Alongside mentoring, the start-ups chosen for the Upscale programme – those that have achieved at least £1m turnover or raised significant funding – will also receive access to workshops on topics such international expansion, HR support, and building a fast-growth company.
The first start-ups chosen for the programme span several industries including e-commerce, fintech and data.
Almost all of the selected companies have been founded within the last six years, have raised an average of £5.6m, turned over $1.8m and employ 30 people.
The mentors for the programme, which also include Hassle co-founder Alex Depledge, Adzuna’s Doug Monro, Graze CEO Anthony Fletcher, and Onefinestay co-founder Greg Marsh, will be giving up their time for the start-ups for free.
Other coaches include Niklas Zennström, co-founder of Skype; Brad Feld, founder of Techstars; high-profile investor Saul Klein; Jerry Colonna, founder of Reboot.io; and Tracy Doree, founding partner at Spring Ventures.
The full list of UK start-ups taking part in Upscale are:
Administrate
Appear Here
Bloom & Wild
Cocoon
Depop
EDITED
Elliptic
Global App Testing
Growth Street
GrowthIntel
io
Improbable
Kano
Lingvist
M Squared Lasers Ltd
Metail
Ometria
Pact Coffee
Property Partner
Receipt Bank
SAM Labs
Seedrs
Show My Homework
Snap Fashion
Sybenetix
Synthace
Thread
Touch Surgery
Wakelet
Zesty
Unruly co-founder Sarah Wood, who will also be mentoring start-ups as part of the initiative, commented: “Our tech start-up ecoystem is stronger than ever; scaling UK start-ups further and faster is now the most pressing challenge for UK PLC if we want to harness the business opportunities brought about by the digital revolution.
“Only by working together and sharing our expertise can we ensure that as many UK companies as possible go from start-up to scale-up and contribute to the future growth of the UK’s digital economy.”
