Is it a good idea to work for a startup?
Working for a startup isn’t all scooters and free lunch, and in many cases, it’s harder work with less pay, but in the end, it can pay off handsomely – monster.com
Which type of startup would you recommend for a career move?
Probably for all round experience, remuneration and career opportunity without the risk it would be a funded fintech. For sheer out there risk it has to be a blockchain startup
Best UK Startups 2021 #1 TOP STARTUPS UK Guide
The tech scale up world is booming right now and with areas like blockchain creating whole new concepts to contribute to the world’s economy there’s no doubt that Tech as a category is rapidly growing. In fact, IT engineers salary‘s reportedly growing to £74k it’s clear the heady days are back again
So to help you keep track of some of the players and shakers here’s a list of some of the top startup companies in the UK to keep an eye on in 2020.
Table of Contents
AI
Deep mind
Deep mind now owned by Google is one of the world leader in artificial intelligence research and its application in different fields, like games, medicine, energy efficiency
Dark Trace
Dark Trace helps stop advanced spear-phishing and business email compromise with AI that understands your organization – and detects the most advanced email threats, from targeted impersonation attacks and social engineering, to supply-chain threat and human-factor vulnerabilities.
Graphcore
Graphcore has built a new type of processor for machine intelligence to accelerate machine learning and AI applications for a world of intelligent machines.
HealthTech
Babylon Health
Babylon’s mission is to put an accessible and affordable health service in the hands of every person on earth which is a big statement but what is without doubt is that they’ve already made ground breaking and rapid progression in the UK by partnering with NHS Trusts such as Hammersmith & Fulham.
Babylon’s AI has been designed around a doctor’s brain to provide accessible healthcare for millions in the palm of their hands, however they actually are making greater in-roads into the private company health care market.
With existing operations in the US, UK, Canada, Rwanda plus multiple countries across APAC and the Middle East, Babylon are a unicorn level startup to watch.
BenevolentAI
BenevolentAI founded in 2013 by Ken Mulvany and with a £200m+ funding level is transforming the way medicine is designed, developed, and tested by taking in millions of data points and processing them using A.I. to discover new ways to develop better medicines and learn through data how patients respond to treatment generating insights into the actual causes of the disease.
Cell Medica
Cell Medica founded by Gregg Sando with a £150m+ funding level is trying to transform the lives of cancer patients by attempting to harness the natural biology of a subset of cytotoxic T cells referred to as “NKT” cells (Natural Killer T cells) which have potentially vital biological differences to “normal” T cells.
Touch Surgery
Learn, prepare and test on surgical procedures, anytime, anywhere. Touch Surgery combines core concepts from gaming and surgical training to allow healthcare professionals to learn and teach surgical procedures all on their mobiles.
Thriva
Thriva was started in 2016 with the aim of building the world’s first preventative health service as there is no simple and convenient way to track what’s really going on inside your body which means most people are forced to wait until something goes wrong until they can react – Thriva want to change that.
Thriva does this by letting you understand what’s really going on inside your body such as with smart finger-prick blood tests you take at home.
Elder
Elder understands that arranging care for someone you love is never easy. It’s often stressful, confusing and complex and Elder work with the whole family to get the best outcome for everyone.
Elder do this by allowing you to book free consultation to talk through your family’s situation with one of our expert care team with them providing advice on navigating the system and helping you understand whether live-in care is suitable.
After that and. if you agree it’s suitable you complete an online or freepost application form covers everything from health requirements and medication, to favourite meals and hobbies and then their matching team work with your family to help you find the most suitable available carer.
Entertainment
Improbable
Improbable was founded in 2012 by Herman Narula and Rob Whitehead. As Cambridge University computer science graduate students, they shared a love of games and an ambition to make bigger, better multiplayer worlds than were technologically possible.
Improbable are headquartered in London and have offices around the world and have also received over $600m in funding from some of the most reputable investors in the world, including the SoftBank Vision Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Horizons Ventures and NetEase.
Improbable Groundbreaking gameplay enabled by Improbable technology.
Energy
Bulb
Bulb are the UK’s biggest green supplier and supply 100% renewable electricity from solar, wind and hydro.
Bboxx
Bboxx designs, manufactures, distributes and finances innovative plug & play solar systems to improve access to energy across Africa and the developing world.
More than 150,000 BBOXX products have been sold in more than 35 countries, improving the lives of nearly 1 million people.
Moixa
Moixa want to be the UK’s leading smart battery company and to do this they have developed Smart Battery hardware and GridShare software to facilitate smart energy storage and sharing.
This pioneering smart energy-management software helps renewable energy work intelligently for individuals and businesses as their GridShare software facilitates and interprets complex interactions between energy-storage devices and the grid, enabling data-based decision making and ensuring value is created throughout the supply chain.
Hometree
Hometree believes that customers should get better, cheaper home care plans and customers should never be subjected to poor customer service and constant price hikes.
Marketplace
FlatFair
Rent deposit-free with flatfair. Tenants pay a small one-off fee and landlords get double the protection compared to a traditional deposit.
Blow Ltd
blow LTD is the UK’s leader in beauty services on demand, specialisng in Kerastase blow dries, makeup, OPI nails and more.
Trouva
Trouva brings you beautiful homewares from Support Independent Boutiques around the world. Trouva make it easy for you to discover just the right piece for your home
Mobility
Citymapper
Citymapper use the power of open data, mobile and payment technology to make transport sustainable and hassle free.
Zencargo
Zencargo are building a world with smarter trade
What if businesses only ordered and moved the exact products they needed? Zencargo are on a mission to synchronise supply and demand to help every business deliver amazing customer experiences as efficiently as possible.
JustPark
From their early days JustPark has been helping drivers park on driveways around sports stadiums to where JustPark are now, helping over 3.5m drivers park across over 45,000 locations around the country – JustPark is now one of the most loved parking apps.
JustPark make parking easy for drivers – whilst helping parking owners and operators (of all shapes and sizes), optimise and re-purpose their under-utilised parking real-estate.
PropTech
Hubble
Hubble’s vision is for every business to have the right workspace to succeed.
Hubble believe every business deserves their perfect workspace – one that will help them grow, win work, attract amazing people and build a brilliant reputation. Hubble use office search alchemy to make that happen
Residently
Residently are a great hot London Startups property example as they claim to be the only rental service that guarantees an impeccable end-to-end service with total flexibility and peace of mind throughout.
Residently provide a transparent, slick experience and help you move in when it suits you and set everything up so you don’t have to. Start living right away, enjoying every possible service you could imagine.
From stylish furniture, high speed internet, to cleaning and ironing right through to contents insurance and art rental, Residently will try to sort it out.
Whether you’re in one of their elegant Georgian flats, Victorian cottages or a warehouse apartment, Residently are only a phone call away from every need.
Triptease
The Triptease Platform is built to help hotels take back control of their distribution and increase their direct revenue.
The Triptese platform identifies a hotel’s most valuable guests then works across the entire customer journey – from acquisition to conversion – to make sure they book directly at the hotel.
Appear here
Appear here helps you find a store for rent in New York, LA, Paris and London. Choose from prime high street spaces, mall kiosks, venues & market pitches.
Food
Feast it
Tell Feast it about your event and the types of suppliers you’re looking for and you’ll be assigned a personal Event Pro who will get to work finding the perfect suppliers for your event and will be on hand every step of the way, from submitting your enquiry until after your event.
Butternut Box
Your dog’s box is portioned to your dog based on their individual dietary requirements.
Buternut Box take all the hassle away by pre-portioning meals into daily servings – just open, serve and set their tails to “wag”. Butternut Box’s nutritional consultation takes into account the age, weight, breed, body condition and activity level of your dog to help them create your unique meal plan.
Olio
Olio connects neighbours with each other and with local businesses so surplus food can be shared, not thrown away. This could be food nearing its sell-by date in local stores, spare home-grown vegetables, bread from your baker, or the groceries in your fridge when you go away. For your convenience, OLIO can also be used for non-food household items too.
OLIO is super easy! To make an item available, simply open the app, add a photo, description, and when and where the item is available for pick-up and to access items, simply browse the listings available near you, request whatever takes your fancy and arrange a pick-up via private messaging.
Perk Box
Perkbox is an all-in-one platform which helps you create a great employee experience. Attract, engage and retain the best talent with Perks, Recognition, Medical and Insights.
SAAS
What3Words
What3Words have assigned each 3m square in the world a unique 3 word address that will never change.
For example ///filled.count.soap marks the exact entrance to what3words’ London headquarters.
3 word addresses are easy to say and share, and are as accurate as GPS coordinates.
51.520847, -0.19552100 ←→ /// filled.count.soap
What3Word’s vision is to become a global standard for communicating location. People use what3words to find their tents at festivals, navigate to B&Bs, and to direct emergency services to the right place.
Attest
Great businesses put consumers and data at the heart of every decision. Attest’s mission is to empower anyone at every business to do this, all of the time.
Attest believe that if every team had access to unlimited data, the world would be full of better products and services, not to mention happier people.
By simplifying the process of gathering quality consumer data, Attest are tring to transform an entire industry and making research accessible to everyone that needs it.
PolyAI
AI isn’t about pre-scripted chatbots or asking your smart speaker about the weather.
PolyAI are building voice and text-based virtual customer service agents that truly understand what your customers want and PolyAI’s virtual agents are context sensitive, flexible and provide the best responses at every turn of the conversation.
Fintech
Lendable
Technology has the power to simplify our lives: that’s the principle on which the team founded Lendable in 2014. Getting a loan shouldn’t be a complicated or lengthy process in the digital age.
So Lendable built a platform that harnesses technology and data in order to make personal finance hassle-free and customer-friendly.
There’s no need to fill in lengthy forms, deal with paper-based applications, wait days for a decision by the lender, queue in a branch, or get stuck in hold loops on overburdened customer service hotlines. Lendable aims to fix all of that.
MoneyBox
More than 400,000 customers use Moneybox to invest towards the things that matter most to them in life.
Investing can be a great way to grow your money and can offer higher long term returns than leaving your money in a current or savings account.
Starling Bank
This new app only challenger bank has made an impact on the UK financial scene since it received its banking licence in 2016 picking up no fewer than three gongs at the 2019 Smart Money People British Bank Awards including Best British Bank, Best Business Banking Provider and Best Current Account Provider.
TrueLayer
With its proprietary API, TrueLayer gives smaller startups access banking data while avoiding – like all APIs – the need to build, design and maintain their own systems.
“Open Banking is about much more than liberalizing the finance industry to increase competition and reduce costs,” said Cofounder and CEO of TrueLayer, Francesco Simoneschi. “It is also about raising security standards and protecting consumers and businesses. Online fraud ripples out and raises costs for everyone making card payments.”
TrueLayer has already launched a beta of its own Payments API.
This API enables businesses to start accepting cash via payments through Open Banking
Trussle as a result have signed big deals with Zopa, BitBond, ClearScore and Anorak, amongst many others.
With so many new and huge markets to enter and almost endless potential partners to partner with, TrueLayer has “true” (Ed: groan….) potential to hyper grow their revenues in 2020 as they fine tune their offer.
Nutmeg
Nutmeg thinks it’s one of the fintech companies with a difference by not developing complex algorithms to make decisions on behalf of its customers and instead relies on human beings to perform this role.
So 70s….
But that hasn’t stopping Nutmeg enjoying significant growth with over 50,000 customers causing Banking (Ed: removed through fear…) Goldman Sachs to invest in a funding round of $58 million.
“Our customers are our greatest advocates and Nutmeg wanted to give them an opportunity to invest in, as well as with, a business they’ve helped to make a success,”
Martin Stead
Nutmeg CEO and Director
Funding Circle
Funding Circle is one of the largest UK peer-to-peer lenders and the first to go public with close to 50,000 small to medium-sized UK businesses borrowing a total of £5 billion on its platform.
Funding Circle has had some ups and downs since it went public but recently announced a record year so lets watch this space
“In the third quarter, loans under management reached £3.7 billion and projected returns for 2019 continued to show an improvement over recent years,”
Co-founder and CEO
Samir Desai.
Fundamentally Funding Circle pairs up small and amateur lenders with small loan-takers.
Monese
Monese offers current accounts and money transfers to a ew generation of consumers and has a good reputation for its quick and simple application process.
In September 2019, Monese raised a gigantic $60 million in series B funding led by Kinnevik and others including PayPal so watch this space!
Monzo
Winners of the Best Banking App gong at the Smart Money People awards and was at the time of press just behind Starling in terms of revenues.
Monzo entered the fray as a challenger bank scene in 2015 focussing on developing an intuitive banking experience for customers and Monzo are very much successful in this ambition and is now holding around $1.1 billion in deposits
“we’re literally the safest bank you could possibly imagine, because the money just sits in the central bank. It seems bizarre. Anyone from another bank who looks at our balance sheet just scratches their head. They can’t understand it. Unless the UK fails as a country, that money is safe.”
CEO Tom Blomfield
Receipt Bank
Receipt Bank offers its clients cloud computing with AI and data handling thrown in which means Receipt Bank helps them saves time and effort by enabling the automatic compilation of accounts and expenses.
Through this process users are able to download spreadsheets and reports and connect up the platform with their existing software and has been embraced by clients.
Trussle
The mortgage space and InsureTech and Lending in general is one that has traditionally found itself highly resistant to digital transformation.
Trussle doees this by scanning different lenders to find customers the best mortgages available and then continuously monitors the market post-sale to help its clients identify and switch to better deals later.
How frigging cool is that!
Cleo
Chatbots are massive and have never been easier to build thanks to the advances of both middleware and artificial intelligence software.
Enter Cleo, which is an AI chatbot that connects users Facebook accounts and helps them manage their finances better to track their expenditure and savings. And this process helps them save money and plan for the future better
Which we all need…
Curve
Using Curve, we can now access all our cards via a single card and PIN combo, doing away the need to have a wallet full of cards. You can even switch payment options after the payment has been made. How cool is that?
With such a great produce Curve could really be on the up curve in 2020….
Revolut
Revolut is providing a digital alternative to traditional banking by using prepaid cards and peer-to-peer payments and supports several cryptocurrencies on its platform.
Revolut has had some brand and culture challenges reportedly but the company is now recording an average of 3.7 million monthly active users, and an average of 1.2+ million daily active users so things could very much work out for Revolut with years of growth ahead them highly likely.
Transferwise
Founded by Kristo Kaarmann, a former manager at Deloitte, and Taavet Hinrikus, an angel investor and former Strategy Director at Skype, Transferwise is no longer a Fintech London company spring chicken and possibly the most well known Fintech startup of recent years.
Transferwise broke into the marketing by allowing users to send money abroad with exchange rates eight times cheaper than most mainstream banks and also allowing users to send money easily, cheaply, safely, and quickly.
Recently Visa announced that TransferWise will begin offering its customers an additional capability to quickly and securely move money to debit cards in real-time, so watch this space as TransferWise continues to improve it’s offering and move increasingly into the mainstream
Sumup
SumUp is mobile payments company that provides card readers to smaller businesses for them to use without a contract.
They take a 1.69% cut of payments made using the terminal but provide an easy and cost-effective way for businesses to make transactions.
The company recently bought Shoplo, a Poland-based multichannel eCommerce platform that allows small businesses to start selling online.
As part of SumUp’s expansion strategy, they also acquired Danish company Debitoor, an invoicing-software platform originally established for freelancers and SMEs.
In 2019 SumUp, announced that it has raised a from Bain Capital Credit, Goldman Sachs Private Capital, HPS Investment Partners, and TPG Sixth Street Partners.
SumUp plans to use this capital to accelerate its growth and acquire new merchants in its current and new markets across the globe.
The funds will be used to continue expanding SumUp’s product suite, both organically and through more acquisitions such as the acquisition of Debitoor, for accounting and Shoplo for ecommerce.
Checkout.com
This little-known fintech was founded in 2009 under a different name before evolving into Checkout.com in 2012 and have since grown to a team of more than 300 employees in eight offices, expanding into the UAE in 2013, and the US in 2017.
Checkout.com enables companies to process and accept cross-border payments from credit and debit cards, online banking, Apple Pay and others such as Klarna – all with a single integration.
As a result Checkout is considered a direct rival to the huge Dutch payment titan Adyen, which is listed on the Amsterdam stock exchange.
Checkout.com provides online payment solutions for a number of growing businesses and has reported $46.8m in total revenues in 2017 according to their Companies House filings, a 56% up on the previous year.
The company’s clients include Samsung, TransferWise, Adidas and Virgin and was ranked 2nd place in Deloitte’s UK Technology Fast 50.
Zopa
In 2005 Zopa claim to have built the first ever peer-to-peer (P2P) lending company to give people access to simpler, better-value loans and investments.
Oaknorth
OakNorth is redefining lending to lower mid-market businesses globally. Oacknorth provide data and technology-driven solutions to borrowers and lenders
Cuvva
Say goodbye to jargon, paperwork and terrible customer service. Cuvva is building insurance the way it should be
Tide
Tide is award-winning smart business account. The hassle-free account for your small business. Get your sort code and account number in minutes.
Go Cardless
GoCardless is on a mission to take the pain out of getting paid for businesses with recurring revenue.
GoCardless have created a global bank debit network, to rival credit and debit cards. On top of it, GoCardless have built a platform designed and optimised for taking invoice, subscription, membership and instalment payments.
GoCardless now process over $13bn in transactions a year and they are proud to count 50,000 businesses around the world as GoCardless customers, from small businesses to household names like TripAdvisor and the Guardian.
GoCardless’s recurring payments platform integrates with the applications businesses use every day, giving businesses more visibility over payments and saving them huge amounts of time on tasks like payment reconciliation. GoCardless partner with more than 150 billing and subscription software partners globally, including Xero, Sage, QuickBooks, Zuora and Salesforce.
Blockchain
Blockchain.com
Blockchain.com positions themselves as the most trusted and fastest growing crypto company, helping millions across the globe have an easy and safe way to access cryptocurrencies
BC Bitcoin
BC Bitcoin is one of the UK’s most trusted Crypto Brokers specialising in a variety of different crypto currencies. BC Bitcoin should be your go to choice.
Clearmatics
Clearmatics is a great example from our list as it provides protocols and peer-to-peer platform architecture – cryptographic systems for member owned and governed networks to exchange value.
Verisart
Verisart is the world’s leading platform to certify and verify artworks and collectibles using the Bitcoin blockchain and one of the coolest blockchain startups London has right now
Since its launch in 2015, Verisart has provided contemporary artists including Shepard Fairey with a free and easy way to generate permanent certificates of authenticity and reduce the scope for fraudulent activity.
Verisart combines museum certification standards, distributed ledger technology and image recognition to its provenance and registry services.
Kraken
Kraken is one of the largest and oldest Bitcoin exchanges in the world, Kraken is consistently named one of the best places to buy and sell crypto online they argue is due to their excellent service, low fees, versatile funding options and rigorous security standards and have been on the forefront of the blockchain revolution since 2011.
Ledgercomm
LedgerComm was founded on the belief that the loan market process is in serious need of an overhaul.
Today, by embracing best in class technology, solving problems quickly and having a strong client focused work ethic, LedgetComm’s platform drives a new kind of global financial services company. One where corporations, funds, banks and business owners can trade, raise capital and settle risk assets on a platform that is secure and easy-to-use.
Govtech
Futr
The experts in natural language conversation-as-a-service.
Futr is in the business of producing natural language chatbots for central government organisations as well as police, emergency and rescue forces by providing chatbots to staff and citizens to use every day very much like Facebook Messenger, Skype and Slack.
Novoville
Novoville aims to do this by making it easier for members of the public to interact with their local government or authority by allowing citizens (us!) to submit requests and find info including web consultations and via IM (instant messaging) as well as a simple web based payments system for services such as paying parking fines and council tax bills.
FashTech
Thread
Thread are making personal shoppers redundant at the affordable level as the app recommends what to buy based on your style, size and budget for free using AI and real-life stylists working behind-the-scenes to give users personalised ideas.
Unmade
Unmade mission is to bring fashion & sportswear value-chains into the 21st Century.
UnmadeOS removes the guesswork from Production and connects Demand directly to Supply, enabling organisations to offer no compromise designs and sustainable fulfilment to consumers.
Lyst
Lyst Established in 2010 from a small shed in Shoreditch London, Lyst’s journey began when founders Chris Morton and Seb Trepca set out to create a way for people to find the fashion they always wanted.
Now Lyst is one of the largest global fashion search platforms and lets you search thousands of online fashion stores at once, bringing together 5 million products from 12,000 of the world’s leading brands and retailers in one place.
Depop
Depop was founded by co-founder of PIG magazine and RETROSUPERFUTURE sunglasses, Simon Beckerman.
Originally a social network where PIG’s readers could buy items featured in the magazine. After realizing that Depop needed a selling function, Simon re-envisioned the app as a global marketplace — a mobile space where you can see what your friends and the people you’re inspired by are liking, buying, and selling.
In turn, your friends and creative influencers all over the world can see the things you like, buy, and sell, and are inspired by you.
This ecosystem has supported Depop becoming a global conduit of connection, not only in m-commerce, but culture, design, and creative communities around the world.
FarFetch
FarFetch exists for the love of fashion and their mission is to be the global technology platform for luxury fashion, connecting creators, curators and consumers.
Near St
Near St is made possible by our bespoke NearLive technology.
It is a powerful platform that seamlessly integrates with all kinds of new and old POS systems and allows automatic extraction of data in what they call Real-Time Local Inventory data, ready to feed it into partners like Google.
Love the Sales
Love the Sales is one of the leading website for shopping the sales online as they make it easy to shop all the sales in one place.
Love the Sales partner with over 850 of the biggest retailers worldwide to find the best offers on the web for you, your wardrobe and your home and let you ‘favourite’ full price items and get alerted as soon as they go on sale.
Cocoon
Cocoon is a London-based monthly subscription service for handbag lovers where, for a £99 monthly membership, you can choose a bag from our collection of the most sought-after new season, pre-owned and limited-edition styles.
While one monthly complimentary bag swap is included as a standard, you can keep you bag for as long or as little as you’d like.
COCOON’s comprehensive offer includes the most coveted brands and styles –from vintage Fendi to the latest Bottega Veneta and their value-driven approach provides COCOON members access to brands reflective of their style and taste, allowing them to indulge in newness and variety in a smarter, less wasteful way.
Their hands-on approach guarantees premium personalised service and their flexible delivery options cater to the fast-changing needs of their members’ busy lifestyles.
Reflaunt
Reflaunt is a technology that promotes circularity by connecting luxury brands with the secondary luxury market.
The technology allows customers of brands to resell, donate or recycle their past purchases directly from the e-commerce site of the brand or the retailer.
Heist Studios
Heist mission was born, to liberate women from disappointing underwear by innovating against ignorance and creating against constriction, they believe underwear can be an instrument for progress.
Through an innovative combination of technology from sports and space never before used in the category, and their scientific knowledge of the female form, Heist have created underwear world-firsts and have created shapewear that takes 5cm off your waist without a hint of tightness.
EDITED
EDITED have been automating retail decisions since 2009 and fuse data science and market data to help clients win in their markets.
EDITED helps the world’s biggest retailers get their products and pricing right by using A.I. and advanced machine learning, their powerful platform maps the entire retail market in seconds which helps their partners be first to spot crucial gaps in their market to then convert into gains.
Ethical
Ethical is increasingly a purchasing decision of customers and as a result businesses are embracing their more ethical future and that can at times be difficult to define exactly what this means in terms of business practice.
But one thing is sure it’s a journey and every step forward should be encouraged, embraced and rewarded so here we take a look at some of the scales ups in both the capital and the UK and some special examples from around the world that are taking bold new steps and helping lead the way.
Element AI
Element AI work hard to ensure that AI is designed, developed and deployed in service of the public good— not because it is one possible path to safe AI among many, but because it is the only way forward.
Element AI engage with governments, civil society, academia and businesses to ensure deployment respects laws and regulations and is grounded in human rights and research the design and technical aspects of explainability and transparency, choose AI projects that lead to positive social impacts and are dedicated to putting our own house in order first through responsible and sustainable business practices.
Element AI help organizations adopt the safe and responsible AI that they believe will be imperative to long-term growth.
Glimpse
Glimpse is a new collective for creative people who want to use their skills for good and run independent campaigns and work with NGOs, brands and people they like. How cool is that!
Safe & the City
Safe & the City‘s award-winning team provides the technology and insights to improve safety risks and create the visibility to share the difference you’re making.
Super Carers
Super Carers was started by two brothers, after their own difficult experience of finding care. Adam and Daniel Pike wanted to make sure no other family found themselves in the same situation, and decided to start SuperCarers.
Launched in November 2015, SuperCarers have helped hundreds of families around the country find home care for their loved ones.
Logically
Logically app is home to a suite of tools, including bespoke fact-checking and an AI-curated feed designed to help you navigate the news. Using the app, you can submit claims to be checked by our team and share the results on social media. Our news feed is automatically generated by a specially designed AI to help you to contextualize what you see, think critically, and see stories and viewpoints from across the political spectrum.
Delphis
Delphis Eco is the first UK-based cleaning product company to make its bottles from 100% recycled plastic, and the first to receive EU Ecolabel accreditation for cleaning products.
In fact, Delphis Eco boasts the largest accredited product range on the market, and the good news is, it’s a range that’s growing.
Eco
Being eco friendly is increasingly a purchasing decision for most of us and as a result businesses are embracing more eco friendly processes, materials and product methods and adding transparency on how they achieve this as much as possible. It’s something that good for the planet, good for all living things and good for us so let’s take a look at some of the most exciting eco friendly startups london and the UK has right now.
All Plants
All Plants believe the world (and everyone on it, including us) would be better off if we ate more plants and they believe eating 100% plant-based meals should be tasty, easy and convenient.
The chef-made dishes contain the tastiest, most exciting plant-based ingredients we can find.
Instantly freezing our meals ensures nutrition and taste is locked in – so it tastes just as good in your kitchen as it does in ours.
Olio
Olio connects neighbours with each other and with local businesses so surplus food can be shared, not thrown away. This could be food nearing its sell-by date in local stores, spare home-grown vegetables, bread from your baker, or the groceries in your fridge when you go away. For your convenience, OLIO can also be used for non-food household items too.
Unpackaged
Unpackaged vision is a world without unnecessary packaging, with resources preserved for future generations and their mission is to reduce packaging waste by developing systems that enable businesses and individuals to reuse and refill; and campaign for policy change.
Delphis
Delphis Eco is the first UK-based cleaning product company to make its bottles from 100% recycled plastic, and the first to receive EU Ecolabel accreditation for cleaning products.
In fact, Delphis Eco boasts the largest accredited product range on the market, and the good news is, it’s a range that’s growing.
ChipsBoard
For Chipsboard sustainability is the core principle and the reason why Chip[s] Board was founded on and is the driving force behind our need to improve the world we live in.
Their philosophy is that a circular economy within waste (by-product) management and material production will create a new sustainable model, utilising the abundant resources we currently have rather than continuing to process virgin materials.
Notpla
Notpla are a combination of designers and chemists, engineers and entrepreneurs who create advanced packaging solutions that disappear, naturally.
Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez and Pierre Paslier cofounded Skipping Rocks Lab in 2013 while studying Innovation Design Engineering at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art.
After their first video of Ooho went viral in 2013, they joined Climate KIC, Europe’s largest funded accelerator focused on climate innovation.
The team started collaborating with chemists and chemical engineers from Imperial College to test Ooho at running events, festivals and takeaway shops. They soon started working on a scalable manufacturing technology.
In April 2017, they raised their first round on Crowdcube which helped grow the business, build the first machine and set up a manufacturing hub in London.
Pavegen
Pavegen is the global leader in converting footfall into off-grid power and data. We supply both permanent installations and experiential activations and can power off-grid applications such as lighting, data capture and transmission, and environmental monitoring.
Each footstep on a Pavegen walkway generates 2 to 4 joules of off-grid electrical energy or around 5 watts of power for the duration of a footstep. Bluetooth beacons in the system connect to smartphones, rewarding users for their steps and generating permission-based analytics.
The tech can operate as a standalone or be embedded simply into existing web platforms.
The London are and vicinity including Cambridge and Oxford is undoubtedly one of the biggest biotech hubs in Europe so we’ve put together a list of the hottest biotech companies out there.
Biotech
Orchard
Orchard therapeutics was founded in 2015 but their roots run deeper, going back to some of the first research and clinical development involving ex vivo autologous gene therapy and are proud that their scientists have played a central role in the evolution of this technology from a bold vision to a potentially life-transforming reality and carry forward the history and rigor of scientific curiosity, discovery and commitment to families affected by rare disease.
Autolus
Autolus is at the forefront of a revolution in cancer treatment. Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell therapies have been shown to be effective in some haematological malignancies and may have wide applications as a cancer treatment, with the potential for cure in some patients.
Autolus is a leader in T-cell programming and manufacturing technology. Working in partnership with physicians and other healthcare providers, Autolus extract immune cells from patients, equip them with a receptor that targets the cancer cell and infuse them back into the patient in order to develop therapies which Autolus believe will offer cancer patients substantial benefits over the existing standard of care.
Kuur (Cell medica)
Kuur (formerly Cell Medica) is committed to transforming the lives of patients with cancer and is leading the development of off-the-shelf engineered CAR-NKT cell therapies.
Kuur’s approach combines the highly differentiated, natural biology of a specific subset of T cells, called natural killer T cells (NKT cells) and innovative chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) construct engineering. In combination, this delivers a very compelling and unique platform, that Kuur believe has the potential to produce many future therapies targeting both hematological and solid tumors.
Femtech
Femtech is on a roll even if not everyone is apparently happy with the term itself it’s set to break $0.25 billion in investment in 2019 with estimatess being that around $200 billion is spent on femtech products each year and growing so in this list we look at the hottest scalesup in the capital and the rest of the UK right now
Bravista
Bravista are developing an app that recommends perfectly fitted bras from the comfort of your own home to simplify bra-fitting and bra-shopping in 3 simple steps.
Results? A highly accurate and personalised sizing and style recommendations.
Elvie
In the UK Elvie, is designing smart devices for women’s health with it’s flagship product being a Kegel trainer which helps to build better bladder control, enhances intimacy and speeds up postnatal recovery and is now recommended by over 1,000 health experts and also be prescribed by the NHS and their next release is a silent wearable breast pump that fits into a nursing bra and doesn’t require and wires or tubes
KaNDy
KaNDy Therapeutics is a clinical-stage company focused on optimising the potential of NT-814 in the treatment of common, chronic debilitating female sex-hormone related conditions, with an initial focus on symptoms of the menopause.
KaNDy Therapeutics was spun out from NeRRe Therapeutics, itself a spin out from GSK, in 2017 at which time all data and intellectual property associated with NT-814 was transferred to KaNDy Therapeutics.
NT-814 is a unique, first-in-class dual mechanism NK-1,3 antagonist therapy dosed orally once daily. It has the potential to be a true breakthrough non-hormonal alternative to hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Following a successful Phase 2a proof of concept study , NT-814 completed a Phase 2b study, SWITCH-1, with data reported in January 2020. The study demonstrated NT-814’s potential to rapidly and profoundly reduce key symptoms of the menopause. SWITCH-1 found that NT-814 significantly reduced the frequency of hot flashes, which was associated with improvements in quality of life, mood and sleep.
Menopausal vasomotor symptoms (hot flashes/flushes) affect up to 75% of women going through the menopausal transition. Symptoms last for 1–2 years after menopause in most women but may continue for up to 10 years or longer in others. Post-menopausal symptoms are experienced daily by millions of women globally. Approximately 20% of women will suffer from debilitating symptoms, multiple times a day. Hot flashes are the primary reason women seek medical help during the menopause.
Not only do they disturb women at work and interrupt daily activities, but they also have a detrimental effect on sleep. These symptoms, while not life-threatening or life-limiting, are debilitating for those affected and result in significant incremental healthcare and economic costs.
Adtech
The capital has always been a world leader for advertising and arguably after a late start it’s catching up in the world of advertising and marketing platforms so let’s look at the hottest companies bringing innovation to this sector.
Flexion
Flexion’s open and global distribution platform for android games offers new opportunities for you as a developer. Your games can now easily reach the whole market without requiring you to integrate and operate multiple channels at prohibitive cost. We let you focus on what you do best while we offer services and technology that maximises your revenues. It’s our mission to help you succeed with new distribution!
Adnow
Adnow launched in December 2015 and since then the algorithms and mathematical model were changed over 12 times improving the selective mechanics, while taking into account feedback from clients and their partners.
The story of Adnow began in 2014, when a bunch of digital geeks passionate about digital marketing, RTB and Big Data came up with the idea of creating a new hybrid native ad format. This format was designed to serve ads and make the discovery of new and interesting content very easy and user-friendly. This format also allows to use media banners and native ads in the course of the same campaign, which comes in handy for clients and agencies when running brand promotion campaigns.
The concept of serving interesting ads and content is quite obvious, however, the technical solution is complicated. It took the Adnow team over 1 year to develop the first platform prototype.
Wellness
With wellness and health in general being a massive lifestyle trend which is going from strength to strength we take a look at some of the new innovation scales ups the capital has to offer
Inhere
Fresh from launching London’s first dedicated meditation centre, Inhere are now London’s first drop-in meditation studio and offering live online meditation classes.
Inhere aim to give everyone the chance to develop a healthy relationship with their mind. Which means offering people the opportunity, the time and the space to tune out the noise of daily life and introduced custom-built meditation pods so people all over the country can experience what it’s like to stop and listen.
In addition to their online meditation classes, Inhere also run mindfulness classes in workplaces and venues of your choosing.
Unmind
Unmind enables your employees to assess, track, and understand their mental wellbeing over time. Empower your organisation with aggregated and anonymous data to improve decision-making.
Spill
Spill was started by two friends who couldn’t believe how hard it was to access emotional support through the NHS, and how expensive it was through the private sector.
Whether you’re suffering from a bereavement, feeling anxious, struggling with work and relationships, or just wanting to understand some of your thought patterns and habits, talking to a qualified professional is shown to work wonders — and Spill believe it should be a basic human right.
Spill’s aim is to smash down the barriers to accessing that support. We do that by working with organisations to make it free at the point of use for individuals, so that no one is excluded from getting support.
Levell
Levell’s user-centric data structure enables employees to share what they want, safely. Managers can request data for check-ins, but otherwise no personal staff information is ever shared.
Sports
With the UK one of the global leaders in sports entertainment, gaming and fintech it’s no surprise that the capital is emerging as one of the leaders in sports startups so here we look at some of the hot sports companies in the category
21st Club
21st Club have developed EVOLUTION to address the problem of short-termism in football and to make the lives of club boardroom decision-makers easier.
The software is a collection of market-leading asset management tools for managing your player portfolio and supports effective squad administration, performance intelligence, strategic planning and recruitment and with the recent appointment of Ben Wackett – who we’re big fans of his work – to head up marketing, 21st Club is sure to go from strength to strength….
Copa90
Copa90 believe that football is the universal language. We’re here to entertain, inform and celebrate football and its fans. Whether it’s chats and challenges with your favourite footballers, in depth documentaries about fan culture or amazing animations and explainers about the biggest stories in the game,
SweatCoin
SweatCoin are an interesting addition to our Sports Startups London guide as they want a healthier you on a healthier planet. We achieve this by converting your steps into money
Let’s do this
Let’s do this is on a mission to help more people discover epic experiences than any other community on the planet. Whether you’re looking for a 5k fun run or a double Ironman triathlon, we list more mass-participation sports events than any other website on the planet. These include running, triathlon, cycling, obstacle racing, swimming, and many others.
We believe that the best experiences are those recommended by others. Our passionate community share their event experience by contributing reviews and photos to help others find their perfect event. Over a million people have discovered events through Let’s Do This.
Supponor
Supponor. With a pioneering spirit and proven innovation, Supponor is the clear market leader in the emerging field of augmented reality digital replacement for real-time broadcast and streaming of in-venue advertising.
Our advanced technology delivers the most powerful and impactful brand activation in broadcast sport. Supponor solutions are being deployed for a broad range of Tier 1 sports – most notably football, but also hockey, basketball, motor racing and American football.
We use our virtualized and targeted augmented reality messaging platform to maximize the value of TV-visible in-venue branding. This unlocks new creative opportunities that enable advertisers and sponsors to connect with local audiences through the power of global sport – and achieve stand-out brand differentiation.
RegTech
Yes it’s a real term and falls within the larger GovTech category and we should 100% encourage them because ultimately they exist to ease the completion of regulatory information by reducing friction and make it more transparent. They are the ultimate red tape cutters of the 21st century so let’s take a look at the best regulatory scale ups the capital has to offer.
Onfido
Onfido want to create a more open world, where identity is the key to access by being the new identity standard for the internet.
Their AI-based technology assesses whether a user’s government-issued ID is genuine or fraudulent, and then compares it against their facial biometrics.
That’s how they give companies like Revolut, Zipcar and Bitstamp the assurance they need to onboard customers remotely and securely.
Napier AI
Napier AI are big on the compliance side of regulation and one of their services is to rapidly load and cleanse external data, They do this by automatically cleansing data from internal and external sources to prepare for optimal screening as well as for watch- and sanction lists from different providers.
LegalTech
The legal technology world is booming in the capital due to the collision of a world hub for legal services and tech so let’s look at some of the scale-ups lowering rates, increasing productive and generally improving the sector.
Lexoo
We here at Rainmakrr believe Lexoo have a claim to be the first ever LegalTech Startup London had, and almost certainly in terms of providing a marketplace for startups and companies to quickly find great lawyers AND to reduce lawyers business development time, effort and money which they can pass on to their new customers (OK, partly pass on, They can’t help it that they are lawyers…)
It also gives us a chance to mention the UK’s nicest lawyer Adam Tucker who was Lexoo’s poster child on their home page banner due to being pretty much their highest user rated lawyer and the go to guy for marketplace and SAAS startups before their website redesign.
Halcyon days….
JustLegal
Justlegal believe searching for solicitors and providers of other professional services can be confusing, stressful and usually expensive and are here to change that.
Just Legal aims to help you quickly find all legal service providers close to your chosen location and show you any fixed fee prices available and work hard to be trusted by consumers to provide impartial help in a wide range of issues and can recommend solicitors for when you as an individual or a company need professional help as part of their mission to provide the UK’s first all of market search and comparison site.
Seedlegals
Seedlegals aim to transformestartup funding, making it faster, simpler… better!
That’s why in just three years they reportedly now help more UK companies raise investment than anyone else.
SeedLegals was founded by serial entrepreneur Anthony Rose and serial angel investor Laurent Laffy who met at a party in Rome. They’d both had enough of paying insane amounts of money to lawyers for the same legal documents at every funding round, and funding rounds taking months to negotiate and close. They decided to change it.
Fast forward 6 months and SeedLegals launched as the world’s first platform that lets founders and investors easily create, negotiate and sign all the legal agreements they need to do a funding round. In less than 3 years, SeedLegals is reportedly now the largest closer of funding rounds in the UK.
We hope you liked our guide to UK Startups
Do check out our Best London Startups as well as our categories guides for Tech, Biotech, Wealth, RegTech, Legal, Sports, Wellness, Adtech, Ethical Startups, Eco Startups, Femtech Startups, Energy Startups, FashTech Startups, AI startups London, Blockchain Startups London, FinTech Startups London, Edtech Startups and GovTech Startups London
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