This year’s Sifted 100 leaderboard of the fastest-growing startups in the UK and Ireland is younger and leaner than the 2024 cohort.
The average launch year for the 2025 companies has jumped more than a year (from 2016 to 2018) on the 2024 leaderboard, while the average number of employees is down by 27.9%.
The average total investor funding per startup is higher than last year but removing fintechs Monzo (which has raised £1.8bn) and Abound (£1.9bn) — two outliers — decreases this figure to £73.5m, far lower than last year’s cohort.
That means many of the startups on the leaderboard are clocking some pretty impressive numbers with relatively small teams, right out of the blocks.
Doing a lot with a little
London-based digital lender Abound, which ranks 11th on the leaderboard, is getting the most bang for its buck based on headcount, generating £805k in revenue per employee. Launched in 2020 by ex-McKinsey partner Gerald Chappell and former EY director Michelle He, the fintech has brought in £68.5m revenue on the back of a £500m Series B closed in January 2024. Abound last week announced a further €300m debt facility raised from Deutsche Bank after Sifted’s leaderboard was published.
The second leaderboard company that’s doing the most with the least employees is London-based Updraft, a lending and financial planning app that’s operating at £719k revenue per employee. Sextech startup MV.Health, also based in London, completes the top three leanest companies.
Other startups from the ranking posting big growth with small teams include London’s Magic, which has created a mirror for the home that’s equipped with an AI-powered personal trainer. The company boasts a two-year compound annual growth rate of 410% and a team of just 13.
Another data point that jumps out from the leaderboard is the 21% increase in the proportion of early-stage (meaning up to and including Series A) startups. One likely reason for this is that companies are doing more with less funding and achieving product traction at a faster rate than before. Many of these companies are also using AI to increase employee productivity.
This is the case for the number one company on the leaderboard, Vertice, a London-based “spend optimisation” platform that promises to save customers up to 25% on their software and cloud bills.
Cofounder and co-CEO Eldar Tuvey says he’s been able to achieve product market fit far faster with Vertice than he managed in the two previous startups he ran. “What took us 10 years to achieve in revenue growth in our previous businesses, we did in two-and-a-half years here,” he says.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/uk-startups-making-the-most-revenue-with-the-smallest-teams/
