Advisory & corporate finance
If you are a scale up business, you know there is some market fit and you will have felt at times that “sales is working”, so it can be very frustrating when sales growth stalls. The Scale up Institute states that the “markets gap” is one of the key barriers to further growth, their focus … Continue reading Unleash Your Sales Potential: Overcoming Growth Hurdles in Scale-Up Businesses
If you are a scale up business, you know the challenges of aligning the development of talent and productivity. The Scale Up Institute lists access to talent as one of the key “significant pain points and barriers to scale further”. To resolve the issue they focus on the education system in lobbying the Government. Without … Continue reading Talent and productivity gap: Solving the challenges for scale up businesses
If you are a scale up business, you will already be familiar with the challenge of growing with limited financial resources. Our article ‘Considerations for Scale-ups when raising funds’ outlines some of the common solutions in addition to fundraising support we provide clients. Do you lack financing to sufficiently scale? The Scale Up Institute notes … Continue reading Access to Finance Challenges for Scale up Businesses
The Scale Up Institute’s last report identified ‘infrastructure’ as one of the key challenges for scale up businesses. While not clearly defined, the term appears to refer to the ecosystem of local hubs and enterprise agencies available. If you are a scale up business (sales growth > 15%; hitting sales of £10m or more; or … Continue reading Time short entrepreneurs understand that a reliable infrastructure scales their business
In short Focus: tie development to the strategic priorities Customise: make your own playbook rather than apply someone else’s Align: too many well-meant initiatives create inertia Experience: engage someone who has actually done it Adapt: no silver bullet, and different people need different styles Intellectual capital: balance skin in the game with objective counsel Commitment: … Continue reading Common pitfalls for high growth business leaders
In short Purpose: be clear what the board is actually for Scope: advisors plan and decide, they do not do Chair: get the chair and CEO axis right Selection: networks, insight, credibility Dynamics: individual qualities, collective behaviours While there is extensive analysis available on how boards of established companies should operate, especially those in the … Continue reading Five steps to creating an effective Venture Board
In short Only 4% of UK businesses grow beyond ten staff Sales development that stalls after product-market fit The talent and productivity gap Access to finance Infrastructure to build on Leadership that has to develop with the business ‘Only 4% of UK businesses grow to have more than 10 staff’ is the worrying statistic released … Continue reading Top five reasons why businesses fail to scale
In 2021 Office of National Statistics estimated that the UK was in sixth place for productivity compared to other G7 countries, with output per worker being 10% less than the average, and output per head in the US being 1.5 times higher. Despite the need to improve productivity never being more important for business leaders, … Continue reading Are you missing two hacks to improve productivity?
In short High growth is built deliberately, not stumbled into An action plan for growth that is yours, not a borrowed playbook Deeper understanding of your market, and where not to compete What actually drives productivity at your stage of growth Leadership and management skills developed on purpose High growth businesses rarely stumble into success … Continue reading Four hacks for creating a Growth Mindset
Value creation is an integrated approach to optimising shareholder value. Value creation is based on developing and applying value drivers (sometimes called ‘value builders’) that help articulate commercial development and also support higher transaction values. By not drawing on the experience of best practices successfully applied by other businesses, founders can risk leaving money on … Continue reading Time to focus on value creation