Growth Stage investment
Patient, minority capital and tailored support for SMEs looking to accelerate their growth plans
Set up to address the SME funding gap, we’re now the most experienced growth investor in the UK and Ireland. We’re proud to provide growth capital and support to hundreds of ambitious businesses up and down the country.
How we’re different
Our investment model is designed to drive strong, sustainable growth in entrepreneurial businesses.
- Patient capital, without fixed exit deadlines
- Flexible funding, investing a mix of equity and debt to suit the needs of your business
- Experienced teams in every region of the UK
- Minority equity investor, always
We’re multi-sector specialists, with experience investing across all areas of the growth economy:
Investment criteria
To be eligible for funding and support from our Growth team, your business must first meet these criteria:
- Headquartered in the UK or Ireland
- Privately-owned
- Strong track record and growth strategy
- Profits typically of £1m+ (or £3m+ ARR for tech companies)
- Not a financial institution
- Seeking £3m-£30m initial investment
Investing in growth
We provide businesses with an initial investment of £3m-£30m, with significant follow-on funding available for new growth opportunities. This enables SMEs to scale-up, through product development, international expansion, strategic acquisitions and partnerships, and other ambitious growth strategies.
Working together
We offer a full programme of support to portfolio companies, throughout the life cycle of our investments. We work closely with founders and management teams, to plan and execute their growth strategies effectively, while helping them to unlock value in their businesses.
Value creation
Partnering with BGF is about more than investment. Our value creation offering helps businesses to accelerate their growth, build resilience and create value. The programme is built around three key pillars:
1. Talent Network
Building effective boards, with a dedicated team for sourcing non-executive chairs and directors.
2. Operating Specialists
Delivering operational best practice via our in-house experts and pre-qualified, external consultants.
3. Community
Enhancing your growth journey, through our portfolio events, networking and learning platform.
Our expertise
We have over a decade’s experience in scaling growth businesses, as well as an extensive network of non-executive talent and operating specialists, covering every region of the UK and Ireland. Together with our community platform, Scale, this has enabled us to support hundreds of companies across:
We can provide significant investment for strategic acquisitions or buy and builds, including access to follow-on funding for new opportunities. We can also support with market mapping, deal sourcing and advisor introductions, and can help guide you through the transaction and integration process.
We can provide funding and support for international expansion plans, whether you’re launching in new territories for the first time, scaling your overseas teams and infrastructure, or pursuing cross-border acquisitions and partnerships.
We’ve helped hundreds of businesses to develop and deliver successful GTM strategies. We can support across the board, including funding new product launches, offering guidance on brand and pricing strategy, connecting you to potential customers in our portfolio, and helping to scale your sales team.
We can provide funding for key hires, board development, training and more. Alongside this, we offer extensive support, including help with searches, leadership coaching, and access to our growing community of ambitious business leaders and the largest network of board-level talent in the UK.
Through our in-house ESG team and network of external consultants, we support our portfolio to embed ESG into their growth plans effectively. This covers everything from materiality assessments and help setting emissions targets to B Corp guidance and introductions to EDI experts.
Looking to modernise your company’s tech stack? Or strengthen your digital capabilities? We can provide both funding and ongoing, specialist support for product development and major digital transformation projects, helping to enable strong, secure growth for your business.
We can provide significant investment to fund projects around data infrastructure, advanced analytics, automation and AI-enabled product development. We also offer a full programme of support, including access to data and AI specialists and hands-on workshops, depending on the needs of your business.
Success stories
Join our portfolio
We’ve already helped hundreds of ambitious businesses across the UK and Ireland to accelerate their growth. Yours could be next.