There is more welcome news that CivTech is being boosted by a further £6m and that the private sector can now co-fund the businesses. Having organisations like CivTech there at the outset to help tech entrepreneurs with support and funding is critical to the development of Scotland’s tech entrepreneurial network. As identified in Mark Logan’s 2020 report, having the infrastructure and funding in place to help start-ups get to scale-up is key.  

The companies we work with that turn the corner from start-up to scale-up, all seem to have some key things in common.  

• They have reached out to the ecosystem and received support from organisations that can help, such as accelerators like Entrepreneurial Spark and competitions like Scottish Edge.
• They have picked their board and advisory team well so they were able to get sound advice from the beginning.
• They weren’t scared to say no and to pivot quickly when something wasn’t working.

However, over and above all of this is funding. Regardless of the talent of the entrepreneur, if they can’t afford to build the business it will never get to start-up let alone scale-up. As such, news that more funding is available is great for our tech entrepreneurs future.