LinkedIn Top Startups 2018: The 25 most sought-after startups in the UK

Entrepreneurs start with an idea and a belief that their vision can have a massive impact. It doesn’t always work out that way. But when it does, the effect can be world-changing: A breakthrough startup can scramble industries, alter how we work or live, and shift talent flows around the world. It’s no wonder that we tend to follow so carefully the fortunes of these founders and those who choose to follow them.

With the LinkedIn Top Startups list, we wanted to provide professionals with a look at the young companies reaching that escape velocity. As always, we started with the data — the billions of actions generated by LinkedIn’s 575 million members — and focused in on four pillars: employee growth; jobseeker interest; the level of professional engagement with the company and its employees; and how well the startup pulled talent from our flagship LinkedIn Top Companies list. In other words, which startups are commanding the attention and working hours of top talent?

To be eligible for Top Startups, companies must be seven years old or younger, have at least 50 employees, be privately held and headquartered in the UK. (Check out which startups made the lists in the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, Brazil and India, and stay tuned — we’ll be unveiling the France list in the coming weeks. You can learn more about our methodology at the bottom of this article.)

Will these companies continue with their explosive growth and world-changing work? That’s in the hands of the talent flocking to these startups. Maybe you’ll want to put your own hat into the ring. Check out who made the cut and join the conversation using #LinkedInTopStartups.

Here are this year’s top 25 startups in the UK

Challenger banking: One of the best-known players shaking up Britain’s banking industry, Monzo — which tops the LinkedIn Top Startups list for the second year running — has seen a whopping 447% surge in hiring over the last two years. The company just this week announced it reached one million customers, who have spent more than £4bn via app-based accounts so far. | Global headcount: 344 | Headquarters: London | Fair pay: Monzo revealed in June that founder Tom Blomfield took home £80,000 in 2017-2018. Its highest paid employee, an unnamed non-executive director, was paid £305,000.

Read more: How British tech startups are waging war on banking - and winning

See jobs at Monzo Bank.

Witness the fitness: Sportswear manufacturer Gymshark boasted extraordinary growth in 2017 and expects turnover of more than £100m in 2018. Founded by students Ben Francis and Lewis Morgan in 2012, Gymshark provides staff in Solihull, near Birmingham, with a gym (obviously), as well as nap pods, VR gaming stations and an in-house barber. | Global headcount: 180* | Headquarters: Solihull | Fun fact: Visitors to Gymshark’s latest pop-up store in Dublin were given the opportunity to work out with UFC fighter Darren ‘The Gorilla’ Till.

See jobs at Gymshark.

Digital revolution: Fintech startup Revolut revealed in July that it is signing up to 9,000 customers to its digital banking platform per day and now has 2.5 million users worldwide. The bank broke even for the first time last December. Over the past two years, hiring at Revolut has increased by a staggering 550%. | Global headcount: 450 | Headquarters: London | Bucking the trend: Founder Nikolay Storonsky, who says he works 8am to 10pm most days, has little time for work-life balance. “I can’t see how [it] will help you to build a start-up,” he told the FT.

See jobs at Revolut.

Clear off: Before founding Clear Bank in 2014, Nick Ogden had built and sold half a dozen successful fintech startups including WorldPay, acquired by Royal Bank of Scotland in 2002. With Clear Bank, Ogden has founded the first clearing bank — an institution that provides banking services to other banks — in the UK in some 250 years. | Global headcount: 180* | Headquarters: London | Hiring surge: Hiring at Clear Bank has increased 277% in the last two years, according to LinkedIn Premium Insights.

See jobs at ClearBank.

Fashionistas: Skinnydip London’s quirky phone cases and snazzy bags — fans include Kylie Jenner and Miley Cyrus — have proved a rare positive story for British retail. Brothers James and Richard Gold and their schoolfriend Lewis Blitz launched the brand in 2011 and now have 15 Skinnydip stores and are in over 250 concessions worldwide. | Global headcount: 253 | Headquarters: London | Bucking the trend: Given the company’s mostly female customer base, its founders keep a low profile. “It’s such a girly, feminine, empowering brand,” James Gold said. “It would be weird if we were kind of front and centre.”

See jobs at Skinnydip London.

Above its weight: A sports streaming service that wants to become “the Netflix of sport”, DAZN announced a £736m deal with boxing promoter Eddie Hearn to show top-tier fights in the US for a fraction of the cost charged by HBO and Showtime. Billing users just $9.99 (€9.99 in Europe) for a monthly subscription, DAZN shows everything from big fights to Japanese lower league football. | Global headcount: 505* | Headquarters: London | Away game: Although UK-based, DAZN says competition between Sky and BT has made it difficult to operate in Britain.

See jobs at DAZN.

Virtual worlds: A shared love of multiplayer gaming led founders Rob Whitehead, Herman Narula and Peter Lipka to start Improbable in 2012. Their SpatialOS platform has proved a hit with game developers, who use it to build massive and complex virtual worlds. As it has with investors, who pumped $502m into Improbable in Series B funding in 2017. | Global headcount: 315 | Headquarters: London | Hiring binge: Improbable has hired 181 people in the last 12 months and has 200 open positions. 

See jobs at Improbable.

Looking good: As Britain’s high street reels from layoffs and closures, Charlotte Tilbury and her makeup and skincare lines have gone from strength to strength. Her beauty products are now found everywhere from her flagship store in London’s Covent Garden to Dubai. In 2017, the 6-year-old company announced its first round of top-tier Silicon Valley funding from investment firm Sequoia Capital. | Global headcount: 890 | Headquarters: London | Fun fact: Before launching her own brand, Tilbury worked as a makeup artist for celebs including Kate Moss and Kim Kardashian.

Charlotte Tilbury is one of only two female founders on this year's list. Read our feature on gender diversity in the startup scene here.

See jobs at Charlotte Tilbury Beauty.

Cash in hand: Bitcoin wallet startup Blockchain has raised £70m from investors, including Google and Richard Branson in 2017 as bitcoin prices skyrocketed and new cryptocurrencies were taking off. The firm hosts 26m wallets, where users can keep an ever-increasing number of cryptocurrencies and use them to trade or pay for goods. | Global headcount: 110 | Headquarters: London | Fun fact: As well as benefits such as free food and flexible working, employees at Blockchain are paid a bonus in cryptocurrency.

See jobs at Blockchain.

Bums in seats: It was their own frustration as in-house recruiters that motivated Chris Abbass and Philip Blaydes to start Talentful in 2015. Three years on, the boutique recruitment startup is eyeing year-on-year revenue growth of 110% and counts Audible, Shazam and Bloomberg as clients. Talentful is now on a recruitment drive of its own — looking to double its headcount in the next six months. | Global headcount: 70 | Headquarters: London | Northern soul: After opening an office in Manchester, Talentful’s next target is Stockholm, where they plan to launch later this year. 

See jobs at Talentful.

Viral heads: Every media company in the world dreams of their content going viral; Jungle Creations is among a handful that have actually cracked how to do so with its flagship channel Viral Thread, since rebranded as VT. Started with £10,000 by founder Jamie Bolding, the firm has already launched offices in New York and Los Angeles. | Global headcount: 140 | Headquarters: London | Food for thought: With more than 80 million followers on social media, Jungle Creations videos receive an average of 5.5bn views a month, says the company.

See jobs at Jungle Creations.

OK, computer: Digital healthcare startup Babylon Health began life connecting patients to doctors via a smartphone app. The 5-year-old company has since expanded to using artificial intelligence to help diagnose and even issue prescriptions for its 800,000 global users. After seeing monumental growth, Babylon Health is now looking to hire more than 400 people. | Global headcount: 500+ | Headquarters: London | Fun fact: In June, the firm’s A.I. doctor scored 81% in the exam given to prospective GPs. The average pass mark for humans is 72%.

See jobs at Babylon Health.

Making connections: Direct debit processing business GoCardless has raised a total of $47.3m in funding over the past four years, $22.5m in the last year alone. As of 2018, GoCardless had processed £5bn worth of transactions for 30,000 customers, from fellow startups to Thomas Cook and TripAdvisor. | Global headcount: 240 | Headquarters: London | Small world: CEO Hiroki Takeuchi founded GoCardless in 2011 with Matt Robinson of Nested and Tom Blomfield of Monzo, both of which are on the LinkedIn Top Startups list this year as well.

See jobs at GoCardless.

In the clouds: Digital engineering consultancy Contino began in London in 2014 and has since expanded to New York City, Atlanta, Sydney and Melbourne. After raising $30m in funding, Contino has seen 80% revenue growth and hired 149 people in the last year alone. In the next year it plans to hire over 100 more. | Global headcount: 200 | Headquarters: London | Retaining staff: Amidst a shortage of qualified engineers, Contino offers employees a £5,000 yearly training budget to encourage those it does have to stick around. 

See jobs at Contino.

Eco warriors: Launched in 2015 with funding from friends and family, energy startup Bulb is now on its third round of venture capital fundraising, and although it is tight-lipped about the figures, its customer base has increased six-fold over the past 12 months. Now the UK’s largest renewable energy supplier, hiring at Bulb has surged more than 800% in two years. | Global headcount: 190 | Headquarters: London | Wage gap: Bulb recently admitted that it had been incorrect to claim that it had a 0% gender pay gap — in fact women at the company are paid 1.8% more than men.

See jobs at Bulb.

Across the pond: Based in Shoreditch, full service marketing firm Pulse has won more than 20 new clients in the past year. Started with VC funding of just £90,000, Pulse has an office in Germany and is eyeing other international markets. | Global headcount: 80 | Headquarters: London | Party time: As well as 5% profit bonuses, Pulse has a “jolly pot” to fund nights out, away days and weekend events.

See jobs at Pulse Comms.

Health kick: After joining Theresa May on her February trip to China, healthcare startup Medopad signed £100m in deals with Chinese firms. Among the new business? A partnership with tech giant Tencent, which plans to use Medopad’s machine learning to diagnose life-threatening illnesses by analysing patient data. | Global headcount: 85 | Headquarters: London | Recruitment drive: Since February, Medopad has more than tripled its headcount but more is to come — the firm plans to reach 320 employees before July 2019.

See jobs at Medopad.

Challenge accepted: Starling Bank founder Anne Boden spent 30 years at UBS and the Royal Bank of Scotland before leaving to start her own smartphone-based bank in 2014. Almost five years and $70m in VC funding later, Starling has seen its customer base grow and hired 97 staff members in the past 12 months. | Global headcount: 240 | Headquarters: London | ‘Passport to Starling’: The bank encourages its customer service agents to spend time with its marketing and compliance teams and learn new skills. In several cases its agents have ‘passported’ into new permanent roles.

See jobs at Starling Bank.

Block on: Financial services consultancy 11FS has worked with some of Britain’s most successful challenger banks, including Starling, Monzo and Tandem, as well as traditional banks such as RBS, Nationwide and Barclays. 11FS coaches bank staff on new technology, works to improve company culture and offers insights into digital banking trends. | Global headcount: 80* | Headquarters: London | Hiring: The firm produce a number of popular fintech podcasts, including Fintech and Blockchain Insider.

See jobs at 11FS.

Job fair: After raising £35m in VC funding, recruitment startup Beamery has had a great year, bringing on top-tier clients such as Continental, Facebook, Zalando and Balfour Beatty. Since July 2017, Beamery has quadrupled its headcount and plans to nearly double that again, with 75 job openings forecast for next year. | Global headcount: 100 | Headquarters: London | Global expansion: Beamery has seen revenue growth of 500% over the last year and is eyeing expansion into Asia Pacific. The 4-year-old startup also has a pet-friendly office.

See jobs at Beamery.

Cloud nine: Fintech cloud payment platform CurrencyCloud counts a number of LinkedIn Top Startups as clients, including Monzo, Revolut and Blockchain, and will have doubled its global headcount by the end of 2018. The firm’s software enables banks to make international payments, and companies to easily pay suppliers and employees overseas. | Global headcount: 165 | Headquarters: London | Board changes: A compliance push recently saw the firm appoint Tanya Ziv as the new Chief Compliance Officer and Money Laundering Reporting Officer (MLRO).

See jobs at Currencycloud.

Automation station: In the past year, marketing technology agency Byte has added clients like Waze, Facebook, Hush and Johnson & Johnson. Byte, which has launched a chatbot for Adidas and augmented reality experiences for Just Eat and Spotify, boasts 76% revenue growth year-on-year to June. | Global headcount: 100 | Headquarters: London | War on boredom: Employees are encouraged to report their most boring day-to-day tasks to Byte’s tech team, which is then challenged to automate them.

See jobs at Byte.

Doubling up: On the fintech scene since 2013, Tandem Money hit the headlines in 2018 when it bought Harrods Bank, picking up a banking license, £350m in deposits and 11,000 accounts in the process. The app-based bank — which previously had £10m in deposits and 100,000 users — also launched a credit card and fixed saver accounts. | Global headcount: 110* | Headquarters: London | Acquisition: In 2018, Tandem also bought fintech startup Pariti, a money management app with 95,000 users.  

See jobs at Tandem Money.

Fintech future: Antony Jenkins spent 10 years at Barclays - three of those as CEO - before founding 10x, a startup designed to use cloud computing, machine learning and fintech to drag old-fashioned traditional banks into the 21st century. It is a crowded space, but 10x has already raised £34m in funding from investors including Ping An, China’s largest insurer by market value. | Global headcount: 180+ | Headquarters: London | On the tin: The firm’s mission statement is to make banking 10 times better than it currently is, hence the name 10x.

See more about 10x Banking.

Home-makers: Only politicians, footballers and journalists are trusted less than estate agents by the British public, so it is little surprise that investors are funneling cash into a London startup that is taking them on. Like agents, Nested will value and put your home up for sale but unlike agents, it will advance you the money before it is sold. | Global headcount: 80 | Headquarters: London | Expansion plans: With instructions — meaning clients that instruct Nested to sell their home — growing threefold annually, Nested was recently ranked by Rightmove as Best Estate Agent 2018.

See jobs at Nested.com.

Share the full list and your thoughts on this year's Top Startups using #LinkedInTopStartups.

Methodology

LinkedIn measures startups based on four pillars: employment growth, engagement, job interest and attraction of top talent. Employment growth is measured as percentage headcount increase over one year, which must be a minimum of 15%. Engagement looks at non-employee views and follows of the company’s LinkedIn page, as well as how many non-employees are viewing employees at that startup. Job interest counts rate at which people are viewing and applying to jobs at the company, including both paid and unpaid postings. Attraction of top talent measures how many employees the startup has recruited away from LinkedIn Top Companies, as a percentage of the startup’s total workforce. Data is normalised across all eligible startups. The methodology time frame is July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2018.

To be eligible, companies must be independent and privately held, have 50 or more employees, be 7 years old or younger and be headquartered in the country on whose list they appear. We exclude all staffing firms, think tanks, nonprofits, accelerators and government-owned entities.

Reported by Orlando Crowcroft. Photo credits: Courtesy of the companies.

*Headcounts are from LinkedIn Premium Insights, while remaining headcounts are provided by the companies. All headcount totals are rounded.