“FIXING THE UK SCALE UP GAP”: STAN AND TOM IN DISCUSSION

DINNER DISCUSSION

Over the last 10 to 15 years the USA has surged ahead of the UK and Europe driven by risk taking and ambition plus a large internal market. The UK has the ambitious entrepreneurs and innovators - but despite some progress there’s been a persistent problem with the quality and quantity of investors in HardTech. Tom argues this isn’t connected to there being a smaller local market or having proportionately less raw talent, it’s been systemic in the way the UK is supporting companies, in the type of investors the fiscal and regulatory regime promotes, and in well-meaning but still dysfunctional state institutions designed to help, from fiscal regimes like EIS and VCTs to Innovate UK and the British Business Bank.

One may ask under these circumstances, is the UK capable of producing technology giants? Does it really want to? Can a very ambitious business founder hope to succeed, or do they have to move offshore to the USA, UAE, Singapore..? Can the Mansion House Compact for Pension Reforms, efforts by the London Stock Exchange, BBB, the National Wealth Fund, ARIA, or even Innovate UK, make enough difference? In short, what are we getting wrong? What can be done about it? And what are we doing about it?

A third discussant will represent a company that has met with success operating and scaling within the UK, albeit not yet on the US scale, and serve as a pointer to what is possible, even in adverse circumstances.

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IN CONVERSATION WITH

TOM ADEYOOLA, EXECUTIVE CHAIR OF INNOVATE UK

Tom co-authored last year the Labour Start-Up, Scale-Up review. A key focus was in trying to bridge the growth capital gap to ensure the UK could support startups through to finally becoming global champions where there was a gap perceived to be around £16bn a year. Tom was appointed Executive Chair of Innovate UK at the beginning of this year and is therefore well placed to talk about this funding gap from the point of view of how Innovate UK could help address it. Tom is a Cambridge alumnus, experienced entrepreneur, and board director with over 25 years in the startup ecosystem. He previously grew his fashion technology startup Metail (based in Cambridge and London) to exit raising £25 million; as a non-executive director, he took women’s personal wellness scale-up Elvie from inception to Series B; and he took net zero strategy consultancy Verco through 3x revenue to acquisition.

STAN BOLAND, SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR, INVESTOR, BOARD DIRECTOR, MENTOR

Stan joined the panel of our final session of the Bessemer HardTech Summit & Showcase event in July, "Scale & Stay" - i.e. scale without moving offshore. He was the co-founder and CEO of Five.ai, an autonomous car business, which Bosch acquired for a large sum in 2022. Before that, he was co-founder and CEO of two of the UK’s most successful venture-backed communications and software companies, Element 14 and Icera, one bought by Broadcom and the other by NVIDIA, for an aggregate value of over $1 billion. Icera raised $245M in venture funding and grew to 320 staff before it was bought in 2011 and Element 14’s team and technology now delivers over 80% of the world’s broadband communications chips and software. Before that Stan was CEO at computer pioneer Acorn and a Board member at its then associate ARM. His early career includes spells at the aerospace firm Rolls-Royce and the computer company ICL. He is a graduate in Physics from the University of Cambridge.

A UK SUCCESS STORY [TBC]

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FORMAT

17.30 Reception and drinks

18.00 Self Intro Sessions

18.30 Drinks and Networking

19.00 Dinner

20.15 Speakers in conversation

21.00 Discussion and Q&A

21.30~ Close

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Host or Publisher The Bessemer Society