Consistently exceeding expectations for more than 20 years.

Entrepreneurial roots

Founded in 2002 as Root Capital, we spent the early years cutting our teeth, and over time have developed a reliable scaling methodology that can be applied to any B2B business in the software, content, services or technology sectors. In 2021, we rebranded to ScaleUp Capital to better reflect what we actually do.

Our founders have been where you are, having spent over 11 years from 1991 to 2002 building two high growth businesses in the B2B technology and services sectors, with combined revenue of >£50 million and employing several hundreds of people, before exiting both to larger trade buyers.

Dedicated, sector specialists

We specialise in the B2B digital sector, covering technology, software, content and services. Many of our businesses are built on SaaS, subscription, managed service or outsourcing revenue streams.

Big aspirations

Our goal is to be the best scale-up specialist in the B2B sector, and to pioneer a new hybrid model that fuses an operational scale-up platform with private equity investment.

We have a track record of consistently helping to scale up companies at an accelerated rate, with improved quality and more robust performance.

Our intent is to help build great businesses and deliver world-class returns to founders, managers, co-investors and our own fund investors.

Meet The Team

  • Michael Allen - Investment Director

    Michael graduated from Kings College London with a first class honours. He is a chartered accountant and investment professional of 10 years. Before joining ScaleUp, Michael spent 5 years with PwC in their Corporate Finance division.

  • Yaqoob Alvi - Finance and Commercial Director

    Yaqoob graduated from McGill with a degree in Finance. He then qualified as a chartered accountant at Deloitte before working in investment banking at Credit Suisse London. His subsequent experience was in Venture Capital at 14W Venture Partners, before joining ScaleUp.

  • Jamie Arnold - Talent Director

    Jamie is responsible for ScaleUp's talent acquisition and leadership development function. Jamie graduated with a first class honours from the University of Exeter in 2016, following this he spent 4 years with Skill Capital, a private equity-focused executive search firm.

  • Niall Casson - Origination Manager

    Graduating with a first class honours in Business Management, Niall is responsible for ScaleUp Capital's deal origination, his role involves building new relationships with exciting businesses.

  • Frank Hyman - Partner

    After graduating in PPE from Oxford University, Frank started out in consultancy with Bridgewater and then Capgemini, before taking on operational and MD roles at Electrocomponents and Autocue. Joining ScaleUp in 2013, Frank has led new investments and the further development and rollouts of our support programme.

  • Joe Jarman - Portfolio Director

    Joe works on value creation with our portfolio companies, helping them deliver on our shared growth ambitions. After graduating with a First Class MEng from Bristol, Joe worked for L.E.K. Consulting before holding roles in strategy, operations and general management at an array of tech start-ups.

  • Henry Macpherson - Investment Manager

    After graduating from Newcastle University with a BSc, Henry spent time working in a SaaS startup in both operational and business development roles. After which he moved to Killik and Co working as an Investment Manager. Henry is primarily responsible for ScaleUp Capital’s fundraising activities.

  • Simon Philips - Partner

    Simon spent 11 years building and then selling two digital businesses before setting up ScaleUp Capital in 2003, previous to this he graduated with a first class degree in engineering from Cambridge University and started his career at Bain & Company. He has gone on to develop an enviable track record as an investor and scale-up specialist in the digital sector.

  • David Sparrow - Investment Director

    David is primarily responsible for deal origination and execution at ScaleUp. He started he career at Deloitte, where he qualified as a chartered accountant. His subsequent experience was across investment and operations at Bloc Ventures and M&A advisory at Equiteq.

  • Karen Steadman - Team Support

    Karen joined ScaleUp Capital in August 2015 and has previous experience in marketing and events. Karen supports the senior team and is involved in projects across the company portfolio.

  • Nathalie Thébault - Investment Director

    Nathalie leads sourcing and execution in the DACH region as well as other core European markets. Having studied Politics and Economics at the Friedrich-Alexander University in Nürnberg, she went on to work at Munich Private Equity Partners followed by Clearsight Investments before joining ScaleUp Capital.

  • Mikkel Tolnaes - Portfolio Director

    Mikkel focuses on identifying and unlocking strategic growth opportunities for our portfolio companies. His experience comes from his senior position at L.E.K. Consulting and from being an early employee at a start-up. Mikkel holds an MBA from the University of Cambridge and B.Sc. in Finance.

  • William Wellesley - Partner

    William graduated from Oxford with a degree in PPE. He then qualified as a chartered accountant before working in investment banking at Schroders. He has held a number of senior roles including COO of St. James’s Place Capital, Joint MD of Molton Brown Group in the period up to its sale to Kao Corporation, Group COO of GEMS Education and CEO of Book People.

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DotVector

ScaleUp partners with DotVector, an exciting strategy consulting and data science specialist in the digital sector.

Our scaler portfolio regularly engages DotVector to help explore and assess market opportunities, help develop their scale-up strategies or to turn their data into actionable insights.

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