As businesses begin to grow, the landscape they operate in—the scale up universe™—expands to include a range of interconnected services and strategies crucial to their success. Think of it as the infrastructure that surrounds a business as it scales, supporting you to grow sustainably and efficiently.
In the scale-up universe, a company needs to consider more than just their day-to-day operations. Legal advice, accounting, tax support, technology systems, brand identity, internal processes and more become increasingly critical to get right. In a start-up world your focus is on bootstrapping, testing your ideas, iterating as you learn and wearing many hats. It means that you’ve built as you’ve grown, often doing just enough to keep the business moving forward without too much of an overhead on time and cost.
As the volume and value of your business increases and you find yourself in the scaling phase of business growth, now’s the time to take a step back to assess your scale-up universe™. Spending time considering how your business is constructed could make the difference between thriving or struggling as you scale.
What is a scale-up universe?
Your scale-up universe will cover the 7 main areas of a business; legal, operations, marketing, sales, finance, technology and HR. Within each of these areas, you’ll then further list the core aspects that your business needs in order to operate well and scale successfully.
This will be multilayered and often starts best with a pen and paper so that you can capture your thoughts as you go – adding and removing areas to address as you spend more time thinking through your particular business universe map.
Legal services for scale-ups
A strong legal foundation is one of the most critical elements in the scale-up universe. For growing businesses, key legal services include:
- Investment readiness: Before taking on investors, you need to ensure your business is legally prepared. This includes having the right corporate structure, strong governance, and clear shareholder agreements.
- Brand protection: Scaling businesses should ensure their intellectual property (IP), such as trademarks and designs, are properly protected.
- Contracts: As you grow, your client and supplier contracts need to limit liability, minimise risk, and ensure compliance with legal standards.
- Employment law: Your employment contracts and policies should be designed to comply with UK law while reflecting your culture.
- Data protection: If you’re working with clients then chances are you’re collecting their data and so ensuring your GDPR policies meet current legislation requirements is vital.
To further help your thinking, we’ve mapped out the most common legal touch points that growth focussed businesses need to consider as they scale. You’ll see that legal matters sit across every aspect of business functionality and whilst not all of these may apply to you now, they’re worth bearing in mind for the future.
To access a downloadable version of this map – just click this link here.
The importance of other services in the scale-up universe™
Scaling requires more than just legal support. Each of these business functions will be complex and will require time to think carefully about the core aspects of each. The emphasis for each business will differ and as such there is no one size fits all.
Having said that there are aspect of a business that are fairly common regardless of sector or business model, here are a few thoughts to get going:
Finance: Bookkeeping, tax obligations & annual filings at Companies House
Operations: Processes, compliance and regulation
Technology: Systems, automations, dependencies and IP
HR: Employment contracts, payroll and policies
Sales: CRM system, contracting and liabilities
Marketing: Brand protection, GDPR and ROI
Mapping Your Scale-Up Universe
Each business’s universe will look different, and it’s essential to identify what services and systems will help you grow sustainably. At Jamieson Law, we encourage business owners to map out their own scale-up universe, identifying which key elements are already in place and which ones need attention.
Want to start building your scale-up universe? Download our scale-up universe map template when you sign up for our newsletter.
By reflecting on each part of this universe—legal foundations, financial planning, branding, systems, and more—you can ensure your business is prepared for the journey ahead.
Found some gaps? Let’s jump on a call to chat through your scale-up universe and discuss how we can support you. Click here to get in touch.
