Past Programmes: Scale Up Brighton & Hove
A strategic growth programme for 30 of the city's most ambitious businesses
Scale Up Brighton & Hove was a management programme for the city’s most ambitious businesses – purpose-built for growth and 100% funded by the Brighton & Hove City Council.
From January-March 2025, we brought together 30 Brighton based scale-ups and large social enterprises, who were at similar stages of their respective journeys and encountering many of the same growing pains as they tried to scale and have impact.
Key components of the programme included:
- Fortnightly workshop sessions focused on key leadership challenges; recruitment, digital transformation, raising funds and managing growing teams.
- Facilitated peer-to-peer troubleshooting to solve live challenges, and “been there, done that” Q&As with successful local founders and MDs.
- A course of one-to-one mentoring targeted to solve a specific growth barrier for each founder.
THE IMPACT:
- 32 scale-ups and charities representing more than 1,000 employees in Brighton supported with targeted growth consultancy.
- 81% felt they had gained a clearer roadmap for market expansion, and 63% felt more confident approaching investors as a result of the programme.
- 4 businesses planned or secured funding within 3 months, including one raising £100k.
“Knowing there’s others out there struggling or thriving in the same ways as you makes you feel a whole lot less alone. For quite a long period of time we were very isolated, and we’ve learned how beneficial it is to be open, to share and be receptive to input from others.”
“What I valued most was the chance to connect with other founders and leaders – to have honest, open conversations about the challenges we all face. There’s something really powerful about being in a room with people from different sectors, sharing perspectives. That kind of diversity helps you think more creatively and act with more clarity.”
“…It has really helped to formalise and structure a lot of fleeting, disorganised thoughts; things that I know I need to worry about at some point. I understand a lot more now about how you filter all those thoughts and focus on the mechanics of optimising a commercial service.”
“Peter and Frank’s session on product-market fit was thought-provoking, and a good reminder to keep going back to our value proposition and making sure it’s still relevant. The session on generative AI also gave me a lot of food for thought, and really turned the mirror back on us as a business.”
