Despite the Covid epidemic, Brexit disruption and Westminster’s never-ending political drama, the success of London’s tech scene continues unabated. According to a report by Startup Genome, London remains the second best place in the world to start a startup, after Silicon Valley. Last year, London attracted $11.3 billion in tech investment — more than double that of Berlin and Paris combined. This success is supported by a welcoming and close-knit community of founders and investors.
“There is a broad, enthusiastic community of investors,” said Marcia Kilgore, the serial entrepreneur behind Beauty Pie. “Everyone knows everyone, or knows someone who knows who to know. People really support me.” Luca Schnettler, CEO of Qumata, agrees: “I came to the country as a student with no recognizable network, professional experience or money. Within a short period of time I was able to meet our first clients and gain exposure to one of the most developed, global and competitive VC markets. I owe this place a lot of thanks.”
beauty cake
Two moments in the life of Marcia Kilgore led to the launch of Beauty Pie. “Leaving an elite third-party cosmetics lab in Italy and walking into a train station where the Sephora product on the shelf cost 15 times more than the fully manufactured ex-factory price,” she says. “I also couldn’t bring myself to buy a moisturizer at an airport in Hong Kong because deep down I knew how much it really cost to make.” Kilgore — a Canadian serial entrepreneur who has sold her previous startups to companies such as LVMH and Walgreen Alliance Boots — defines Beauty Pie as a “buyer’s club for people who love truly high-quality beauty and wellness products, but are tired of the crazy industry prices.” pay to get them.” Club members can purchase Beauty Pie private label products at affordable prices sourced directly from manufacturers. In September 2021, the startup raised $100 million from investors including Index Ventures and Insight Partners – the investment now stands at $170 million. beautypie.com
Human Forest
HumanForest’s zero-emission, rentable e-bikes offer riders the first 10 minutes for free, as long as they get an advertisement at the start and end of their ride. Founded by former Cabify leader Agustin Guilisasti and backed by Cabify founders Juan de Antonio and Vicente Pascual, it raised a pre-series A of £2.3 million in August 2021 and a valuation of £32 million (about $36 million). at the current exchange rate). humanforest.co.uk
Valentina Milanova, founder of Daye, a gynae health research and development company.Photo: Sam Lort & Kathryn Chapman
daye
Valentina Milanova was only 9 years old when she had her first period. “I had painful periods and was on hormonal birth control at age 11, which later led to health complications, including ovarian cysts,” she says. Solving the way women deal with their painful periods was her motivation to launch Daye in 2017. “The goal was to reinvent the menstrual tampon, so it serves a lot more than just aspirating menstrual fluids,” she says. Daye has already developed tampons to help the 90 percent of women who suffer from menstrual cramps; a tampon to detect STDs and HPV; and another for treating vaginal infections that affect 7 in 10 women. More than 11,000 women buy Daye’s tampons every month. yourdaye.com
Sylvera
Sylvera is a carbon assessment platform that uses data and machine learning to analyze the performance of carbon offset projects. “We distil the findings into comprehensive reports and assign a clear rating to each carbon credit,” said Sylvera CEO Allister Furey. “Our mission is to be a source of truth for carbon markets.” The company was founded in 2020 by Furey and Sam Gill, after the two met at a LocalGlobe climate event and realized they had a common goal. “Our vision for the company is helping to create a world that encourages protecting our future,” he says. The company is working with researchers from UCLA, NASA and UCL, while Delta Airlines, Cargill, Bain & Co, Equinor, Shell and Ecolog are already using its service. In January 2022, Sylvera raised $32.6 million in a Series A round led by Index Ventures and Insight Partners. sylvera.com
Hokodo
Hokodo offers a “buy now, pay later” solution to businesses, making it easier for them to buy and sell to each other. “Buyers are given the freedom to defer payment, while merchants are prepaid and protected from all risks of default,” said CEO Louis Carbonnier, “We make instant credit decisions, even on a customer’s first purchase.” Founded in 2018 with co-founders Richard Thornton and Sami Ben Hatit, more than 30,000 buyers have already used Hokodo to pay for purchases in France, Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands. In June 2021, it raised $12.5 million. hokodo.co
Hoxton Farms
Hoxton Farms grows animal fat without the involvement of animals. Instead, they use a combination of synthetic biology and mathematical optimization. “From just a few cells, we grow cultured animal fat to produce a cruelty-free, sustainable ingredient for the plant-based meat industry,” said founder Ed Steele. In July 2020, Steele, who has master’s degrees in mathematics from Oxford and Imperial College, launched the company together with geneticist Max Jamilly. “We are both avid home cooks,” Steele says. “We’ve been obsessed with the ‘big fat problem’ in plant-based meat for years, and we both got excited about cultured meat when Max got his PhD.” hoxtonfarms.com
DustNano
“I was one of those kids at age 10 who came up with several, completely crazy ideas for a perpetual motion machine,” says Grant Aarons. “I’ve always wanted to build something physical and impactful.” He achieved that goal in 2019 when he launched FabricNano with a co-founder he met at Entrepreneur First. The startup is making a powder that can be used for mass production of sustainable chemicals, from biofuels to bioplastics. “Our platform is already being used by two major protein engineering partners,” he says. “Our technical partners plan to start selling new and patented proteins by the end of 2022.” fabricnano.com
Rebecca Love and Andrea Berchowitz of Vira Health.Photo: Sam Lort & Kathryn Chapman
Qumata
Qumata, launched in 2017 by Luca Schnettler and Etienne Bourdon, aims to disrupt insurance. “We noticed a big gap in the market that could be solved through data,” says Schnettler. “While other industries jumped on digitization and using data to improve traditional processes, one sector was particularly lagging: life and health insurance.” The startup analyzes the applicant’s digital data for pricing policies, such as calculating the risk of diagnosis for ICD-10-encoded medical conditions without requiring applicants to complete a lengthy questionnaire. This helps customers, including insurance company AIA Group, to speed up their underwriting process. Recently, Qumata raised a $23 million Series A round led by Tencent and MMC Ventures. qumata.com
Gaia
Nader AlSalim, the CEO and founder of Gaia, believes parenthood is a fundamental right. “I founded Gaia after my wife and I experienced the frustrations and limitations of IVF firsthand,” he says. He launched his startup in 2019, with the goal of making fertility care affordable for everyone. Gaia offers personalized financing based on predictive modeling that predicts the number of IVF rounds a couple will need – couples who don’t get pregnant pay only a fraction of the cost. The startup has raised $23 million so far. “Designing the world’s first IVF insurance product was our biggest challenge.” says Al Salim. “Assurers were neither willing nor willing to spend the time and investment required to design this complex proposition.” gaiafamily.com
Viral Health
When Andrea Berchowitz and Rebecca Love first met, they had a shared passion to address the gender gap in healthcare. “Female-targeted conditions receive less than 5 percent of healthcare R&D, women are often not included in clinical trials, and disaggregating data by gender is not a legal requirement,” she says. In 2020 they founded the femtech startup Vira Health and a year later they launched Stella, an app that currently offers lifestyle and behavior change advice for menopause, and will soon include telemedicine and access to regulated hormone replacement therapy. In March 2022, Vira Health raised $12 million in a second round of funding led by Octopus Ventures. vira.health
