The West Midlands Growth Company (WMGC) is being restructured into a new Economic Development Vehicle (EDV) by 2026 to focus on investment and strategic delivery. While WMGC claims credit for attracting big business, many local startups, mine included, received no meaningful support. The restructuring is a chance to fix that, but only if the new EDV backs early-stage innovators with funding access, partnerships, and scale-up support. Otherwise, it’s just a rebrand, not reform.
Contents
- Contents
- Introduction: From Promise to Puzzlement
- A Quick History: What the WMGC Claims
- My Lived Experience: A Deafening Absence
- The Restructure: Change or Continuity?
- The Big Question: Who Will the New EDV Serve?
- A Practical Alternative: What Startups Want
- Conclusion: Rebuild with Intent, Not Image
- References
Introduction: From Promise to Puzzlement
The West Midlands Growth Company (WMGC) is undergoing a major overhaul. In April 2026, it will be reconstituted into a new Economic Development Vehicle (EDV) with a slimmed-down board, revised remit, and more direct oversight from the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA). This has been framed as a strategic move: a way to deliver more value, drive inward investment, and align with regional priorities.
But will it work?
As the founder of multiple cyber startups based in the West Midlands, my experience suggests that for all its foreign investment headlines and glossy branding, the WMGC hasn’t delivered meaningful support to early-stage innovators like us. We weren’t looking for handouts. We were looking for help: funding clarity, strategic intros, and structured engagement.
We got silence.
A Quick History: What the WMGC Claims
To its credit, the WMGC has long claimed a leading role in securing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). It points to big names like HSBC, Goldman Sachs, and PwC setting up or expanding regional offices as evidence of success. In fact, Greater Birmingham is now ranked 7th in Europe for FDI and 3rd in the UK behind only London and Scotland.
But attributing this to WMGC alone may be generous. The region’s industrial heritage, university base, and relatively low operating costs have long attracted global interest. The real test of an economic development body is not just how well it rolls out the red carpet to multinationals, it’s how well it nurtures the next generation of regional innovators.
My Lived Experience: A Deafening Absence
As I laid out in my article “Securing Success – Questions for Startups in the West Midlands“, startups like Cyber Tzar and Psyber Inc. received no meaningful support from WMGC, despite our alignment with priority sectors like cyber, AI, and tech-enabled resilience.
To be clear: this isn’t a criticism of the individuals at WMGC. In my experience, they’ve been professional, fair, and always willing to listen when I spoke about my business. But they simply had nothing to offer, no relevant programmes, no introductions, no tangible next steps. And that’s the strange part.
Maybe I wasn’t close enough to whatever was going on behind the scenes, or maybe my business just didn’t fit their definition of relevance. That ambiguity only deepens the sense of apathy and dissociation that many startups like mine feel when trying to engage.
We asked what we thought were obvious and straightforward questions:
- What funding routes are open to us?
- Can you help us access testbeds, accelerators, or export markets?
- Who can we speak to about partnerships and hiring talent?
We got no response. No roadmap. No follow-up.
So we went it alone.
And that raises the question: if WMGC wasn’t built to support early-stage regional startups, who was it built for?
The Restructure: Change or Continuity?
Here’s what the WMGC restructuring looks like:
- Transition Period: 2025–26
- New EDV Launch: April 2026
- Board Restructure: Down to 10–12 members, more elected officials, fewer public sector voices
- Budget: £7.25m in 2025/26, down from £12m
- Focus Areas: Inward investment, capital attraction, visitor economy, strategic relationships
Meanwhile, many LEP functions have been absorbed into WMCA. Funding once earmarked for inward investment and culture may be withdrawn entirely by the central government. And tensions between WMGC and regional authorities have surfaced, with some seeing this restructuring as necessary, and others viewing it as performative politics.
The Big Question: Who Will the New EDV Serve?
Startups and scale-ups like ours need more than warm words. We need a delivery engine that helps us:
- Access capital (grants, matched funds, equity networks)
- Showcase our products (at key events and delegations)
- Break into global markets (not just attract them here)
- Connect with partners (industry, academia, public sector)
- Navigate R&D and innovation support (from testbeds to pilots)
Will the new EDV be designed to enable this?
Or will it remain, bluntly put, a siloed, top-down body, more focused on ribbon-cutting and hosting multinationals than supporting the region’s cyber, cleantech, and AI startups?
The current language around “streamlining,” “strategic relationships,” and “global tourism” doesn’t fill me with confidence.
A Practical Alternative: What Startups Want
Here’s what a real shift would look like from the point of view of regional tech founders:
| Startup Need | What We Want from the New EDV |
|---|---|
| Funding Navigation | One clear, updated map of local, regional, and national grants and funds – with application support. |
| Innovation Infrastructure | Easy access to R&D testbeds, pilots, and regional sandboxing for regulated sectors. |
| Talent Linkages | A route into graduate schemes and apprenticeships tied to regional cyber/startup growth. |
| Market Access | Trade missions that include regional startups, not just big business showcases. |
| Strategic Partnerships | Help forming JVs and MOUs with anchor institutions and larger firms. |
| Accountability & Feedback | A public dashboard showing startup engagement metrics, not just FDI headlines. |
Conclusion: Rebuild with Intent, Not Image
The new EDV could be an opportunity.
But only if it learns from the blind spots of the past: ignoring local startups, failing to collaborate, and treating “inward investment” as a photo opportunity instead of a pipeline-building exercise.
We don’t need more snouts in the trough.
We need a builder’s mindset, an EDV that sees startups like Cyber Tzar and Psyber Inc. as assets to develop, not distractions to manage. One that collaborates with DSIT, UK Cyber Security Council, universities, and cluster bodies. One that delivers measurable outcomes, not just polished branding.
If the new leadership gets that right, we’ll back them. If not, we’ll keep building without them.
We already have.