Key findings

• The biggest challenges relate to talent and liquidity
  Some 40% of scale-ups identified finding the right talent as one of the biggest challenges to achieving their growth ambitions, while 38% cited liquidity and funding issues. Liquidity is now a more prominent issue than it was in the 2023 survey.
• Most scale-ups want to expand their headcount, but they face obstacles
  Although 82% of Dutch scale-ups want to employ more people (up from 75% in 2023), they face multiple obstacles in this respect. Almost two-thirds of respondents highlighted the scarcity in the job market of specific profiles, while 34% flagged candidates’ expectations regarding financial rewards, as a result of the talent war.
• More Dutch scale-ups confident they can raise more funding
  Of the scale-ups surveyed, 60% are actively seeking additional funding, and 64% of this group feel confident that they will be able to secure what they need – up from 55% in 2023. Venture capitalists remain the most popular source when considering funding.
• Need for new features and functionality and better sales/lead management
  Some 90% of the respondents identified the development of additional product features and functionality as a high priority for technology investment (up from 78% in 2023). In terms of potential for improvement, 70% of scale-ups identified “optimizing my lead/sales funnel management” (up from 58% in 2023).
• A key priority for 2024 is new customer acquisition
  For 2024, the surveyed scale-ups are heavily focused on generating new business: 86% of respondents plan to focus on acquiring new customers, and 42% on building partnerships/reseller channels and 42% on product diversification and development. Each of these figures are higher than in the 2023 survey.
• More scale-ups are confident of future growth
  The proportion of respondents that are highly confident or confident that they can continue or even accelerate their growth trajectory has increased from 80% in the 2023 survey to 91% this year. 

About the survey

This survey is part of the Deloitte NSE Scale-Ups Ecosystem intitiave.

In total, 50 scale-ups based in the Netherlands responded to the 2024 Scale-Ups Confidence Survey. Thirty-eight of the respondents held the position of CEO  or co-founder in their respective organizations.

Scale-ups from multiple segments participated in the survey, with the enterprise software, fintech and digital commerce sectors best represented. More than 90% of the respondents operate at least in the B2B sector, but there are major differences in size. While 42% generate less than €1 million in annual revenue, 12% generate more than €10 million in annual revenue.

More than half the respondents have the equivalent of between 10 and 50 full-time employees, while 6% have more than 100 staff.