Tech City UK is piloting a new initiative called Upscale. The 6 month programme helps 30 selected ‘early stage tech businesses’ on their road to expansion with the expertise of world-class Scale Coaches. Upscale provides workshops and networking sessions to develop these businesses past the growth barrier.
The Scale Coaches
The Scale Coaches come from various different backgrounds. Below is a list of 2016’s coaches:
- Niklas Zennström: Skype
- Brad Feld: Techstars
- Sarah Wood: Unruly
- Jerry Colonna: Reboot
- Tracy Doree: Fab
- Alexandra Depledge: Hassle.com
- Doug Monro: Adzuna
- Alex Chesterman: Zoopla
- Saul Klein: Local Globe
- Greg Marsh: one fine stay
- Anthony Fletcher: Graze
- Simon Calver: Moo
The Selected Companies
The 30 selected ‘early stage’ tech businesses are some of the fastest growing UK companies over a variety of sectors. The needs of these businesses boil down to 4 main things:
- Going global
- Quality recruitment at scale
- Scaling company culture
- Leadership
The 2016 cohort is as follows:
Fintech
Elliptic
Elliptic are a leading blockchain intelligence company that identify illicit activity on bitcoin blockchain.
Growth Street
Growth Street is a finance platform for SMEs. They use cloud technology to create real-time data feeds to better assess a company’s credit risk.
Property Partner
To buy and sell residential property can require huge sums of money and heavy administrative procedures. Property Partner allows anyone to invest in buy-to-let property and manages the administration.
Receipt Bank
Receipt Bank is the international leading provider of automation to accountants and bookkeepers. They make accounting a fast and efficient background task.
Seedrs
Seedrs is the European leading equity crowdfunding platform. It allows anyone to invest in a business they believe in for as little as £10. The company has completed more deals per month than any other European competitor.
Sybenetix
Sybenetix is a UK leading enterprise in behavioural analytics. Its purpose is to improve investment performance and aid management on all levels of a company.
E-commerce
Bloom & Wild
Bloom & Wild is transforming the experience of sending and receiving flowers by offering a mobile experience. They believe that flowers should be “as easy to send as a text, and as easy to receive as a letter.”
Depop
Depop is a mobile social shopping app. It strives to make shopping fun and accessible whilst on the go.
Metail
Metail allows consumers to ‘try on’ clothes online. The aim is to recreate the physical shopping environment and replicate the satisfaction of a purchase without having to brave the busy stores.
Pact Coffee
Pact Coffee delivers coffee within 7 days of roasting and grinds it at the last moment to give people the pleasure of drinking it fresh.
Snap Fashion
Snap Fashion allows consumers to find exactly what they want to purchase online with visual search. They work with retailers, social media providers and publishers to enhance the online shopping experience, make it as near to the offline experience as possible and create conversions for brands.
Thread
Thread uses a combination of human stylists and machine learning algorithms to help men dress well. The online platform is free and aims to help men find the clothes they love.
Data and Analytics
EDITED
EDITED has set the industry fashion standard for retailers to get pricing and products right. It is used in 6 continents and is the single biggest source of real-time data for its sector in the world.
GrowthIntel
GrowthIntel accelerates B2B trade by turning raw data into predictive go-to-market intelligence. It uses NLP, data science and machine learning to execute this.
Import.io
Import.io is a free, multi-award winning web-based platform that turns websites into structured tables of data without having to use code.
Improbable
Improbable enables developers to build large-scale simulations across thousands of machines in the cloud. It enables a new class of applications for a variety of industry sectors in the future.
Ometria
Ometria is a customer insight and marketing automation platform. It helps to understand customers and personalise their communication with them.
Edtech
Administrate
Administrate is used on 6 continents as a training management and learning management software. It helps organisations define, track and deliver high quality education.
Kano
Kano Kit is a simple computer and coding kit designer for children of all ages. The aim is to empower a new creative generation that wants to create and play with technology, not consume it.
Lingvist
Lingvist is a language learning software that combines mathematical and statistical methods to make learning 10x faster. It teaches words based on how often they are used in a language.
Show My Homework
Show My Homework is a platform on which teachers can publish homework to students whilst keeping parents involved. It helps schools perform with highly engaged students as well as monitoring whether the effort students put in is worth missing ‘family time’ at home.
Healthtech and Biology
Synthace Ltd
Synthace engineers biology applications for health, food, energy and manufacture. They create efficient bio processes to make bio-based products with strategic partners.
Touch Surgery
Touch Surgery is an app that connects the global community of surgeons. The product is a virtual reality application that enables surgeons across the world to connect and improve quality of procedures and make better decisions.
Zesty
Zesty is the UK’s leading digital health platform that allows patients to book and manage healthcare appointments on any device. They wanted to make booking healthcare appointments as easy as booking a flight. They currently operate in UK and Holland.
Harware and IoT
Cocoon
Cocoon is a security system that detects unusual or unwanted activity in any room or floor in the home. Cocoon learns normal patterns of the household so only sends alerts via smartphone if anything is out of the ordinary.
M Squared Lasers Ltd
M Squared Lasers designs and manufactures lasers and advanced photonic systems for academic and commercial use. They are used for fundamental physics research including quantum technology, biophotonics and chemical sensing.
SAM Labs
SAM Labs is an educational app that allows anyone to ‘make the most’ of the Internet of Things without having to code.
Other
Appear Here
Appear Here is an online platform for retailers to find, book and list short-term spaces. As retail changes, so does the importance of being in the right place at the right time.
Global App Testing
Global App Testing locates professional app testers to find bugs before the app is released. They want to help people produce quality apps and organise events, such as Testathons, worldwide.
Wakelet
Wakelet is a platform that organises online content and curates shareable collections. It empowers the user to take control of content that inspires them.
Tech City UK is continuing to support UK digital businesses throughout their lifecycle. With initiatives such as Digital Business Academy, Upscale and Future Fifty, they are giving opportunities to nurture the UK’s diverse digital scene and, consequently, putting this little island on the map for tech business excellence.
