What is Upscale? Upscale 8.0 helps the UK’s most promising tech companies to accelerate their growth and unlock the key to scaling successfully.
Based on values of honesty, intimacy and trust, and now in its 8th year, this curated programme has been designed to reflect your scaling journey. Companies will explore fundamental growth challenges with peers and benefit from sessions delivered by expert scale coaches who’ve trodden this path before you.
Over 6-months, 30 founders and senior leadership teams will receive over 60 hours of support, delivered by over 20 scale coaches. It’s free, and we don’t take an equity stake in any businesses that join.
Upscale is not currently accepting applications, but you can pre-register your interest in the programme below or contact us at info@technation.io.
As the UK’s leading growth platform, we are pleased to welcome 35 mid-stage scaling tech companies to our eighth iteration of the Upscale programme. This year’s cohort includes businesses specialising in fields ranging from fintech, artificial intelligence, e-commerce, SaaS and more. Discover more about each company by clicking on the logos below.
London | Lawtech | @amicableapps
Amicable’s vision is to transform how people end relationships. Traditional law firms still dominate the divorce market, but the landscape is changing. Shifting attitudes to separation, court reform and technological advancement present a global opportunity to disrupt the market. amicable’s tech-enabled divorce service is uniquely positioned to capitalise on this. Its approach to working with couples has been endorsed by the High Court, proving there is a better way to end relationships. amicable also has a co-parenting app to improve ongoing co-parenting relationships and run The Divorce Podcast, an industry-leading podcast covering all aspects of separation.
South East | Artificial Intelligence | @arctoris
Arctoris is a tech-enabled drug discovery company. It combines its unique automation platform, Ulysses®, with advanced machine learning approaches and a world-class team of seasoned drug hunters to guide and rapidly progress its wholly owned and partnered drug discovery programs in oncology and neurology.
North East | Digital & Creative Tech | Ecommerce & Marketplace | @cgherofreelance
CGHero is a collaborative talent platform for digital artistry in the media and entertainment industry, offering flexible access to over 6,000 'heroes' with vetted skills to deliver a wide range of creative production work including 2D, 3D, Animation and VFX.
South West | SaaS | @clue_software
Clue is a SaaS investigation case management and intelligence platform used by governments, police, private, and non-profit sectors globally to help counter threats including fraud, organised crime, modern slavery, corruption, environmental crime and more.
London | Human Resources | @corddotco
Cord’s direct messaging tool enables someone to have a conversation with a person who wants to hire them. Every message is instant and in real-time. All the information is relevant and transparent. Cord’s infrastructure underpins these interactions and handles the deep complexity required to distribute people at scale.
London | Finance | @CreditEnable
CreditEnable is a global credit insights and technology company that enables intelligent lending to SMEs. It applies proprietary data analytics, deep learning and AI to build solutions to the world’s biggest financial challenges. It provides decision optimising solutions to help SME lenders grow efficiently and support SMEs to prepare for and access affordable credit from formal financial institutions. CreditEnable’s lender solutions enable profitable growth by substantially reducing the time involved with underwriting SME loans, provide efficient access to quality borrowers and improve the quality of SME loan books. The firm’s borrower solutions help SMEs better understand lenders’ credit requirements, get prepared for debt and secure the capital they need at an affordable rate.
Northern Ireland | Health & Wellness | @CumulusNeuro
Cumulus Neuroscience was formed to revolutionise how brain health is measured and analysed at a massive scale, thus enabling breakthroughs in therapy development and diagnosis for conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer's. It has developed and validated a neuro-assessment platform to frequently and objectively sample a broad spectrum of brain health domains including EEG, cognition, language, mood and sleep. Its technology has been sold to pharma and biotech customers and is currently being used in Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical trials.
South West | Human Resources | @DeazyLtd
Deazy is the smart, flexible and scalable way for businesses to engage vetted developers, fast. It has built a closed ecosystem of vetted global development teams, a tech platform to intelligently match and facilitate the end-to-end process of finding developers and building dev squads, and a delivery team to minimise risk of delivery by using Deazy.
East of England | Edtech | @DevelopExperts
Developing Experts provides an edtech learning-careers platform designed to stimulate excitement in STEM from primary school age and beyond to inform positive career choices for strategically building a diverse and inclusive STEM talent pipeline over the long term - in response to a range of industry challenges. The ambition is to invigorate students’ development into STEM by enhancing greater confidence in teaching excellence that seamlessly links to real STEM careers so that young people can connect their learning to the sustainable jobs of tomorrow with confidence and self-belief, without stereotypical bias. It is envisaged that the platform will realise a confident, prepared, and resilient future workforce for meeting world changing social, environmental
London | Ecommerce & Marketplace | @thedishpatch
Dishpatch is a leading platform connecting the authentic chefs with food lovers nationwide. It democratises access to the best restaurants by delivering pre-prepared food to customers' doors each week; diners do not have to travel and make reservations at restaurants and can enjoy food prepared by the same chefs in the comfort of their own home, at a far reduced cost than eating at the restaurant. Dishpatch essentially combines an e-commerce front end built on Shopify, with an in-house food manufacturing and fulfilment operation - allowing next-day delivery to 98% of the UK's population.
London | SaaS | @duel
Duel is a brand advocacy SaaS platform that helps consumer retail brands grow through the advocacy of their customers and fans. Brand advocacy the single most effective way to grow consumer retail brands, yet the vast majority of marketing time and budget is spent on advertising- which has tripled in cost since COVID, crippling brands' go to market. Duel lets brands engage with, manage and scale communities of 1000s of advocates through gamified, tiered-based programs.
West Midlands | Automotive
Eatron is a fast-growing, UK-based, software scaleup dedicated to making ‘software-defined vehicles’ a reality for vehicle manufacturers & automotive Tier-1 suppliers (e.g. Knorr Bremse, Mahle) worldwide to speed up the realisation of net-zero mobility. Eatron develops and sells/licenses its products to automotive industry for serial production use in the new electric vehicle (EV) programs. Its first product is a unique edge-cloud connected BMS (battery management system including software and hardware) and the second is an intelligent motion software platform for adaptive suspension controls both targeting EV applications.
London | Finance | @fable_data
Fable Data turns banking data into revenue. Its compliance technology sits within a bank anonymously reading millions of accounts every day. This gives Fable Data an unrivalled measure of consumer and SME economic activity in real time, from which it produces Data As A Service insight products on the macro economy, regions, sectors and on how individuals brands are performing.
London | Entertainment & Gaming | @flavourworks
Flavourworks is a leading, next-gen entertainment studio pioneering immersive storytelling with cinematic games and interactive video content. With a unique methodology and best in class proprietary touch video technology, it sits at the intersection of filmed entertainment and gaming, both industries generating >$100bn in annual global revenue.
London | Automotive | Insurance | @flockcover
Flock is reinventing insurance for commercial motor fleets. It is a fully digital MGA reinventing fleet insurance with a data-driven approach. It leverages immense amounts of data (telematics data, hyperlocal weather data, crime data, etc.) to quantify driving risk in real-time, enabling fleet customers to reduce risk by providing them with risk insights, and incentivising safer driving with lower premiums; with Flock, safer fleets pay less.
North West | SaaS | @helpthemove
Helpthemove is a software company that automates processes that relate to moving home. The core software is a solution that integrates with the councils, water and energy companies to automate change of tenancies. The UK’s leading energy companies, letting agents, insurance and reference providers all utilise this software to drive huge administration efficiencies. The software is free to use and is monetised by recurring transactional services offered to the landlords or incoming tenants.
London | Ecommerce & Marketplace | @housekeep
Housekeep is an online marketplace connecting consumers with local, vetted home services professionals. Housekeep's tech matches customers with local, trusted professionals and it assigns these professionals local, dense travel routes – reducing travel time and increasing utilisation. Housekeep cleaners earn 50% more, due to in-house job allocation and route optimisation technologies, which reduce travel & boost cleaner utilisation. This tech's saved £8 million in travel costs for cleaners & saves 1000 tonnes of CO2 emissions/year. Having found product-market fit in home cleaning, Housekeep has now expanded into deep and end of tenancy cleaning, as well as tradespeople services in a bid to 'own the home'.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @Humanising_AI
Humanising Autonomy teaches machines to understand human behaviour to ensure human-to-machine interactions are safer, pleasant and most importantly, more human. Imagine if machines could understand the nuances of human behaviour in the same way an experienced driver can predict if a pedestrian is about to cross the road, a person on an electric scooter will turn quickly, or if a bicyclist is about to ride around a car door or a pothole. Human Autonomy's ethical computer-vision software understands and predicts human behaviour so to quickly, safely and accurately provide the context around the interactions between people and machines, whether it’s a vehicle, a traffic control, a digital advertisement or any other automated machine. In an ethical way, we can understand, infer and predict a full spectrum of pedestrian behaviours.
South East | Supply Chain Solutions | @i6systems
i6 Group is revolutionising fuel management for airlines, airports, and into-plane operators by digitalising the entire fuel supply chain. Its fuel management platform seamlessly connects business functions to drive operational efficiency and environmental accountability across the globe. It connects the entire fuel supply chain in real-time through cloud-based software, secure technology, and i6-enabled vehicles and carts. Today, its proprietary technology combines fuel monitoring, inventory management, and airline connectivity - offering the most accurate and advanced fuel management platform available.
West Midlands | Automotive | Energy | @indra_rt
Indra Renewable Technologies Ltd operates across two highly innovative and fast-moving industries: electric vehicles (‘on vehicle’ technology) and smart energy (‘off vehicle’ technology). The business develops and manufactures smart energy products, including an electric vehicle Smart Charger, a Vehicle to Grid (V2G) charger and vehicle battery systems.
Its vision is to deliver a world of net-zero transportation, enabled through intelligent home charging technology.
London | Lawtech | @juno_hq
Juno is a simpler, clearer and faster way to manage major life events – like moving home or dealing with the death of a loved one. It delivers regulated legal services through its own law firm, staffed by experienced lawyers and paralegals, underpinned by industry-defining legal automation technology. It has started with conveyancing - the legal work needed for home sale and purchase - with plans to expand over time into all the other major life events that people face, first in the UK and then overseas.
North West | SaaS | @luniohq
Lunio is a SaaS (software as a service) platform offering automated invalid traffic (IVT) prevention to digital marketers. It identifies invalid users across marketing campaigns ( including bots, fraudsters, competitor traffic, non-interested users) and protect against these by building powerful invalid user pools that are then excluded across campaigns. This allows for the surgical removal of IVT, bots and invalid users, leading to cleaner more actionable marketing data and eliminating wasted advertising spend that was previously going to bot/competitor/IVT activity.
North West | Health & Wellness | @membr_com
Membr is a powerful cloud-based gym management software with a global footprint in 25 countries across four continents. While its headquarters are based in Manchester, it powers fitness clubs worldwide, including New Zealand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Spain, Benelux, Morocco, Bahrain, Qatar, Indonesia and the UK. As an innovative gym management software, Membr places the individual at the heart of that experience. By delivering a member-centric platform that keeps exercisers connected, active and engaged, it enables fitness clubs to create stronger bonds with members and ultimately bring a real difference in their lives. Its vision is to create a data-driven SaaS platform that helps gym owners to better understand the membership behaviour, needs and wants of their customers in real time.
London | Finance | @getpenfold
Penfold is the digital pension that addresses the core problem at the heart of the £8trn UK pension market and gets people saving enough for retirement. Penfold provide a mobile and desktop application for customers to open, combine and manage their pension savings. Its mission is to be the pension that stays with people throughout their life and gets them saving enough for retirement. The Penfold app helps users set up a pension or consolidate their old pots into one, and then through a range of personalised tools helps change their savings behaviour and get on track with their retirement goals, all enabled by a backend platform.
London | Human Resources | @ThePlacedApp
Placed is a talent attraction and recruitment software built for high churn service sectors and the next generation of job seekers. On the B2C side, it has built a mobile app with a matching algorithm that automatically connects gen Z job seekers to relevant opportunities and curated content about all things work. Through a marketplace candidates can explore, browse and access useful resources, quizzes and follow employers that are interesting to them. No CVs are needed and candidates are instead prompted with engaging questionnaires to create profiles that help bring their personalities to life. On the B2B side, it offers software that employers of all sizes in the service sector (retail, hospitality, care, call centres) can access the next-gen job seeker and showcase their brands. The platform is used by individual site managers to chat and book candidates in for interviews, whilst their HQ can access invaluable data on their recruitment process; from attract to hire.
Scotland | Health & Wellness | @playerdata
PlayerData exists to revolutionise the way athletes train. It is doing this by providing athletes and teams of all sizes and levels access to their performance data. PlayerData services clubs across the UK, giving teams, coaches and athletes easy and affordable access to their data so they can control their performance.
London | Finance
Playter is a B2B Buy Now, Pay Later fintech that is the creator of 'post purchase' BNPL. Its platform helps ambitious SMEs instantly convert their invoices into BNPL, spreading the cost of their bill over 6-12 months.
Northern Ireland | Retail Tech | @Get_Responsible
RESPONSIBLE exists to fight for a circular future in fashion. Its technology enables fashion brands to offer their customers an effective trade-in option in store and online when they consider a new purchase. Its systems facilitate the logistics related to the movement or refurbishment of products that are traded in for resale or recycling as well as general returns. It also manages the resale and recycling of products on behalf of fashion partners, enabling them to control and benefit from the secondary market of their manufactured goods. RESPONSIBLE reduces the number of products going to landfills while making money from processing fees and resale revenues.
London | Health & Wellness | @scandotcom_uk
Scan.com is the platform that makes diagnostic and preventable medical imaging accessible to all. It integrates with private hospitals and diagnostic centres via a proprietary API, and make their spare capacity available to patients via a website (Scan.com) and a B2B portal/API.
London | Ecommerce & Marketplace | @SkrapHQ
Skrap is a B2B marketplace for construction hire services and equipment, making the journey seamless for contractors to order via mobile and web app.
London | Human Resources | @SourceWhale
SourceWhale is a B2B SaaS recruitment engagement platform that integrates with social media sites including Linkedin, email providers, CRM and applicant tracking platforms to help recruiters source, engage and keep track of candidates. It works with both agency and in-house customers to increase their sourcing speed through workflow automation capabilities, such as email sequencing, response tracking and hiring pipeline analytics. By plugging seamlessly into customers’ CRM/ATS, it allows them to keep their records accurate and up to date. Beyond that, SourceWhale gives customers deep insight into their workstream so that they know exactly what is going on and how to improve their outreach capabilities and ultimately, their performance as a team.
Finance | @SwoopFunding
Swoop is a global SME finance marketplace powered by data and APIs. It empowers SMEs to easily access every form of funding and make the right money decisions in one fell swoop.
London | Finance | @TainaTechnology
TAINA leverages cutting-edge technology to empower financial institutions globally to automate their FATCA and CRS regulatory compliance. TAINA’s fully-automated FATCA and CRS Validation Platform is being used by global financial institutions of all types to save costs, reduce risks and transform their customers’ experience. TAINA's Online Customer and Investor Portal allow customers to complete and submit W-series and CRS tax forms from any device, through simple and intuitive journeys with built-in IRS guidance and real-time validation checks. TAINA's Tax Operations Validation allows clients to streamline FATCA and CRS validation and remediation process of W-series and CRS forms in all formats using a built in workflow and OCR engine.
South West | Fintech | @tumeloHQ
Tumelo is driving retail investor engagement through shareholder democracy. Its APIs and user-interface shows investors in funds which companies their money is being invested into and gives them a shareholder’s voice on the ESG issues that matter most to them, from CEO pay to board diversity to climate change. By integrating Tumelo’s solution, investment platforms will create investor loyalty, driving cheaper acquisition, increased AUM and better retention, and help fund managers to better understand and act on the preferences of their underlying investors, creating impact in the real-world.
North West | Ecommerce & Marketplace | Health & Wellness | @wellboxuk
WellBox (Incendo) provides a range of solutions for enterprise companies to simplify business giving. Its flagship product is WellBox, a range of gifts designed for business gifting where there are multiple recipients in many locations with varied tastes and requirements. The gift range spans food, drink and wellbeing, and comes with a guarantee that sensitive employee data is stored responsibly, never leaves the UK and is erased after use. Powering the order process is a gifting platform, which will soon be rebranded as 'Incendo'. It facilitates the process of sending gifts triggered by user requests, key dates or CRM integrations in addition to helping clients manage budgets, teams and catalogues of custom branded merchandise and gifts. Every gift sold includes a meal donation on behalf of the client to a shelter or grass-roots organisation in their local area.
Upscale 8.0 supports the UK’s fastest-growing tech companies to scale faster, together.
A company might hit the baseline criteria, but the final selection takes four key criterion into account; value proposition, traction, potential for scale and programme suitability.
Guidance: Upscale typically works with companies experiencing rapid growth approx 10% month-on-month. With COVID, we understand that some companies may have experienced variances over the last 6 months.
With that in mind, typical Upscale companies are:
Coaching and mentoring from world-leading scale coaches, helping your teams scale and develop support networks beyond the Upscale programme.
Founder and c-suite sessions, and online resources designed to tackle fundamental growth barriers such as; culture, talent, international expansion and financing.
The world has changed, and so have we – with our sessions being run online for the foreseeable future. Learn from and with programme peers and connect to Tech Nation’s prestigious alumni network, including 160 Upscale founders who have been through it all.
Get the recognition you deserve as a successful, fast-growth UK tech company, through Tech Nation marketing, press and government, and get access to the tools you need to meet corporates and investors.
Each month, you will meet with other Upscale founders in designated groups of 8-10 to work on what will make you more effective and resilient as a founder. Using the power of intimate groups, founder circles are designed to provide emotional support to founders, as well as help crack through big challenges together and boost skills and confidence as a startup leader along the way.
There’s no bravado or egos, just a safe space with supportive fellow founders and a group coach, leading to a transformational support group that is as open and honest, while developing your own coaching skills as a leader.
Fast tracking future leaders or upskilling managers in times of rapid change is crucial to building an organisation that can scale, as well as pivotal in retaining and training high performers (read how Farewill do this here).
Support for your junior managers impacts not just your managers but their direct reports, helping to drive engagement, improve wellbeing and reduce turnover. Upscale is excited to bring your nominated middle-management a short programme of support to help them scale with your business and develop their leadership skills and style with professional support.
“Quite simply, it’s the best scaleup programme around. It’s an incredibly well thought-through format, and is an unparalleled learning & networking opportunity – not only for the founders, but also for the whole senior leadership team. I can’t recommend it highly enough!”
Tessa Clarke, Co-founder, OLIO
“I think the beauty of it is that it’s other companies talking to us who’ve been through the same challenges, who’ve learnt through that experience. They’re passing down that knowledge which is amazing.”
Suman Saha, Co-Founder & Medical Director, Doctify
Clients partner with Cooley on transformative deals, complex IP and regulatory matters, and high-stakes litigation, where innovation meets the law. Cooley is known for working with start-ups to launch dynamic new ventures and guiding them through their respective journeys. The firm has 1,500+ lawyers across 17 offices in Europe, the US and Asia. Cooley maintains an environment of inclusion and is dedicated to maintaining a truly diverse workplace that values and celebrates differences.
Known as the ‘rebels of accountancy’, Cooper Parry works with entrepreneurial, fast growth businesses across the UK to help them grow, become more tax efficient, get up to speed with their tech and transform their culture.
Supporting founders for nearly 40 years, SVB has helped many leading founders and innovators get started. They work with clients through the ups and downs of growing a business.
Scroll through to see the calibre of our expert judges
Aron Gelbard
Founder & CEO, Bloom & Wild
Charlotte Barttelot
Investment Manager, Mercia
ZeShaan Shamsi
Partner, People Collective
Francesca Warner
Co-founder, Diversity VC
Max Bautin
Founding Partner, IQ Capital
Divinia Knowles
Founder, COO Roundtable
Giovanni Nani
European Lead, Aquiline Technology Growth
Mandeep Singh
Co-founder, Trouva
Maria Wagner
Investment Director, Beringea
