Barclays Go-to-Market Mentoring at Turing Fest 2026
Hosted by: Barclays Eagle Labs, Sponsors of Turing Fest 2026
Date: Tuesday, 22 to Wednesday, 23 September 2026
Location: Biscuit Factory, Edinburgh
Booking via Turing Fest website
About the event
A full notebook can hide an untouched decision. You collect ideas from the stage. You collect recommendations over coffee. You collect contacts for later.
Back at your desk, the question you arrived with can still be waiting. And while you weigh another approach, your team keeps working, your budget keeps moving and the cost of not choosing gets harder to ignore.
At Turing Fest 2026 in Edinburgh, Barclays Eagle Labs offered attendees 20-minute speed mentoring sessions. Callum Stuart and I were the two mentors on the team, contributing to Barclays’ support for founders at the summit. Barclays was the event’s Founding Banking Partner.
Twenty minutes isn’t enough to rebuild a business, and it shouldn’t pretend to be. But a short conversation can help you look again at a decision you’ve been circling for weeks. Fewer notes. A better question.
What you’ll learn
- Pinpoint the decision behind a broad growth challenge, so the conversation addresses something you can act on.
- Distinguish what you know from what you’re assuming before committing more time or budget.
- Examine a proposed next step against your business’s stage, constraints and immediate priorities.
- Identify where further evidence or specialist support is needed rather than forcing a premature answer.
- Choose one question to test or action to take in the week after the event.
Who it’s for
The mentoring was available to Turing Fest attendees. These are the situations where a focused conversation can be useful:
- You’re weighing competing priorities and need to decide which deserves your team’s attention first.
- You’ve heard plenty of growth advice but can’t tell which parts apply to your business right now.
- You suspect your next hire or marketing spend is addressing the wrong problem, but have never tested that assumption.
- You’re preparing for a bigger commercial commitment and want an outside perspective before proceeding.
- You’ve been carrying the same unresolved question through several planning meetings without getting closer to a decision.
About the mentor
Sid Kathirvel: I’m the Founder and Strategic Growth Partner at Unlock Growth, with 25+ years across brand strategy, growth marketing and e-commerce. I’m a Growth Mentor for Barclays Eagle Labs, Techscaler by CodeBase, Digital Boost and Edinburgh Innovations. Digital Boost named me Marketing Mentor of the Year 2024.