#15: Small Is Beautiful - But Sussex Needs Scale

The Sussex And The City Podcast

– Episode 15:

Small Is Beautiful - But Sussex Needs Scale

Host: Richard Freeman
Guest: Simon Chuter - business growth strategist, founder of Scale Up Sussex, former Head of Centres & Investment Services at Sussex Innovation

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This episode is brought to you in partnership with:
Kreston Reeves – one of the UK’s leading accountancy and advisory firms and one of the first to achieve B Corp status. With offices in Brighton, Chichester and beyond, they help Sussex businesses grow with clarity, confidence and purpose – from tax strategy and audit to ESG reporting and succession planning.
👉 krestonreeves.com

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🔍 Episode summary

In this candid conversation, Richard sits down with Sussex-born-and-bred enterprise champion Simon Chuter to explore how devolution could shape a more joined-up, ambitious business landscape – and why the mayoralty’s first job should be to fund what works.

Simon draws on over a decade supporting founders, scale-ups and investors across the county – from student entrepreneurs at the University of Sussex to experienced business leaders seeking growth capital. He makes the case that Sussex has all the ingredients for a thriving scale-up culture, but too often fails to connect its pockets of excellence into a coherent regional story.

This episode digs into what scaling really means, why it matters for job diversity, and how barriers like talent, finance, leadership, markets and infrastructure could be tackled with smart, evidence-based investment.

 

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🎯 Why this matters

"I'd like to think that it's possible to create a grand narrative, to create a grand community across the region, across the county of Sussex - it’s certainly possible, but there are huge pockets of inequality, not just in the county, but in the city that we're sat in now. Telling a cohesive story that brings people together when you've got different politics across the region, different ideas, different values, different sets of beliefs, is… messy. That’s what I’m getting my head around now - slowly but surely."

 

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🧠 Topics covered include:

• What makes Sussex unique – and why cohesion is hard but possible
• Why scaling isn’t about “corporate behemoths” but about good jobs for good people
• The five big barriers holding back business growth
• How to build a county-wide mentoring culture that works across sectors
• Why the mayor should scale-up the scale-up programmes
• Lessons from investment networks and university-linked entrepreneurship
• Avoiding guff: making collaboration real, not performative

"It's about creating good jobs. That’s fundamentally what it's about for me: good jobs for good people in good places. How do we create an economy whereby people can do really great work, in a way that has significant impact? The way we do that is by growing businesses who can employ at that scale. Small is beautiful, yes — but there’s an opportunity to do something else as well. It’s additive rather than a takeaway."

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📚 Further reading and references

ScaleUp Institute – What is a scale-up?

OECD definition of scale-ups

Logical Progression – A scale-up research report for the Brighton and Sussex economic area

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🎧 Production credits

Host: Richard Freeman
Guest: Simon Chuter
Sound design / editing / original music: Chris Thorpe-Tracey
Production management: Letitia McConalogue
Recorded at: Projects: The Lanes, Brighton

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📣 Get involved

Want better public communication in Sussex? Want to help shape devolution in a way people understand?👉 sussexandthecity.info – for more episodes, resources and events.