The Scotsman

Searching for Scots tech scene’s next Skyscanner

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become investor-ready ahead of Silicon Valley heavyweigh­t Sequoia investing in 2013, crystalisi­ng that unicorn status.

In an interview with a national newspaper in 2018, Logan expressed his view that while Skyscanner may be unique, it is also replicable. He then tempered this remark by saying Scotland requires hundreds of good tech start-ups to grow one unicorn.

Last week, Logan’s Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review, commission­ed by Finance Secretary Kate Forbes, was released to a considerab­le amount of acclaim across the Scottish tech scene. As one of the senior team from Codebase tweeted out on the day, which seemed to capture the overall response to the report, “Brilliant to see a coherent narrative forming around the future of Scottish tech”.

The Logan Review states that Scotland’s technology ecosystem has still to pass through a “tipping point” in its develop - ment, “which is the point”, the report continues, “at which the ecosystem hosts a critical mass of viable start-ups and scaleups”. Logan places emphasis on “Education and Talent”, “Infrastruc­ture” and “Funding” and the report goes on to outline a detailed list of “interventi­ons” which attached himself too. As outlined in the Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review, we are still some way off being able to say that we have a critical mass of Scotland-based startups who have a realistic chance to achieve global scale and it’s a belief that is echoed by a number of prominent VC firms I have been in touch with over the last 12 months.

A well known UK tech reporter occasional­ly asks me who I think will be, as she puts it, Scotland’s next Skyscanner. My answer is usually pretty much the same – what I have heard from VC and angel investors in my network, who tech incubator Codebase (the tech incubator supports around 400 companies who have raised over £600 million in investment) rate and start-ups I have got to know first-hand.

Do I believe we can produce another Skyscanner? For sure. Technology investment bank GP Bullhound’s co-founder and managing partner, Hugh Campbell, puts its best: “There are now more than 100 billion-dollar technology companies that have come out of Europe. As we become a more global society and economy, so the ambitions across continents have become more similar.”

Nick Freer is the founding director of the Freer Consultanc­y

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