ESK is a global entertainment technology company that partners with world-class rights holders, brands, and producers to deliver story-driven live experiences to audiences worldwide. At its core is founder Samuel Weatherstone, an entertainment executive whose career began in music licensing at IMG Artists, moved through five years as Senior Producer at the Royal Albert Hall, and eventually led him to Edinburgh, an MBA, and a company built from the ground up.
Founded in 2022, ESK set out to create audiovisual content and technical solutions for the live entertainment industry, serving theatres, arenas, and concert venues globally. Three years in, the numbers tell a clear story: from £250k in year one to just under £4 million in year four, entirely bootstrapped until a recent private equity round with Maven.
Support from Techscaler, delivered by CodeBase, played a meaningful role in helping Samuel navigate the Scottish funding landscape, build a local network from scratch, and think bigger about where ESK could go.
Samuel didn't stumble into entertainment technology, rather he grew up in it. After years representing artists and managing complex live productions at some of the UK's most prestigious venues, he had a clear read on a gap in the market: the industry needed better audiovisual content and technical infrastructure for live events, and no one was building it at scale.
So he did. Moving to Edinburgh, completing an MBA, and co-founding ESK with two technical co-founders, one a decade-long trusted colleague, the other a skilled introduction, Samuel structured the founding team around a simple principle: identify what you can't do, then find people who can. That clarity, applied from day one, gave ESK a focused and functional core. No wasted runway or role overlap. Just three people building something they understood deeply, for an industry they knew intimately.
Relocating to Edinburgh meant starting without the built-in professional connections that had underpinned Samuel's career in London. ESK was growing, but the founder behind it was navigating an unfamiliar funding landscape and learning the mechanics of running a business for the first time, without a safety net.
Then came the moment that tested everything. Samuel spent six months in conversation with a major UK public broadcaster about a potential collaboration. He had the contacts, he had the relationship, and he backed himself. When the broadcaster eventually walked away from the deal, he found himself with nothing else in the pipeline and had to make a decision about what came next.
What followed is the part worth paying attention to. Samuel reached out to people he had previously assumed were beyond ESK's reach at that stage, contacts he hadn't dared approach before. One of them said yes. That conversation became a tangible next step, and that next step became proof that the business had legs beyond a single opportunity.
He's clear-eyed about what that period taught him. Failure, when it comes, demands two things in sequence: you accept it fully first, and then you identify the next concrete action. Sometimes that means walking away from an idea entirely. Sometimes it means finding a different buyer for the same one.
When Samuel joined Techscaler, the immediate value was found in relevant and timely mentorship. For someone who'd built a strong career in London but arrived in Scotland without a local network, that connection with Callum Stuart, as a mentor, was a genuine unlock.
Through Techscaler, Samuel gained a grounded view of what was available in Scotland: the funding routes, the right organisations to engage, and critically, an introduction to Scottish Enterprise grants. More than the practicalities, though, it was the quality of conversation. Mentorship that met him where he was, not with generalities, but with specific, actionable guidance that helped him think through real problems in real time.
The mentorship sessions gave Samuel space to ask the questions that don't always make it into pitch decks or business plans: What do I do when I'm about to run out of money? Do I keep going, or do I pivot? Those conversations, grounded and honest, gave ESK's decision-making a sharper edge.
Equally important was the shift in perspective. Moving to Scotland, and connecting with Techscaler's wider community, pushed him to think more internationally than he ever had in London. In London, he waited for the world to come to him. Scotland made him reach for it. That mindset, shaped in part through the network and community, is now baked into ESK's growth strategy: four continents, North America next, and a fresh team being hired to make it happen.
ESK's growth since founding has been rapid by any measure. The company went from £250k in revenue in year one to just under £4 million in year four, entirely bootstrapped, entirely sales-led, and entirely deliberate. That foundation made the private equity process, when it came, easier to justify and harder to dismiss.
The Maven funding round was nearly a year in the making: six months of preparation, 50 firms approached, ten serious conversations, five in-person partner meetings, two final offers. It's a rigorous, methodical process that Samuel describes with characteristic honesty, including a frank admission that he wishes he'd been better prepared for the due diligence phase.
Now, with investment secured, ESK is hiring in sales and production, pushing into North America, and deepening its presence in Europe, the Middle East, and Australia. The company has delivered over 550 events, reached audiences of more than one million, and built a content portfolio of 50+ licensed titles across 34 countries and five continents.
Techscaler, delivered by CodeBase, gave Samuel Weatherstone something that's hard to replicate: a starting point in a new place. For a founder without local roots, the network and mentorship accessed through the programme provided both practical guidance and a community to build from. It helped ESK find its footing in Scotland, and think far beyond it.
ESK's story is a reminder that the right support, at the right moment, doesn't have to be dramatic to be meaningful. Sometimes it's a mentor who knows the landscape, a grant that funds a project you wouldn't have attempted otherwise, and a community that normalises the ambition to go global.
Follow ESK on LinkedIn and Instagram, and visit esk.live for updates on productions, partnerships, and international expansion.
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