What is it?
Future Fifty is Europe’s leading growth programme for late-stage tech businesses, with alumni including Revolut, Skyscanner, Monzo, and Deliveroo. It is designed to support founders and their leadership teams to address challenges unique to the most successful tech companies in the country. Members gain access to invaluable expertise, knowledge, and insights critical to this stage of growth. The programme is free to join and members are selected based on a number of criteria, including:
- Value proposition
- Competitive position
- Achievements to date
- Performance and funding
- Job creation in the UK
- Potential for further scalability
- Representation of the best of UK tech
Over the past 10 years, the Future Fifty programme has supported 22% (30) of the 138 tech unicorns founded in the UK, who have raised £16.3bn collectively (contributing to over a third of the £47.1bn raised by all UK-founded unicorns).
Why are we doing it?
Open banking is not just a European initiative but a worldwide experience, now in more than 50 countries across the globe; adoption is increasing at an exponential rate with 6m active users in the UK alone; and we’re starting to see Big Tech move into the space, an exciting endorsement of open banking that will drive further adoption.
We want to scale faster in order to capitalise on the market opportunity - very recently, we were ranked 7th in Sifted’s ultimate list of Europe’s B2B rising100 tipped to be the next generation of unicorns. We have an exciting journey ahead of us, now strengthened by the opportunity to learn and evolve as part of this powerful network.
“Yapily and open banking are on a phenomenal journey. Both innovative and fast-growing, there are bound to be a number of challenges and opportunities along the way. It’s exciting to be a part of a really strong cohort in which we can share learnings and gain insight into how other fintechs have successfully scaled their companies." - Stefano Vaccino, Founder and CEO of Yapily
Who else is joining the programme?
Collectively, the 13 companies joining Future Fifty 11.0 operate in 19 different countries, have raised $2.2bn in VC investment (with their average total funding being over £150 million) and employ over 4,200 people.
We are joining a diverse group of tech companies that work across multiple sectors; from climate technology to transport tech and healthtech (not forgetting - fintech!). This is the most regionally diverse Future Fifty cohort yet, with nearly half (46%) of the late-stage companies hailing from outside of London.
Joining the 11.0 cohort alongside Yapily are Faculty, Florence, Graphcore, Huboo, Paragraf, Speechmatics, The Modern Milkman, Wayve, Yoti, YuLife, Zilch, and Zuto.
“Over the past decade, Tech Nation’s Future Fifty programme has been the definitive list for identifying the UK’s best and brightest scaling technology companies. This is the strongest cohort I have seen to date in terms of ambition, innovation and scaling potential. It’s amazing to see both the winners and applicants improve year over year, as the UK’s tech ecosystem continues to mature.” - Hussein Kanji, Partner at Hoxton Ventures and Future Fifty 11.0 Judge
What happens next?
Over the next 6 months, the newest Future Fifty cohort will have access to peer-to-peer learning opportunities, open dialogue between experienced entrepreneurs and founders, in-depth masterclass sessions run by seasoned coaches, sessions with key government officials and exclusive ministerial roundtables, and much more.
HSBC UK, Evelyn Partners, and Slaughter and May will be partners for this year’s programme, providing support, expertise, and insights alongside Tech Nation to help guide members through their scaling journey.
