Who are Europe’s fastest-growing companies?

Freya Pratty (0:01)

Hello, and welcome to the Sifted podcast. I'm your host, Freya Pratty. This is a really exciting week at Sifted HQ. It's the Sifted Summit, our annual event in London.

One feature of Summit we're all really excited for is the unveiling of the new Sifted 250, our annual list of Europe's fastest growing companies. Joining me to talk through the Sifted 250 and the trends it reveals is our Director of Research and Product, Johnny Sinclair, welcome.

Jonathan Sinclair (0:28)

Hello, everyone. Yes, it really is the best week of the year. The Sifted Summit in London is taking place, and we have our brand new Sifted 250 that is launching, so really exciting stuff.

Freya Pratty (0:40)

Talk us through the 250 What does it measure and how does Sifted compile it, and then you can reveal the top companies?

Jonathan Sinclair (0:48)

The third year we've done the Sifted 250 It's part of our leaderboard series. These are effectively rankings that we compile, compile through the year.

We do them regionally. So let's say we do a region like the UK and Ireland.

We do that around Europe as the year goes on, and then we bring it together for the Sifted 250 later in the year, which ranks the fastest growing startups and scale-ups in Europe by revenue growth over the last three financial years. So using a two-year CAGA. We do that to be kind of very objective in how we are spotlighting startups. Revenue growth, obviously, being kind of one of the most objective ways to measure how startups are scaling.

And we scour the ecosystem. We, you know, we scour and send thousands and thousands of emails. It goes out all through our marketing channels. And we get thousands of applications from startups looking to appear on our data boards with their financial data stored very securely in our database. Startups have the option to kind of share whether they want their actual revenue figures disclosed or, you know, they're just happy with the growth rates going out there. We bring that all together. And then, as I said, rank them regionally and then to the SIFT 250 It's a Europe-wide ranking. So it's our biggest ranking of the year. We do a lot of rankings at Sifted, but it's the most prestigious one. And, you know, companies are vying to get the top spot for being the fastest-growing company in Europe. I should caveat that we don't accept ARR. So we only accept statutory revenue. Obviously, ARR is a projection. It's forecasted revenue based on, let's say, a very good recent month. You would then multiply by 12, as a lot of companies do across LinkedIn, let's say, to obviously raise their profile and attract investors. But that is future-projected revenue. We base this on historic, actual reported revenue over annual periods of accounts that are obviously published and sent to us.

Freya Pratty (3:06)

Yeah, I was going to say with the, I feel like since we unveiled the last one a year ago, that ARR metric has become so ubiquitous that we'll make this data even more attractive, right? Because it's distinct from that, which has become very commonplace.

And for listeners who aren't at the summit, we'll put a link to the report in the episode description so you can check it out. Talk us through, then, the top companies. Give us the top five, perhaps.

Jonathan Sinclair (3:31)

Yes, let's do that. Well, it's not Legora Lovable. Those two companies don't share actual reported figures. But what we have up top are two health tech companies at the top of the list. The number one on the Sifted 250 this year is a company called Health. They are founded in London, actually, by two brothers, Max and Lestat. And they are effectively a kind of well-being marketplace. So they procure, source the best kind of products for one's health. You know, looking at things like sleep, like recovery, like nutrition, bringing all those products together in order to sort of give a personalized marketplace, let's call it, for consumers to kind of best look after themselves. So they've grown revenue from, you know, a very modest $177,000 a few years ago, all the way to $40 million, giving them a two-year revenue CAGR of over 1,000%, which is hugely impressive.

I think it's the top, the second top CAGR that we've seen in kind of Sifted leaderboards history, and a really exciting story from London. The other is probably a bigger name, at number two in Neko Health. So a company that we've been writing about at Sifted for, kind of going back to 2019 and 2020, when the idea was coming together. It's a Danielette company, so founded in Stockholm. They offer full body scanners. So you go into these clinics, which are now in London, elsewhere in the UK. They got some in Sweden and now expanding to the US very rapidly as well. You get a full body scan, you get blood tests, and they give you your results instantly. And they've just kind of raised a big sum of money recently and are doing very well. I believe at a 7 billion valuation. So good. That's probably a bigger kind of scaling company that's now expanding to the US, Health doing very well as well. But Neko probably looking to capture a broader market share at this point in time.