Designing a Joined-Up Pathway for Scotland’s Tech Scaleups

Scotland’s tech ecosystem has matured quickly over the past decade. Ambition and talent are in no short supply. Founders across the board can be seen building globally relevant products from day one.

However, to a large extent what determines whether that ambition translates into sustained economic impact is support infrastructure.

Infrastructure that is all about intentional growth and coordination. Where public investment, advisory expertise, capital access, and founder education work as a coherent system rather than parallel tracks.

Our partnership with Scottish Enterprise is rooted in this principle. Techscaler and CodeBase brings deep, startup-specific insight drawn from supporting thousands of companies. Scottish Enterprise brings the mandate, scale, and global reach of Scotland’s national economic development agency. Together, through Techscaler, we are designing a pathway where founders encounter alignment rather than friction.

The strategic intent behind this partnership is to eliminate the need for Founders to interpret where one organisation’s remit ends and another begins. In a truly growth-conducive ecosystem they should experience continuity.

Why This Partnership Exists

Early-stage companies often operate and make progress by virtue of speed. Decisions around product, hiring, and capital happen in compressed timeframes. When institutional support systems are fragmented, founders lose momentum navigating process rather than progressing their business.

Scottish Enterprise has long provided sector expertise, international market access, innovation funding, and investment support across Scotland’s economy. CodeBase via leading national programmes such as Techscaler has developed founder-first delivery models. Manifesting in the form of accelerator programmes, mentorship structures, peer learning, and curated investor connectivity these meet the founders at their current stage with curated support that provides maximum support.

Through Techscaler founders get to experience:

• Collaborative Advisory teams.
• A connected framework of programme milestones and grant structures
• Internationalisation support integrated into founder journeys rather than bolted on at the end.

The objective is a fool-proof coherence.

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At Nuuri, we received an R&D Grant from Scottish Enterprise via a Techscaler referral. The grant has allowed us to accelerate the development of our customer dashboard and speculative features within it. Specifically, it enabled us to bring forward an engineering hire by three to four months and strengthen our ability to deliver the project.
_{Steven Clarke, founder of Nuuri and  Techscaler member}

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What We Have Built Together

The most visible expression of this collaboration is the Techscaler MVP Small R&D Grant, delivered in partnership with Scottish Enterprise.

The grant is designed to support founders at a pivotal point. Once a company has validated its direction and demonstrated commitment through structured programmes such as Techscaler Catalyst (Raise track) or the Venture Building Incubator, access to focused R&D funding can accelerate product development and market readiness.

Beyond funding, the partnership operates through a coordinated advisory model. Scottish Enterprise specialists across innovation, intellectual property, financial readiness, and international markets work alongside Techscaler Entrepreneurs in Residence.

Internationally, this coordination extends further. Scottish Development International teams provide in-market expertise for Techscaler international programmes, strengthening export potential and supporting companies engaging in key markets such as Singapore.

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Measurable Impact and Systemic Outcomes

Partnerships in ecosystem development must be evaluated on both immediate outputs and longer-term structural change.

In practical terms, this collaboration has already delivered:

• 44 MVP Grants issued to Techscaler companies by the end of 2025
• £1,254,685 in grant contribution leveraged into £2,748,503 of total project activity
• Coordinated advisory support reaching more than 160 companies, with additional support provided to over 90 percent of the grant cohort

While the impact snapshot is a representation of real ground work, the deeper impact lies in how these mechanisms influence behaviour. Founders progress from ideation through validation with a clearer understanding of what institutional support can offer. Advisors operate with shared visibility of company context. International engagement becomes part of early strategic thinking rather than a late-stage aspiration.

Over time, this reduces duplication and increases velocity across the ecosystem.

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We received the Techscaler MVP R&D Grant and the teams at Techscaler and Scottish Enterprise have provided excellent mentoring and guidance in helping us scale up our successful innovations into a sustainable business model where we can expand into new markets.
_{Andrew Conkie, Founder of Red Star and Techscaler member}

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Extending Beyond a Single Programme

While Techscaler provides the operational framework, the partnership reflects a broader national ambition.

Scottish Enterprise plays a central role in shaping Scotland’s economic priorities, including innovation, investment attraction, and export growth. CodeBase operates as a connective layer across hubs, founders, investors, corporates, and academic institutions. Through Techscaler’s presence in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stirling, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness, and the South of Scotland, national infrastructure is experienced locally.

This distributed model ensures that support is not centralised in one geography. It also ensures that founders in emerging clusters have access to the same advisory depth and funding mechanisms as those in established urban centres.

From CodeBase’s perspective, the partnership contributes to a structural shift in how startup ecosystems function. Rather than separate initiatives operating independently, public investment is channelled through integrated pathways building long-term resilience.

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Embedded Expertise and a Founder-First Design

One of the defining characteristics of this partnership is that it was shaped deliberately from the outset. Scottish Enterprise was involved during the early contracting and design phase of Techscaler, ensuring that grant support and advisory capability were not appended later but integrated from the beginning.

As Richard Hamill, Techscaler Programme Development Lead at Scottish Enterprise, notes, the MVP Grant was conceived as one component of a wider, joined-up programme of embedded Scottish Enterprise support. A dedicated team of specialists across Innovation, Intellectual Property, Financial Readiness, International, and Research was assembled to work alongside Techscaler delivery teams.

The impact of that design choice is measurable. Together, the partnership has worked with more than 160 companies, delivering 56 MVP Grants and providing additional support to over 90% of the cohort. Beyond grant issuance, the collaboration is already contributing to a steady flow of new investment deals and revenue generated from newly launched products.

What distinguishes this model is continuity. Founders do not experience grant funding in isolation from strategic advice. Intellectual property considerations are introduced alongside product build. International readiness is discussed before export becomes urgent. Financial discipline is embedded early.

International programmes reflect the same philosophy where founders are directly taken into markets where they are selling or raising capital creating exposure that cannot be simulated remotely.

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Founder-first thinking runs through everything Techscaler by CodeBase does.
_{Richard Hamill, Techscaler Programme Development Lead at Scottish Enterprise}

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A Coordinated National Ecosystem in Practice

This partnership extends beyond a single institutional relationship. Alongside Scottish Enterprise, Techscaler works in coordination with Highlands and Islands Enterprise and South of Scotland Enterprise (SOSE) to ensure founders across Scotland access consistent, high-quality support.

In the Highlands and Islands, collaboration with HIE is focused on enabling meaningful engagement with emerging technologies. At the recent Rural AI Roadshow in Inverness, led by HIE, Techscaler contributed to discussions on the practical realities of AI adoption for both established businesses and startups. The emphasis was applied capability, ensuring companies in rural and island communities can access relevant expertise as AI continues to evolve.

In the South of Scotland, collaboration with SOSE and regional partners is translating into sustained founder-facing activity. This includes founder talks, introductory technology sessions, AI community meetups, and hands-on no-code workshops for businesses, students, and aspiring founders. Community-led initiatives such as Borders Tech Connect are building local peer networks, while plans for a regional hackathon aim to widen participation and support more diverse founders to test new ideas.

This coordinated model ensures that support is not concentrated in one geography. Founders across Scotland encounter aligned standards of guidance, funding access, and expertise, whether operating in a city hub or a rural community. By connecting regional delivery with national capability, the partnership strengthens the infrastructure that underpins long-term competitiveness.