Member Article

Tech City UK unveils programme to Upscale digital businesses

Tech City UK has launched Upscale, a new free programme designed to provide UK scale-up digital businesses with direct access to expertise and advice from world-leading entrepreneurs.

Upscale is a unique government-backed initiative with the mandate to support digital businesses poised for rapid expansion, thus helping to drive British productivity.

The programme is a six-month pilot programme designed to accelerate the growth of 25 early stage high-growth digital businesses.

Through a series of workshops with leading founders from Europe and the US, Upscale will provide UK businesses with strategic advice and expertise on the critical challenges of scaling domestically and internationally.

Upscale builds on Tech City UK’s commitment to support UK digital businesses at every stage of their lifecycle and growth trajectory from the Digital Business Academy for very early stage entrepreneurs to Future Fifty for much later stage businesses, where revenues are more than £3m a year.

Aiming to assist fast-growth scale-up companies to accelerate their performance, Upscale is developed as a feeder into the Future Fifty programme which targets the next level of UK-based digital businesses preparing for exit or IPO.

Participating businesses get access to a network of expert ‘Scale Coaches’ who will provide invaluable insight and advice based on their first-hand experience of growing successful global digital companies.

Tech City UK has gathered an unparalleled pool of expertise from across the digital economy, with Scale Coaches including:

• Niklas Zennström, Skype, Atomico
• Brad Feld, Techstars, Foundry Group
• Alex Chesterman, Zoopla
• Saul Klein, LoveFilm, Kano, Seedcamp
• Sarah Wood, Unruly
• Greg Marsh, One Fine Stay
• Simon Calver, LoveFilm, Moo
• Jerry Colonna, Reboot.io
• Alexandra Depledge, Hassle.com
• Tracy Doree, Llustre, Spring Ventures
• Doug Monro, Adzuna
• Anthony Fletcher, Graze

Upscale will be delivered by Tech City UK with the support of sponsors, Cooley and Silicon Valley Bank.

To be considered for the Upscale programme, digital businesses need to be:

• UK headquartered companies
• Growing at 40% month on month (over the last 3 months) on their key business metric (such as active users, subscriptions, sales, as relevant to the company and sector)
• Funded up to Series A (or equivalent) OR with £500K revenues (if bootstrapped)

Ed Vaizey, Minister of State for Culture and the Digital Economy, comments, “The UK is one of the fastest growing digital economies in the G20 and we must embrace new models like Upscale in providing effective targeted support for fast-growth insurgent businesses that back the new jobs in our economy.

“Building on the Government’s commitment to turn the UK into a nation of business builders, Tech City UK’s Upscale is focused on equipping the next generation of digital entrepreneurs with the knowledge, skills and confidence of turning their start-up business into a scale-up success via mentorship by world class experts who have successfully scaled their own businesses internationally, which will further strengthen the UK’s digital economy.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .