Key actions in our Scale-Up Action Plan include:
Support access to customers in other / home markets: Companies at series B+ stage may face challenges in securing funding from UK investors and look to explore opportunities to expand into new markets. At this stage of growth, companies are also likely to face regulatory scrutiny.
- The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology should launch a dedicated support package for tech scale-ups, including a concierge service.
- Government buyers should give scaling businesses more opportunities when buying tech
- Utilise the Regulatory Innovation Office for tech scale-ups and complement the RIO with regulatory sandboxes and test beds.
Help access the right combination of finance: It is well versed that there is a lack of institutional capital to drive growth. This investment gap impacts on businesses’ ability to expand within the UK and compete on the global stage.
- Review, streamline and join up the different types of government financial support (including arms-length Government bodies UKRI, InnovateUK and British Business Bank) to make it easier for scale-ups to access.
- Bolster world-leading EIS and VCT schemes to better support regional tech start-ups and scale-ups, including increasing the age-limit for firms.
- Continue at pace to advance wider capital market reforms, helping to maximise the impact on government investment vehicles.
- Apply the success from the French Tibi scheme to boost investment in innovative tech businesses.
Enhance access to talent and skills: Scale-ups often struggle to compete for talent with larger tech businesses, i.e., in offering competitive financial benefits, such as signing bonuses. Tech scale-ups are also learning to cope with meeting growing customer demands whilst simultaneously developing their managerial and leadership talent.
- Better promote the Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) as an option for scaling firms to access talent.
- Make the scale-up worker visa more competitive, removing complexities and making it cheaper.
- Bolster the role of national assets, including universities, to continue developing a pipeline and network of entrepreneurial talent.
Develop a pipeline and ecosystem of diverse tech scale-ups: Female and ethnic-minority led businesses remain vastly underfunded, receiving only a small fraction of scale up capital. Demonstrating the scale of the problem, only one in three UK entrepreneurs are women, a gender gap equivalent to 1.1 million missing businesses.
- Create stronger evidence on base diverse tech founders by improving data collection for government and policymakers.
- Work to establish a network of next generation diverse leaders in deep tech and life sciences ecosystem by continuing the Science and Technology Venture Capital Fellowship Programme.
