be used as something of a peer-to-peer learning tool. There’s no point in doing a survey for the sake of doing a survey, we want people from across the tech ecosystem to have valuable takeaways. 

We were lucky to get the input of Michael Moore, Director General of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA), who says: “This is an exciting time to be investing in tech, especially in Scotland. Shared insight is vital to growth companies and their investors across the country - this survey gets right to the heart of the key issues and its findings will be invaluable to all of us.”

Michael Moore puts his finger on it, “shared insight”.  Nobody can build a successful startup in a vacuum.  From many of the founders I respect most, it’s a common theme that the shared insight gained when on accelerator programmes, or when visiting other tech hubs, can be game-changing.  

When writing for this column last November, Hassan Khajeh-Hosseini, co-founder and CEO of Infracost, described it perfectly: “In the startup world, your network will not only help you in times of stress, but if done right it will act as a catalyst to your company’s success.”

One of the first Scottish companies to secure investment from world-renowned Y-Combinator, Hassan continued: “Our success is tied to the support of the network, and if we had more strong networks like this in Scotland, we would have more successful startups.” 

Elsewhere on the tech scene this week, there is a lot of excitement in the air after the ecosystem’s jungle drums sounded out that the Scottish Government is on the cusp of announcing details of the five so-called ‘tech scaler hubs’ around Scotland - hubs aimed at helping hundreds of new startups get off the ground.

The collective hope for Scotland’s startup scene, as per the Jazz and the Plastic Population pop anthem in the Eighties, is that the only way is up! 

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