News

Scottish EDGE launches special award to target applicants from the Creative Industries.

Scottish EDGE, Scotland’s leading competition to identify and support the nation’s most promising entrepreneurial talent, is launching a special award today – the Creative EDGE Award – in partnership with Creative Scotland and Cultural Enterprise Office to encourage applications from the creative sector.

Scottish EDGE, the UK’s largest funding competition, launches its next round today with an all new online application portal, accessible at scottishedge.com. Applications to Scottish EDGE Round 11 will be accepted through the application portal until Wed, 6^th September 2017 at 2pm, requiring a completed application and a short video pitch. All entries will then be assessed by a number of independent, expert panels before being shortlisted to participate in a Scottish EDGE semi-final or the final of our subsidiary competition categories, namely Young EDGE or Wild Card EDGE.

With just under a week until the launch of Scottish EDGE Round 11 on 31st July (that’s right, a week!), we wanted to share some important and exciting changes and updates that we’ll be introducing from this round onwards.

The Scottish EDGE competition has evolved significantly since its inception in 2013. Our 263 winners from rounds one to ten, who have collectively won almost £10 million in prize money, have thus far generated an additional £57.23 million in turnover, secured £55.17 million in additional investment, and created 981 jobs.

If you are considering applying for Scottish EDGE in Round 11, then be sure to come along to one of our workshops – kindly hosted by some of our supporting organisations in locations throughout Scotland. You’ll find out what makes a strong Scottish EDGE application, what the judging panel look for when assessing your application and how to deliver a 3-minute video presentation. The workshops are delivered by the Scottish EDGE team and experts from within Scotland’s entrepreneurial eco-system and could be the first step in your Scottish EDGE journey to winning funding of up to £100,000.

Following an extensive, country-wide search to find Scotland’s next great start-up businesses, twenty promising entrepreneurs pitched their businesses plans to an expert panel of judges in order to win a slice of a £1.3 million prize pot. The panel of judges, which was chaired by Brian McBride, Chairman of ASOS, chose twelve of the businesses as winners on the day. Also announced were winners of Higgs EDGE, which seeks to identify innovative science and technology businesses with global commercialisation potential, Young EDGE, for entrepreneurs under the age of 30, and Wild Card EDGE for businesses who have yet to commence trading.

Start-ups are being offered the opportunity to become ‘investors’ themselves in the next generation of entrepreneurs.

They can sign up to an initiative which will mean donating part of their revenue or funds they receive from selling their businesses into a pot to fund other start-ups.

Scottish Edge, which funds early stage firms,  is inviting award winners to sign the “Edge Pledge”, contributing a minimum 1% from exit proceeds or future revenue streams.

Earlier this week, in our penultimate Scottish EDGE Round Ten Final before the live Final on 22^nd June (get your ticket here), two innovative Scottish start-up businesses won the competition’s award for science, technology and engineering-focused businesses – Higgs EDGE. From a shortlist of four extraordinary Scottish EDGE semi-finalists chosen to pitch in front of Higgs EDGE’s industry expert judging panel, CuanTec and Oxy-Gen Combustion emerged as winners. One of the victors will receive Scottish EDGE’s top prize of £150,000, and the other £100,000. The exact amount each has won however will not be revealed until their awards are presented at the live final.

Today, after two weeks of EDGE of your seat vote campaigning by three very worthy contenders, we are delighted to announce the winner of the Round 10 Wild Card EDGE public vote.

Meet the Scottish EDGE Round Ten Young EDGE Winners

Aiming to continue the trend of high-quality pitching seen in Scottish EDGE Round Ten’s Wild Card EDGE Finals and Scottish EDGE Semi-finals, it was the turn of twenty-one young entrepreneurs to impress a panel of expert judges in the Round Ten Young EDGE Final – and they did not disappoint. The panel, consisting of Glenn Exton (Scottish Enterprise), Martin McFadyen (Virgin Media Business), Ross Marshgall (KPMG), Nicola Dames (Vanilla Blush) and Amanda Taylor (Taylor Nisbit), had the exciting but difficult task of awarding the £100,000 allocated prize pot for the category across twelve of the finalists.

In what a collective panel of 15 expert judges deemed a highly competitive Scottish EDGE round 10 semi-final – spread over three days and featuring fifty-seven great Scottish start-ups – eighteen businesses have been selected to pitch in front of a panel of industry-leading professionals, for up to £100,000 of Scottish EDGE funding and support.