Investor Paul Atkinson on the importance of people and taking the long view

The co-founder and partner of Par Equity, now part of PXN Group, started out with a background in physics and engineering before moving into technical sales, recruitment, entrepreneurship and, eventually, venture investing.

His first business, Direct Resources, was sold in 1999 before selling Scotland’s first job website recruitmentscotland.com, to Monster back at the turn of the millennium.

Paul also founded Head Resourcing in 2001, which later became Taranata Group, a leading international recruitment business. These exits became the starting point for a long career backing and advising other companies.

Paul later co-founded Par Equity in 2008, and has since built a portfolio of board roles, chair positions and personal investments across technology, services, financial markets, cyber, food and drink, and charity organisations.

Par Equity merged with Praetura Ventures and its adviser-led arm, Praetura Investments, to form PXN Group in June 2025. The deal brings together £670 million of capital to create a northern-focused investment platform backing high-growth SMEs across Scotland, Northern Ireland and the north of England.

He still plays a key role as Partner in PXN, while continuing to chair and support businesses including StretchSense, Infinitx, Taranata Group and digital consultancy CreateFuture, which recently announced they are being acquired by Version 1.

Paul also chair’s not for profit organisations including Cyber & Fraud Centre Scotland, The David Hume Institute and the Scottish Forestry Trust.

But when asked what has stayed consistent through that career, his answer is straightforward.

“It is always the people that matter,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what the business is. Without good people, you aren’t going to have a good business.”

For Paul, that view has been shaped by decades of hiring, building, selling, investing and chairing.

He says the strongest founders and leaders are curious, resilient and able to take advice without blindly following it.

He is particularly drawn to people who ask questions before forming an answer.

“I like working with curious people,” he explains. “People who actually ask questions as part of forming an answer. They’re not too dogmatic. They’re willing to take input from other people.”

That does not mean investors, NXDs or chairs are always right. Paul says the best founders listen to different opinions, weigh them up, then decide their own course.

He also looks for problem-solvers.

In growth companies, he says, difficult issues are inevitable. What matters is how leaders respond.

“It’s difficult to work with people who run away and hide from problems,” Paul admits. “In any kind of growth company, you’re going to run into problems that you have to solve.”

One of the clearest lessons from his career is that ambition alone is not enough.

A company needs a balanced leadership team, with commercial drive, operational discipline, financial grip and product or technical depth. Paul describes it as a stool that cannot stand on two legs.

Many early-stage companies have a brilliant inventor or product leader, but lack the commercial or finance experience needed to scale.

“You need sales, you need operations and finance, and you need the product evangelist or inventor,” he says. “If you only have two of those, the stool doesn’t stand up.”

That balance becomes more important as a company grows.

A part-time or fractional finance role might work at one stage, but not at another.

Boards also need to change as businesses mature.

Paul says one of the chair’s roles is making sure the board has the skills needed to support the executive team.

That can involve difficult conversations.

“You’ve got to be able to deal with conflict,” he says.

“You’ve got to have hard conversations with people and deal with things in a nice way. Leave people with their own egos Intact.”

He is blunt about the realities of raising money.

Founders can often overestimate what they are able to achieve in a given timeframe.

“As an example, in a technology product company, you typically see entrepreneurs over-estimate their capability to move the market towards your product,” he says.

That does not mean hiding weakness from investors.

Paul says companies should be open about the assumptions behind their projections.

“You tell investors that upfront,” he says. “You don’t hide anything. Most investors who’ve done a lot of venture investment know companies are hardly ever going to hit the plan and will maybe need to pivot their business model to Succeed”

The venture market has also become tougher.

Paul says the last two or three years have been difficult for companies trying to raise capital, with fewer major exits, resulting in less capital being recycled back into the market.

“The theme that comes through a lot is that in this world of investment, you need the ability to return capital,” he says.

This gives secondary market offerings, such as Infinitx and its JP Jenkins platform a really important role to play, particularly with the advent of Pisces as regulatory regime.

He sees artificial intelligence as both an opportunity and a distortion.

Large sums are flowing into AI companies, particularly a small number of major deals, but that can make fundraising harder for non-AI businesses.

Paul believes AI will change everything, but he also sees parallels with the dotcom boom. He says: “I think we’re in a hype cycle similar to the dotcom boom. There will be a reckoning at some point.”

Scotland must focus on niches in the AI investment race

Paul Atkinson believes Scotland can build strong technology companies, but not by trying to compete directly with global artificial intelligence (AI) giants.

The PXN Partner says artificial intelligence is attracting major venture capital, with large deals absorbing much of the money available in the market.

He says that creates opportunities, but also risks pulling capital away from non-AI companies.

For Scottish firms, Paul believes the strongest prospects for venture investment lie in specialist, defensible areas rather than broad large language model products dominated by the big names.

That includes sector-specific AI, hardware, sensors, robotics, industrial technology, medical technology and companies that own valuable proprietary data, such as StretchSense.

“If you’re a high-growth small company, you need to be niche and focussed, but in a big enough niche to create scale” Paul says.

He points to applications where AI is built around specific data sets, regulated industries or physical infrastructure. In those cases, smaller companies can develop products that are difficult for larger tech firms to replicate quickly.

But he says Scotland also needs to fix barriers that slow investment, particularly planning, grid connections and policy uncertainty, and adds that investors need consistency before committing capital: “One of the things that’s important for investment is stability of the operating environment.”

TOP FIVE

1 Back people first Paul believes strong businesses start with strong people. Curiosity, honesty and resilience matter as much as the proposition.

2 Build a balanced team Scale-ups need commercial, finance, operational and product strength. A brilliant founder alone is rarely enough.

​3 Be honest with investors Founders should explain the assumptions behind their forecasts and accept that most plans change.

​4 Expect hard problems Growth companies will hit difficult moments. Paul looks for leaders who face problems rather than avoid them.

​5 Find a defensible niche In artificial intelligence and technology,

Scottish firms are unlikely to beat global giants head-on. The opportunity is in specialist markets, proprietary data, sensors, robotics, medtech, plus industrial applications and materials.