ScaleUp Chairman John O’Connell and Investment Director, Natascha Scholten were delighted to host some leading entrepreneurs and investors at the Ivy Club on 22nd Nov 2016 in partnership with Credit Suisse.
Conversation veered from expanding in China to addressing less obvious cultural challenges in the USA – all with the overriding theme of how to create ‘Global Champions’ from the tech sector in the UK.
Attendees concurred with the key ScaleUp Review 2016 challenges of leadership, funding, skills – noting that whilst finance is the lifeblood of businesses without the requisite vision and talent allied to guidance from entrepreneurs who have previously scaled the heights – funding could well be wasted. Sadly to date the UK has lagged behind in getting the vast array of startups to the next stage of being high growth companies, where the skills required can be quite different.
To help Grow Global Champions, the ScaleUp Group has formed a network of very successful entrepreneurs who between them have guided 80+ companies to successful exits of over £4 billion. These range from household names £1 billion + sales downwards to less than £10 million.