Growth in the UK Tech Market

A recent report from Spinks and Beauhurst has summarised the growth in UK tech companies, whether start-up or scale-up, and the key elements of that growth. We’ve taken a very small snippet of this report to illustrate a few key stats in the tech sector.

So firstly, how do we define a start-up versus a scale-up? A start-up is in the early stages of business and is typically quite vulnerable, although has the potential to grow quickly and impact the structure of the company. Many companies in this category have not yet made profit or revenue. A scale-up, on the other hand, has been established longer and represents some of the fastest growing companies in the UK. These companies are ambitious and have an appetite to expand and take on new opportunities.

There are 12,975 active technology companies in the UK. Of this number 9,196 are active start-ups and 1,519 are active scale-ups. Leaving 2,260 not fitting into either category.

At 62%, the fastest growing technology sector is challenger banks, closely followed at 54% by quantum. Right at the other end of the scale we see FinTech with a growth of 28%.

It won’t come as too much of a surprise that the biggest growth region is London at 37%, closely followed by Scotland at 33%. Northern Ireland has seen the slowest amount of growth at 15%.

Although many sectors are reporting growth, 32% of companies reported no change in headcount. Interestingly 7% of companies did report a 100% or over headcount growth. 21% of companies reported negative growth.

A stat that is extremely surprising in this report is that 54% of active tech companies had absolutely no female leadership in the business. 33% of companies reported less than 50% of leadership roles in the business being filled by women. Only 4% of companies reported that 100% of its leadership is represented by women.

Tech start-ups created 1,806 job opportunities during the pandemic, with an overall employment number of 73,800 in the sector. Tech scale ups, on the other hand, created 594 job opportunities during the pandemic, with a total recorded number of 259,800 employees in the sector.