The UK’s technology sector represents a great opportunity for the UK. It is a leveller across regions, aides productivity levels, creates jobs, wealth, and tax. Yet we are falling behind, as the world catches up with our lead. A significant part of this challenge is incredibly low progression from startup to scaleup phase, with lack of access to growth funding often being cited as a core reason for this. In 2023 less than 300 startups accessed venture capital funding in a Series A round (first institutional investment). This lack of pipeline will stifle the UK’s ambition to be a global scaleup superpower. 

 

To remain globally competitive, the UK needs to better support these high potential scaleups and address the lack of access to growth funding to drastically increase the progression of UK tech startups to the scaleup phase. We need to create more venture-backed UK tech successes. 

 

VenturePath - The UK’s Scaleup Investment Community is recommending targeted intervention from the new Government in late 2024. This letter sets out the issue, and its support from 100 key signatories drawn from across the UK tech investment ecosystem. 

 

Challenge Statement 

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Raising venture in the UK is hard and difficult. Many founders don’t get beyond the startup phase. UK wide understanding of, and access to, venture capital is currently not available. Collectively the UK’s community of business growth supporters need to collaborate to help make venture more accessible to the UK’s ambitious founders, and ensure high potential tech founders are readily accessible by venture capital investors. 

 

This includes Government playing an active role joining us on this mission; to overcome the venture funding accessibility barrier. Through rewriting the venture narrative for the UK’s tech scaleups we can create a more equitable and accessible venture landscape for the founders of today and tomorrow.

 

Support for the UK ScaleUp Investment Mission

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Signatories to this Mission include: Ecosystem Partners, trade bodies, VCs, Exited Entrepreneurs, VC backed founders, business support organisations.

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To remain globally competitive the UK needs to better support these potential scaleups and their high potential entrepreneurs. The new Government has the opportunity to make immediate gains here. 

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Investment success to scale up is a process. Its learnable (and teachable). Its repeatable. Its proven by others who have gone before. We have reverse engineered this path through venture to scaleup success. 

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We must: Surface, Select and Support Scaleups from across the UK, including those founded by under-represented groups. We can help VCs Find and Fund them Faster and then Celebrate UK Scaleup Success. 

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We have identified a 6 stage process to achieve this. Supporters of this mission have a role to:

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1. Surface them (Data driven)

2. Select them (Nationwide partner network referring)

3. Support them (Using proven Connections, Community, Content & access to Capital)

4. Celebrate them (across this joined up ecosystem, domestically and internationally)

 

At the same time, ensure UK investors can: 

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   5. Find them (via a central index of UK scaling businesses seeking growth capital)

   6. Fund them (Access a ready pool of £10bn+ of Series A-B capital)

 

Our ask of the next Government is collaboration to support research, partnership building, and platform development. In doing so the UK will track all promising companies as they progress through venture funding stages, enable data-driven investment and improvements in the UK’s tech funding landscape.