Your growth
is our mission
We focus entirely on the scale-up phase. We acquire and/or invest £2-£10 million into businesses with revenues usually between £1-£10 million and an enterprise value of £2-£30 million, and help to scale them to revenues of £10-£50 million and an enterprise value of £20-£200 million over 4-8 years.
Consistently exceeding expectations for more than 18 years.
Entrepreneurial roots
Founded in 2002 as Root Capital, we spent the early years cutting our teeth, and over time have developed a platform and 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.
Our core values give you a sense of what we are like to work with.
Entrepreneurialism
We invest in entrepreneurial businesses and we are entrepreneurial ourselves. This is about being alert to opportunities when they arise and seizing the moment. It’s about being positive and can-do when the going gets tough. It’s about always finding a way when the prize is big enough. It’s about being pragmatic and flexible. And it’s about being human, valuing people and relationships and having fun.
Truth
We believe that if sensible people can get to the truth and heart of a matter, then they tend to make the right decisions, and most poor judgements or misunderstandings or disagreements stem from one side or the other not having access to the objective truth. We listen, observe, and relentlessly question and investigate until we get to this truth. And then we say it as it is.
Pace
We move fast. Pace delivers results more quickly. If we fail, then pace means we fail fast, learn and have time to pivot and try again. Pace eliminates wastage, forces focus on what really matters, and engenders a relentless desire for more progress and better results. Pace requires intensity, being direct and straightforward, cutting to the chase, keeping things simple, and always having a clear purpose to what we are doing.
Rigour
We set high standards and go the extra mile to ensure the rigour of our work. We collect all the pertinent data that exists and analyse and organise this information logically, accurately and without error, paying attention to the details. We are clear and transparent about where we have the data to back up conclusions and where we don’t, and cognisant of the quality of the sources and reliability of the data.
Meet The Team
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Jamie Arnold - Talent Manager
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.
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Frank Hyman - Managing Director
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 Scaler Programme.
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Joe Jarman - Strategy 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.
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Simon Philips - CEO
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.
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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.
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Nishul Shah - Portfolio Director
Nishul graduated from London School of Economics with a degree in Business, Mathematics and Statistics. His prior experience includes Investment Banking at Barclays Capital and Consulting roles with EY and Deloitte. Nishul has held numerous Private Equity portfolio operating roles with Aurelius Investments and more recently, took on a director position in a food tech start-up.
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Mikkel Tolnaes - Strategy 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.
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William Wellesley - Managing Director
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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Victoria Wiesener - Portfolio Director
Victoria graduated with a degree in International Business with Languages before moving into Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley and then Private Equity with Apax Partners. She has since held senior operational roles across various industries, including most recently CFO of a high-growth B2B SaaS business that was sold to Zoopla. Victoria is also a qualified CIMA accountant.
Expert Advisors
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Bob Dowson
After Oxford and Mckinsey, Bob grew four SaaS and information businesses in Sales Director and CEO roles – three to successful exits including the £95m PE-backed buyout of Capital Economics Ltd. He is now a non-exec director and adviser helping B2B SMEs to scale up, including our portfolio companies and potential investments.
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Peter Rowse
Peter is a former CFO/CCO with 30 years as a board member in rapid growth businesses in the UK, US and Europe such as DeLonghi America Inc, Clean Air Power Plc and ByBox. His experience includes leading successful IPO's and PE exits, as well as refinancing and fundraising. He now supports businesses to manage strategy, growth and transactions.
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Ed Vaizey
Ed is a member of the House of Lords and sits on the Communications and Digital Committee. He is also an adviser to a number of technology companies. Ed was the Member of Parliament for Wantage between 2005-2019. During that time he was the UK’s longest-serving Minister for Culture and Technology.
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Clair Porteous
Clair is a former CMO with 20 years of experience in high growth businesses both in the UK and globally. Winner of Marketing Week launch of the year, and the recipient of many industry accolades, Clair specialises in scaling B2B SaaS businesses quickly and effectively whilst driving equity value.
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Rob Brown
After graduating with an MSc in Management Science at Edinburgh University Rob joined Accenture where he worked for Prudential, ClearStream and the London Stock Exchange. He architected and managed the rebuild of the Rightmove platform before its IPO and worked as Development and Delivery Director at Monitise. Rob now uses his experience to support several scaleups as CTO.
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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Become a ScaleUp Capital Leader
We often back existing CEOs and management teams, but there are occasions where we need to add new leaders to the C-suite.
It’s great to work with a proven CEO, but we are also always on the lookout for emerging, high-potential leaders. These individuals are earlier in their professional careers but are super-bright, driven, commercial, and ambitious, with backgrounds often in strategy consulting.
If you fit this bill and want to move from consultancy into entrepreneurial management, then please do get in touch