It came as no surprise that Britain’s fast-growing fintech start-up Revolut was crowned Europe’s Allstar Company of 2018 at the 16th annual Investor Allstars Awards ceremony. With a revenue that quintupled in 2017 and more than £250 million secured in funding since the company was founded three years ago, business at Revolut is booming.
The digital banking startup is therefore a leader of what investment firm and co-organiser of the awards GP Bullhound calls the coming of age of European tech.
The report highlights the high-speed growth of the European tech ecosystem since 2014 – an ecosystem now worth £180 billion, in which the number of billion-dollar companies has doubled in the last four years.
In front of a judging panel consisting of high-profile European investors including Karen McCormick of Beringea or Rory Stirling of BGF Ventures, six companies at the forefront of Europe’s tech landscape were given fifteen minutes each to pitch their project and convince the judges.
Competition was fierce, and it came from various fields of technology. Sean Seawell presented Partnerize, a digital platform based on AI that lets brands establish seamless partnerships by making payments easier and increasing transparency, where until now companies had to rely on weighty Excel spreadsheets to set up and manage integrations.
Volocopter CFO Rene Griemens pitched an air taxi project that should be launching in the next 18 to 24 months. With an electric device flying at 100 km/h and powered by 18 rotors, the flying taxi is a lot more realistic than it sounds. “Taxi drivers tell me their profession is dying,” said Griemens. “So I answer, ‘Listen, we’ve got opportunities coming soon. And we’ll be recruiting pilots.’”
Other competitors included OpenClassrooms, an online and accessible higher education platform; Egress, a data security firm that reduces friction linked to data protection; and Topia, a global mobility suite facilitating mobility programs for companies to send employees abroad through scenario planning, centralised payrolls and cost estimates.
Revolut’s banking system, which lets users spend money in more than 25 currencies at the interbank rate, ultimately stole the spotlight. That’s probably because, as business development manager Ryan Thorpe said, “banks are expensive, inconvenient and sneaky; they don’t understand what people want”. Understanding what people want is something Revolut, on the other hand, seems to have mastered.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
