It’s Scotland’s time to scale-up

The global economy continues to struggle, and investment in scale-ups has declined. This current state of affairs could however prove advantageous rather than detrimental for aspirational Scottish businesses that are ready to scale their operations and grow their international market share.

Earlier this year, S&P Global Market Intelligence reported a 61% fall in the aggregate transaction value for private equity (PE) and venture capital investments into UK companies. The existing restriction of funds within the market has led investors to take an even more robust and disciplined approach, putting their focus firmly on companies that are prudently run, backed by a data-led proposition and a strong clarity of vision.

Here lies the opportunity for Scottish scale-up businesses, which have rarely, if ever, been subjected to a flow of easy money from PE investors and hence have a DNA more suited to this evolving investment appetite.

Skyscanner, a unicorn created on the back of relatively modest investment levels, is among the list of successful Scottish-based businesses that has achieved global growth through a disciplined, lean approach. Meanwhile, Glasgow-based Simple Online Pharmacy, a company I’m proud to work with, reported a 56% increase in revenues recently, to in excess of £24m. It has also expanded operations across the UK, Germany, and Australia and has set out further plans, all achieved without any external investment.

Despite some of its current challenges, Scotland’s world-leading education system coupled with its supportive business eco-system, encompassing a high level of knowledge-sharing and mentoring, creates an appealing and investable pool of talent.

Furthermore, Scotland’s well-established angel network plays a key role in supporting countless start-up companies to reach proof of concept and product market fit.

This combination of talent, DNA and product-market fit should be the perfect recipe for today’s scale-up investor. But does the Scottish start-up ecosystem do enough to connect with the global PE investment community? Has the ecosystem itself scaled up or does it still operate like a start-up in search of silver bullets?

This month’s Invest2Scale event, which brings together revenue-generating scalable Scottish companies with potential investors, suggests the former or at least a move in that direction.

However, Scotland can still raise its game. Our inherent business fundamentals, coupled with the increasing levels of scrutiny from PE investors, makes many Scottish companies more investable than ever, but capturing the attention of the global investment community will require further support from the government and key public bodies.

We need to build the bridge that will make it far easier for the global investment community to find and connect with these innovative and highly scaleable businesses. Global PE houses have the world to choose from, so we must make Scotland the most accessible as well as the most exciting place for them to investigate.

Accelerating this exchange between savvy investors and our well-disciplined and prudently run companies should be beneficial to all sides and would undoubtedly further bolster Scottish prosperity.

Shane Corstorphine is founder of Scale Up Consulting and a former senior executive at Skyscannerand is one of our keynote speakers as (Originally published on The Herald 19/10/2023)