Case Study: High Potential Startups (HPSUs)

The Partnership

Before founding Fellshore, our director Colin Bell was Business Growth Director at the North East LEP. In that role, he led the development of a flagship programme to turn strategy into delivery, addressing one of the region’s toughest challenges: the lack of high-growth startups. This experience is now central to Fellshore’s Deliver offer: knowing first-hand how to design programmes that move seamlessly from evidence and strategy to action and impact.

The Context

The North East LEP’s Economic Plan (2014–2024) set a bold ambition to create 100,000 more and better jobs and it also had a specific target to increase scaleup density by 50%. But research from the Enterprise Research Centre showed the region lagging far behind its peers in high-growth startup rates.

To achieve the strategy’s job creation target, the LEP needed a delivery programme that would:

• Translate research into clear priorities.

• Stimulate new high-growth ventures.

• Ensure underrepresented founders had targeted support. In short: a programme that linked strategy to real-world outcomes.

  
  

The Approach

Colin led the design of a research-driven, evidence-led programme that:

• Identified characteristics of high-growth startups (experienced founders, co-founders, early bootstrapping).

• Addressed inequality by engaging women and Black and Minority Ethnic entrepreneurs.

• Built governance and delivery frameworks to align delivery with strategic priorities.

• Integrated monitoring and evaluation so progress could be tracked against the LEP’s wider Economic Plan.

• Activated participation with a bold campaign across social media, video, and influencer networks.

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By rooting design in strategy and evidence, the programme aligned regional ambition with credible, fundable delivery.

The Results

One of the biggest challenges was reaching people who were pre-start—those with a great idea but who had never engaged with the LEP or its partners before. To do this, we created a bold and playful marketing campaign built around the hook: “Could your Doodle be the next Google?”

The results were outstanding. The campaign generated 305 expressions of interest, all from individuals completely new to the LEP. From these, 90 people were eligible and joined the programme. This was a huge achievement, not only had the messaging resonated, but the eligibility criteria had been communicated so clearly that we avoided large numbers of ineligible applications. It was targeted marketing at its best: connecting with the right people at the right time.

The programme itself provided people with great ideas, ambition and capability with the peer learning, mentoring, networks and challenge needed to validate the desirability, feasibility and viability of their idea providing them the confidence to take the leap and start their business. What mattered was not just the campaign that brought people in, but the quality of the delivery that turned ideas into businesses.

The impact was transformational. 58 high-growth startups were created, generating 99 new jobs in the first year. Half of the founders were women and/or from Black or Minority Ethnic backgrounds, showing that the programme had reached groups typically underrepresented in high-growth entrepreneurship.

We were proud to celebrate these achievements with a high-profile event headlined by Sara Davies MBE, attended by more than 300 people. The event showcased not just the businesses created, but the energy, ambition, and belief that the campaign and programme had unlocked across the region.

The Takeaway

This programme demonstrated how delivery works best when built on strategy, research, and communications. It showed that delivery is not the starting point but the outcome of defining, engaging, and activating first.

At Fellshore, this lived experience shapes our Deliver offer. We know how to turn strategy into delivery programmes that are credible, fundable, and built to last, because we’ve done it from the inside.