Accessing finance and attracting investment
Our Entrepreneurship and Investment Team can help you find sources of finance, engage with funders and secure investment to grow your business. Providing expert support and advice, we can help you access a range of funding options, including our own co-investment funding opportunities and loan funding.
Free expert support from our Entrepreneurship and Investment Team
Our Entrepreneurship and Investment teams (formerly the Scottish Investment Bank) continues to invest in and support early-stage companies and the investment market, including inward investment opportunities. We can offer support and advice and can help you access a range of funding, including bank funding, equity funding, loan funding and grants.
We'll help prepare your business to have the best chances of applying successfully for funding. We can:
- Guide you through the complexities of different funding options
- Find the right growth funding for you from the right funder
- Prepare your business to successfully access these funds
- Help you pitch to investors
Our co-investment funds
If your business has high growth potential, we can also offer co-investment funding. This is where we co-invest funds into your business alongside private investors, including business angels, angel syndicates, venture capital groups and corporate investors.
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Scottish Co-Investment Fund
Are you a Scottish start-up, early-stage or growing company seeking investment to develop products and/or markets? We can match fund accredited investment partners to support your growth plans.
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Scottish Venture Fund
Seeking funding to develop products and/or markets? This flexible equity gap fund invests alongside private sector investors, offering equity funding of up to £2 million.
Loan funding
We can also provide loan funding. If you're a growth-focused Scottish company, the Scottish Loan Scheme can provide loan funding of £250,000 to £2 million.
Loans can be used for a variety of purposes, including:
- Working capital
- Capital expenditure
- Growth funding
- International expansion
- Marketing investment
How we can help your business secure investment
We want to boost equity funding levels for globally ambitious Scottish companies, ensuring the right levels of funding, from the right sources, get to the right companies at the right time.
We can help you:
- Build strong relationships with a range of international investors
- Identify the type of investor that's right for you
- Match and connect supply and demand based on investor preferences
We’ve supported companies at different stages across a range of sectors.
Not sure if investment funding is right for your business? Read about other businesses we've supported and how investment funding has helped them to grow and develop.
We can also help you to:
- Increase your chances of securing the most appropriate package of finance for your needs
- Gain access to relevant public sector support
- Make your business ready to apply for funding
We've produced a series of guides on the different types of finance that could be used to fund your business. The guides also cover what you need to do before making finance applications.
We can provide insights into Scotland's risk finance market. Our market intelligence work provides companies and investors with market evidence as they plan for the future. This involves looking into the supply and demand for risk-based growth finance.
We look at Scotland’s finance market in areas that include:
- Year-to-year changes in deal sizes
- Sector investment
- Company growth stages
- Who has been investing in Scotland’s growth companies
We also keep up-to-date with global and UK regional trends.
The risk capital market in Scotland has grown over the past six years, with the underlying health of the market – where 99% of deals take place – almost doubling from 2013.
This is significant because it means that many more ambitious Scottish companies are accessing growth finance, and serves as an important signal for existing and new investors.
Our business finance guides
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Finance options for your business
Work out whether debt finance or equity finance is right for your business.
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Becoming investor ready
Interested in attracting investors to your business? Find out how to prepare.
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Using your business plan to raise finance
Your business plan can be a useful tool when it comes to securing funding from banks, investors and other sources.
Other sources of finance
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Your funding and grants options
We can connect you to a range of external sources of funding, help you understand your options, offer support and advice, and in some cases, offer funding from our own sources.
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LendingCrowd
We also provide funding for LendingCrowd, Scotland’s marketplace lender that offers loans to small and medium-sized enterprises.
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Maven UK Regional Buyout Fund
This fund provides private equity funding of £5 million to £15 million for management buyouts (MBOs).
Interested in becoming an accredited investment partner?
If you become one of our accredited investment partners, we’ll match you with small and medium-sized businesses to help them reach their growth potential. We work with private sector investors from around the world and we're always keen to receive applications from a wide range of investors.
Our private investors include business angels, angel syndicates, venture capital groups and corporate investors.
If your application is successful, we'll work with you to identify investment opportunities, undertake due diligence and negotiate terms of any deal. If there's a funding gap, Scottish Enterprise will consider co-investing with you.
Get in touch to access support
If you’d like help finding investors, deciding the right finance option for you, preparing for and securing funding, or understanding Scotland’s risk finance market, get in touch today.