Sir Tom Hunter and the Scottish National Investment Bank - among others - have come together to launch ScaleupScotland2.0, aimed at backing Scotland’s scaling companies.
The programme is focused on those businesses potentially able to achieve more than £100m in turnover, offering intensive, strategic support to an initial cohort of 12.
The package of support is estimated to be valued in excess of £50,000.
Alongside advice and mentoring from some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs and business leaders, participants will also receive strategic consultancy support, initially identifying specific challenges and opportunities facing founders.
Chosen chief executives will also participate in quarterly retreats to focus on common challenges through a mixture of specialist and peer-to-peer learning experiences. Wider leadership teams will get retreats specific to functional heads where they can access specialist and interactive learning.
Willie Watt, chair of the Scottish National Investment Bank, said: “The bank is committed to investing in innovation and industries of the future with the aim of supporting a more resilient and productive economy.
“We know that the success of high growth business is critical to boosting Scotland’s productivity and this programme not only looks to address the financing gap for scale-up businesses, but will provide future business leaders with mentoring and expert advice to support their growth ambitions.”
Hunter added: “Through our existing ScaleUpScotland programme we recognised we needed to deliver a programme for the next level up - and that’s what we are doing with the 2.0 version - offering far more tailored, one-to-one sectoral growth support.
“Multiple studies, including our own commissioned by Oxford Economics, detail precisely why Scotland needs more scale-ups – this programme will provide precise, laser focussed support to high growth businesses with massive ambition.
“Scotland fundamentally needs far more ambitious scale-ups and to enable them we have to offer the right support – our economy depends on scale-ups, they are the engine of growth and prosperity so if we want to deliver a 10-year growth strategy this is one starting point.”
The closing date for entries is 19 September, with all applicants - whether successful or not - to be offered both advice on their propositions and signposting to ongoing support.
Entrepreneurs undertaking masterclasses and dinners as part of the programme will include:
- Bob Keiller CBE, who sold PSN for £600m.
- Calum Paterson, managing partner of Scottish Equity Partners.
- Calum Smeaton, who built TV Squared to an exit worth $160m.
- Sir Christopher Evans OBE, biotech entrepreneur created and listed 20 of his own companies and built 25 private businesses.
- Chris van der Kuyl CBE, founder of Chroma Ventures and serial investor.
- Sir Jackie Stewart, racing driver and philanthropist.
- Kristian Tapaninaho and Darina Garland, founders of Ooni Pizza Ovens.
- Mark Beaumont, endurance athlete and partner at EOS Advisory.
- Mike Reid, founder and senior partner at Frog Capital.
- Theo Paphitis, retail entrepreneur, philanthropist and Dragons.
- Sir Tom Hunter, chair of West Coast Capital and The Hunter Foundation.
- Lord Willie Haughey, founder of City Facilities Management Holdings.
- Willie Watt, chair of the Scottish National Investment Bank.
The programme will require a contribution of £10,000 per business towards costs.
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