Mapping the herd: the UK's unicorn companies in numbers. Download the full report

20,000 companies tracked on Beauhurst

| Hannah Skingle

Category: Uncategorized

Since 2011, it’s been our mission at Beauhurst to track every high-growth and ambitious company in the UK, and the organisations that help them grow.

We’ve reached an exciting milestone in this journey, with 20,000 tracked companies on the platform. Here’s a breakdown of our statistics.

Triggers for inclusion

We currently have 6 triggers for tracking a company on the Beauhurst platform. These events are signs that a company will soon be, or is already, growing quickly, and any private UK company that meets one of these triggers will have a highly detailed profile.

 

equity / Debt fundraising

 
 

 

 

MBOs / MBIs

 

 

 

Academic Spinouts

 
 

 
 

accelerator participations

 

 
 

scaleup events

 

 

 

high-growth list cohort

 
 

Announced vs unannounced fundraisings

Beauhurst uniquely tracks unannounced fundraisings, as well as those that are reported in the press. These deals are sourced from Companies House filings and verified by our in-house researchers, allowing us to identify promising companies before they gain media attention, and pick up on interesting deals that would otherwise stay under the radar. 

Our data shows that a majority of equity investment into high-growth companies remains unannounced to the public.

total number of fundraisings

Beauhurst unannounced fundraisings

Stages of evolution

Beauhurst has its own standardised stages of evolution to combat issues raised by traditional ‘series a, b, c’ etc. labels. Our researchers manually assign these labels to each company using over 30 guidelines, including size of fundraising and employee count. 

This data shows a generally healthy and optimistic market, and that the criteria we deem indicative of potential is fairly reliable. This tells a very different story from the frequently quoted statistic that 90% of startups fail; rather, only around 10% (as most zombie stage companies go on to die) of ambitious and high-growth startups fail.

Beauhurst stages of evolution

Trending Buzzwords

Beauhurst has its own unique sector matrix and buzzwords to categorise companies in a more useful way than outdated SIC codes allow for. Our researchers manually tag companies with as many sectors and buzzwords as appropriate. Here are the ten most popular buzzwords for tracked companies. 

FinTech
812
Artificial Intelligence
551
AdTech
464
EdTech
405
Digital Security
355
Internet of Things
295
eHealth
281
Big Data
275
Alternative Finance
186
Wearables
139

Perhaps unsurprisingly, FinTech takes the number one spot for most commonly used buzzword, with Artificial Intelligence following not far behind. These terms dominate media coverage of startups and high-growth companies, with London even being lauded the European capital of FinTech.

About our data

We pride ourselves on creating and maintaining the most accurate data possible. We use a variety of technical methods to find and verify information, but in every case, virtually every datapoint is manually verified and maintained by our London and Nottingham based Research teams.

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