The founder of an organisation formerly behind some of Scotland's leading entrepreneurship events has called on government to take a more disciplined approach to business support as he prepares for the formal launch of his latest venture.
Bruce Walker has announced plans to wind up Edinburgh-based FutureX ahead of the inaugural gathering of the newly-established Ecosystem Builders Network on October 17. Its aim is to improve links within the community of accelerators, investors, universities and agencies that support start-up businesses.
FutureX was best-known for creating Startup Summit, Impact Summit and the Silicon Valley Accelerate programme. Earlier this month Mr Walker announced the winding up of FutureX to "pursue other projects", now known to be Ecosystem Builders.
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After nearly nine years at the helm of FutureX, he said now is the "right moment in time" to shift gears.
"I think I personally am ready for a new challenge, and looking at new opportunities and horizons," Mr Walker said. "But also from a really practical point of view as an organisation, we were set up to try to solve this particular problem, which was how do we create more purpose-driven companies that can really scale up and be sizable organisations that have a really large impact?
"In lots of ways I feel like we achieved that mission, and we helped influence that culture in Scotland. Now there are lots of initiatives that support purpose-driven companies, there are lots of purpose-driven investors, so I think there is a point where you stop and reflect and go ‘is what we do at FutureX and the way that we do it, [does that] need to continue?’".
Mr Walker spent eight years running the FutureX accelerator programme in Silicon Valley but one of the primary objectives of the Ecosystem Builders Network will be to broaden Scotland's horizons into other parts of the world.
"While I think that’s got a lot of really great value, one of the drawbacks is that Silicon Valley is a fairly unique context, and it’s not always directly comparable for a place like Scotland to look at Silicon Valley and say how do we replicate that," he explained.
"But what is potentially more valuable is looking at other places around Europe and asking ourselves what is it that’s they’re doing in Estonia, for example, or what is it they are doing in Helsinki or Oslo or Berlin and London. These places seem like a more comparable journey for a start-up, rather than constantly looking at the west coast of the US as the oracle for start-up creation.”
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During the past few months about 20 organisations such as CodeBase, Edinburgh Napier University and RBS Accelerator have signed on as founding members of Ecosystem Builders Network, which will host regular events and organise collaboration missions to and from Scotland to other parts of the world.
Mr Walker said the group will also act as a forum for conversations with government on how to create the best environment for start-up businesses.
“We can’t be changing focus every year or going towards something just because it appears shiny," he said. We need to focus on long-term strategy - what do we need to achieve, and let’s work on that.
"That doesn’t mean that every year it looks perfect, but it’s about committing to the fact that we believe this is the right approach, and we need to give it time to develop.”
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