From international expansion and securing hefty sums of investment to attracting talent and navigating AI, leaders from some of the North’s fastest-growing tech businesses believe the region is becoming an increasingly attractive place to scale.
For Callum Bentley-Edwards, partnerships at fintech platform Ryft, he’s seen “more and more scale-ups coming from the North” since Covid, whether that’s across Leeds, Newcastle or Manchester.
And the level of support available to tech businesses across the region is “night and day” compared to a decade ago, according to leaders like Gary Bennion, chief product officer of Vypr.
The conversation took place at Prolific North’s Scale-ups to Watch roundtable, sponsored by Beyond Echo PR and hosted at No.2 Circle Square in Manchester on 16 June.
The event brought together several leaders from businesses featured on the recent Scale-ups list from last year and this year to talk about some of their achievements while also examining the opportunities and challenges facing growing Northern tech businesses.
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While the businesses are at different stages of growth, there was broad agreement on how things have positively shifted for Northern tech businesses over the years as well as many of the issues facing scale-ups today, from infrastructure and investment to talent and the impact of AI.
Attendees:
- Ben Waterhouse, commercial director, Prolific North
- Neil Armstrong, CEO, Tribepad
- Craig Griffin, Chief Technology & Product Officer, Tribepad
- Mark Camp, founder and CEO, Propello Cloud
- Nathan Armstrong, head of commercial partnerships, Propello Cloud
- Alex Thomas, CRO, Boxphish
- Gary Bennion, chief product officer, Vypr
- Jane Robinson, VP business development, intelliAM
- Callum Bentley-Edwards, Partnerships, Ryft
- Sara Donnelly, founder, Beyond Echo PR
‘There is so much money sloshing around’
One of the biggest talking points around the table was that for growing businesses based in the North, where they are headquartered now matters far less than it once did in comparison to a decade ago, especially when it comes to raising investment.
“When you’re answering a thousand questions from investors, where your office is headquartered, whether it is in Sheffield, London or Manchester, doesn’t even make the top thousand,” said Neil Armstrong, CEO at Sheffield-based recruitment and talent acquisition platform Tribepad.
For Jane Robinson, VP of business development at Sheffield-headquartered AI PLC firm IntelliAM, “people don’t actually care that much about where your base is now”.
“There’s so much money sloshing around and investors just want a good story to back, and they like the idea of the North. There’s a real appetite for it, but you’ve got to go to them. I don’t think they’re going to come to you.”
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The same appears to be true for customers. “We’ve taken on a new CRO and are going through massive expansion in the US. Customers he’s talking to don’t care whether we’re based in Sheffield or London. They don’t even know the difference because it’s a short amount of time to travel between the two, when compared with how vast America is,” she explained.
For leaders who have spent years hearing that serious growth requires a London postcode, it represents a significant shift.
Callum Bentley-Edwards, who looks after partnerships at Manchester-based fintech Ryft, said it’s all about the “immediate cost saving” in comparison to having an office down in London.
“Our HQ in Manchester is at Cubo and eventually we will need to expand that in the next 12 months. We’ll either stay there or look at a bigger office, but we’ve looked at having a main office in London, where most of our payment partners are, and the difference is crazy.
“Having someone in the North is much better for us because we can actually invest in going to market internationally, which is what we have been doing over the last 12 months, and part of my role is international expansion with our partners.”
He said Ryft’s investors have recognised that too: “They are quite happy with us not necessarily having a London base”.
‘More people are realising that the North is far more investable’
While location may matter less to investors and customers, leaders in the room argued it is relevant when it comes to attracting and retaining talent as they reflected on how dramatically the Northern talent landscape has shifted in recent years.
For Callum Bentley-Edwards, partnerships at Ryft, “more people are coming up from the South and more and more people are realising that the North is far more investable and a good place to come and do business”.
“There’s definitely a case for more mature, experienced individuals coming from private equity, payments, banking, and other places to come up and show the right ways of how they’ve done it in London to now be replicating that in the likes of Manchester and Leeds. If you look at Leeds, there are a lot of banks there and there is investment in places like Darlington and further up in the North East.
“It’s more profitable for them, there’s far more growth in return on investment, from investing in those towns and cities.”
Gary Bennion, chief product officer at Vypr, who is now at his third PE-backed business, described hiring in Manchester today as “a hell of a lot easier than it was ten years ago”. He explained how Vypr, a Manchester-based product intelligence and consumer insight tech firm, recently hired around 30 staff predominantly from the region.
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Other leaders, including Neil Armstrong from Tribepad and Jane Robinson from IntelliAM, pointed to growing numbers of graduates now choosing to stay in Northern cities rather than automatically relocating to London.
Lower living costs, shorter commutes and a “better quality of life” were all highlighted as important reasons behind helping some of their businesses compete for talent.
And post Covid, remote and hybrid working has opened up that talent pool even more.
“We have hired a lot of people in the last year, hiring around 15 staff over the past nine months or so. We’ve found the talent pool in the North to be pretty good because while we’re a remote-first company, we want everybody to be within an hour and a half to two hours away from the office. That’s worked really well,” said Neil Armstrong from Tribepad.
But access to talent hasn’t always been easy. After growing his Manchester-based business Cloud Technology Solutions (CTS) to 400 staff before selling in 2023, Gary Bennion said it was “really hard” to get that level of talent in the region.
“We had to go to London and down south to get the talent and the certifications that we needed. I went and worked in Germany for a couple of years and I’m now back in Manchester, but the talent around is much better than it was back in 2017,” he explains.
While Mark Camp, founder and CEO of customer loyalty platform Propello Cloud, also acknowledged there is a “hotbed of talent” in Manchester and surrounding regions, he also sees where there are limitations.
“Traditionally, the majority of our team have been in and around Manchester but equally, I think we’re competing with London-based organisations for some of the best talent as they see northern talent as more cost-effective.”
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While Alex Thomas, CRO at Leeds-based cybersecurity firm Boxphish, explained that scaling businesses have “aggressive growth plans” and need to strike a balance between getting results now with the time it takes to invest in and train talent.
AI is changing the skills conversation
When talking about talent, the conversation inevitably turned to AI. And if the North is to position itself as a leader in AI, it needs to focus on where that growth will come from, argued Gary Bennion from Vypr.
“It doesn’t start with data centres or infrastructure, it starts with people. I think we all really need to make an effort to connect with the universities who will be trying to keep up with this,” he explained.
“We need to make sure that Manchester and the North has got the people coming out of education, who have those skills that are just going to be so in demand and already are in demand.”
Other leaders in the room agreed that “bright young driven people” need to be connected to the right businesses so that they’re not being ‘forced to hire expensive overseas talent or those from down south’.
For Sara Donnelly from Beyond Echo, one of her clients is the Greater Manchester Institute of Technology and its “whole purpose is to bridge that gap between industry and education”. For her, there is that work being done regionally to meet some of those skills gaps challenges while keeping ambitious talent in the region.
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It opened up a candid debate about how AI will have an impact on young or entry level talent. A number of leaders referenced other variables beyond AI that are having an impact on hiring too, from the rise in minimum wages which is making it “really expensive” to hire for those entry level positions now.
While there was plenty of agreement around how businesses are now embracing AI in different ways, leaders were quick to challenge the idea that it is a replacement for people.
“AI isn’t going to take your job, people who are better at using AI are going to take your job,” explained Gary Bennion from Vypr.
“You need to educate investors that if this is the skillset and the business they want to build, ironically it will take a bit of time, and it’s not an instant flick switch. I compare it to this analogy: Would you let us get in a Formula One car? You need someone qualified to drive it.”
Alex Thomas explained how Boxphish has monthly roundtables with external consultants to look at how the business can be better at using AI for operational efficiencies to allow “staff to do their jobs better”, whether that be reducing admin and allowing sales staff to spend more time on the phone with clients.
Similarly, Callum Bentley-Edwards said Ryft has weekly discussions around AI and has “embraced it massively”.
“If you’re not actually using AI, even if you are reluctant to, you’re going to have to at some point because your competitors will be using it every day, and every day that they’re using it, they’re going to be two three steps ahead of you. The gap is going to be massive.”
Mark Camp from Propello Cloud said he is seeing a “divide between devs” where some are embracing it, while others are still fearful of it. For Nathan Armstrong from Propello Cloud, his business is now looking at how AI can be used to “accelerate” the work from copywriters “as opposed to a replacement”.
“When you’re a junior engineer, which I was, you do things like support tickets, you learn your trade, and then you get on some more exciting stuff. If you can get people who are AI-aware engineers, actually hiring a junior is almost like hiring a midweight engineer with the cost of the junior, because they can use all the AI tools,” added Gary Bennion from Vypr.
Yet Jane Robinson from IntelliAM raised a question about how future talent will get the experience they need if AI increasingly starts to take over some of the entry-level work used to learn a profession. “Businesses all need to embrace it but someone needs to own it and teach people how to use it properly.”
Infrastructure remains a frustration – and why the North needs to be more ‘gobby’
Transport links and international connectivity continue to be frustrations for scale-ups in the North.
“The biggest problem in Manchester with international expansion is the airport. When you’re traveling every week, it’s so unreliable. The flight times are ridiculous if you compare with London, who have hourly flights to places like Hamburg. I had two a day I could get, if I was lucky,” explained Gary Bennion from Vypr.
For Neil Armstrong from Tribepad, his business has always had a “build in the north, sell in the south approach” but physical travel is “still quite a barrier” when it comes to selling and networking. Craig Griffin from Tribepad agreed, adding that while the talent pool has undoubtedly improved, the local infrastructure is “still not quite there”.
“Going from Leeds to Manchester to Sheffield and between those cities is still quite tough. If there was investment there, I think that would help. It’s easier to get to London than to get to Leeds.”
One of the final takeaways from the discussion was about the collaboration and confidence now growing across the Northern tech ecosystem.
“We bring people together, we’re supportive,” said Sara Donnelly from Beyond Echo PR. For Craig Griffin from Tribepad, that’s what makes it “quite unique” while Mark Camp from Propello Cloud is seeing “huge appetite” for businesses across industries to now work together.
But for Gary Bennion from Vypr,, the region could still learn a lot from Americans and Silicon Valley about collaboration thanks to its “openness with competitors”.
“There is not the same level of openness here and I think that’s what, particularly in Silicon Valley, that’s why they’ve all done so well. It blows your mind at first. They’re literally telling you about deals that they’re working on.”
On what the North could do better to shout about its successes, he suggested the North should be more “gobby”.
“At CTS, we often said go and be gobby. Maybe in the Northern tech scene we can have our own version of what they’re like in the US – be big, and humbly proud of what you’re doing, but actually talk to people about it. That helps promote the whole scene, right? Maybe that’s something we could do better.”
