Paula Skinner

Paula specialises in advising entrepreneurs in the early stage and investment arena, particularly high growth start ups and investors, having previously worked in-house at a VC and within the investment team at Scottish Enterprise. She is recognised as Scotland’s leading legal adviser on crowdfunding. Harper Macleod is the exclusive legal partner to Entrepreneurial Spark and Scottish EDGE and Paula is the lead partner for both relationships. Paula and her team work with businesses from pre-incorporation right through to exit and they regularly work with businesses getting them “investor ready”.

Recent deals include:

Investment

• Jumpstart in relation to a £3.2m investment from Business Growth Fund. Jumpstart is a high growth early stage business based in Edinburgh which helps businesses maximise their research and development tax credits.
• Zonefox in relation to two rounds of investment totalling £1.1m from Archangel, Tri Cap and Scottish Investment Bank. Zonefox is an Edinburgh based software company that specialises in helping their customers protect their business’s critical assets.
• Maven Capital Partners UK LLP in its capacity as Fund Manager for the Scottish Loan Fund in relation to a funding package of £750k into BioFilm Holdings Limited, a Blantyre based business focussed on dental, healthcare and pharmaceutical opportunities.
• the founders of GCRM Limited, a private fertility company, from start up in 2005 to partial exit recently.  We acted for the founders when they sold 70% of their successful fertility business to The Fertility Partnership which is one of the largest single providers of assisted conception in the UK.
• Epidarex Capital, a specialist life sciences venture capitalist in relation to two recent investments with an aggregate deal value in excess of £5m – (i) Sirakoss Ltd, a University of Aberdeen spin out, and (ii) Clyde Biosciences Limited, a University of Glasgow spin out.
• Upper Pitforthie plc in relation to its raising of £2.8m (£1m of which was raised within the first 24 hours through the crowdfunding platform Abundance.  This funding was to fund the development of a single wind turbine project in Aberdeenshire; and
• a solar business in a total investment of £11m.  This was a transaction that involved several different jurisdictions.

Qualifications: LLB Dip LP
Qualified: 2002
Joined the firm: 2005