Blogs May 2016

Two Scottish start-up businesses have won the Scottish EDGE’s competition for technology and science-focused businesses, the Higgs EDGE. RotoMotor and Soltropy were selected as winners from a group of five finalists, each of whom pitched to a panel of expert judges last Friday in an attempt to win the Scottish EDGE’s top prizes of £150,000 and £100,000. The companies must now wait until the Scottish EDGE round eight final on June 20th, 2016 to discover which of the prizes they have been awarded, and to collect the Scottish EDGE’s business support package which has been put together by a variety of partner organisations.

Less than one month after holding the final of our latest Wild Card EDGE competition, a panel of experts from the worlds of business and entrepreneurship came together on Thursday to assess the pitches of twenty-two Young EDGE competition finalists in Glasgow. It is with great pleasure that, today, we are able to announce the twelve winners of the Young EDGE competition, each of whom will receive some of the £100,000 prize fund. Designed to support Scotland’s youngest entrepreneurs, the Young EDGE competition offers winning businesses grant funding of up to £10,000, as well as a comprehensive non-financial business support package which is provided by our various partner organisations.

Scotland’s foremost start-up business competition, the Scottish EDGE, today announced the launch of Young EDGE Loans, a new source of funding for Scotland’s youngest entrepreneurs and their start-up businesses. Offering loans of between £2,500 and £25,000, Young EDGE Loans are the Scottish EDGE’s first offering to use an application structure rather than a competition structure, and aim to fill the funding gap left by the closure of the Princes Trust’s Growth Fund in 2015.

Update: The Wild Card EDGE Public Vote is now closed. We announced BLUSHO as the winner on June 1st, 2016.

For the first time ever, the public are being given the opportunity to judge start-up businesses in Scotland’s largest business competition. Three Scottish businesses are participating in the Scottish EDGE Wild Card public vote in the hope of winning the chance to pitch for up to £100,000 in grant and loan funding at the Scottish EDGE final on June 20th, 2016. Blusho, Estendio and Pio Design now have until May 27th, 2016 to convince the public that their product or service is deserving of additional funding and business support.

Time flies when you’re having fun, so here we are writing our second EDGE Alumni ‘Good News’ post. Just as in March, there was plenty for our alumni to celebrate as spring arrived in Scotland this April, and we’re keen to share their recent accomplishments with you. So grab yourself a cup of tea and spend a few minutes finding out what they’ve been up to…