LONDON, 11 December. Tech City UK has today announced that 12 growth stage digital companies will be joining its Future Fifty programme.
Half of the new companies joining the Future Fifty programme operate in the FinTech space, providing further evidence for the UK’s global leadership in this sector.
Companies representing the AdTech, EdTech and e-Commerce sectors join the FinTech companies on the programme. Tech City UK’s Future Fifty programme will support these businesses as they continue their growth journey.
With the exception of one business, all the new Future Fifty companies were founded five years ago or less.
Selected by members of a 17-strong independent advisory panel, via an open competition, the following companies have been welcomed to join the existing members of the programme:
Adzuna: Adzuna is a search engine for job ads that lists every job, everywhere.
Algomi: Algomi creates the network that enables all market participants to securely and intelligently harness data to make valuable financial trading
connections. Algomi’s revolutionary technology empowers fixed income
professionals to fulfill their precise needs, for both sides of the market.
busuu: With over 50 million users, busuu is the world’s largest platform for language learning providing interactive language courses, combined with social interaction with native speakers of the community.
Go Cardless: GoCardless is the UK’s leading Direct Debit provider, collecting more than half a billion pounds each year for thousands of businesses across the UK including The Guardian, Crowd Cube, and Funding Circle.
JustGiving: JustGiving is the world’s social platform for giving, connecting causes with people who care.
LMAX Exchange: LMAX Exchange is the leading FCA regulated MTF for global FX trading and the UK’s fastest growing technology company; delivering a neutral, transparent trading environment and consistent exchange quality execution to financial institutions and banks.
Performance Horizon: Performance Horizon Group provides a world-class affiliate marketing and partner management platform that enables large enterprises to connect directly with their online and mobile publishers at scale, globally.
Qubit: Qubit empowers businesses to customise and optimise websites in real-time using qualitative and quantitative visitor data to deliver the right content to the right users at the right time.
Ratesetter: RateSetter is the one of the largest P2P lending platforms in the UK, offering a ground-breaking proposition that cuts out the middle man and shares the savings with everyday borrowers and lenders desperate for a better deal.
Rockabox: Rockabox is on a mission to improve the quality of digital brand
marketing. They’ve spent the last three years building a world leading content creation and distribution platform which hands control back to brands, agencies and publishers, helping them create, deliver and analyse video and rich media campaigns programmatically, at scale.
TransferWise: TransferWise is an international money transfer platform – it makes it up to 10 times cheaper to send money abroad compared to using a bank.
World Remit: WorldRemit is a global money transfer service – making sending simpler for friends and family in more than 110 countries.
Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of TransferWise and member of the Future Fifty
Programme said:
“London is a fantastic place for fintech because it brings together both tech and financial talent from all over the world. In order to keep London as a driving force for both fintech and innovation, it’s important to have good communication with the government. Tech City UK’s Future Fifty programme is helping startups like TransferWise to do just that.”
Philipp Stoeckl, Director of the Tech City UK Future Fifty programme, commented:
“The new companies selected for the Future Fifty programme represent some of the nation’s most exciting and innovative digital businesses. The Future Fifty team looks forward to working closely with these new companies to help them reach the next stage of their growth journey. We also wish to congratulate the graduating companies who collectively have achieved outstanding and inspirational milestones.”
Tech City UK has confirmed that 12 companies will graduate from the programme to form an alumni class of companies. The graduating members will continue to receive a form of support from the Future Fifty team that reflects their more advanced stage of growth. They are: ao.com, Box, Horizon Discovery, Just-Eat, Masternaut, matchesfashion.com, mimecast, Neomobile, OrderDynamics, Photobox, Skyscanner, and Zoopla.
The inaugural Future Fifty companies created significant job growth, employing over 15,000 people in 2014. In the last year, together they generated an estimated £2.1bn in net revenue – representing an average growth of over 60%. In addition, four of the companies have completed IPOs on the London stock markets with a total value of £3.7bn. 13 of the companies have attracted a combined £260m in investment.
The Future Fifty are leading a movement that is seeing increasing numbers of technology scale-ups primed to take advantage of recent innovations such as the High Growth Segment and the scrapping of stamp duty on AIM shares, making UK listings more attractive for growing tech businesses.
The Future Fifty programme was launched at the end of 2013 to accelerate the success of high-growth tech businesses. Tech City UK’s Future Fifty programme has supported 50 innovative and exciting growth-stage companies in the UK, matching them with schemes and incentives relative to their stage of growth and specific needs. Members of the Future Fifty programme benefit from bespoke support designed to drive continued growth, including guidance on policy, recruitment and global expansion from the Future Fifty team and a suite of private sector experts.
The UK government has some of the best and most far-reaching support for entrepreneurs in the world; the programme provides a single point of contact across Government as well as range of private sector delivery partners, matching companies with publicly funded schemes and incentives relevant to their stage of growth and specific needs. Future Fifty is a two year programme, which inducts new companies approximately every 6 months.
Over the last year, the Future Fifty team has rendered support on more than 250 individual matters, covering strategic and practical assistance around themes such as funding options, business support and talent. The team has connected Future Fifty companies to private sector stakeholders, government influencers and partners, as well as running a range of events with the support of private sector partners such as Ernst & Young, Kilburn&Strode, Numis, FTI Consulting and KPMG.
In addition, the programme has also reflected issues raised by companies directly into Government. The Future Fifty programme team and Tech City UK’s FinTech Forward Working Group has supported the active campaigning efforts of peer-to-peer (P2P) lending providers, including Funding Circle and Zopa, which resulted in the introduction of new bad debt relief for lending through P2P platforms announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, in the Autumn Statement.
For more info on the Future Fifty programme and the participating member
companies, download the recently published Future Fifty report.