Traktion Top 100 Start Ups Report Q1 2021

The Traktion Top 100 Start Ups report gives a fresh perspective on the UK start up ecosystem. It provides analysis of key metrics for over 100 recently funded UK start ups. It shows how each start up is performing against these key metrics and also ranks them vs. the other start ups in the report.

6 Signals of Growth:

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In this report we analyse 6 signals of growth that can be compared for each start up:

1. Investment: How much investment did each start up receive in the last quarter to fuel their growth?
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2. Talent: Which start ups are hiring? This is a good leading indicator of growth. The majority of start ups will be hiring talent either ahead of future growth or to support existing growth.
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3. Search Volume: Which start ups are generating the most organic search traffic ? Organic monthly search traffic is an important measure for start ups. It is the traffic generated as a result of people searching for your brand/service /product or related content.Your share of organic search (specifically on your brand terms) is a lagging indicator of market share. If you are growing your share of search then studies show you will grow market share and revenue.
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4. Site Authority: Site authority is the score a search engine uses to establish how important your site is. The score is used to determine how high up your site comes when a user types a query. This impacts how much organic (free) traffic you get. Having strong visibility in the search engines is critical for most start ups.
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5. Social Presence: The number of people that have followed or connected to you on social platforms is one measure of brand interest. A growing social following indicates brand interest but also has benefits in terms of advertising performance.
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6. Digital Velocity: Digital Velocity is a measure of how fast a business is growing organic search traffic. It provides an insight into the speed at which a start up is building momentum in the form of search volume.
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These signals give a collective view on a start up's trajectory, combining different contributing growth factors.

Which Start Ups Are Winning And Why?
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While all of the start ups in our report are demonstrating growth against these key signals there are some stand out businesses. We've picked 4 below that deserve a special mention. Not simply because they are experiencing hyper growth but because their strategies are all different:

Cazoo, the start up transforming how people buy used cars, is a growth rocket ship. Cazoo ranks number 1 in terms of Digital Velocity and is generating 200k organic search visitors per month. Their massive search volume is a result of two key strategies: firstly they spend a large amount on TV advertising which drives people online to search, secondly they are investing heavily in search engine optimisation which ensures they are visible when people go online to search their brand.

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Numan ranks number 2 in our Digital Velocity score. Numan provides medicine and medical information for men. This is an extremely competitive market with many regulatory restrictions on advertising. But they have broken through to become one of the default destination sites in a very short space of time. They have built a strong brand presence without relying on traditional paid media advertising, instead focusing on content and relationship marketing to drive their growth.

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Zilch is a buy now, pay later virtual card accepted at thousands of different retailers including Amazon, eBay, Ali Express and Nike. Anything you buy with your virtual Zilch card is split into 4 payments, over 6 weeks. The Zilch growth story has been driven by smart top of funnel Facebook marketing using a large volume of creative variations demonstrating the different retailers where their payment is accepted. These ads, targeted to people who shop at those sites, combined with their logo appearing at point of purchase, make for an extremely effective top and bottom of funnel strategy.

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Hopin, the virtual events platform, is number 1 in terms of domain authority. In a very short space of time Hopin has built a domain authority of 80 (out of 100). This meteoric rise in site authority has been driven by a rapid increase in the number of sites linking to it. The number of sites linking to Hopin has gone from 200 to over 10,000 in a matter of months. They have achieved this by building a timely remote working product that is social by design.

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In the last quarter almost £1bn was invested into the Top 100 UK Start Ups. They collectively employ over 3,000 people and are growing at pace, providing an important accelerator for the post COVID economy.

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You can now download the full report, complete with a list of all the start ups, as well as all the supporting data, for free.

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Download full report here

Download data set here

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