Moving the dial on female entrepreneurship, by Nick Freer

Like most people who meet Scottish entrepreneur and investor Ana Stewart for the first time, I was both impressed and charmed when I met Ana, an individual who combines a razor-sharp business mind with a high likeability factor.  So, no surprise really when the Scottish Government commissioned her to chair the Women in Entrepreneurship review, or so-called Stewart Report, that was published earlier this week.  

At 150 pages I’m not going to attempt to summarise the report here.  The report is publicly available on the Scottish Government site, so it’s there for everyone to read.  As an agency, we were pleased to support the PR push by the Scottish Government’s communications team, following on from the advisory services we have offered Stewart since the discovery phase of the review commenced last year.  

In a not dissimilar way to the Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review by Mark Logan, Scotland’s Chief Entrepreneur, in 2020, the Stewart Report will have an enduring shelf life and is a strong foundation on which the narrative around barriers to female entrepreneurship in this nation will be built over the years ahead. 

What has been welcoming, is how positively received the report has been across the board, both in this country and further afield. Of course, the more support the report garners, the greater impact it will have.  While it’s a bonus to see the worldwide attention that has already been achieved, the real rub will be around how effective and lasting transformational change can be here in Scotland.  

One of my main takeaways from the report is how male behaviours and mindset are crucial to bringing about this kind of effective change.  

We know the status quo is holding back not only female entrepreneurship, but also the economy as a whole.  Widespread research shows us that more diverse workforces lead to significant economic growth, and we know that entrepreneurs are absolutely integral to successful modern economies.  Therefore, it’s not hard to ‘do the math’, it’s a total no-brainer.  

Having a son and daughter, this is important stuff for me on a personal level.  And really, essentially, who wouldn’t want a level playing field on gender terms in business.  I mean, unless we’re still living in the Dark Ages or something?  

But what do more important people than me think on the subject? 

According to Tim Allan, Founder of Tricorn Capital: “The odds are stacked against women succeeding in entrepreneurship because the current system has not evolved to support them.” 

Leah Hutcheon, CEO and Founder of Appointedd, says: “I was once advised in an investment meeting to take a male colleague to future meetings to make my tech business more ‘credible’.  I spent the next few days thinking of where I might pick up a man to do this.  It was both funny and depressing in equal measure.”  Depressing indeed. 

Worryingly, storied entrepreneurs like Ann Budge think the dial on female entrepreneurship, which some people think has improved in recent years, is nowhere near to that kind of reality: “The gender gap has widened, not narrowed, since I started my business many years ago.”  

On this basis, the collective hope is that the Stewart Report’s recommendations are implemented in a timely fashion. 

An opportunity for business journalism in Scotland, guest post by former Financial Times' international correspondent Jeremy Grant

The other day, I was in Glasgow for the first proper visit in 40 years. Standing in front of the house on the city’s south side that was our family home for the first 18 years of my life, a lot was familiar: the red sandstone exterior, the front lawn. 

But then I started to see that some things had changed. The gravel drive was now paved, the window sashes painted a blingy matt black. And a monkey puzzle tree that I remember my parents planting at the foot of the lawn as a sapling in the late 1960s was now of Jurassic Park proportions, towering over the street below.   

I’ve been having other similar experiences in the year since returning to live in Scotland, after a long career in journalism in London, Asia and the United States. Much is familiar and unchanged (starting with the Tunnock’s teacake, I’m relieved to say). But a lot’s changed, too. 

One of the big changes is that the business scene seems more varied, vibrant and outward-looking. It also has global heft, thanks in part to the food and beverage sector. Much of the heavy lifting is done by whisky, of course. Figures recently out from the Scotch Whisky Association showed that Asia has just overtaken the European Union to become the drink’s biggest export market.  

All in all, Scottish business feels like a richer offering that, in parts, tells a fresh, forward-looking story.

Take pureLiFi, an Edinburgh-based company that has developed a kind of mobile wireless technology that uses light, rather than radio frequencies, to transmit data. Its technology is now being used by the US Army. 

Or Orbex, a Forres-based rocket manufacturer founded seven years ago that’s set to build and operate the first vertical launch site for satellites on the UK mainland (in Sutherland). Astonishingly, there are more small satellites being built in and around Glasgow than any other European city, as Ivan McKee, Scottish Minister for Business, Trade, Tourism and Enterprise, told a space convention last week in Singapore.

Then there’s the transition to a low-carbon future, clearly a huge deal for Scotland. I noticed the other day a Glasgow-based start-up called HVS that’s developing hydrogen-electric vehicles for the commercial vehicle market. An electric bus swept past me the other day on Princes Street, Edinburgh (my home these days) operated by Ember, the UK's first all-electric, intercity bus service.

The funding environment is another part of the story of change. Back in the day, there was no development bank for Scotland. Now, the Scottish National Investment Bank (armed with £2 billion over a decade) is funding exciting companies in clean energy, including Nova Energy, which in Shetland operates the largest cluster of tidal turbines in the world. Some of this, crucially, is done by co-investing with the private sector.  

All this presents a fantastic opportunity for business journalism in Scotland. To be sure, this month’s news that DC Thomson, the Dundee-based publisher of the Press & Journal and Beano, was closing titles, coming after last year’s closure by publisher Reach of the print edition of Scottish Business Insider, have been reminders that this is a tough environment. But the story of change is there to be told. 

Scotland-wide cluster will launch Scottish tech into orbit, guest post by Allan Cannon, Co-founder and CEO of Krucial

The power of the Glasgow tech scene has been brought into focus in recent weeks and months with success for Glasgow-based company Novosound, reports that the Glasgow ecosystem is worth £2.6bn, and subsequent media interest – including in a recent column (Startup growth potential is heading west - Nick Freer | The Scotsman).

My own business, Krucial, which harnesses space technology to connect Internet of Things (IoT) devices all over the planet, is headquartered in Glasgow. It’s home. But we’re part of a wider landscape; a Scottish phenomenon that is launching our relatively small nation into orbit and once again proving that we can and do over-achieve. 

So why would we put our cities in competition with one another? There are more than 850 high-growth tech companies operating across Scotland so we shouldn’t focus on a Glasgow or Edinburgh cluster, but a Scottish one. 

I’d define a cluster as a critical mass of people, organisations and support mechanisms designed to encourage collaboration – meaning founders, funders and innovators have the necessary support in place to thrive. A cluster is self-reinforcing: its existence then encourages more people, funding, startups and fresh ideas to the area. 

Individual places still play their own unique part in making the tech ecosystem what it is – but ultimately the goal is the same, to make Scotland a home of big ideas and opportunity. 

Look at the advantages we already have to help boost our tech industry.

Our two largest cities are more connected than ever. A 50-minute train journey is all that ‘separates’ them. I easily work across both regularly - in other places looking to be at the forefront of innovation, this would be the distance from one end of a city to the other. And that’s before we mention the one hour flight to the financial and tech powerhouse of London.

Between them, our cities have multiple world-class educational institutions, from the University of Strathclyde, my alma mater, to the University of Dundee, home to some of the most exciting video game development work on earth.  Scotland has more than 330,000 students in higher education across the country – each with the potential to come up with the next unicorn-worthy idea.

We have innovation centres across the country – such as CENSIS (Scotland’s Innovation Centre for sensing, imaging and Internet of Things) based in Glasgow which helped Krucial with early stage product development, or its sister centre SAIC (Sustainable Aquaculture Innovation Centre) in Stirling, focused on ways to make Scottish aquaculture as sustainable and successful as possible.

Compared with the UK more widely we perform well – Edinburgh, for example, came second only to London in 2021 as the most attractive UK city to set up a new business – 45% of which were in tech.

This is an important moment for the Scottish tech scene. The wins are coming thick and fast and since co-founding Krucial I’ve been blown away by the sheer talent, tenacity and ambition of founders all over Scotland. 

My hope is that work continues to be done to combine and maximise the potential of all Scotland’s ecosystems – and not focus on segregating success. 

Enter stage left, by Nick Freer

As I occasionally do, I met someone interesting for coffee in town this week.  A former Financial Times correspondent who covered desks in Asia and North America during his tenure with the so-called ‘pink pages’, I hope he will write for this column in the not too distant. 

Having spent almost exactly a year in Edinburgh, the former hack (his description, not mine) and his wife had been in London for the previous few years, so as with any relocation it’s been a big move.  I remember it being tough to leave the bright lights of London, and floundered for a while when I relocated here over a decade ago.  Making contacts definitely helped to right the ship, and I hope I can help to expand this journalist’s network in the kind of way that others have done for me.  It makes such a difference.  

One of the people I was kindly introduced to a few years’ back is Scottish entrepreneur George Mackintosh, another globetrotter who has returned to his native land.  It can be a small world, particularly in Edinburgh, and it turned out that George knew my uncle, Angus Maitland, who founded one of Europe’s most successful public relations agencies back in the Nineties.  

In Scotland, you seldom need the six degrees of separation, or the ‘six degrees of Kevin Bacon’ as the dinner party game used to go, based on the idea that all humans can be connected by six social connections.   

Anyway, since I met George and we got the chance to work together on a few ventures and projects, I’m now in the fortunate position to have him as one of my advisers.  Thankfully for George, I’m not on the phone to him all the time, but if something big comes up that I can’t quite get my head around, it’s good to know he’s on the other end of the line. 

One of George’s ventures, although in truth it is best described as a labour of love, is Papple Steading in East Lothian, one of Britain’s finest historic model farms of the Agricultural Improvement Movement, and formerly owned by AJ Balfour, the British Prime Minister between 1902 and 1905. 

Recently repurposed into top-end holiday accommodation and a corporate retreat, with a community centre, agricultural museum, and performance venue in phase two of its development, Papple has hosted some rather special guests over the last couple of years.  

During the first half of 2022, Hollywood came to Papple when the entire post-production for Universal Pictures movie Tár, the acclaimed drama starring Cate Blanchett that has just been nominated for six Oscars, took place in situ.  

With BT playing a supporting role (that’s a pun people) via a direct-connected one gigabit digital service, Papple’s health studio, lounge, and grand dining room became post-production studios, each with blackout blinds and multiple huge screens.  

Best known for its golf courses and beaches - I once heard Skyscanner founder Gareth Williams say his favourite beach on the planet (the guy has been to a lot of beaches) is Yellowcraig - George Mackintosh and his team are developing a new type of attraction that is already putting East Lothian increasingly on the map.  Bravo! 

A tale of two (tech) cities, by Nick Freer

Last weekend, I wrote about the smoke signals from the west suggesting Glasgow is set to outpace Edinburgh’s growth as a tech hub.  I should have known that by going on the record to pit Scotland’s largest cities against each other, there would be a good deal of feedback.  I’m pleased to report that there weren’t too many profanities involved. 

In Robert Crawford’s book ‘On Glasgow and Edinburgh’, the author writes: “Edinburgh and Glasgow enjoy a famously scratchy relationship.  Resembling other intercity rivalries throughout the world, from Madrid to Barcelona, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and Beijing and Shanghai, Scotland’s sparring metropolises just happen to be much smaller and closer together - like two twin stars orbiting a common axis.” 

“Yet their size belies their world-historical importance as cultural capitals of the British Empire, and the mere forty miles between their city centres does not diminish their stubbornly individual nature.” 

Cally Russell, founder and CEO of eco startup This is Unfolded says, “It might be wishful thinking, but I would love to see us starting to view the two cities as one ecosystem.”  While you can’t really argue with this kind of sentiment, can we really bring our “twin stars” together? 

In Scotland’s tech ecosystem, there are undoubtedly initiatives taking place that are bringing the geographical spread of talent into one town hall, with organisations like CodeBase, via Techscaler, digital skills academy CodeClan, and Startup Grind Scotland among those leading the pack.

Rochelle Oliver, founder at wealth adviser Welfified, adds Fintech Scotland to the list of collectives that are helping to unify Scotland as a joined-up tech hub, although Oliver would like to see more “meet-ups organised for startups”.     

The University of Glasgow’s Executive Director of Innovation, Enterprise and Economic Development, Declan Weldon, says, “What is exciting is Scotland’s high potential to build a world-changing innovation ecosystem given the combined research excellence, supported by Government policy for innovation and entrepreneurship.  Collaboration and alignment are key.” 

Between 2016 and 2019, University of Edinburgh Business School senior lecturer Dr Ben Spigel, an expert on entrepreneurial ecosystems, interviewed dozens of high-growth entrepreneurs in both cities.  Spigel’s research found that Edinburgh’s strength lies in the strong connections between founders at all stages of development, learning from other entrepreneurs on subjects ranging from managing investors, growing pains, and hiring.  

“The continued engagement of successful entrepreneurs as investors and mentors is very important”, says Spigel, “and has helped to build a culture of trust and reciprocity.”  

On Glasgow, Dr Spigel’s research showed that the city didn’t have the reciprocity evident in Edinburgh, founders weren’t connecting like they do in Scotland’s capital, although he found the strength of Glasgow’s creative talent in the city to be a huge asset. As he puts it, “The ability to integrate design with tech is crucial and will be a source of a lot of innovation and growth”. 

So, what does the academic think about Edinburgh and Glasgow being more joined-up as one tech hub?  “My research shows that there is a real barrier between the two communities” says Spigel.  “That can change”, he continues, “but it’s going to be a slog.  Maybe we can all just agree to hang out in Whitburn!”. 

Smoke signals suggest tech hub power shift, by Nick Freer

I bumped into a well known investor on George Street in Edinburgh just before Christmas, a guy who splits his time between the States and Scotland.  He told me he thinks Edinburgh’s tech startup scene is close to plateauing, after years of well documented success.

Glasgow, he said, is the Scottish city showing the greatest potential for growth as a startup hub, and I agree that the smoke signals from the west of the Central Belt indicate that a power shift is taking place.  Companies like Glasgow-based foodtech startup ENOUGH (formerly 3F Bio), a University of Strathclyde spin-out originally backed by Eos Advisory and pioneer in high-scale sustainable protein production, raised £36 million in its last investment round, and is just one case in point.

In December, another former spin-out (from the University of the West of Scotland), remote sensor specialist Novosound, reported that it had secured a major contract with a Nasdaq-listed healthcare company alongside an investment led by Par Equity.  Novosound’s continuing progress Stateside has many rating the company, not unlike Current Health a few years’ back (Current Health secured the second largest European healthtech exit when it was acquired by US consumer electronics giant Best Buy in 2021), as one of the next big things to come out of the Scottish technology sector.

Here is how the CEO of the Nasdaq company, Lishan Aklog of PAVmed, describes Novosound’s offering: “We believe Novosound’s proprietary ultrasound technology has the potential to be a once-in-a-generation breakthrough in medical imaging.”  High praise indeed.

Remote sensor technology is an area Scotland appears to be building critical mass in, and we have another client company story in the wings to evidence this in the coming weeks.  Watch this space.

Talking of space, well a different type of space, space communications is one of Scotland’s future economies that is beginning to take off.  Recently rebranded as Krucial, formerly R3IoT, the Glasgow-based space communications startup secured investment from New York-based Space Capital in 2021, a press announcement we handled at the time, and is a good example of how the Internet of Things (IoT) is integral to so many of our economies of the future.

This point was highlighted by Paul Wilson, CEO of Filament Smart Things Accelerator Centre (STAC), this week as Wilson forecast that STAC, based at Skypark in Glasgow, could become Europe’s largest IoT cluster.

As Wilson puts it: “When you look at Scotland’s key future industries including Energy, Healthcare, Education, Natural Capital, and the Satellite Communications sector, IoT is absolutely integral to each.” 

In other news, Techscaler, powered by tech incubator CodeBase, launched at the end of last year, with startup hubs being rolled out across Scotland.  You would expect this initiative to even a playing field where Edinburgh has arguably dominated over the last decade.

For me, I’m not convinced that Edinburgh has reached a plateau point.  For one, there are too many second time tech founders starting up new companies here.  Let’s see how the startup cookie crumbles, but trying to democratise the tech ecosystem order on a geographic basis has got to be a good thing.

2023, let's do this! By Nick Freer

2022, whoa what a year.  For me, more so than other years, it felt like it went in a blur.  Was that a post-Covid thing?  I don’t know, perhaps.  The pandemic was, and continues to be, a traumatic experience, and the after-effects are still being felt in the business world. 

I think a lot of people spent so much energy just getting through Covid, that there is a good deal of post-traumatic stress around.  How many of us got through the last three years unscathed?  I know I have some battle scars, and I’m pretty sure they exist in both the conscious and subconscious.  

Throwing yourself at your work can be a good distraction from the travails of life, with less time to sit around and navel gaze.  Up on Skye this week, where I have come to fully realise the meanings of “windswept” and “rain-soaked”, there has been some time to reflect and look forward to the year ahead.  

As an agency, I believe we did some of our best work last year, for longstanding, occasional, and new clients.  Corporate communications is always nuanced, and because of Brexit, Covid, and times of economic crisis, it has only got more nuanced.  We have been mindful of this, and it has been built in to the strategic advice we have offered, and how we have gone about executing public relations in tandem with our client base.  

If one principal underpins the approach of the agency, I think it centres on client care.  If we take on a client, we will go the whole nine yards on their behalf, no matter their size, or the financial fee.  

An example?  Over the last twelve months, we have advised on investment deals totalling over £100 million - mainly tech startups and scale-up companies raising funds from venture capital and angel firms.  The largest one was circa £20 million, the smallest in the region of £500,000.  In spite of the divergence in quantum, both these investment announcements required lots of legwork, albeit in different ways, and we received rave reviews from the respective CEOs.  

Working for my uncle’s public relations firm in London in the late Nineties, I remember I had dropped a ball on a client assignment, and he brought me to task.  I think his analogy was along the lines of “if I ask you to do a job, you do it to the best of your ability, whether I ask you to paint my office or look after a key client.”  I’m pleased to say that I never got called in to do the paint job.  

One thing I learnt last year?  I have a great instinct for my own business, but that doesn’t mean I always get it right.  Having Carolyn Jameson and George Mackintosh on speed dial as advisers has helped to address this chink in the armour. 

The best move I made last year?  That one’s easy.  Bringing former BBC dynamo Vanessa Collingridge on to work with client CEOs on presentational training.  Ness has been amazing.  

 We have one more walk planned on Skye, to the Fairy Pools in Glen Brittle, then it’s back to the old routine.  2023, let’s do this!  

A sustainable future for offices, guest post by Mark Sorsa-Leslie, co-founder, Beringar

For many businesses, traditional workplaces have changed drastically over the past few years. While the space still exists physically, the very idea of what a workplace is has evolved to enable a new hybridised approach to work – one that prioritises flexibility.

These changes have signalled a new way of thinking about work. Whereas before it was seen as a physical space, it has now become a process detached from a physical location.

So where does that leave the modern workplace? Surely it will continue to exist to some degree. But if it does, what will it look like, and what will this mean for the commercial property market?

Today, you cannot just lease an office and stuff it with desks. Businesses must make their spaces fit the model of work they have chosen to adopt - whether that’s hybrid working, flexible, or fully remote.

Research from Women and Banking in Finance and the London School of Economics shows that 95% of workers within the financial industry prefer a hybrid working approach. However, the more control employees have over when and how often they work from home, the more complicated the scheduling challenges become for employers.

Many of Beringar’s clients are monitoring their hybrid working patterns using our solutions and seeing occupancy rate consistently below 50%. As a result they are beginning to think about downsizing into smaller, higher quality offices. They have also made environmental, social and governance (ESG) commitments to their stakeholders, pledging to reduce their carbon emissions, improve the wellbeing of their people and drive up efficiency. Where work gets done has a material impact on meeting these commitments.  

However, as organisations look to downsize, the knock-on effect of this race for quality space has resulted in ‘zombie’ office buildings in cities across the world. With properties no longer viable as modern office buildings, many building owners are now actively looking into converting these into housing or even industrial space.

Real estate analysts at Citi Group are estimating that the value of offices in London could fall by as much as 38% over the next two to three years, driven by economic turmoil and working-from-home office shrinkage. Office markets across the UK will suffer a similar fate as large companies start to jettison surplus office space they no longer occupy.

It might sound bad for the office market, but the desire for businesses to find the best available office to help attract the best talent is having very positive effects on the market. Now, employees demand a well-thought-out, flexible workplace that fosters collaboration and innovation. Companies want to move to smarter, greener office buildings that use technology to improve the working environment, decrease running costs and reduce carbon emissions. 

The good news for owners is that according to CBRE, offices like these that are certified as sustainable command a 6% rental premium.

So, although there are certainly challenges ahead for the future of the office, there is clear evidence emerging that as we learn to live with hybrid working and head in a more sustainable direction, both owners and occupiers could win by being more sensitive to each other's changing needs.

GIVE400.scot a chance this Christmas, by Nick Freer

I was approached recently about an initiative aimed at tackling the worsening cost of living crisis in Scotland, to see if we could support on PR for the campaign alongside a well known Edinburgh-based creative agency who would handle the branding and design. 

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and GIVE400.scot launched on Tuesday to help tackle the rising tide of poverty is this country, encouraging households who feel they can afford it to donate some or all of their £400 Energy Bills Support Scheme sum to charities of their choice, or via Scottish charity the Corra Foundation.  

Since being set up in 1985, Corra has delivered more than 16,000 grants totalling almost £200 million to disadvantaged communities.  It does this by making small grants to smaller charities and community groups, who in turn pass on funds to families and individuals on low income, with cash or vouchers to cover food, fuel, household items, and clothing. 

So, how bad are things on the ground?  In October, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation released its annual Poverty in Scotland report, stating that, “Nearly one in five households on low incomes in Scotland have gone hungry and cold this year, even before we enter the winter months.” 

Corra Foundation’s CEO Carolyn Sawers puts it like this: “The levels of need and urgent requests for support are shocking and sobering in scale.  Families are having to make impossible choices at the moment, they are doing so with dignity, but they need support.”

The collective hope is that the campaign will strike a chord, catch the public imagination, and both individuals and businesses will get behind GIVE400.scot.  

In my own experience of charity campaigns, patronage by the corporate sector can be a key driver for success.  In the Scottish context, Social Bite, and Street Soccer Scotland are two of the success stories that come to mind.  

In December 2016, I was one of three hundred people to participate in Social Bite’s first sleep out, on Charlotte Square in Edinburgh.  The meteorological gods were kind that night, the temperature didn’t get too low, and at 7 to 8 centigrade the weather was unseasonably mild for a Scottish winter.  

In all honesty, it was not a great hardship that night, although I think everyone went home the next morning with more empathy for homeless people and, in turn, felt more committed to the cause.  

Like Social Bite, the support from Scotland plc for Street Soccer Scotland has been tangible whenever I’ve attended one of their events, or helped to publicise them.  Both not-for-profit organisations have inspirational leaders, with omnipotence that resonates with stakeholders, including chief executives from the business world.  

Celebrity endorsement can be a game-changer for aspiring charities, boosting their brand and profile.  Those who attended dinners over the last decade in Edinburgh with the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, George Clooney, or Barack and Michelle Obama, will never forget them.   

We would love to get some celebrity endorsement behind GIVE400.scot.  We don’t have the time or resources to organise any glitzy dinners, we cannot currently count on any Hollywood A-listers, but the mission itself will hopefully be enough to create a wave of support for those most in need in the months ahead.

Learning about egoless collaboration from the Helsinki startup scene, guest post by Startup Grind Scotland co-director Nick Murray

Just as travel expands our personal horizons, so too must we explore new frameworks from business ecosystems overseas. This was the intention of a recent Startup Grind Scotland programme, delivered in partnership with the Scottish Government, to experience the vibrant city of Helsinki, and its world-famous Slush conference. 

Why Finland?

With an ecosystem valued at €37Bn, boasting 1822 startups, 500+ investors, and the yearly Slush conference attracting 12,000 - 25,000 people, Helsinki marries entrepreneurial excellence with an enviable quality of life. Finland’s 8 unicorns happily pay up to 49.2% tax, viewing it as a civic badge of honour to support the country’s high-functioning social infrastructure.

This is what I learned and what Scotland could adopt from Finland.

Embrace risk, failure and ‘Sisu’

Helsinki’s ecosystem was built on failure. Nokia’s 2008 crash released hundreds of developers into the job market. Many started businesses, and failed. They started again, and with the combined support of the universities and some light state intervention, the scene blossomed.

Slush was, and still is, run by students, and frequently refreshes leadership to avoid things getting stale. The conference now attracts thousands every November, including international investors looking for the next big thing. This success didn’t just happen. Early on, the organisers chartered a plane of Silicon Valley VCs to showcase their offering. That gamble paid off. Investments in Finnish startups reached over €1Bn in 2021 alone.

The Finns call this spirit of perseverance ‘Sisu’, a stoic determination to push through hard times like chipping through a block of ice. This mindset has parallels with entrepreneurial resilience, a level of mental toughness built through embracing failure and risk.

Egoless Collaboration

The lack of ego in Helsinki was striking. The universities, accelerators and public sector work seamlessly to streamline support activity.

Maria01, a massive enterprise hub based in an old hospital, houses startups, incubators and investors, all mingled under one roof. Their public sector sees themselves as part of this community, rather than part of the state. 

In contrast, Scotland’s distributed and competitive ecosystem is marred by a sense of tribalism of brands and geography, with siloed and disconnected services across regions, where similar and competing players confuse the entrance point or support roadmap for Founders. 

Our Opportunity

The Finnish message is clear; If you’re fighting for your piece of the pie, you’re not fighting for the big picture. To attract international attention and investment we must discard tribalism and adopt a ‘Team Scotland’ approach to act as a national flare gun, illuminating what we have to a global audience. 

Encouraging new players to contribute to the ecosystem and showcase ‘their’ Scotland will lead to fresh ideas and help retain graduate talent.

There are rumblings of a refreshing approach to state support, such as the energy behind realising 2020’s Logan Report recommendations. The Tech Ecosystem Fund empowering grassroots projects earlier this year, the appointment of Chief Entrepreneur Mark Logan, and the Tech Scalers going to community-builders CodeBase, all mark a vote of confidence in those on the ground to deliver impact with light state support.

As they say, “If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together”. I believe that, together, we can move Scotland closer to the Finnish line.

Profit with purpose and the triple bottom line, guest post by FutureX CEO and Co-founder Bruce Walker

As the business world adjusts to global tailwinds and the news of some tech layoffs coming from Silicon Valley, business leaders are rightly asking themselves where they should prioritise spend and where to make potential cuts.

When the economy is feeling wobbly, communication is more important than ever - just think of FTX or Twitter in the business world in recent times, or, closer to home in politics, Liz Truss when it comes to communications and planning.

As consumers, we all know we have a deeper connection to businesses that communicate authentically, care about the environment, and have a purpose that resonates with local communities. Which is why during any economic downturn, your USP comes from how you communicate with your customers, the actions you take and the commitment to your purpose during recessionary times, helps to prove your authenticity.

Evidence shows customers reward authentic brands, with Edelman’s Trust Barometer 2020 showing that 64% of today’s customers are “belief-driven buyers”.

Our mission at FutureX is to help founders and high-growth potential companies realise their missions by combining purpose-driven communication with growth strategies that generate a healthy triple bottom line; people, planet, and profit.

For the last 10 years, we have been creating international leadership courses and programmes, working all over the world, from Silicon Valley to India, China, and of course back in Scotland.  Additionally, we advise large corporations and governments on creating their own accelerator and leadership programmes, as well as consulting with high-growth leadership teams to save them time, remove roadblocks, and dream bigger.

The latest programme ‘How to Scale with Purpose’ is an immersive 4-day course, delivered in partnership with experts in their field, including Mark Logan, the Scottish Government’s Chief Entrepreneur and former Skyscanner COO, Graeme Barron, VP Legal at Trustpilot, and Arelette Halavage, Senior Leader at GSK.

The cohort-based programme is supported by Johnston Carmichael and Scottish Enterprise, and is positioned to take founders out of their comfort zone and introduce them to world-class education, advice, and networks. One of the highlights of the course has been the immersive company visits, which included a private tour of the Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) Crop Research Centre outside Dundee and Q&A with IGS CEO David Farquhar. The visit to the vertical farm was a fantastic showcase of technology and innovation being created in Scotland, with IGS building on centuries of crop management and putting Scotland firmly on the environmental tech map.

These programmes not only provide access to world class opportunities and learning, but create powerful new networks for the founders who generate connections and friendships that will last their entire career.

With the famous quote from the World Economic Forum reminding us, “The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again”. It’s critical that founders keep learning, up-skilling and growing their network, with Mark Logan telling us this week that you must be “aggressive with your own learning and development” and that “best practice almost always comes from outside your own organisation”.

Together we can shine a light on the innovative ecosystem we have locally and help each other build strong, resilient businesses that serve people, preserve our planet, and generate sustainable profit.

Coulda been a contender, by Nick Freer

Global tech bank GP Bullhound swung into Edinburgh a couple of weeks’ back to present its Titans of Tech report to an audience of founders, investors, and advisers at Skybar on Bread Street, jointly hosted by Scottish law firm Shepherd and Wedderburn.

I was there with Trickle founder and CEO Paul Reid, and the room with a view, possibly one of the best in the city, contained some of the usual suspects from the local tech ecosystem - investment firms like Par Equity, Techstart Ventures, and BGF, and founders including PlayerData’s Roy Hotrabhvanon, and Cally Russell from Unfolded.

The 2022 Titans of Tech report lays out a record year for European tech, with as many unicorns created in one year as in the three previous years combined.  According to GP Bullhound, there are now 283 tech companies valued at over $1 billion in Europe, with 125 companies reaching that status in the last year alone.   

Of course, economic headwinds are now in force, and will likely be even stronger as we move into 2023.  And, the technology sector itself has experienced well-documented malaise, with lower company valuations followed by mass job losses.

With an eye on Europe, GP Bullhound’s managing partner Manish Madhvani frames it like this: “The European tech ecosystem continues to show its strength, demonstrated by the record value creation since last year.  Now as inflation spikes to 40-year highs, Europe’s unicorn party is slowing, and growth companies are likely to be hit hardest as investor focus is shifting from growth to profitability.  However, activity persists, and history shows that founders that react quickly and decisively will be able to seize unique opportunities to reposition for the future landscape and continue building category leaders.”

Back at Skybar, the GP Bullhound guys put up a slide on “The contenders”, startups contending for unicorn status and which the tech bank predicts will reach this milestone in the next two years “through showing the greatest ambition and being best positioned to take advantage of opportunities.”

I’m sorry to say that there were no Scotland-based contenders on the slide.  When put to the floor by GP Bullhound, who asked if anyone in the audience had a Scottish company they would put forward, the crowd was rather muted and only a couple of hands went up.  Perhaps everyone was just feeling shy on the night, and the single company suggested was vertical farming specialist Intelligent Growth Solutions.

Later in the week, I was out with a C-suite executive from a tech company that secured one of Scotland’s largest ever exits in recent times.  He agreed that the “ambition” and “seizing opportunities” points expressed by GP Bullhound are absolutely key.

Realising the importance of the North American market from the early days, this senior executive’s Edinburgh-based CEO spent “about half the year” shuttling between the East and West Coasts of the United States to meet prospective customers and shareholders.  And this determination and time on the road paid dividends, both in terms of big-ticket sales and big name additions to the company’s investor cap table.

No need for this particular CEO to repeat Marlon Brando’s famed lined from 1954 silver screen classic On the Waterfront: “I could’ve been a contender”.

Betting on web3, by Nick Freer

At Solana Breakpoint in Lisbon last weekend it was good fun, and informative, to hang out with the BetDEX Labs team who were presenting at conference. While the cryptocurrency industry moves into an even tougher winter than observers had forecast, event organisers Solana pointed out during the introductory address that some of the most successful tech companies were founded during bear markets. 

Microsoft, airbnb, WhatsApp, Apple, and Uber would be just a handful of present day tech giants who launched during deflated markets and times of financial crisis.  

The Scottish philosopher William MacAskill has a narrative around what he describes as plasticity, that there are moments in time when change is much easier.  MacAskill uses an analogy of history being like molten glass, so when glass is hot it can be folded into different shapes.  But when the glass is harder, it’s much more difficult to change things. 

In the tech sector, with widespread job losses and hiring freezes, over and above the current woes in cryptocurrency, we are definitely in a time of change. 

A somewhat more renowned philosopher, Plato, wrote in his Socratic masterpiece Republic that “our need will be the real creator”, a saying that has morphed into a more commonly used proverb, “necessity is the mother of invention”.  

What is certain is that MacAskill’s analogical glassblowing will continue in the technology sector, in software and hardware, and across both the Web 2.0 and web3 manifestations of the internet. 

In BetDEX’s address to conference, co-founders Nigel Eccles and Varun Sudhakar explained their plan to disrupt sports betting, a sector valued globally at around 2 trillion dollars, with a web3 offering positioned to address the constraints of Web 2.0 equivalents - namely, a fragmented market, high fees, locked up funds, counter party risk, and an aversion to winning bettors.    

Being in situ at Breakpoint, it would not be an understatement to say that BetDEX was one of the best received storylines at the 4-day event over a balmy few days in Lisbon.  And no real surprise from the guys who built the astronomical sports betting company FanDuel from a base in Scotland.  

Tech conferences play an important role in technology ecosystems, a point highlighted in Mark Logan’s 2020 STER report.  While our domestic tech conferences - Turing Fest, EIE, ScotSoft, DataFest, or DIGITExpo, which took place this week at the EICC, to name a few - are important fixtures on Scotland’s tech scene, the trip to Lisbon reminded me how important it can be to jump on a plane to get your finger on the pulse of other International ecosystems, and build meaningful connections.  

Today, Startup Grind Scotland jets out to Helsinki with cohort of startup founders and ecosystem stakeholders like CodeBase to attend Slush, a major fixture on the international tech conference calendar, along with site visits to Nokia, Startup Sauna, and Aalto University.  

The Startup Grind team has promised me a wrap piece on the Finland swing, so look forward to reading a postcard from Helsinki in this column in the weeks ahead.

Overall, I guess the hope is that we can take the learnings and connections made at conferences like Slush in Helsinki, and Breakpoint in Lisbon back to Scotland to help power our own tech ecosystem forward. 

web3 and into the metaverse, by Nick Freer

At last year’s Solana Breakpoint conference in Lisbon, the Solana blockchain and its cryptocurrency token were riding high, with one the world’s largest banks suggesting that Solana could become “the Visa of the digital asset ecosystem”.

Since then, the value of Solana’s cryptocurrency, SOL, has retreated from around $250 to $31 (at time of writing earlier this week).  Against a macro-economic backdrop characterised by inflationary pressures, interest rate hikes, and general malaise, Solana’s fortunes have taken a similar dent to the rest of the crypto industry in what is now widely termed “crypto winter”.

On the upside, commentators are forecasting an easing of cryptocurrency bear markets in the months ahead.  More certain, is that cryptocurrency, blockchain, and the more all-encompassing web3, are here to stay.

In the context of Solana, co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko explained on a recent podcast that despite the lower price of SOL, startups continue to develop and build on the network, startups who are also raising funds at “still pretty high valuations.”

Last November, sports betting company BetDEX Labs, co-founded by former FanDuel founders and early employees, raised the largest ever seed round by a UK-headquartered startup.  Arguably more impressive than the quantum of the raise, the $21 million investment secured by Edinburgh HQ-ed BetDEX numbered some of the most important players in the fast-developing web3 ecosystem.

This week, alongside the company’s New York PR agency,  we announced a major milestone as BetDEX became the first fully-licensed sports betting exchange on blockchain.  As we converge on Lisbon for Breakpoint, I’m sure a toast or two will be raised to an incredible year of progress for one of Scotland’s most promising technology firms.

An appetite for software

In 2011, entrepreneur turned investor Marc Andreessen penned his famous “Why Software is Eating the World” opinion piece, with the premise that every business needs to become a software company.

Sticking on eating analogies, when I met Estonian Ambassador Viljar Lubi last week he said nations must think about how they plan to “feed their people” in the future economy and how technology plays a central role.  Ambassador Lubi believes technologists and policymakers should be thinking five years down the line, around developing tech trends and how to stay ahead of the curve.

From New Zealand with Love

We teamed up with PR agencies in Auckland and Los Angeles this week to support New Zealand tech firm StretchSense, as the company announced the launch of an AI and spatial computing centre of excellence in Edinburgh alongside its latest investment, a £7 million round led by Par Equity and supported by Scottish Enterprise.

Ben O’Brien-led StretchSense is planning on international expansion from Scotland.  In O’Brien’s words, “With this investment we are expanding into the metaverse, focused on the key partnerships, new technology, and investments in scale needed to build the future of how people will create, learn, work, and play”.

As I said to StretchSense’s chief marketing officer, Charles Pludthura, I just hope the All Blacks don’t play too hard against Scotland when the all-conquering Kiwis visit Murrayfield later this month.

Tech, Estonian style, by Nick Freer

I got the opportunity to meet Estonia’s Ambassador to the UK, Viljar Lubi, this week as he undertook a whistle stop tour of Scotland and shared his views around how the Baltic nation has risen to be global leader when it comes to tech startups.

While the tech success of the Nordics is well documented, many consider Estonia to be the region’s most alluring startup nation.  With a population of just over one million people, Estonia has produced, per capita, more tech unicorns (companies valued at over $1 billion) than any other country worldwide, ten of the rarefied tech firms to be exact.

So, how did Estonia reach this lofty position, what foundational pieces did it put in place, and do they put something in the water supply in Tallinn that helps breed alpha entrepreneurs?

I put these questions to Ambassador Lubi, who earlier in the week at the Digital Scotland conference had pinpointed the importance of Estonia’s Tiger Leap, a public-private initiative credited with bringing about seismic change as the country strived to build a world-class digital economy.

Tiger Leap launched in 1996 focused on the IT competency of students and teachers, which Lubi says ensured the supply of tech-savvy Estonians who could help develop innovative e-services.  “We could not create a modern e-governance system,” says Lubi, “without people knowing how to use it.”

“Today”, continued Ambassador Lubi, “the majority of our unicorn founders consider themselves a Tiger Leap generation.”

Ambassador Lubi told me a story about a new coding school in East Estonia, which he says illustrates how founders and companies give back and invest in the ecosystem, almost as a rule.  Cross-border payments startup Wise’s (Wise became the largest tech company on the London Stock Exchange, with a market capitalisation of $11 billion when it completed its IPO last year) co-founder Taavet Hinrikus helped launch kood/Jõhvi to help address one of the biggest challenges faced by Estonia,  a shortage of talent and skills.

The school receives support across the board, from startups, more established corporates, and government.  And we’re not talking about small cheques here, with the Estonian way of giving back illustrated by IT company Pilvio, who are providing kood/Jõhvi’s new school building rent-free.

Getting back to my chat with Estonia’s man in London, Lubi says a successful tech ecosystem needs three things, namely skills and talent, funding, and markets.

Not content with his coding school in East Estonia, Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus launched €250 million venture fund Plural earlier this year to give tech firms exposure to seasoned founders-turned-investors. Plural says only 8 per cent of investors in Europe are former operators, in contrast to more than half of tech investors in the US.

“We’re the investors we would have liked to have when we were building our own companies”, said Hinrikus at launch.  “Founding a company is a craft, and the best way to learn that craft is to work alongside those who have done it before.”

Wise words, with a lesson or two for our tech ecosystem here in Scotland.  More on this next week.   

Happy Anniversary, by Nick Freer

Anniversaries can be a big deal.  I had a notable one myself earlier this year, although in truth I was pleased to get it out of the way and into the rear view mirror.  As something of an introvert, with very occasional extrovert tendencies, I’ve never been a fan of being the centre of attention.  At the same time, I do think it’s important to acknowledge milestones in our personal and business lives.  

Two of our clients had anniversaries of their own this month, with CodeClan CEO Melinda Matthews-Clarkson stepping down after five years leading Scotland’s digital skill academy, and the Smart Things Accelerator Centre (STAC), Scotland’s first Internet of Things (IoT) accelerator, marking its first year of operations. 

Leadership is taxing, and this was particularly the case for many leaders during pandemic times, and Melinda deserves credit for guiding CodeClan through a challenging couple of years to come out stronger on the other side.  As she sets out on a sabbatical that will include a spell back in her native United States, the word on the tech scene is very positive about Matthews-Clarkson’s replacement in the top seat, tech entrepreneur Loral Quinn. 

CEO and co-founder Paul Wilson has had his foot down, in the best possible way, at the Glasgow-based STAC IoT accelerator since day one.  The overall aim of STAC is for the industry and government-supported organisation to produce Scottish IoT companies capable of scaling and competing on a global level.  

Backed by top-tier homegrown and international corporates, STAC has already built a 24-company cohort, and last week announced a further round of impressive appointments to its executive and advisory teams.  With former Scottish Enterprise chief Linda Hanna now in place as STAC’s head of partnerships, and with Meta VP for Supply Chain Sean Murphy joining a STAC advisory board that includes recently appointed Volvo Cars CEO Jim Rowan, the IoT accelerator has a powerhouse team to help guide STAC’s bold strategy to supercharge Scotland’s IoT sector. 

One of the not-for-profits we advise, Digital Xtra Fund, was in the news this week around the 35 grants it has awarded to drive digital skills for young people across Scotland.  We know from research that we need to get kids interested in all things digital at an early age, so it was no surprise to see a weighting towards primary schools in this year’s grant awards.

As with CodeClan and STAC, industry partnerships are key to Digital Xtra Fund making a real and lasting impact on a national level, and the Kraig Brown-led charity has some high profile corporate supporters - including Baillie Gifford, CGI, Chroma Ventures, J.P. Morgan, Accenture, and Skyscanner.  What would be great, would be having even more companies step up to back Digital Xtra Fund.  While the small team already makes an outsized impact, think how much more it could do with even more backing.

You would think it would be nothing less than a no-brainer for Scotland plc to invest in digital skills initiative, as this will help to create a virtuous circle that will benefit us all in Scotland’s future economy. 

The question of leadership, guest post by Opto Advisory co-founder Chris Wilson

In the recent flood of coverage about the late Queen, I was particularly struck by the strength of her leadership that came through in so much of the commentary.   One exchange in particular caught my eye, especially in light of recent events at number 10.

Former Prime Minister James Callaghan was recalling an interaction with the Queen.  He was dealing with a particularly troublesome issue and was struggling.  At one of his weekly audiences with the queen, he took it upon himself to enquire as to what he might do.  Quick as a flash came the reply… “that’s why you are paid the big bucks”.

It’s not, I suspect, that the queen did not have an answer.  I’m certain she will have.    However, giving her view would narrow his perspective – he needed to explore all options without bias and with all the context and facts.  Once decided, of course she can have an opinion on plans, share wisdom and indeed challenge if she sees fit.  But not tell him what to do.   

I’ve been lucky enough to lead in great organisations and experience lots of different leadership styles.   This exchange hit home with me as it was very aligned with a recent (and am sure you may think very obvious) realisation of mine on leadership.  No, on great leadership.    

Great leadership is not about the ability to use your wisdom and experience to give great answers. Vanity sometimes causes us to fall into that trap.   Great leadership is about using those same attributes to ask great questions.   

So not, “You should” or “I would …”. Instead, “why might that be happening” or simply, “what do you think?”  A small change but a big difference.  

And I know it works because I’ve experienced it… 

“Why might that have happened?” asked the pro, as I once again hit a wild slice with my 6 iron at a golf lesson.   Initially, this was a source of great frustration for me.   I booked the lesson for the pro to tell me why it was happening.   We both persevered… “maybe my swing was a bit wonky?” I offered pathetically.  “OK, why might that be the case?”  The professional gradually coaxed my amateur golf brain to work out what was going wrong.   Then, as we narrowed the issues down to the most significant (of many) issues with my game,  next came, “What could you do about that?”  And then, “OK, try that then.”  

And so the process continued – trial and error, to rectify the issues in my game.   Miraculously (and for him I expect painfully), the shots started to straighten out, the flight path improved, and I actually started to hit what looked like a golf shot.    Then he said it:

“I’ll not be on the golf course with you when you start to hit bad shots – you need to work out what’s going on and how to sort it yourself”.

So, whether it’s a recurring slice or a global crisis, great leadership is not about telling. Like the Queen,  it is about taking the time to ask great questions so that, in the moment, we help people get the best from themselves when it matters. 

Normalising entrepreneurship, by Nick Freer

At EIE22 week, tech luminaries delivered keynotes addresses to delegates alongside 40 startup founders pitching to investors from across the UK and beyond. 

Scotland’s Chief Entrepreneur Mark Logan revealed that the startups invited into Scotland’s Tech Scaler network will have access to grant funding when they start joining one of the seven hubs across the country later this year.  In terms of other benefits, Logan believes it will be easier for investors to connect with the nation’s startup talent because of Tech Scaler’s inherent one-stop shop proposition.  

On the subject of entrepreneurship, Logan said entrepreneurial potential is latent in all of us, but we need to normalise entrepreneurship on a societal level and throughout the education system. Scotland’s universities are world-class at teaching and research, Logan continued, but they need to be better at entrepreneurship to “complete the triangle”. 

In response to a question on securing more international investment for startups based here, Scotland’s Chief Entrepreneur said this challenge was being addressed at government level, a point reiterated by recently appointed CEO of Scottish Enterprise, Adrian Gillespie, who spoke after Logan.  Gillespie went on to pick out EIE alumni companies that have helped to move the dial when it comes to innovation - including thermal storage specialist Sunamp, and space technology rising star Krucial, a company the new Scottish Enterprise CEO visited last week. 

When it comes to an entrepreneurial journey, incoming president of techUK Sheila Lavell CBE’s story was an eye-opener.  Starting her career as a police officer in Glasgow, Flavell recounted to conference, she went onto become an air stewardess in the Middle East before the Gulf War clipped her wings and she returned to the UK, where she started a business that is now valued at over £1 billion as a constituent of the FTSE 250 on the London Stock Exchange. Supporting women in tech has been one of Flavell’s main crusades, and it was illuminating to hear from entrepreneur and investor Ana Stewart, chair of the Scottish Government-commissioned Women in Enterprise Review, or Stewart Review, co-authored with Mark Logan, reiterating her belief that Scotland can bring about transformative change when it comes to moving the dial on gender imbalance.  

A year on from COP26 in Glasgow, CEO of The Earthshot Prize, Hannah Jones expanded on how Earthshot searches the world for the most innovative solutions to the climate emergency, and how the spark for the foundation is based on President John F Kennedy’s famous moonshot speech at Rice University in 1962. 

One of the climate tech companies pitching at EIE22 that caught my eye was Robotics Cats, with CEO and founder Andre Cheung outlining how his team are aiming to reduce wildfires via AI-enabled detection software.  Another was Ocean Biofuels, a startup seeking £4 million of investment to develop a fleet of autonomous vessels powered by green hydrogen and solar to harvest sea kelp for a variety of applications with sustainability at their core.  

Healthcare startups were also prominent at EIE22, and I got a kick out of seeing my youngest brother, Matthew Freer, a consultant anaesthetist, present his company Infix Support, a venture he set up three years ago to improve operating theatre efficiencies in the NHS. 

The Silicon Valley CEO's CEO, by Nick Freer

Early stage investment firm Race Capital’s general partner Alfred Chuang was in the media this week talking about right-sizing valuations during the tech downturn, and the opportunity that exists for startup founders in spite of economic woes. 

When Alfred Chuang speaks, people listen, to the extent that venture capital heavyweight Andreessen Horowitz refers to him as “Silicon Valley CEO’s CEO”.   BEA Systems, the enterprise software group co-founded and led by Chuang, was sold to Oracle for $8.5 billion in 2008, after which he entered venture investing, going on to help transform an array of startups into some of the Valley’s most iconic technology companies. 

In the arena of all things crypto, blockchain, and web 3.0, companies like FTX, Solana, and Databricks are among Race’s portfolio, and Chuang is bullish about Web 3.0, viewed by commentators as the next seismic shift in the evolution of the internet, via decentralisation where ownership is by users rather than behemoth corporates.

Chuang uses the example of Amazon Web Services (AWS) controlling over one-third of the western world’s internet infrastructure. Crucially, Silicon Valley CEO’s CEO says, the decentralisation of the internet addresses the concentration of power wielded by dominating tech groups. 

While the growth and late stage venture market has been dampened by the recent market crash, the rate and quantum of early state investment deals remain strong and, according to Chuang, this is down to three factors.  

Firstly, seed funding is not tied to revenue, and market slowdowns have a limited impact on early stage founders.  VC firms like Race look for what they describe as “founder-market fit”, providing startups with investment for 18-24 months of runway to penetrate target markets. 

Secondly, exits don’t have to be initial public offerings (IPO), which dry up when tech valuations go south.  The vast majority of exits are by way of acquisitions.  Just think of Scotland’s biggest tech exits of recent times - TVSquared, Current Health, Skyscanner, FanDuel etc. 

Thirdly, venture capitalist investors are sitting on top of USD162 billion of cash for new investments.

So, how is this relevant in the Scottish context?  Tech trends Stateside tend to migrate - there is that old adage about America sneezing, and the rest of the world catching a cold.  

The findings of the 6th annual Scottish Startup Survey were announced this week, a survey of startup founders run by the EIE investor readiness programme at the University of Edinburgh’s Bayes Centre in tandem with my own agency.  

While 93 percent of respondents said Scotland is a good place to launch a startup, 88 percent of startups are targeting investors outside Scotland.  

London and Rest of the UK (46 percent), followed by North America (30 percent), and Europe (21 percent) are the most targeted investor regions. 

If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain.  Along these lines, and after its successful Silicon Valley trip earlier this year, Startup Grind Scotland will be taking 10 Scottish tech founders to the Slush tech conference in Helsinki next month.  For the lucky guys and gals that are picked, the Finland swing will afford a fantastic opportunity to meet some of Europe’s top venture capital firms.  

The power of positive listening, by Vanessa Collingridge, Associate, Freer Consultancy

In this time of widespread economic misery, it’s a natural response to draw in your horns and retrench.  But with hardship looming for so many this winter, how do we strengthen and grow our businesses and personal networks – all without adding to costs?

One of the most interesting shifts in business culture that I’m seeing among my clients is the growing realisation that we need to transform how we engage with each other; put simply, we need to rediscover the art of effective communication. 

To illustrate, let me share a real life story from a leadership development course I ran recently. This was for a group of chief executives and managing directors from the logistics industry - mainly male with twenty-plus years in positions of power.

Part of my work was helping them boost their business performance, improving the way they communicate by seeing customers and colleagues as human beings with unmet needs. As the theory goes, recognising and meeting those needs forges stronger, deeper relationships, and better quality outcomes for both parties. So how is that achieved?

This group was well practised with the sales patter; in fact, they were close to pitch perfect. But inexplicably to them, they still weren’t connecting with their customers. I put the group into pairs and did a listening skills exercise with them. Person A talked for a minute with Person B ignoring them completely. They then swapped and repeated the exercise before reflecting on how it felt to be ignored. Some of the team felt dehumanised; others felt a surge of red-hot anger. We then repeated the exercise with Person A talking, and Person B listening with strong, affirming eye contact and body language – but no talking or even sounds. Everyone reported that this felt better but was still unsatisfying. Finally, we repeated the exercise where the listener listened, paused, then ‘reflected back’ what they’d heard the speaker say, using the speaker’s words as far as possible. This time, the participants reported that they felt acknowledged, appreciated and validated, with their words not only heard but respected and understood. 

So far, so good. But when everyone else was clearing their chairs away, one very senior executive – let’s call him Dave – stayed stock-still in the middle of the room, as if transfixed by some giant discovery.  Gently, I asked him if he was ok and with his eyes still focussed in the middle distance he replied, “I’ve been leading teams for over thirty years but I think that’s the first time I’ve ever truly listened to anyone!”.

Dave’s discovery was the power of active listening – not just to what was being said but conveyed in the silences and body language, as these often divulge a very different truth. 

Active listening is a whole body experience that takes humility, empathy and patience to achieve. It flips the ‘download’ culture on its head, adding value by recognising and hearing those unmet (and even unspoken) needs of customers and colleagues – and then responding to them. By ‘listening to understand, not to reply’, we can help to build strong and successful teams, heal fractured relationships, and deliver what the customer really needs, not what we think they need.