Deadline: 11 May 2025
Are you a female founder or woman leading a growth business who is looking to secure investment to scale up? Their Pathways to Scale programme offers strategic advice, skills development, peer support, and networking opportunities to help you prepare for investment. Apply Now!
The programme will help you develop your leadership and scale-up skills and help your company prepare for investment.
Pathways to Scale is an entrepreneurial leadership programme for women. It focuses on building the key executive skills needed to scale a business and secure investment, to help you transition from founder to company leader.
The 2025-2026 programme has space for a total of 24 participants. You’ll be assigned to one of two cohorts consisting of 10 to 12 participants each for the duration of the programme.
Programme Benefits
- The programme offers:
- Executive skills training in areas such as leadership, sales, financial strategy, and advanced pitching
- Once you’re part of the programme, you’ll also be able to apply for a grant of up to £20,000 to support a scale-up project that runs for the duration of the programme.
- A supportive peer cohort and community building
- Business and investor network building
- Strategic business growth and investment support
- An investment showcase opportunity
Eligibility Criteria
- PTS is open to female company founders and co-founders of established start-up businesses that have been operating for one to five years.
- Your business will need to be headquartered in Scotland and have some commercial traction (or show progress toward initial sales).
- You’ll need to be able to show that your business has ambition to scale. For example, it should:
- Likely have a turnover of around £100,000 or more
- Aim to raise investment of £500,000 or more in the next 18 to 24 months – this should include plans to make capital investments to increase productivity
- Likely have 2 to 10 full-time employees – so, be the very early stages of growth, but beyond the initial start-up phase
- Have international ambition, with clearly identified market opportunities and rationale for regions targeted for exports, or be looking to grow your current exports by 100% in the next 6 to 12 months
- Have an innovative, scalable product or service, with a focus on key and future industries – examples include digital and tech, data and AI, energy, life sciences, quantum photonics, radio and semi-conductors, fintech, space, and industrial biotech, as well as the broader clean energy industries
For more information, visit Scottish Enterprise.
