What a journey it’s been for both our Scale-ups and us as GrowthBuilders. On completion of our latest 3 Scale Programmes - Aerospace, Defence & Security, Legal, and Retail, we reflect on the lessons and celebrate the collaborative successes!
It all started as normal
The application phase for the Scale Programmes started way back when fist bumps were reserved for the trendy, when the only bubbles in life were when you had a bath and when working from home was seen as a rare treat. Jokes aside, the world turned on its head in a flash with widespread negative impact and in the business context it was more important than ever for industries to look to innovative technologies and embrace radical and long lasting change.
It was certainly the first test for the GrowthBuilders team as we set up the company right just as we plunged into lockdown, giving up our jobs in corporate safety (more to come on this separately), we held our nerve as we believed supporting scale-up and corporate collaboration was more relevant than ever. What's more, when we spoke with the incoming scale-ups, as always we were inspired by their steely determination to keep pushing on despite the uncertain climate and so we knew we were good to launch our programmes!
With 28 scale-ups onboarded, from 12 different countries ranging from US, ME, Europe and Asia we saw our most valuable cohort ever assembled join the programme, with the collective companies having raised £315M.
We quickly adapted the Programmes for the new virtual world and delivered the masterclass curriculum seamlessly (a big thanks to our superstar speakers!) whilst running large and small events with PwC and senior large company decision makers we quickly noticed a trend. The world had become smaller than ever…
The new normal begins
Video calls have always been at our disposal but now being forced to adopt this as the new way of working, we were beaming in people from all over the shop, connecting scale-ups to all corners of the globe when usually those in-person events were a bit of barrier to access due to travel. This has unearthed a whole host of new opportunities for the cohorts.
Of course, we did wonder whether we would lose some of the magic that only in person networking and face to face meetings have, and yes it is difficult to replicate that dynamic, but on the flip side, you don’t get all the challenges that physical meetings bring and we have seen many - travel constraints affected by all things we’ve seen in the past - torrential rain, snow storms, World War bomb discoveries, terrorist incidents, train strikes, tube closures and the list goes on - so actually on reflection, people have never been more available the trick is really curating the right audience and the relevant technologies to cut through the virtual noise. More on enterprise selling in the new world to come in the next few weeks :)
With over 400 executives tuning in to see how they can work with our scale-ups from a host of different countries, we are now seeing the relationships flourish and we look forward to continuing to work with our scale-ups to support them as they rapidly expand with these opportunities.!
“GrowthBuilders runs one of the best programmes in the industry that every scale-up should attempt to qualify for. We immensely benefitted from consolidating our business plans, refining our finance structure through to positioning our values and getting large enterprise connections. All of that too in a matter of weeks under the guidance of best from the industry. The team from GrowthBuilders are excellent as they guide and support you through every step of the programme.” Rajib Ghosh, Chief Revenue Officer, LoyalT
"The Scale-up programme by GrowthBuilders granted us valuable insights that enabled us to scale our operations and accelerate our growth. It also gave us the opportunity to expand our network, collaborate with peers, industry experts and potential clients. Stephen and Max went out of their way to support us and make the most out of the programme." Sara Korchmaros, Chief Commercial Officer, Recash
If you'd like to learn more about our latest programmes get in touch.