Beyond London: where Britain's next growth companies are emerging

8-minute read

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For decades, London has dominated UK venture capital, concentrating much of its capital, founders and experienced management talent. It has produced many of Britain's most successful growth companies.

It does not have a monopoly on them.

At Guinness Ventures, we are seeing good businesses being built across the UK and are increasing the time we spend meeting founders, advisers and investors outside London.

Under new leadership, what has changed?

Andy Burnham's rise from Mayor of Greater Manchester to Prime Minister has put regional growth firmly on the national political agenda: the approach he developed over nine years in Manchester is now beginning to shape national policy, with further devolution, greater mayoral powers over housing and planning, and reforms to technical education already under way. His argument remains that stronger regional economies are necessary if Britain is to raise its overall rate of growth.

For investors, the practical question is where opportunities might emerge as investment and decision-making move into Britain's cities and regions. Policy can influence the opportunity set, but it does not change the fundamentals of what makes a good investment.

We act on evidence

Follow the problems, not the policy

Government policy can create attractive markets, but we look for businesses where the commercial case already exists, supported by strong underlying customer demand, and where policy can provide an additional tailwind for growth.

Infrastructure spending does not make every construction business a good investment, just as higher healthcare spending does not make every healthcare company attractive, and the same applies to AI, defence and energy.

Instead, we look for substantial, persistent problems that customers need to solve, and for businesses with a proven commercial solution, strong management and the potential to grow. At Guinness Ventures, we focus on real-world businesses with proven commercial value: our core Series A investments typically have more than £1 million of revenue, clear customer demand and a business model capable of scaling rapidly.

We are generalists, with particular experience in consumer, business services and healthcare, while property technology is an area we are actively exploring. That breadth is useful in the current environment: healthcare is of particular interest given the pressure on capacity and the workforce, while increased investment in housing and infrastructure could create opportunities across property technology and the software and services that support planning, construction and the built environment. Stronger regional economies should also create demand for the business services that growing companies need.

The more interesting opportunities are likely to be businesses whose commercial case already exists and where changes in policy, investment or economic conditions can accelerate an existing market rather than create the investment case.

A regional company can serve a global market

Shot Scope, a Guinness Ventures portfolio company since 2021, is a good example: established in Edinburgh, where its technology and product team is based, but selling to golfers around the world. The company develops GPS watches, rangefinders and shot-tracking technology that help golfers improve their game.

The investment case was never dependent on the size of the Scottish golf market. Technology and changing patterns of distribution have made this increasingly possible, with products sold internationally, software delivered remotely and specialist teams built outside the most expensive parts of the country.

As we spend more time outside London, we expect to find more businesses with that characteristic: regional roots and an ambition to outgrow the home market into national or international markets.

The importance of local expertise

For some businesses, location offers a different advantage: access to a concentration of specialist knowledge and people.

Cambridge is a good example: its combination of universities, hospitals, experienced entrepreneurs and investment capital has supported generations of technology and healthcare companies, including Qureight, one of our portfolio companies, whose team brings together scientists, engineers and clinicians to apply AI to medical imaging used in pharmaceutical clinical trials.

In July 2026, Qureight raised $20 million in Series B funding, with Guinness Ventures participating alongside other institutional investors, to expand its 3D deep-learning imaging portfolio and AI imaging laboratory and extend its technology into additional disease areas. Building technology that combines medicine, data science and artificial intelligence requires specialist people, and Cambridge has a deep pool of them.

Other British cities have developed their own clusters of expertise: Manchester in healthcare, technology, media and manufacturing; Edinburgh in technology, universities and financial services; Leeds in healthcare and financial services; and Bristol in engineering and aerospace.

Healthcare: doing more with existing resources

Healthcare is closely connected to Andy Burnham's economic programme as Prime Minister: an ageing population, pressure on NHS capacity and staff shortages are economic as well as healthcare problems, affecting spending, employment and productivity. We have already invested in several businesses tackling different parts of this problem.

Britain cannot meet ever-rising demand for care simply by adding people and capacity, so technology that deploys existing resources more effectively has a role in solving a long-term structural problem.

Cera, Perci and Qureight tackle healthcare pressure from three angles: care delivery, cancer support and drug development. None depends on a single government programme for its market. Policy may increase the urgency, but customers already have reasons to pay for the solutions.

Where infrastructure investment creates opportunity

Housing and infrastructure are already important parts of the government's regional agenda, with greater powers being devolved to mayors over housing and planning. Large programmes create work for construction companies and engineers, but a growth investor should look at the broader group of businesses in planning, compliance, transport and logistics that surround them.

Many of these markets contain smaller businesses capable of growing quickly without the capital requirements of owning the underlying infrastructure. Better transport widens the pool a company can recruit from, and better connections make more locations viable places to build a business.

Business services and the companies behind regional growth

Growing companies need software, recruitment, logistics and specialist professional services, and companies expanding overseas need expertise they may not have internally. These can be attractive markets for growth investors because the value of the service can be measured: if it saves time, reduces cost, increases sales or makes a difficult process easier, there is a clear commercial reason to buy it.

YASO, another Guinness Ventures investment, provides an example, helping Western consumer brands enter and scale in China by combining operating infrastructure with proprietary technology to manage the complexity of selling through Chinese e-commerce channels; its platform brings together more than 25 data sources to give customers visibility over sales and supply-chain activity that would otherwise be time-consuming to consolidate.

Skills, employment and mental health

As Prime Minister, Andy Burnham has also placed considerable emphasis on technical education, employment support and the relationship between health and work, carrying forward priorities he pursued in Greater Manchester. A region can attract investment and build infrastructure, but companies still need people with the right skills to grow, and long-term sickness and poor mental health can remove people from the workforce when many industries are already struggling to recruit.

What regional growth could mean for consumer businesses

The connection between regional policy and consumer investing is less direct, but employment, wages, housing costs and transport all affect household spending, and if stronger regional economies lead to higher employment and greater disposable income, some of the benefit should ultimately reach consumer businesses.

Consumer is an established part of the Guinness Ventures portfolio: we have backed companies including Fussy, MOTH Drinks and MORI, as well as Shot Scope. Our approach is based on demonstrated demand and the potential to scale; Fussy, for example, built its position in refillable natural deodorant before extending into a broader range of personal-care products.

Geography has also become less constraining for consumer brands: online distribution, national retail and social media mean a brand need not be built in London to reach consumers across Britain, and international expansion extends the market further.

Capital flow

London retains a considerable advantage in access to capital, surrounded by venture investors, advisers and founders who have built, financed and sold companies. If regional growth is to produce more large British companies, access to those networks needs to improve, which is one reason we are spending more time with companies, investors and advisers across the UK.

We have been investing in early-stage British businesses since 2010, with a generalist approach that lets us consider companies across a wide range of industries. At Series A, we are generally looking for companies where the product or service is already in the market, customers are paying and the capital has a defined role in helping the company scale.

Shot Scope in Edinburgh, Qureight in Cambridge, Cera, Perci, JAAQ and YASO are different businesses serving different markets, but what connects them is identifiable customer demand, a product or service with proven commercial value and the potential to build a substantially larger company.

Several of these businesses have also been made available through the Guinness Ventures Co-Investment Service, which gives sophisticated and high-net-worth investors and family offices the opportunity to invest alongside Guinness Ventures on a deal-by-deal basis.

Invest alongside Guinness Ventures

Join the Co-Investment Service

The Guinness Ventures Co-Investment Service gives sophisticated and high-net-worth investors and family offices the opportunity to access selected investments alongside Guinness Ventures on a deal-by-deal basis.

Looking beyond London

The political focus on regional growth is welcome, but an investment strategy cannot depend upon every element of a government's programme being delivered. The underlying problems exist regardless: Britain needs more housing and infrastructure, healthcare needs to make better use of limited resources, and growing businesses need skilled people and capital. These are large, long-term markets, and the companies solving them will not all be built in London.

Expanding our regional activity is therefore less about predicting which areas will receive the most government support and more about widening the pool in which we look for investments. We review more than 1,000 opportunities each year and invest in only a small proportion after due diligence.

Through our EIS and VCT strategies we invest across a diversified range of British growth companies, while our Co-Investment Service offers sophisticated and high-net-worth investors and family offices individual access to selected investments in the Guinness portfolio (on the same terms and with the same shareholder protections). As more capital, skills and economic activity develop alongside investment in Britain's regions, we expect a corresponding rise in the number of investable growth companies. We continue to look for the best of them.

Find out more

Whether you are a founder raising EIS-eligible funding, an investor interested in selected co-investment opportunities, or would like to join us at our Annual Conference, find out more below.