FutureX secures grant from government fund to take tech teams to Silicon Valley
An organisation focused on helping start-up tech businesses grow and scale is growing its own Silicon Valley mentoring programme after securing financial backing from a new Scottish Government fund.
FutureX, which markets itself as a business education and community platform, has received funding from the £1m Technology Ecosystem Fund, which launched last year as part of a plan to “accelerate Scotland’s tech-led recovery”.
It will use the money to expand its Silicon Valley Scale programme to include senior teams and under-represented founders. The Silicon Valley Scaling Teams programme will run as an offshoot of the original scheme, which launched in 2014 and has connected over 50 business leaders with Silicon Valley organisations via masterclasses, roundtables and workshops.
FutureX co-founder and chief executive Bruce Walker said the original programme was being expanded because while there are “many great initiatives out there to help founders” it was felt that “senior teams have been overlooked”.
“This year, with support from the Scottish Government’s new ecosystem fund, we’re taking everything we have learned to help founders share knowledge and up-skill alongside their senior leaders and team members,” he said.
“We are also delighted to be working with Scottish Enterprise to provide five fully funded places to traditionally under-represented founders.”
This year founders and their teams will have access to an online course before spending a week in Silicon Valley, where they will be able to network with founders from organisations such as Google, Airbnb, Netflix, Wilson Sonsini and Lightspeed Ventures.
The Technology Ecosystem Fund launched last March following a recommendation from former Skyscanner executive and University of Glasgow professor of computing science Mark Logan, who was commissioned by the government to report on how best to grow the country’s technology sector.
Logan was also appointed to oversee the launch of five ‘tech scaler’ hubs across the country, with the aim of supporting 300 tech-focused start-ups over the next five years.
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