- Engine Shed host Scale-Up Pow Wow in partnership with Smith & Williamson
- The event convenes regional stakeholders around a common purpose – to create the best region in the country for scale-up growth
- Scale-up ecosystem map launches to share new dataset and highlight regional resources
- Engine Shed and UKBAA announce first UK Angel Hub and Quarterly Investment Briefing events
The ScaleUp Institute’s Annual ScaleUp Review, released on Tuesday 14th November, cited Engine Shed as an exemplar infrastructure case study. This week, Engine Shed invites ScaleUp Institute CEO Irene Graham and global Entrepreneurial Ecosystem expert Dan Isenberg to participate in a local discussion and consider how to create a region that is the best place in the UK to build a scale-up business.
The event, hosted at the Engine Shed by Scale-up Enabler Briony Phillips and run in partnership with Smith & Williamson, brings together a diverse mix of scale-up business founders, and scale-up supporters many of whom run or participate in scale-up initiatives in the West of England region.
Not only does the event provide a platform for discussion, it also sees the launch of two key scale-up focused projects:
- The first ever UKBAA Angel Hub in partnership with the UK British Angels Association. The Bristol Angel Hub is designed to bring the early stage investment community in the West of England together, to share good practice, to learn, and to discover new investment activities and opportunities. To find out more about the Angel Hub, please visit: https://www.angelhubs.org/
The Bristol Angel Hub will offer members access to Engine Shed Business Lounge, training and development opportunities for new and experienced angel investors, and opportunities to attend pitch presentations. The Angel Hub will be complemented by a new initiative from Engine Shed – the Quarterly Investment Briefing. This is a 3-monthly event and newsletter designed to invigorate the investment ecosystem locally, nationally, and internationally; to join the mailing list for the Quarterly Investment Briefing, please complete this short form: http://bit.ly/ESQIBFORM
- The Scale-up Ecosystem Map – a map to illustrate the assets that exist across the region that are designed to support scale-up growth and success. The map has been built using a newly formed dataset that has been collected organically by Engine Shed’s Scale-up Enabler, Briony Phillips. The pins on the map are organised according to the challenge areas identified by the ScaleUp Institute. The map, launched as a minimum viable product, also invites users to share new data through a brief form.
This resource is the first public asset map of its kind and is designed to help scale-up businesses to identify support that is available, support providers to find opportunities to collaborate and those outside the region to see what is available here. The next planned iteration will include scale-up business data plotting the community of businesses.
Briony, Scale-Up Enabler for Engine Shed said: “The ecosystem map illustrates the vibrant support available for scale-up businesses in the West of England. We are interested to see how this will be adopted, utilised and developed both within and beyond the region. With the region already identified by startup.co.uk as the best place to start a business, today marks a great opportunity for the region to come together and commit to making it the best place to scale a business too.”
Peter Ball, Partner at Smith & Williamson said “The event, brought together by Briony at Engine Shed shows just how strong and collaborative the business ecosystem is here in Bristol for fast growing businesses, with an opportunity to showcase what we do in Bristol on a national and international field. We’re looking forward to taking what we learn today to help support these local success stories to grow and make the most of their potential.”