The “Going Global: Showcasing Scottish Innovation in Climate and Life Sciences” event was organised by Scottish Business Network and hosted by Zinc Ventures at their office at Euston House in London on 7 May 2024.
Four Accountech clients were showcased at the event:
Clyde Hydrogen Systems – a University of Glasgow spinout which has created technology to help build systems for green hydrogen production at scale by developing a new type of electrolysis.
Rostra Therapeutics – a pioneering biotechnology company developing innovative therapies for the treatment of infectious diseases, initially focussing on invasive fungal diseases.
Flexergy – developing the world’s most efficient and flexible hydrogen compression system, offering modular containerised solutions and reliability guarantees which make hydrogen projects more bankable and faster to deploy.
Danu Robotics – developing an advanced robotics system that minimises the global waste problem, fully automating the manual waste sorting process and reducing risk to people working in waste sorting stations and dramatically improving productivity and quality.
The event was quite informal with SBN chairman, Russell Dalgleish, interviewing each founder about their companies, the problems that their products solved and their motivation for doing what they did.
Afterwards there was ample opportunity for networking, which continued in the Somerstown Coffeehouse pub before some, including myself, left to catch the Caledonian Sleeper home to Edinburgh.
Numbers for the event were impacted by rail strikes – they didn’t stop us getting to the event from Scotland, but they made commuting into London that day difficult even for the main organiser Jonny Downie, SBN’s London Ambassador.
Despite this, we still had over 40 people in the room and it was a valuable event for all concerned as evidenced by feedback from our clients:
John Mulgrew, Rostra Therapeutics:
“I thought it was a great event, the best investor event I have been to yet. It was small scale, had deep tech companies, and really interesting people.
I really liked the more informal Q&A style.
As with all investor events…more investors, please!”
Xiaoyan (Amy) Ma, Danu Robotics:
“The time and venue was really good, and the host and audience were great.
I really enjoyed it.
We should do it again”.
It was also a great opportunity for Accountech clients to meet each other and share their contacts and experiences.
Thanks to Niall Mackle and Katie Carter from Burges Salmon, lawyers for a number of our clients, for coming down from Edinburgh too.
Thanks also to everyone who attended and especially to Jonny Downie and Russell Dalgleish from SBN who organised the event and to Caitlin Scheybeler and Luke Bevan from Zinc Ventures who hosted it.
We hope to do a similar event again later in the year and to avoid the train strikes next time!
Like blogs, LinkedIn posts, podcasts and TV series (have you ever watched the first series of The Simpsons or Blackadder?), the more often that you do something the better it will get!
We are pushing against an open door here:
Investors are increasingly keen to meet the best new companies and to look outside London.
We can make it easier for them by going to them in London and holding events that are sector specific: our clients are all in the climate tech and life sciences/medical device sectors.
The number one thing that tech start-ups are looking for from networking events is to meet investors.
The more investors that they can meet, the better the chance of finding the right investor which can help them to scale and which has the contacts and experience that they need.
Let’s hope that in future, the government can resolve all of our transport issues as getting that right can definitely facilitate levelling up and matching our best tech start-ups and investors!