Tech Scale Up Event at Mansion House

When the Lord Mayor asked the WCIT to organise two events at the Mansion House as part of his Growth programme, I felt it was a great honour and testament to the amazing surfeit of skills and experience of our members, as well as to the reputation of WCIT – the City Livery Company for the IT sector. It was only after our Past Master, Rob Wirszycz, worked his network to sign up 15 great investment, finance and service-based companies to promote and fund the event and shared the list with me, that I realised how just significant the events were going to be. These promoters included amazing institutions and companies such as HSBC Innovation Banking, Amadeus Capital Partners, Guinness Ventures, Lloyds Banking Group, Imperial College, Scale-Up Group, Strathclyde University, BVCA and Venture Path.

Firstly, the ambition of the Lord Mayor, Alastair King, was daunting – “to launch the first-ever ‘Scale Up Showcase’ at Mansion House, aimed at supercharging investment into the UK’s fast-growing tech start-ups.

Secondly, the Lord Mayor wanted the showcase to serve as a critical platform to accelerate collaboration between the UK’s burgeoning tech sector and major financial institutions, creating high-impact opportunities for growth, innovation, and global competitiveness. “We’re sitting on a goldmine of innovation, but we’re watching our gems get polished elsewhere,” said the Lord Mayor, who has made tech sector growth a cornerstone of his ‘Growth’ agenda. “The talent is here, the ideas are here, but the capital to scale often isn’t.” No pressure then!

It was agreed and noted that the Lord Mayor’s ambition was a bold move to keep Britain’s brightest tech stars from fleeing across the Atlantic, and to achieve this the City of London was rolling out the red carpet for its most promising scale-ups. The historic Mansion House, typically a bastion of traditional finance, needed to be transformed into a hub of innovation to host the inaugural ‘Scale Up Showcase,’ on 6 February, bringing together 18 of the UK’s most promising tech companies with, hopefully, deep-pocketed institutional investors. The plan was that these promoters would identify the best tech scale up companies in their portfolio who were each looking to raise between £2M and £10M, or just to raise their profile, and prepare them to pitch to a room full of investor heavy weights. From Legal Tech to Fin Tech and Health Tech, from Green Tech to Space Tech and Legal Tech, and from Social Impact to Food & Beverage Procurement, we were very happy that there would be something of interest for every investor in the room.

At the first event the Lord Mayor welcomed the packed Salon. “My theme for the year is ‘Growth’, and a key focus is supporting our tech sector. This event connects UK tech talent with major financial institutions, unlocking opportunities for growth and innovation. The UK has world-class tech talent and top universities, but too few businesses are scaling into global leaders”. Gary Moore, Master Information Technologist, then added his welcome. “I’m delighted to be supporting the Lord Mayor for this event. Our purpose today is to surface and give a platform to some of our exciting high-growth tech businesses.  We want to reinforce the message that London, and the wider UK, is a fabulous place to conceive of and grow a business”.

The promoters introduced each of their presenting companies, explaining why they had been selected. Each company then presented, with delegates able to stay in their initially chosen room or move to one of the others to maybe catch a presentation twice if it had taken their interest.  This created a great and informal atmosphere as well as an energy and buzz to the event. As one of our presenters, Zoe Colosimo of Neighbourly.com said afterwards “A short but heartfelt thank you for arranging such a superb event last week. The experience was invaluable and many tremendous connections were made which I’m still working through..”.

The delegates, promoters and presenters then returned to the wonderful setting of the Salon where Entrepreneurship Panel Chair Liveryman Mark Bridger gave an inciteful wrap to the event followed by lively networking over drinks and snacks. Our WCIT Help Desk was superbly staffed by members Richard Mann and Andy Cobb, while Past Master Michael Grant brilliantly managed the constant flow of delegates between the rooms. Great feedback was received such as this from Kirsty Rutter, Fintech Investment Director, Lloyds Banking Group: “It was one of the best pitching events I have experienced – Well done and thank you. Ranil (our Chief data officer) and I met with many founders at the drinks. Amazing people. Lots of follow ups planned”.

We are now planning what will be an even better second event in June.

For more information on how you can get involved in this exciting initiative please contact mike.day@member.wcit.org.uk

Mike Day, Secretary of the Entrepreneurship Panel