Scale up companies* play a pivotal role in creating vibrant economies. They provide employment opportunities, drive innovation, create international trading opportunities and disproportionately add to the local economy. The challenge is that we just don’t have enough of them – typically only 4%. Many new business starts never go on to create job prospects and many growing companies seem to stall when they reach a head count of 25. The statistics speak for themselves – out of 5 million businesses only 50,000 employ over 50 people.

 

So what is the challenge of scaling a business? For starters, growing a company is difficult - sustaining growth over the years’ presents an entrepreneur with wide-ranging challenges.

 

Genuine ambition supported by resilience and mental toughness in our view act as the cornerstone for success and the scale up challenge. When these invisible factors are fused with a strong capable team, good financial discipline, great propositions supported by a credible growth story then all the ingredients are there. With great coaching and or the involvement of credible Non-execs, which support the choreography, and execution of the plan then the probability of success increases significantly. External support must bring:

 

• Governance - good housekeeping, regular board meetings, compliance

• Insight – on markets and growth challenges

• Coaching – driving the plan, sounding board to address challenges

• Connectivity – the ecosystem of growth – great advisers, supply chains

 

Where to find a scale up is key, we have worked with over 13,000 ambitious businesses

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* Those businesses achieving 20% growth for the past 3 consecutive years.