In association with the Freer Consultancy and TalentSpark, this year’s survey will quiz startup founders from both the current EIE20 company cohort and EIE alumni on a range of issues ranging from COVID impact, Brexit, investment environment, target markets and the recently published Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review.

The EIE team has also announced that an investor-only event will be taking place on the eve of EIE20 featuring a Q&A session with the author of the Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review, former Skyscanner COO Mark Logan.

Investors from Scotland, the rest of the UK, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific will be participating in the online event, which precedes EIE20 the following day and an investor panel that includes investors like Silicon Valley Bank, IBM Ventures, BGF, Octopus, BGF, Archangels, Equity Gap and the Scottish Investment Bank.

Mark Logan joined Skyscanner as COO in April 2012, driving revenue and user growth at the online travel site ahead of Sequoia’s investment in 2013, which crystallised Skyscanner’s unicorn status, the 2016 investment round by Artemis, Baillie Gifford, Khazanah Nasional, Vitruvian Partners and Yahoo, and the eventual acquisition by China’s Ctrip later that year.

Mark Logan

Mr Logan is also a Professor at the University of Glasgow’s School of Computing Science, is the co-founder of scale-up consultancy Ipso Facto and is a non-executive director at The Data Lab, Care Sourcer, Swipii and TravelNest.

Karen Wood, director of Enterprise, EIE, said: “We’re delighted that Mark Logan is joining us for what promises to be an insightful inside track on not only the recent Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review but also Mark’s time running the day-to-day operations at one of Scotland’s most revered tech startup success stories, Skyscanner.

“It’s particularly fitting to have Mark on the back of his recommendations about internationalising the Scottish tech ecosystem in a year where we have so many entrepreneurs and startups from outside Scotland pitching on the day.”

Mark Logan added: “More so than ever, in 2020 there is a shared view across Scotland’s tech scene around how we can drive the ecosystem forward and there is a real feeling of impetus. Of course, the investment and funding environment is one of the fundamental building blocks as we aim to create a critical mass of viable startups and scale-ups in this country and I greatly look forward to our discussions with investors from the UK and across the globe in October.”

EIE20 goes virtual for the first time on Wednesday 14th October, featuring 50 data-driven start-up to scale-up companies pitching to investors from Scotland, the UK and internationally for seed to series A funding.

This year’s event, originally intended for Edinburgh’s McEwan Hall, will be hosted by the University of Edinburgh’s Bayes Centre team on a virtual conference platform, extending EIE20’s global reach and offering an International Virtual Market Place for the first time.