In the fast-paced, ever-changing world of startups, time is the one resource founders can’t raise, borrow, or buy more of. Every founder is familiar with the relentless pressure of trying to balance it all: leading the company’s vision, pitching to investors, securing funding, managing growing teams, building products, and scaling operations.
When it’s time to scale, many businesses grind to a halt – not because of market conditions, but because their internal systems aren’t built for growth. These businesses often have the demand, the talent, and the ambition, but their outdated financial systems hold them back. This is the scale-up trap: when growing businesses stall not for lack of opportunity, but because they’re not operationally ready.
Small and medium sized companies are the backbone of the global economy. In the UK alone, these businesses account for three-fifths of employment and almost half of turnover in the UK private sector. But their influence is not limited to UK borders. They are internationally ambitious, often purchasing from global suppliers, and sending goods and services to buyers overseas. Their growth, and that of the economy, relies upon favourable and fair market conditions – something which has been found lacking in recent months.
At Zubr Capital, a growth-stage investment fund focused on supporting ambitious tech companies, we typically back three to five companies each year during the Series A or Series B stages. That doesn’t mean there aren’t hundreds of impressive founders with compelling ideas out there – only that few truly align with the investment approach and long-term partnership model we’ve developed.
Starting a business is always a leap of faith. But for refugees from Artsakh – an ethnically Armenian region forcibly depopulated in 2023 – it’s often a matter of survival. If you’re starting over after a career setback, bootstrapping a business during inflation, or trying to harness the power of AI, you may have more in common with these refugee founders than you think.
Dr. Krishna Dubba is the Co-Founder and CTO of CoVent, an AI-powered marketplace designed to transform the way sponsorships are discovered and evaluated. He is a serial entrepreneur and deeptech innovator with over a decade of experience at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and product development.













