LinkedIn Top Companies | Startups UK: The 25 industry disruptors you need to know now

Startups are springing up across the nation, transforming industries, grabbing market share and challenging the status quo. It’s no wonder, then, that talent is flocking toward these innovative new companies. But who are the 25 most in-demand startups operating in the UK today?

The all-new LinkedIn Top Companies | Startups list has the answer. To surface the companies, we looked at the billions of actions of LinkedIn’s more than 500 million members to determine employee growth, job seeker interest via views and applications, member engagement with the company and its employees – and how well these startups pulled talent from our flagship LinkedIn Top Companies list. (You can learn more about our methodology here.)

To be eligible for Top Companies | Startups, companies must be at most 10 years old, have at least 100 employees, remain independent and privately held and have at least one round of venture-backed funding. LinkedIn worked with CB Insights to pull a global list of nearly 25,000 eligible venture-backed companies, and we whittled it down to the top 25 that are making waves in the UK.

Share the list and join the conversation using #LinkedInTopCompanies.

Here are this year's top 25 startups in the UK:

All valuation and funding data come from CB Insights. Tenure, employee growth and global headcount data are from LinkedIn Premium Insights unless provided directly by the company.

Finance of the future: Challenger bank Monzo may be less than three years old, but it’s already taking on the capital’s major banking corporations with its own current accounts, debit cards and app that feature perks like fee-free spending abroad.

Global headcount: 175

Millennial money: Monzo has secured just shy of ￡35m ($46.5m) to date and has a firm following of millennials, who have been signing up in droves, eager to get their hands on one of the firm’s trademark neon orange payment cards.

Valuation: ￡87m ($116m), according to the company.

All those extras: Rewarding employees isn’t all about how much you pay. Perkbox capitalises on this movement, enabling employers to offer team members a whole host of perks, from mobile phone insurance and free coffee to special rates on cinema tickets and discounts on high street shopping.

Global headcount: 180

Perks of the job: Perkbox offers its employees a list of benefits as long as your arm, but one of the most popular is the beer trolley that’s wheeled around the office on a Friday afternoon. Staff members can also bring their dogs to work.

Valuation: ￡75.4m ($99.8m), according to the company

Creating communities: WeWork has nearly doubled its membership this year to over 150,000 users, expanded to some 170 locations (including its first India location) and purchased private coding academy Flatiron School in its first-ever acquisition. While the startup has been growing rapidly, a highly competitive office-leasing market recently raised doubts around the company’s rich valuation.

Global headcount: 3,000

Summer camp for grown-ups: Every year, employees get the chance to go to the WeWork Summer Camp – an all-inclusive weekend getaway open to both employees and members. This year’s festivities took place in the UK for the first time at Eridge Park, 75km south of London.

Valuation: ￡15.14bn ($20bn)

A whole new world: Improbable’s cloud-based distributed computing allows companies to build massively detailed virtual and simulated worlds, blurring the line between real life and the imagined. While it’s proving popular among those developing computer games, the platform can be used for a whole host of other things, including to control fleets of driverless cars.

Global headcount: 220

A new unicorn: Improbable did the near impossible earlier this year, joining the exclusive UK tech “unicorn” club with a massive ￡378m ($502m) Series B raise.

Valuation: ￡760m ($1bn)

A taste of success: On-demand food delivery firm Deliveroo has been in and out of the headlines recently, lambasted for its employment practices one week and praised for raising massive funding rounds the next. People are hungry for what they offer; the company now operates in 84 cities around the globe.

Global headcount: 2,675

Keeping it real: The company’s founder Will Shu – an ex-investment banker – delivers one Deliveroo order a week so that he keeps in touch with what it’s like to be one of the firm’s “riders”.

Valuation: ￡1.51bn ($2bn)

Yurt, treehouse, castle: Airbnb is on track to pass 100 million guest arrivals this year, a 25 percent increase over 2016. Taking on the $550bn hotel industry is no small feat. To go head-to-head, the company has expanded its instant booking listings and even announced plans to open its first co-branded apartments (which residents will be able to share on Airbnb).

Global headcount: 6,500

Royal lodgings: Employees receive an annual $2,000 (￡1,516) stipend to stay in Airbnb locales around the world, including one of more than 1,400 listed castles.

Valuation: ￡22.15bn ($29.25bn)

Driving forward: Uber has been in the public eye this year for all the wrong reasons: sexual harassment claims, regulatory issues, a new CEO and loads of boardroom drama. The trouble hit home in the UK where the ride-hailing firm had its licence to operate in London cancelled on the grounds of "public safety and security implications". Uber is currently locked in an appeals battle over the ruling, but the company is still growing fast and attracting top talent, including from leading companies like Google, Facebook and JPMorgan.

Global headcount: 16,000

Catch a ride: Worldwide employees get free monthly Uber credits to use on personal rides or UberEATS, the company’s online meal ordering and delivery platform.

Valuation: ￡51.49bn ($68bn)

Financing business dreams: London-based Funding Circle provides business loans – it’s funded over 38,000 companies across the globe in the past seven years, to the tune of ￡3.8bn ($5bn). It raised ￡82m ($100m) in January – bringing the total raised to date to ￡250m ($201.6m) – which led Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond to describe Funding Circle as "a real success story for British FinTech".

Global headcount: 750

Fun times: The company’s office doesn’t have any square rooms – only circles. It has its own 'Funderbar' with in-house baristas and food served daily. New hires can look forward to having their photo taken with the giant office teddy bear, aka the 'FunderBear'.

Valuation: ￡760m ($1bn)

Revolutionising healthcare: Babylon is taking the pain out of booking doctors’ appointments. Through its mobile app, users can speak with GPs and specialists via voice or video call. It also features an AI-powered chatbot, which acts as a triage service, helping users decide if their symptoms can be treated at home, require a GP – or demand a trip straight to A&E.

Global headcount: 260

Humble beginnings: Founder Ali Parsa came to the UK from Iran as a teenage refugee, but went on to work in banking before embarking on his mission to revolutionise healthcare. He greets every new employee at an informal lunch, so new hires can ask any burning questions they have about the business.

Valuation: ￡151.44m ($200m)

Virtual training: Reading about something isn’t quite the same as seeing it in action, which is why Touch Surgery created its training app for surgeons. It features over 100 simulations of surgical procedures, so healthcare professionals can check out interactive, realistic and detailed guides to every step of a procedure, test their knowledge and rehearse for surgery.

Global headcount: 135

Going stateside: The startup was co-founded by two surgeons, Jean Nehme and Andre Chow, and is headquartered in Clerkenwell, London, with a second office in New York.

Passion for fashion: Shopping is a bit like Marmite: you either love it or you hate it. Thanks to online fashion retailers like Farfetch, it’s no longer necessary to traipse around shops and queue for poorly lit changing rooms. The London-based firm, which was founded in 2008, sells products from over 700 boutiques and brands from around the world.

Global headcount: 1,870

When tech and fashion collide: Farfetch founder José Neves was born in Portugal and started coding when he was just eight years old. He went on to found a number of companies in both tech and fashion and is now a non-executive director at the British Fashion Council.

Valuation: ￡1.14bn ($1.5bn)

Crossing borders: Sending money internationally used to be dominated by a few key players in the currency transfer market, and the fees were high and unavoidable. TransferWise is one of the new kids on the block, undercutting the incumbents with low fees and stealing market share with punchy ads.

Global headcount: 600

Cashing in: Founded by Estonian expats Taavet Hinrikus and Kristo K??rmann, TransferWise has raised over $116m (￡88m) to date, with investment coming from heavyweights such as Valar Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and Baillie Gifford.

Valuation: ￡830m ($1.1bn)

Threats thwarted: Cybersecurity company Darktrace uses AI and machine learning to defend enterprise networks. Rather than building perimeters to keep hackers out, it looks at what normal behavior is in a system and raises alarms when something deviates. The company was founded by mathematicians from the University of Cambridge.

Global headcount: 545

Unsolved problem: Darktrace has raised ￡137.2m ($182.3m) in total, including a new ￡56.5m ($75m) funding round earlier this year, putting its valuation near unicorn territory. Its more than 3,000 customers – up 140 percent in a year – include even water-supply systems, eager for help. “The problem of cybersecurity is still unsolved,” CEO Nicole Eagan told Bloomberg TV.

Valuation: ￡624.69m ($825m)

Bank to the future: Like Monzo, Atom is a challenger bank, here to create a mobile-first bank for the future. The Durham-based company has decided to focus first on the mortgage and savings account markets, but plans to launch business and personal current accounts in the future.

Global headcount: 240

Celebrity endorsement: In a rather strange turn of events, the fintech startup announced earlier this year that music artist and TV personality Will.i.am was joining its board to give strategic advice on how to capture a millennial market.

Valuation: ￡242.3m ($320m)

Pay up: The fast-growing fintech firm aims to make it easier for companies, charities and government agencies to take direct debit payments from anyone. It now works with more than 30,000 organisations across Europe – from airline Thomas Cook to the Guardian – and is expanding at such a rapid clip that it expects to double its headcount next year, adding 130 jobs.

Global headcount: 125

New perspective: After a bicycle accident last year left CEO and co-founder Hiroki Takeuchi paralysed from the waist down, he returned to the company and told TechCrunch the accident, while difficult, helped him look at GoCardless’ strategy “with a fresh pair of eyes”.

Total funding: ￡35.9m ($47.3m), according to the company

For sale: Yopa is trying to make home selling less expensive and tedious. The online real estate agency sets a fixed fee for its agents (￡839 for most areas) and uses a portal to keep sellers up-to-date. In the first nine months of 2017, it sold double the number of homes it did in 2016. Yopa’s still growing, too, with plans to add 100 employees and 250 agent licensees next year.

Global headcount: 160

Open house: Yopa wants all of its employees to understand its core business, regardless of role. That’s why every new hire has to tag along with an experienced agent to get an on-the-ground look at what it’s like to sell a home.

Total funding: ￡59.39m ($78.44m)

Beyond Tweets: Social media management platform Hootsuite now has more than 16 million users. While the post-scheduling tool has popular competitors like Buffer and Sprout Social, its lead with the business world is clear: more than 800 of the Fortune 1,000 companies use Hootsuite.

Global headcount: 1,210

Mobile focused: Hootsuite CEO and LinkedIn Influencer Ryan Holmes boldly disclosed that he runs the 1,000+ person company almost entirely from his iPhone. “It was Siri that helped me make the switch. Voice dictation has gone from a fantasy to a viable technology almost overnight,” he wrote in a recent LinkedIn article.

Valuation: ￡567.9m ($750m)

Fast lane pivot: In 2013, carwow switched from a review aggregator to a marketplace to buy new cars and the results speak for themselves: more than a third of UK new car dealers use carwow and the startup raised a $39m Series C round earlier this year.

Global headcount: 130

Backed by big names: Accel Partners, one of carwow’s top VC funders, is also behind big private capital success stories like Spotify and Dropbox.

Total funding: ￡50.54m ($66.74m)

Special delivery: London-based Quiqup is a courier service with a difference. Not only will its fleet of self-employed drivers pick up and drop off items, they’ll even go so far as popping into the shops and buying your requested goods, before delivering them.

Global headcount: 150

Company swag: New hires receive a Quiqup swag bag on arrival and they’re paired up with another team member – their QBF (Quiqster's Best Friend) – who shows them the ropes. They also get introduced to the office dogs: Kenny and Simba.

Total funding: ￡19.59m ($25.87m)

Stress-free holiday: Secret Escapes believes a vacation should be as relaxing as possible, starting from the planning stages. So it eliminated the fuss of price comparisons by guaranteeing the lowest possible rates on hand-picked hotels for its 42 million members from Norway to the US.

Global headcount: 500

Work hard, play hard: Whether it’s weekly board game evenings or Friday night drinks at the office Tiki Bar, Secret Escapes’ employees put in the effort to make time for fun.

Total funding: ￡144.63m ($191m)

Spreading the wealth: Peer-to-peer lending platform RateSetter is a kind of matchmaking service for those who have spare cash to invest, and those who need a personal or business loan. Investors can make upwards of 4.1 percent on the money they lend (but this is, of course, not guaranteed), while borrowers can borrow at an APR of 3.9 percent.

Global headcount: 215

A new addition: The FinTech firm raised ￡13m ($17.3m) earlier this year and is soon to launch its Innovative Finance ISA, which will enable savers to invest through the peer-to-peer platform, tax-free.

Valuation: ￡194.6m ($257m)

Moving the money: Like TransferWise, WorldRemit operates in the currency transfer space, helping people send money overseas. Via the startup’s app and website, users can send money to bank accounts, for cash pickup, to a Mobile Money service or as a mobile airtime top-up.

Global headcount: 395

Rapid expansion: Founder Ismail Ahmed, who hails from Hargeisa, Somaliland, has grown his team significantly over the past year, increasing headcount by over 190. The entrepreneur hopes to hire a further 150 people in the coming year.

Valuation: ￡378.6m ($500m)

Get cooking: HelloFresh, the meal-kit delivery service, serves 1.3 million customers across 10 countries, from the UK to Australia and beyond. The 5-year-old startup is now planning its next big step: going public. HelloFresh is looking to raise as much as ￡268m ($353m) in its planned initial public offering in Frankfurt.

Global headcount: 1,400

More than meals: A massive data-driven technology platform drives every HelloFresh delivery. To make that happen, the company has been growing across operations, support and business development, according to LinkedIn Premium Insights. The business development team alone has expanded its headcount by 71% in the past year.

Valuation: ￡1.58m ($2.09m)

Snacking goes digital: Graze is out to build a healthier snack brand. The company combines the power of technology with product innovation to create nutritionist-approved snacks. Graze has come a long way since it shipped its first nibble box in 2008: its snacks are now sold offline in stores across both the UK and US.

Global headcount: 580

Loyal employees: Graze employees have the longest tenure of any startup on the list, staying an average 2.7 years, according to LinkedIn Premium Insights. That may be thanks to perks like free breakfast – or its hiring motto: “Nice people need apply.”

Fixing finance: Small businesses often struggle to get the money they need from big banks. Iwoca is on a mission to break down those barriers, using technology to make faster, more accurate credit decisions. Since its launch, Iwoca has lent over ￡260m ($343.4m) to more than 12,000 businesses across Europe.

Global headcount: 165

Team time: The company takes team bonding to all new levels. In January 2016, Iwoca rented a house in the French Alps for a month. Teams cycled through the house, getting a chance to work remotely while enjoying skiing, snowboarding and making meals together.

Total funding: ￡93m ($123.4m), according to the company.

Additional reporting by: Chip Cutter, Laura Lorenzetti and Ashley Peterson