Is Scotland creating enough tech startup contenders? – Nick Freer

I used to be there with Trickle founder and CEO Paul Reid, and the room with a view, presumably top-of-the-line within the metropolis, contained among the ordinary suspects from the native tech ecosystem – funding corporations like Par Fairness, Techstart Ventures, and BGF, and founders together with PlayerData’s Roy Hotrabhvanon, and Cally Russell from Unfolded.

The 2022 Titans of Tech report lays out a file yr for European tech, with as many unicorns created in a single yr as within the three earlier years mixed. In accordance with GP Bullhound, there are actually 283 tech corporations valued at over $1 billion in Europe, with 125 corporations reaching that standing within the final yr alone.

In fact, financial headwinds are actually in drive, and can seemingly be even stronger as we transfer into 2023. And, the expertise sector itself has skilled well-documented malaise, with decrease firm valuations adopted by mass job losses.

With a watch on Europe, GP Bullhound’s managing accomplice Manish Madhvani frames it like this: “The European tech ecosystem continues to indicate its energy, demonstrated by the file worth creation since final yr. Now as inflation spikes to 40-year highs, Europe’s unicorn get together is slowing, and development corporations are more likely to be hit hardest as investor focus is shifting from development to profitability. Nevertheless, exercise persists, and historical past exhibits that founders that react shortly and decisively will be capable of seize distinctive alternatives to reposition for the long run panorama and proceed constructing class leaders.”

Again at Skybar, the GP Bullhound guys put up a slide on “The contenders”, startups contending for unicorn standing and which the tech financial institution predicts will attain this milestone within the subsequent two years “by way of displaying the best ambition and being finest positioned to make the most of alternatives.”

I’m sorry to say that there have been no Scotland-based contenders on the slide. When put to the ground by GP Bullhound, who requested if anybody within the viewers had a Scottish firm they might put ahead, the gang was relatively muted and solely a few fingers went up. Maybe everybody was simply feeling shy on the night time, and the one firm prompt was vertical farming specialist Clever Progress Options.

Later within the week, I used to be out with a C-suite govt from a tech firm that secured certainly one of Scotland’s largest ever exits in latest instances. He agreed that the “ambition” and “seizing alternatives” factors expressed by GP Bullhound are completely key.

Realising the significance of the North American market from the early days, this senior govt’s Edinburgh-based CEO spent “about half the yr” shuttling between the East and West Coasts of america to satisfy potential clients and shareholders. And this willpower and time on the highway paid dividends, each by way of big-ticket gross sales and massive title additions to the corporate’s investor cap desk.

No want for this specific CEO to repeat Marlon Brando’s famed lined from 1954 silver display traditional On the Waterfront: “I might’ve been a contender”.

Nick Freer is the founding director of company communications company the Freer Consultancy