Twelve of the West of England’s most exciting and fastest-growing businesses will line up next month to pitch for investment at an event that will also boost Bristol’s reputation as a hive of tech and creative activity.
Accountancy group PwC and Business West, in collaboration with Bristol’s innovation hub Engine Shed, have identified the dozen companies as examples of businesses that can take the all-important step from start-up to scale-up.
The event, on March 1, is part of the Scale | South West programme that will link selected businesses with market leaders, industry experts and investors to help drive further their growth and expansion.
PwC regional leader for the West, Katharine Finn, said: “This is a fantastic opportunity for industry leaders, experts and investors to engage with the founders of fast-growth companies that have the potential to be future market leaders.
“Our aim is for founders and executives to learn from each other and feedback from previous programmes suggests that this process evolves as the programme develops. We are confident that this will continue into the current programme and that will, in turn, lead to real development and scale-up opportunities.”
The Scale proposition brings together companies who have developed disruptive and innovative technology, with executive decision makers looking to innovate, establish partnerships or provide mentoring and advice.
More than 20 large corporates with strong regional presence are already showing their support to the initiative.
West of England scale-up enabler Briony Phillips added: “I’m pleased to see such a diverse and dynamic cohort of companies joining the PwC Scale programme in the South West.
“This programme presents a fantastic opportunity to connect exciting fast-growth companies with some of the biggest brands in the region and I’m keen to see what new collaborations and customers result.”
The Executive Evening, the first of a series of Scale | South West showcase events, will be held at PwC’s Bristol office at Temple Quay.
The companies pitching will be:
BOXARR: Empowering People to Combat Complexity
Ghyston: Turning your technical ambition into technical success
HiETA Technologies: Increased system efficiency through thermal management and light-weighting using additive manufacturing
Landmrk: Location-based experiences platform, giving digital scale to experiential marketing campaigns
MyLife Digital: Rebalancing the control of personal data between an organisation and the citizen, supporting GDPR compliance
OnCorps: Enterprise digital transformation software
Ruggd: Faster, Smarter, Safer Development of applications, from build through to production
Synseer: Secure, efficient SaaS platform for enterprise decision-making
Test and Verification Solutions: Testing experts helping companies create products that are reliable, safe and secure
Theta Technologies: Innovative, patented form of non-destructive testing, using non-linear acoustics (NLA), which detects flaws other technologies cannot see
Yellowdog: Solving big batch processing problems in Financial Services.
Zeetta Networks: NetOS software for network management, improving efficiency and performance.
Executives interested in attending the event can register here.
Yellowdog founder and managing director Gareth Williams said: “I am super pleased that YellowDog is taking part in Scale. The opportunity to learn from the PwC team and access their enterprise clients is an amazing opportunity to accelerate YellowDog’s growth.”
The Final Showcase event for the programme will be staged on April 12. It will be open to the public and anyone interested in attending can register here.
