The three barriers to growth - by a Scottish scale-up success story

The founder of a Scottish scale up success story has pinpointed three hurdles holding Scottish businesses back.

Simple Online Healthcare

Addy Mohammed's Simple Online Healthcare has seen revenue growth soar from £20m to £155m, a figure which will be released in its upcoming accounts.

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The firm has capitalised on the demand of weight loss drug GLP-1 and is also increasingly focused on nutritional advice by providing ongoing support.

Addy said that Scotland’s growth economy was being hindered by a lack of access to funding, global connections and experienced leadership.

"Scotland is still very good at producing entrepreneurial talent and early-stage businesses, he said.

“The bigger challenge is that in the scale-up phase, companies need experienced leadership, growth capital, international networks, people who've lived and breathed that journey from £10m to £50m or £50m to £100m.

“There's an added complexity because we might not have access to that level of talent within Scotland."

Simple Online Healthcare is self-funded and runs from a single Glasgow site where warehouse, engineering and C-suite share a roof.

Analysis of the Scottish Tech 50 also backs up Addy’s analysis with well over half below the key £50m turnover barrier.

Thirty-six sit below £50m turnover, trapped by what CodeBase calls in this issue the "valley of death", the gap between traction and repeatable growth where otherwise viable companies collapse.

CodeBase published a paper in August that showed Scotland’s scale ups made up just 0.52 per cent of SMEs but generated a third of turnover, closing this gap could add £22bn to the Scottish economy.

The margin picture in the Tech 50, detailed by Insider on page four and five, however, presents a more positive picture with just under 50 percent showing expanding margins year-on-year.