The sixth annual Scottish Startup Survey has revealed that the nation’s tech companies are in a resilient mood in the face of economic headwinds.
While 89% of survey respondents said they are concerned by the global economic outlook, 88% said their start-up had grown in 2022 - although 68% said Brexit had slowed growth.
While 93% of respondents said Scotland is a good place to launch a start-up, 88% are targeting investors outside Scotland.
London and rest of the UK (46%), followed by North America (30%), and Europe (21%) are the most targeted investor regions.
Run by the EIE Investor Readiness Programme at the University of Edinburgh’s Bayes Centre, in association with the Freer Consultancy, the survey sample included the current EIE22 cohort, alumni companies and a number of other early to later stage start-ups from across Scotland.
The survey showed that Scottish tech founders are targeting venture capital and angel firms in near equal measure - 83% versus 80% - with 71% reckoning they have come out of the pandemic in a stronger position to achieve growth.
Almost half of start-ups (48%) are back in the office, while retaining hybrid or remote working, with a third still remote working and only 19 percent fully back in the office.
The research revealed that 69% have found it difficult to hire talent over the last 12 months - with 76% stating that engineers and developers were the hardest roles to fill. Therefore, 67% are targeting talent pools outside Scotland.
The poll also found that 55% of start-up leaders think that Scotland’s tech ecosystem is in a stronger position compared to a year ago.
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