We often talk of London as one homogenous group, but in reality, the capital is broken down into 32 distinct boroughs.
In this article, we’re diving into the high-growth ecosystems across London, comparing and contrasting them using heat maps.
An overview
Currently, over 14k companies operating in London meet one or more of our tracking triggers for high-growth companies. According to the latest financial data, we can reveal that these high-growth companies have an average of 72 employees and have turned over a combined £167b.
The most common sectors within London are technology-based. Indeed, 13.9% of high-growth London-based companies are operating within the SaaS sector. Amongst the most common tech verticals, we have fintech with 7.2% of companies falling under this sector and 6.9% in artificial intelligence.
Male-founded companies make up 80.7% of the ecosystem whilst female-founded ones account for only 17.4%. Disappointing as this may be, it’s in line with the wider trend in UK high-growth companies, where male-founded companies account for 80.5% and female-founded ones make up 17.8% accordingly.
The London company ecosystem is fairly mature, with 35.9% of companies operating in the seed change and 36.4%, operating in the later stages of growth and established.
When it comes to the top funders in the capital, Seedrs comes in first, participating in a staggering 879 fundraisings. Following behind is Crowdcube (partaking in 672 equity rounds), Future Fund with 166 investments and SFC Capital with 155 investments.
Turning up the heat
Looking at the breakdown of London companies across the 32 boroughs, we find that the inner boroughs of Westminster, City of London, Camden, Islington and Hackney are the most saturated.
