33 early stage scaleups to watch in 2023
Tech Nation revealed the top 33 early stage scaleups to watch in 2023 in every region, representing the brightest of UK tech with the most potential to scale in the year to come. The 33 regional ‘Rising Stars’ comprise the three most promising tech companies from 11 regions and nations of the UK including East of England, North East, South West, Midlands, Scotland, North West, London, Wales, South East, Northern Ireland, Yorkshire & the Humber. Selected companies or ‘Regional Winners’ will benefit from significant profile raising, masterclasses and networking opportunities to put their business in front of leading investors, influencers and corporates.
Companies from the 2023 Rising Stars cohort include companies like Safer Date - the only dating app which carries out real-time, biometric ID checks to create a safe environment to users through to Artscapy, a platform dedicated to redefining art buying, collecting and investing by removing archaic and opaque business practices and robotics company Danu who have developed a robotic system for the recycling and waste management industry to significantly increase recycling efficiency.
While 80% of startups fail within their first 2-5 years, over 95% of startups on Tech Nation’s growth programmes have gone on to scale, including companies from Rising Stars. This year, ambitious growth plans are evident among the finalists which Tech Nation will support - 82% plan to expand internationally in the next 12 months and 97% are currently raising investment. Companies have secured funding from a variety of sources demonstrating the range of options available to UK entrepreneurs: 44% have had VC funding, 44% have had angel funding, 38% have had government funding and 21% have had funding from family and friends.
Key trends amongst the 2023 cohort show that 1 in 3 companies are using AI technology in their product or service development. When looking at sectors, healthtech, cleantech and marketing techcame second as top areas of focus for this year’s Regional Winners. Additionally, 45% of companies include at least one female founder and almost 20% include a founder from a ethnic minority.
The Regional Winners are progressing to the Semi Finals in February where the competition will culminate with a showcase of the top 10 National Winners in March. Supporting early stage techcompanies to succeed is at the heart of Rising Stars - a Tech Nation competition programme specifically designed to not only showcase the most exciting innovative business on a regional level across the UK, but also to provide them with tailored support, opportunities, network, and access to coaching and masterclasses to help take their business to the next level. Previous regional and national winners of the competition include uFurnish, SeedLegals, Elemental, People Matter, Tickr, and Vitaccess.
East of England
Purrmetrix: Purrmetrix provides better insights into building performance by combining energy and environmental data from a redeployable IoT toolset.
Hermione Crease, co-founder - “At a time when getting housing to net zero is urgent, we are so excited to be recognised as a Tech Nation Rising Star regional winner. Purrmetrix is building the tools to make it easy to measure housing and heating performance, helping our customers target and manage their housing retrofit. As we build on our initial market traction, the Rising Star programme validates our approach and will help us raise our profile with investors, customers and landlords.”
Medwise AI: Medwise.ai helps clinicians quickly find answers to their questions at the point of care.
Dr Keith Tsui, co-founder - “At Medwise.ai, we are very proud to be a Tech Nation Rising Stars 5.0 East England Regional Winner amongst other outstanding companies from the region. Our mission is to empower clinicians to do their best work and provide better patient care. Tech Nation provided an abundance of support and we are excited by the opportunities Tech Nation brings to further scale our search product to support clinicians across the UK.”
RippleXn: RippleXn enables brands to ensure advertising compliance is met in real-time, at scale across social video.
Adrian Land, co-founder - “The entire Tech Nation experience has been phenomenally valuable for RippleXn. Particularly as first-movers in a brand new space, you need an audience to develop how best to tell your business’ story, and who better than an expert panel of judges. Cambridge is well-known for innovation and globally renowned technology businesses, so to win the Rising Starscategory here is hugely gratifying. We have global aspirations and a genuine opportunity to be pioneers not only in what we do, but how we do it. The team and I thank Tech Nation for recognising a small company with a big idea.”
North East
PulmoBioMed: Pulmo BioMed develops AI-based technology and product design for a medical device to capture and analyze exhaled breath. Exhaled breath contains a wealth of biomarkers that can detect and be used to monitor over 40 disease states.
Dr. Sterghios A. Moschos, founder - “We aim to turn the marathon patients face in getting their asthma diagnosed into a single step, as simple as breathing. For our mission, growth potential, and traction to inspire such an accolade is a rewarding and highly motivating recognition of our progress. Being Tech Nation Rising Star regional winners is a great opportunity for us to bring value to the North East, a region that has a long history in transforming healthcare and so much to offer to the nation’s prosperity.”
Vibbl: Vibbl reduces teacher workload by enabling better, faster and more collaborative feedback.
Nihad Ćehić, co-founder - “We are absolutely over the moon to have Vibbl recognised as a Rising Stars Regional Winner! We believe that teachers need support, now more than ever, and we are working hard to reduce teacher workload for free through Vibbl. The whole Rising Stars process has been incredible and supported us to be ready for our launch this week.”
Safer Date: Safer Date was created to protect people from online crimes including fraud, assault, stalking, harassment and even murder which happen all too often as a result of the lack of safety and regulation in the dating industry. Safer Date is the only dating app in the world with real-time ID checks, global criminal background checks and more which all put customer safety and wellbeing at the forefront of everything Safer Date does.
Elaine Parker, founder - “Rising Stars is a brilliant competition which really helps to springboard the best newcomers in tech and I am so thrilled that Safer Date is a Rising Stars Regional Winner! Safer Date is the safest dating app in the world with ID checks to eliminate anonymity, fake profiles and scammers, as well as the most comprehensive global criminal background checks possible. We also have many other unique features which give our customers the best online dating experience possible, and we are on a mission to revolutionise online dating to protect people around the world. As a female founder of a mission-driven tech company, scaling the business is a challenging journey, but opportunities like Rising Stars are so beneficial. This competition will give Safer Date huge exposure, as well as connecting us with other scaling tech businesses, customers and investors. Our plan is to take Safer Date around the world, and Tech Nation's Rising Stars competition will help us to achieve this.”
South West
digiLab: digiLab's self-optimising Machine Learning platform transforms decision efficiency and sustainability in safety-critical applications.
Dr Anhadjeet Sandhu, co-founder - “We are delighted to be the regional Rising Star winner for the South West and part of the Tech Nation network. We're shifting the paradigm in the south west by being the first 4 day week deep tech scale up, and we see digiLab making a positive contribution to jobs, the economy and sustainability both regionally and nationally, as well as improving gender balance in the tech industry. It's great to be recognised by Tech Nation for our commitment to our values!”
Amutri: Amutri is a 3D Visualisation software product delivered via a Software As A Service (SaaS) model, which automates the creation, hosting, and deployment of real-time rendered 3D Visualisations.
Michael Calver, founder - “We’re delighted to be recognised as a regional Rising Stars winner, and represent the innovations taking place within the space of 3D Visualisation, Immersive Technology and the metaverse. We’re currently raising funds to lower the entry point to each of these technology areas, and become a go-to product for those wishing to leverage these technologies quickly, easily and cost-effectively.”
Siloton: Siloton develops optical-coherence-tomography-based chips, aiming to create a portable eye scanner which can detect eye conditions and prevent blindness.
Dr Alasdair Price, co-founder - “Siloton is delighted to have been named a regional winner of Tech Nation’s Rising Stars competition. As a deep-tech start-up whose device has the potential to transform eye care for millions of people, we are incredibly grateful to have benefited from the unique levels of support and recognition that Tech Nation provides to the UK technology ecosystem.”
Midlands
AppScore: AppScore is a SaaS platform that helps partners and businesses assess, plan and execute cloud migration and modernisation.
Charlie Futcher, founder - “We are thrilled to be chosen as a Rising Stars regional winner and very much looking forward to the next stage of the competition. Being recognised as a regional winner means a great deal to us at AppScore, it is fantastic recognition of all the hard work done by the team over the last 2 years. We are extremely proud to be representing the Midlands tech start up scene, there is some serious talent and great future businesses being developed here.”
Inicio AI: Inicio.ai provides businesses and organisations that are managing debt books with an alternative solution to capture the income & expenditure (I&E) information for their customers that are in debt.
Rachel Curtis, CEO - “Inicio AI is delighted and proud to be a Tech Nation Rising Stars 5.0 Regional Winner. This provides an excellent platform for us to raise awareness of how we are disrupting the process to capture detailed income and expenditure data in the market.”
Digital INNK: Digital Innk is disrupting the traditional leasing and mobility sector through its ViSN platform, which makes running a fleet easier, cheaper, and more efficient.
Angela Montacute, Founder + CEO - "We are delighted to be a Tech Nation Rising Stars 5.0 Regional Winner; we are so proud of this achievement. It's been an amazing experience with great support from the Tech Nation team. We are looking forward to show casing our innovative technology, ViSN, digitising the connection between vehicle fleet operators, drivers and service providers, we can make running a fleet easier, cheaper, more efficient and crucially, safer."
Scotland
Danu Robotics: Danu is currently developing a highly innovative intelligent robotic waste sorting and mining system that is sustainable, affordable, flexible, scalable and future proof. It can be used by any recycling facility worldwide regardless of its size, its current technology or location.
Xiaoyan Ma, founder - “We are absolutely thrilled to be one of the regional Rising Stars winners. Being selected as one of the regional winners will help us to promote our brand, our product idea and our value to a much wider audience.”
MyCustomerLens: MyCustomerLens is the always-on client intelligence platform for professional services firms.
Paul Roberts, co-founder - “The Rising Stars competition showcases the most innovative and exciting startups across the UK, and we are delighted to be amongst them as a Regional Winner from Scotland. We are grateful to Tech Nation for this fantastic opportunity to tell our story nationally and internationally to an audience of potential clients and investors. MyCustomerLens is on a mission to help professional services firms become more client-centric by using AI to bring real-time client and market insights to the boardroom table. Being part of Rising Stars is giving us the knowledge, connections and visibility to demonstrate how always-on listening can benefit firms, their people and their clients.”
SENSEcity: SENSEcity is an Immersive Design Studio based in Glasgow which specialises in the development of Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) experiences for the cultural heritage and tourism sectors.
Pooja Katara, founder - “We are proud and honoured to be recognised as a Rising Stars 5.0 Regional Winner. This has been pivotal for previous winners and we are so excited for SENSEcity’s and Historiscope’s journey ahead. Our core ethos is to empower heritage and cultural sites with immersive technological tools so they can offer meaningful storytelling experiences to stay relevant. This opportunity will enable us to meet the right partners, public bodies and investors as we grow to become a trusted brand in the travel tech space. The Tech Nation community has been very encouraging and with this win, we are ready to take full advantage of the support to follow.”
North West
VidiVet: VidiVet gives pet parents instant access to a vet from anywhere in the world at any time of day.
Ben Sweeney, co-founder - “Three years ago I started on a journey with VidiVet as a sector expert non-tech founder: what a rollercoaster it has been, but to be recognised as one of the most exciting businesses coming out of the North West is truly humbling. To be a part of Tech Nation history is a great feeling. Winston Churchill famously said 'Never have so many owed so much to so few'. To me, the few in the tech sector are Tech Nation. You cannot go anywhere in the UK without speaking to anyone who hasn't directly or indirectly been impacted by one of the amazing companies Tech Nation has helped, and for VidiVet to be counted amongst them is mind blowing. The North West is a growing and exciting hub of awesomeness. It was incredible to be pitching alongside so many exciting businesses in the regional final: companies that you would never come across in your normal day to day life but that founders and teams are doing incredible work in to improve the world. I would like to think that VidiVet represents the best of the North West: an exciting personalised tech company that has a clear social compass and innovative approach to solving a real problem for many people (and their pets). The future is bright, the future is ORANGE!”
RiskSmart: RiskSmart operates an online risk management platform designed to digitalise and streamline processes.
Ryan Swann, Founder - “The team at RiskSmart are – spoken like true Mancunians – buzzing to be Rising Stars semi-finalists. We've seen the desire for better risk management nationwide, and we’re honoured to have the North West's backing in bringing our accessible, tech-led software to GRC teams across the country.Rising Stars has fostered a real sense of community in the UK’s techscene and we can’t wait to see where it takes us and our fellow contestants next!”
BetMate: BetMate's vision is to become the home of social betting and to do this BetMate will have a suite of peer-to-peer games under the Betmate umbrella.
Ryan Lawrence and Declan Dowling, founders - “We are delighted to be named a Tech Nations Rising Stars Regional Winner, a fantastic platform for showcasing innovative startups in the UK. At Betmate, our goal is to revolutionise the betting industry by prioritising responsibility and ethics, and providing fun and engaging experiences for our players. Our vision is to bring positive change to a sector that has been neglected and left without accountability. Being named a Rising Stars Regional Winner is a powerful validation of our progress towards this goal. The competition has not only been a great opportunity to connect with other purpose-driven entrepreneurs, but also to gain invaluable insights as we work to grow and leave a lasting impact in the industry.”
London
Trumpet: Trumpet centralises the whole sales cycle with one link (called Pods) that follows a buyer on the whole sales journey with everything they need to make the deal and then get onboarded.
Rory Sadler, co-founder - “We are absolutely thrilled to be selected as a Tech Nation Rising Star Regional Winner for London. It's extremely exciting to be recognised as a startup that is making waves not only locally, but globally too. With the rigorous process to get selected we have seen some other great startups not be selected so we are pumped to have the backing of the judges, and Tech Nation, and hope this will be a springboard for us to go on and do great things and represent the UK tech scene on the world stage.”
Augnet: Augnet extracts unique data through an encrypted global network of devices to validate the quality of hundreds of SMS providers. Messages sent via Augnet will be optimized via its routing algorithm.
Daniel Gill, founder - “Although Augnet is a start-up, we are selling to some of the largest companies on the planet. Being a regional Rising Star winner provides a firm signal to our target audience that Augnet has the credibility and expertise to resolve the global issues within the $25bln Application-to-Person (A2P) SMS ecosystem. To combine the guidance that Tech Nation have provided, along with the increased profile to our target audience has been an exciting stepping stone in our story.”
SPOKE: SPOKE is a music-led mindfulness app. It makes mental wellness relevant to the millions unserved by working with the world's best musicians and cultural leaders.
Ariana Alexander-Sefre, co-founder - “As the UK's no.1 music-led mental wellness app, we are on a mission to lead this new category of wellness for GenZ. We believe that music and artistry will be at the forefront of how we think about our wellness in the future. Winning the regionals is fantastic, as London is the home for our brand and culture right now - we primarily work with London-based musicians and have a thriving community here. Growing this movement across the UK and the world will help millions more adopt a mental health practice that feels like a natural addition to their day.”
Wales
Stratigens: Stratigens software provides strategic decision intelligence. Its mission is to help companies join the dots between workforce and workplace so that they make decisions that are data-led, fast and cost effective.
Alison Ettridge, founder - “Stratigens is thrilled to be a Tech Nation Rising Stars 5.0 Regional Winners. More than a third of all tech unicorns and decacorns created in the UK have graduated from a Tech Nation program (wow!), and it is brilliant that we are a part of this supportive ecosystem. Our vision is that access to human capital is at the heart of strategic decision making – companies should understand access to the skills that they need to deliver their strategy, in the same way that they understand access to the finance they need. Being chosen as a regional winner is a huge achievement for me as a founder, but more importantly, it is recognition of the hard work and genius of our team and the support from the wider community in South Wales.”
Virtus Tech: Virtus Tech is a Google backed UK leading expert in virtual reality technology, based in Cardiff. Its mission is to provide companies with a no code solution to build a library of unlimited interactive VR training simulations which is also accessible on any device.
George Bellwoood, co-founder - “We are extremely grateful for this opportunity and cannot believe we have been selected for the next stages. Being a Tech Nation Rising Stars winner has given our company the best opportunity to pitch in front of key investors for our next round and to help us continue our rapid growth in the VR sector. Virtus is also extremely honoured to represent Wales, showing the rest of the nation some of the talent that it holds.”
Pai Language Learning: Pai Language Learning is a multilingual NLG (Natural Language Generation) company that wants to use data science to provide services and information in all languages.
Josef Roberts, co-founder- “We are immensely proud to have been selected as a Tech Nation Rising Stars 5.0 regional winner. It really means a lot to us that people can see the value and potential in our business, vision and team, and this will really help us raise our profile in Wales, in the UK and even internationally. We’re on a mission to build the world’s most extensive and comprehensive language data collection and use data-driven approaches to provide scalable solutions that enable better communication, break down barriers and facilitate greater collaboration between the entire human population. We hope that through the launch of our first product, a data-based language learning platform dedicated to minority and underserved languages, we can share our passion and excitement for language with people around the world. Tech Nation has been incredibly supportive throughout, and we've received lots of support from the team, and we look forward to the next stage!”
South East
OneShot AI: OneShot is a fully autonomous sales prospecting solution for B2B companies. OneShot removes the need to hire sales people to generate new business meetings.
Gautam Rishi, co-founder - “We are incredibly honoured and excited to be named as a winner for Tech Nation Rising Stars for the South East, to follow in the footsteps of some of the UK's best start-ups is amazing. We are all facing tough market conditions with slashed budgets, decreased headcount and increases in revenue targets. Enterprises are looking to do more with less. OneShot is part of a new wave of solutions that utilises generative AI to prospect automatically and book meetings within your ICP with a huge increase in meetings, response and open rates, this has been reflected in our 100%+ month-on-month growth. Rising Stars are such a great partner, the help, support and network is unparalleled, they really are an extension of our team.”
Artscapy: Artscapy is the most comprehensive platform dedicated to art buying, collecting and investing, which it is redefining by removing archaic and opaque business practices and consolidating under one roof a fragmented digital ecosystem. Artscapy answers to only one stakeholder: the art buyer.
Emilia De Stasio, co-founder - “We are proud to be a regional winner of Tech Nation’s Rising Star award, recognising Artscapy as one of the most innovative companies in the UK. We are pleased to see our mission to make buying art more accessible resonates with Tech Nation. We look forward to enhancing our visibility to potential clients, partners and investors through this programme. By providing the world’s first Art Account - a bank account for art - supporting the vital cultural production of art has never been easier. The art world is on the cusp of digital transformation and Artscapy is in a unique position to create a more open and transparent art market through leveraging technology.”
Labl.it: Labl.it is an all-in-one commercial kitchen label printer that is the fastest and cheapest way to keep your kitchen compliant with EHO food labelling guidelines. Labl.it is the only handheld portable commercial kitchen label printer. Its cloud based software has been specifically designed for the kitchen environment, with features and functionality within the software that saves valuable hospitality labour hours.
Sean Larsen, co-founder - “Labl.it is honoured to be named a Regional Rising Stars winner, recognising our achievements and potential in the region and hospitality-tech sector. We continue to strive towards the goal of making kitchens safer, faster and reducing food waste. We are very much looking forward to working with Tech Nation and benefiting from their invaluable support.”
Northern Ireland
BioLedger: Bioledger provides SAAS for biofuel supply chain traceability and compliance for businesses regulated by the EU Renewable Energy Directive which includes all oil companies, biofuel producers, agricultural producers and waste management companies. There are currently 8000 businesses in 180 countries controlled by this regulation and who supply the $100 billion/yr mandatory biofuel market in Europe.
Patrick Lynch, CEO Founder - “Bioledger was spun out of industry to try to solve a global, systemic risk of fraud in the global supply chains of certified sustainable commodities. Recognition as a regional Rising Star adds validation to our progress so far and our choice to be digitally headquartered in Derry City.”
IncluTech: IncluTech's award winning software helps people feel safe and secure in an emergency and enables them to know what to do and when to do it. It focuses on building greater inclusion and access; shaped by research and user centric design. Not only will its technology save lives now, but help to predict and prevent future emergencies.
Becca Hume, co-founder - “Inclutech are grateful to be chosen as a Regional Winner in this year’s Tech Nation’s Rising Stars competition. We feel honoured, in part, to represent Northern Ireland’s tech community, along with being delighted to share our own story in building public safety software which helps protect, preserve and predict for our citizens. The additional sense of community and support gained from Tech Nation Northern Ireland has been brilliant!”
Anneal: Anneal makes collaborative software for the acceleration of multidisciplinary, R&D intensive engineering. Practically, Anneal's cloud-native software acts to facilitate, capture, and store the technical discussions, advisory comments, and design parameters that actually drive the design of physical products.
Nick McCleery, Founder + CEO - "It’s amazing for the team, and we’re really pleased to be recognised as a regional winner. We’ve put a lot of effort into getting the business to where we are now, and the product isn’t a straightforward thing for a small team to put together, so the recognition coming through really helps to keep us motivated and keep us moving towards bigger and better things."
Yorkshire
Interact DC: Interact DC's world-first machine-learning tool reduces data centre energy use, emissions, and waste by analysing server efficiency and suggesting optimal hardware replacements, often matching compute power with lower energy use, cost, and emissions.
Rich Kenny, Managing Director - “Incredibly proud to be a regional winner and represent Yorkshire for Tech Nation Rising Stars 5.0. Yorkshire people are famous for being down to earth, hardworking and effective and that’s the attitude we’ll be bringing to the next stage. Our sector has a big challenge to face in driving sustainable IT practices and this competition has been a great opportunity to highlight our impact to a wider audience.”
Answer Pay: Answer Pay secures bill payments in banking apps. Its certified “Payments as a Service'' platform connects banks to Request to Pay, the new messaging standard for experience-rich payments.
Gary Partlett, co founder - “With the rising cost of living crisis and the threat of authorised push payment fraud, many customers and businesses are struggling to pay and get paid. We're therefore delighted to be recognised as a Tech Nation regional Rising Stars winner as it is the perfect launchpad for Answer Pay's bill payment solution.”
JUST: Access: JUST:Access is disrupting the manual transcription sector, where prices are stubbornly high with poor turnaround times. Using proprietary NLP & ML, transcripts are delivered twice as fast at half the price.
Sophie Walker, Founder + CEO - "We are over the moon to have made it through to the semi-finals, and to fly the flag both as representatives of the City of Leeds and for the legal-tech sector. While Fin-Tech may have made most of the running in the last few years, it's time to watch out for how innovative companies such as JUST: Access can revolutionise the practice of law by getting technology to automate manual processes and improve access to justice."
Matt Exley, Rising Stars Lead at Tech Nation, said:
"Over the past five years Tech Nation Rising Stars has searched for, supported and celebrated the UK's best early-stage tech companies. Our expert judges from across the tech economy have selected the 33 from nearly 400 applicants and assessed them on their potential to scale. These companies now receive support on preparing for corporate ventures, improving sales and marketing, engaging with investors and improving their pitch.
Being named a Tech Nation Rising Star doesn't just get you noticed in the UK; the global tech economy recognises and values this endorsement. These 33 businesses represent the most promising emerging tech teams, products and services of 2023 and are certainly the ones to watch.”
