Wiring the North West for venture scale growth
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Our collective thinking: Wiring the North West for venture scale growth
We posed questions to local leaders, founders and key influencers from the tech ecosystem in the North West.
We’ve taken their voices and distilled their views to create the our first Wired for Growth report: Wiring the North-West for venture scale growth.
The report distils our thinking so far on how to accelerate the growth and funding of ambitious start ups in the North West – through founder education and recommendations for how the region’s ecosystem can better support start up founders.
It also identifies five steps we can take as a collective community to foster an environment where venture scale businesses can thrive.
Our why
It’s time for all stakeholders in the North West venture scale ecosystem to come together and design our support around the needs of actual founders. We must drive positive change, by empowering our region’s founders to access the education capital they need; and by supporting their successful growth journeys so that funding genuinely becomes an output of successful companies, rather than the other way round.
“I found raising the funding for an IPO to be a very different process than early private rounds, from individuals and venture funds.”
“I wish I’d been braver when navigating my first funding round. I now realise it’s okay to ask questions and lean into the network of people who’ve done it before.”
“We need to work smarter to join up the help and support for startups and scale ups in the region. We have to find ways of shining a spotlight on promising scale ups to make it easier to connect investable propositions to investors.”
“I was stretched too thin, and it took me too long to appreciate that investment could help me scale and take the pressureoff. I needed help to understand how a small company can grow into a householdbrand. I knew how to make money, not how to look for money or get investors.”
“We constantly see businesses looking to scale and grow but lacking the knowledge and understanding of where to start seeking investment. Education is key to this. We need to work as an ecosystem to provide businesses with the tools, guidance, programmes of support and meetups that will help with this journey.”
“It’s really encouraging to see the depth of people and organisations interested in the challenge of raising finance. It can be a fragmented ecosystem and hard to navigate, but there is a real collegiate mentality. So don’t be afraid to ask for guidance.”
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