We were delighted to welcome Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes MSP to a special founder roundtable last week. This was a candid conversation about what it really takes to build a startup in Scotland, and what Techscaler has made possible over the past three years.
Joined by six founders at very different stages of their journeys - Ayub Shoaib (NOMW Health), Chris Helson (Tiny Air), Dr Eva Steele (Amytis), Dr Giulia Marcucci (LumiAIres), Gus Laing (All Trade Link), and Sam Mayall (Zelim) - the conversation ranged from the loneliness of the early days to first international sales, from academic labs to construction sites.
What Doors Have Opened?
Techscaler is often described as a door opener. Within a month of first reaching out, Ayub at NOMW Health was on a stage alongside a chief science officer and a cardiac consultant - relationships he'd had no route to previously.
For Giulia at LumiAIres, it connected two worlds that rarely meet: Silicon Valley and the green tech community her photonic processor is designed to serve. She validated her market, grew her team - including a Chief Marketing Officer she met on the Silicon Valley trip - and learned to translate nine years of academic expertise into a pitch that lands.
"Before, my conversations with investors were really difficult. Now they're easy."
Chris at Tiny Air described a sharp contrast between two timelines. Four months after joining the programme and attending the Singapore international programme, he had demoed his surgical decontamination technology live at 5am to 35 people across four hospitals in Singapore and Abu Dhabi via iPhone - and received a purchase commitment two days later.
"Techscaler brought us advice at the level we needed. The people who've been there, who've done the exits. And they get their hands dirty - they do the work with us."
Mentorship: The Thing That Can't Be Rigid
For most founders around the table, mentorship was the thing that changed everything. Sam Mayall - who has since moved from mentee to mentor - described the hard lessons he'd learned through costly decisions and the wrong markets. If you can shortcut those lessons for someone else, you meaningfully increase their chance of success.
"Getting investment is an art, not a science. The relationship between mentor and mentee has to be built on trust - the personal relationship matters more than the sector match."
Kate Forbes picked up on this directly. Almost everything government funds has to be structured and reported against metrics. Mentorship can't be any of those things and still be effective - and that's precisely what makes it different.
International Markets: The Proof of Concept
Eva at Amytis found her first matched investment through a Black and Green Ventures feature in the very first Techscaler newsletter she received. The Silicon Valley international programme then opened early customer connections in the US, and helped her community catch a red flag about an investor she'd been speaking with before it was too late.
"Someone had my back. Having been out there to build those connections - we might have gone down a bad route without them."
For Chris and Tiny Air, Singapore has already moved from trip to transaction. For NOMW, a Scottish Government delegation opened a manufacturing route to China. For Giulia, conversations with Google and Apple in the US confirmed that what she'd built in a university lab could compete at the highest level of the market.
Techscaler: Then and Now
The Deputy First Minister traced Techscaler back to its origin: a phone call in May 2020, COVID lockdown, pulled into a lay-by on the A9 to speak with Mark Logan for the first time. That conversation led to the STER Report, which led to the funding, which led to this.
"From that lay-by to a room in the UAE, watching people with serious capital being blown away by the strength of the propositions coming from Techscaler businesses. That's my arc."
She was clear about what the government can and can't do: it can't build the businesses. It can create the right conditions. And she pointed to self-belief as something she hadn't fully anticipated becoming part of that.
"It's giving people across Scotland the confidence to say: I can start a business. Someone sees a problem and decides to go fix it. Where do I start? That's what Techscaler answers."
One Piece of Advice
The session closed with a round-robin: one piece of advice you'd give your earlier self.
- Sam: Get the right people around the table, early.
- Giulia: Don't be scared to be bold.
- Gus: It's a long road. Make sure your calendar's cleared.
- Chris: We should have found Techscaler seven years ago. But we got here at the right time.
- Eva: Ask for help sooner. And be confident in your ability to do it.
- Ayub: Keep walking.
If you're at the start of your own founder journey, or somewhere in the middle of it, become a Techscaler member for free today.
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