Has your business grown more than 20% in turnover or employee numbers in the last year? Do you have plans to grow that quickly in the next couple of years?
If you are, we would very much like to hear from you. The West of England region has ambitions to build the best possible ecosystem for scale-up businesses in the country. To achieve this, we need to know what your greatest challenges are, and what support or resources you need to overcome them.
I would like to invite you to share your views both in person and on paper (in August and beyond):
- Complete this survey from the Scale-up Institute by 1st September 2017. Insights from your answers will be shared at a regional launch event in November. The survey will take about 15 minutes to complete and we plan to repay your time with useful content, programs and services to be developed in response to your input over the next 12 months. By completing the survey, you will help us ensure that the UK is the best place to scaleup a company in the world.
- Have coffee, or a call, with me, Briony, the West of England Scale-up Enabler. I want to hear first-hand what challenges you’re facing and what we (as a region) can do to help you scale- up more effectively. I would also like to share your stories to help inspire others. This invite is open beyond August but the sooner the better! My contact details are below.
Finally, as a fast growing business, you might be interested to raise your profile by nominating your business for the newly launched Fast Growth 50 – recognising 50 innovative businesses in the South West. Deadline for nominations is 25th August.
If you are keen to build the profile of your Tech business, nominations are also open for the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 until 8th September. According to their press release, “South West business have ranked in first, second and third places in previous Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 Awards and were named the fastest growing UK tech businesses. The highest four-year growth rate for a South West winner was in 2015 when Corsham based Skyscape Cloud Services, now rebranded as UKCloud, ranked in second place with 13,391% growth.”
The survey small print:
- The “ScaleUp Survey” is part of the ScaleUp Institute’s ongoing work to focus attention on the UK’s high growth firms so we can ensure that the UK is the best place in the world for companies to both start up and scale-up. We want more companies to grow and scale up!
- The deadline for completion is 1st September 2017.
- Scale-up businesses are technically defined by the OECD as “an enterprise with average annualised growth in employees or turnover greater than 20 per cent per annum over a three year period, and with more than 10 employees at the beginning of the observation period.” However, we don’t want to be limited by the definition and are seeking responses from businesses who have grown by 20% or more in the last 12 months (in terms of turnover or employee numbers).
- You may have received this survey already – perhaps from the Scale-up Institute or from colleagues across the region. If you’ve already completed it, please consider this email/newsletter/reminder as our rather alternative way of saying thank you. We’re really sorry you’ve been asked more than once, we just want to be sure that your experiences have a voice.
- Our ambition is to ensure the West of England is the best represented region in the survey – please share the link with similar businesses that you know.
- Full link: https://alligator.focusvision.com/survey/selfserve/54a/170741?list=1&clientid=85
This blog series tells the story of the Scale-up Enabler, Briony Phillips. Briony joined the Engine Shed team on a 1 year contract in June 2017 funded by Business West, Engine Shed, The University of Bristol and the West of England Growth Hub. This group have a shared ambition – first, to identify scale-up businesses in the West of England region and to better understand their challenges and second, to design, facilitate and support initiatives that will make it easier for businesses to scale-up more effectively – in the long term.
Briony – Scale-up Enabler
briony.phillips@engine-shed.co.uk
@BrionyPhi1