Entrepreneurs, growth & investment solicitors
Entrepreneurs and growing businesses face specific challenges which require specialist advice. We understand these obstacles and opportunities, working in partnership to help our clients build and grow successful businesses from sound legal foundations.
Overview
Leading legal advisers to the entrepreneurial community
The entrepreneurial, high-growth arena in Scotland is thriving and our specialist team is recognised as leading legal advisers to this business community.
Along with advising many individuals and businesses, we work closely with the organisations and investors who have helped to drive this growth.
We also work closely with many entrepreneurial support organisations including Scotland’s network of angel investors and venture capitalists. In addition we have strong relationships with the public sector and banking institutions which support entrepreneurs and high-growth companies.
From our offices in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Thurso and Inverness, we deliver legal advice in a clear way, focused on business rather than the law. As a full service commercial law firm we can also provide a number of additional services which may be crucial to you and your business. Moreover, we can be with you for your entire journey – you will not outgrow us.
Key contacts
Watch our video with Evelyn McDonald, CEO of Scottish EDGE as she talks about the support they provide to a growing number of early stage Scottish businesses, the importance of professional advisors and Scottish EDGE’s partnership with Harper Macleod.
THE TEAM
Our lawyers work closely with businesses at every stage of their life-cycle, from inception right through to a successful exit. We have extensive experience of helping young, innovative companies secure the necessary investment to fuel their growth into strong, successful businesses.
Services
Our services
We have teams within our firm regularly dealing with high value transactions so we can secure your needs at every stage of your business’ life cycle. We also like to open doors and facilitate introductions to other larger, blue chip clients which are often highly beneficial to early stage businesses.
Investment
Alternative Finance
Overview
We are specialists in lending and equity alternative finance. On the equity side, we have been at the forefront of developments in crowdfunding in Scotland, helping clients carry out some of the country’s most successful and ground-breaking equity crowdfunding campaigns and on the lending side, we have acted for many of the key lenders as they enter the Scottish market and worked on excess of 200 alternative finance deals last financial year.
Share options
Overview
We work with companies to help them grow their team and as part of that routinely putting in place share option arrangements, including non-tax favoured options and enterprise management options (EMIs). With our extensive share option experience, we tailor share options to each business so to maximise benefit.
Brand protection and trademarks
Overview
We are specialists in brand protection and management, helping you to look after your brand, maximise its potential and react effectively to threats at all levels, both offline and online.
Our team manages more brand rights than any other Scottish-based legal firm and offers a holistic, contentious and non-contentious brand management service.
Commercial contracts
Overview
Our commercial and corporate solicitors work with scale ups across Scotland, the UK and internationally to draft, review and finalise all manner of commercial contracts and terms and conditions.
Whether you’re a small business employing one or two people or a large company, our solicitors can draft legal documents to suit all types of commercial agreements.
Employment contracts
Overview
Our employment lawyers help businesses on every aspect of employment law. From ensuring suitable contracts and policies are in place through to exits by way of settlement agreements we can help at all stages on the employment journey.
Work
Working in partnership
We have worked closely with some of the leading organisations in the Scottish entrepreneurial ecosystem, from business accelerators to investors, and publicly funded organisations to networking communities. These include:
ScottishEDGE
Overview
Harper Macleod has been working closely as a partner of ScottishEDGE, the funding competition aimed at Scotland’s top early stage and high-growth businesses. Our involvement has seen us work with a number of the finalists and winners of ScottishEDGE helping them on their way to success.
As legal advisers to Scottish EDGE, we’ve put together special offers on our legal services.
Entrepreneurial Spark
Overview
We have worked with Entrepreneurial Spark since its inception more than 10 years ago and in that time Entrepreneurial Spark has supported more than 5,000 entrepreneurs in 27 accelerators. In addition to advising Entrepreneurial Spark, we have worked with many of the entrepreneurs on its programmes on a host of areas such as corporate structure, intellectual property, commercial contracts and investment. Currently, we are partnering with Entrepreneurial Spark on its Fusion:Connect to Capital programme, a six-month investment completion programme that accelerates early-stage space industry startups to raise investment from angels and stage-appropriate funds.
Case studies
Work
Examples of our work
Aveni
Incentive Holdings Limited (Incentive Games)
Reath Technology
Estendio Limited
Scottish EDGE
Caribou Property Limited
Aveni
Overview
After advising Scottish fintech company Aveni on it first round of investment, we then advised it on an investment of £1.1 million to launch a ground-breaking Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform which is leading the way in a new era for speech analytics in business.
Aveni Detect uses the latest advances in AI and natural language processing (NLP) to automate processes direct from the customer voice. This allows companies to achieve greater efficiencies in quality assurance whilst significantly improving client experience, staff training, and the ability to identify vulnerable customers. The investment, led by the TRICAPITAL Angel syndicate, will accelerate Aveni’s growth and see it move beyond financial services into other regulated industries, whilst building a team to support its UK expansion.
Aveni’s team of world leading NLP scientists and engineers have worked with top businesses in the UK to develop Aveni Detect. Whether a business meets customers face-to-face, via video conference or phone, Aveni Detect converts the conversation to text before processing it through its unique NLP pipeline to deliver novel insight and automation.
This creates significant opportunities for businesses to greatly reduce the cost to serve, build a better trained workforce and identify opportunities for new products and services. As well as TRICAPITAL, the round was supported by Scottish Enterprise’s Growth Investments, Old College Capital – the University of Edinburgh’s in-house venture investment fund and Wallace Equity.
Incentive Holdings Limited (Incentive Games)
Overview
We work closely with Edinburgh based Incentive Holdings Limited as it expands rapidly. Incentive Holdings (trading as Incentive Games) is a leading B2B games provider working globally with an ever expanding team.
Our most recent work with Incentive includes helping them with a further round of equity investment, assisting with various share transfers, putting together consultancy arrangements and advising on unapproved share option arrangements and an EMI share option scheme.
Testimonial: “Jo and her team have supported us superbly well through some difficult and exciting times. They have helped guide us in a professional and trustworthy manner, always keeping our budget and requirements in sharp focus.” Stewart Gove, Executive Director
Reath Technology
Overview
Our Corporate Team advised Reath Technology on its seed investment from Techstart Ventures and various private investors.
Founded in 2019 by Claire Rampen and Emily Rogers, Reath Technology is on a mission to build the digital infrastructure required for businesses to shift the circular economy. They specialise in the tagging and tracking of circular assets, and building the “digital passport” they need – think Google Analytics for the circular economy.
The investment will allow Reath Technology to carry out a number of expansion plans. Our team advising on the deal included Jo Nisbet.
Harper Macleod have gone on to assist Reath on various rounds of funding and right through to the exit of one of its founders. Showcasing the team’s dedication to growing their client’s businesses
Estendio Limited
Overview
Estendio is an innovative tech business with a mission to cultivate human potential through accessible technology such as its Present Pal product.
The company secured £450,000 funding in the form of a long-term Convertible Loan Note from Scottish Enterprise and a group of private investors. Paula Skinner (Partner, Corporate) worked closely with Chris Hughes and the team at Estendio to bring the deal to a successful close.
Testimonial: “Natalie and Paula, a massive thank you for all your work to get this deal complete and over the line. It has been an absolute pleasure working with you both and I look forward to working with you both again.”
Chris Hughes, founder of Estendio
Scottish EDGE
Overview
We advised Scottish EDGE, a competition for early stage and high growth businesses where they can win grant and loan funding, on its recent fund raise of £1 million from Sir Tom Hunter, Kevin Dorren, Sir Brian Souter, James Watt, Lord and Lady Haughey, Chris van der Kuyl and Paddy Burns. Each of the leading entrepreneurs committed between £100k to £500k, mainly in the form of loans.
The new funding is going to be used in the next four rounds of the competition to help businesses grow. Harper Macleod has been heavily involved with Scottish EDGE from its inception and is delighted to have been able to assist them in securing such a significant funding package. Jo Nisbet (Partner) and Paula Skinner (Partner) advised on the deal.
Testimonial: “We were delighted to work with Harper Macleod on a deal which will help us to support additional winners in the next four rounds of Scottish EDGE and improve our chances of having a positive impact on the Scottish economy. As always, the team were a great source of advice in pulling together the paperwork.” Evelyn McDonald, CEO of Scottish EDGE
Caribou Property Limited
Overview
We acted on behalf of Caribou Property Ltd in relation to their £1.5m investment in Macomics Limited, an immuno-oncology company with world-leading expertise in macrophage biology. Macomics is developing precision medicines to modulate macrophages for the treatment of cancer.
Caribou co-invested alongside Scottish Enterprise and Epidarex UK Fund who had previously already invested in the company, bringing the total of the round to £4.24m. We are engaged to act on behalf of Caribou in relation to all of their Scottish investments and have so far assisted with four investments. We work closely with the team to ensure we can carry out the investments within their required timescales.
This transaction was led by Paula Skinner (Partner, Corporate) with intellectual property input from Jamie Watt (Partner, Corporate).
Testimonial: “Thank you very much for all your help with getting Macomics over the line. We really appreciate all the help and support you have provided.” Lucinda O’Dowd, Executive Assistant
Publication
Dealmakers magazine
Our team is among the leading advising in corporate Scotland and our regular bulletin captures some of their recent activity across a wide range of sectors.
Read our Spring 2024 editionInsights
CONTACT US
Call us for free on 0330 159 5555 or complete our online form below to submit your enquiry or arrange a call back.