Across nearly all regions, scale-ups faced a primary hurdle: reduced or delayed new business and customer acquisitions. Market uncertainty hampered decisionmaking, a trend particularly pronounced in the UK, where 71% of respondents reported this impact. Cash flow, liquidity, funding, and operational challenges also emerged as widespread concerns. Notably, cash flow issues were a key worry for Middle Eastern scale-ups, while operational challenges were most pressing for those in Greece.

When scale-ups were asked about international expansion, the US was the most frequent response. While intra-country expansion remains popular in larger markets like Spain, it’s also notable in smaller nations such as the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland. Additionally, scale-ups in most other countries show a preference for expanding into geographically close neighbours, likely driven by familiarity, linguistic and cultural alignment, and potentially lower logistical expenses. 

Surprisingly, the majority of scale-ups do not have an exit strategy. Those that do are looking towards M&A as a potential exit route, with an IPO being a much less popular choice. Interestingly, the majority of scale-ups in the Middle East and Switzerland have an exit strategy. Across the rest of the geographies, it is less common for scale-ups to have an exit plan.

Going forward, the primary focus for scale-ups is to acquire new customers, with at least 73% of scale-ups across all geographies reporting this as their priority. New market entry is another key focus, demonstrating the ambition of these scale-ups. The combination of these two factors indicates that many scale-ups may feel they are fully utilising their current customer base. With the cost of new customer acquisition high, it may be sensible for scale-ups to reassess whether their current customer base has more value they can extract before they undertake potentially expensive expansion.