These 7 business trends are set to dominate 2025

In some respects, identifying the next trending product or fashion item is like sticking your finger in the air. You never know what consumers will latch onto. When predicting this year’s biggest business trends, though, we can be savvier, thanks to the 2025 Startups 100 Index.

Our list of startup ‘ones to watch’ over the next 12 months says a lot about what direction the next generation of business leaders will be guided in. Showcasing heightened agility, and new technology, they are not just responding to customer needs, but answering them too.

By analysing our top 100, as well as our survey of 531 SMEs conducted at the end of last year, we’ve come up with a list of seven business trends that will shape company priorities, opportunities, and performance in 2025.

1. Support for parents and families

Things have gone wrong when the current generation of employees can’t afford to birth the next generation. Compared to other countries, the UK is lagging behind on support for parents, with maternity policies and paternity leave both in dire need of reform. 

The government has tried window dressing the problem with a much maligned childcare policy, announced last year. With no real change on the horizon, though, a number of startups have stepped up to act as a life raft for parents and parents-to-be.

Nugget Savings has so far helped over 100,000 customers to navigate the confusion. Alongside the “nuggbase,” a database of UK parental leave policies, it also provides budgeting tools and educational videos on how to build a postpartum pay plan.

With nursery costs similarly astronomical, mums and dads are putting themselves in debt to raise their children, forcing (mostly women) to sacrifice their payslip or give work up entirely.

Flexa, a vetted directory of flexible-work-friendly firms, helps women avoid the motherhood penalty by matching them with empathetic employers. According to Flexa’s 2024 Flexible Working Index, UK workers are increasingly prioritising parental leave when job seeking.

For some, the cost of parenthood is a burden even before conception. Gaia Family insures the cost of IVF treatment fees, ensuring that anyone who wants a family can try for one.

2. Educational marketing content

As the saying goes, everybody has a podcast now (insert shameless plug for the Speaking of Startups podcast, here). Everybody, it seems, including business owners. 

Multiple startups in the 2025 Startups 100 Index are using podcasts to market their products and services, capitalising on the deeper engagement it allows. In an hour-long episode, hosts can hold in-depth discussions and storytelling, providing value beyond just a tagline.

Budget planning app, Financielle is just one example. Knowing that their customers expect more than just spreadsheets, founders created The Vault webcast series. Each episode tackles viewer-submitted financial dilemmas, transforming complex topics like inheritance tax coffee-shop video anecdotes that entertain and educate.

While some go behind the mic, others are behind the smartphone. Take Tonic Health founder, Sunna Van Kampen. Van Kampen has distinguished his vitamin brand from the market using gonzo journalism tactics. He films himself visiting UK supermarkets and exposing the high sugar content in popular brands, gaining around 45 million monthly views.

Such tactics will likely be imitated across the advertising sector in 2025. With influencer culture now fully entrenched across nearly all forms of media, consumers have come to trust authentic, personal branding over traditional PR strategies.

3. Fashion resale and rental

Secondhand clothing had a huge rebrand this decade. Popularised in response to the carbon-guzzling fast-fashion industry, Gen Zers and other young shoppers have leapt on reselling apps for a guilt-free new wardrobe. One of the largest, Vinted, reported a 61% rise in sales to over £500m in 2024, marking the first time the business has turned a profit. 

But how guilt-free is it? Some say second-hand demand still encourages overconsumption. TikTok is filled with sartorial scrollers watching endless videos of ‘Depop hauls’, where users show off tens of items, all of which still had to be trucked to their door by a delivery van.

Charity shops remain a step up from buying new. With the climate crisis going nowhere fast, however, we’re predicting that the next phase in the resale craze will be a shift to clothes swaps and rentals as buyers attempt to satiate their fashion needs without overindulging.

Helping them will be a number of new apps including By Rotation, a luxury clothing rental brand that has already built a 220,000-strong community on social media. Even kiddies can get involved with Swoperz, an app for children to trade preloved clothing instead of marbles.

Linked to this trend is upcycling, the process of mending or improving old items rather than gorging on new ones. Early adopters include The Seam, a fast-growth matchmaking platform that connects clothes owners to nearby menders, tailors, and cobblers. 

4. AI cybersecurity

Last week, the prime minister unveiled the AI Action Plan, a set of proposals to cement the UK as an AI superpower. We’ve already led the charge on regulation, having hosted the AI Safety Summit last year. Now, it seems that AI innovation will take the spotlight in 2025.

‘Controlled innovation’. It may sound like an oxymoron, but it’s a phrase that will likely come to define the next era of AI in Britain. Fast-growth startups, such as Robin AI, a legal tool to automate contract reviewing, and MAGIC AI, a personal trainer that lives in your mirror, are already dominating. Both made the Startups 100 Index this year.

However, after an explosive period of growth, entrepreneurs are also balancing progress with responsible development. Many are rolling out supporting, cybersecure solutions that harness the power of AI but also mitigate its risks, keeping developers on a path to good.

That includes Unify AI, a London-based startup that organises large language models (LLMs), models used to build generative AI chatbots. By matching the right LLM to the right task, Unify helps users avoid LLM overload and achieve better results from their tech library.

Risk prevention is another area. Mindgard, a Lancaster University spinout, provides a full-stack security solution that helps firms safely deploy and operate AI software. It’s a response to the companies stung by poor cybersecurity after bowing to AI pressure last year.

5. Predictive marketing

The term ‘predictive marketing’ has been around for over a decade. Simply put, it means using data analytics to predict consumer behaviours in real-time. But while previously a niche area for marketer mavericks, technology has finally caught up to the idea in 2025.

Various marketing startups we featured in the Startups 100 Index are using AI and other transformative technologies to create highly targeted campaigns tailored to individual customer needs, giving clients a head start in the race to audience engagement.

They include Userled, which uses AI to generate bespoke landing pages for shoppers. There’s also trumpet, a sales platform which builds invite-only microsites that account managers can furnish with the customer’s branding, objectives, and priorities in mind. 

Yes, it’s all about algorithms, and machine learning. Paradoxically, though, the goal is to move away from digitised selling and return to the days of humans at counters, when shop assistants could respond to their customer’s every eyebrow raise and body shift.

That’s what Manchester-based Made With Intent wants, anyway. Its model tracks ‘intent metrics’ to measure a customer’s desire to purchase, return, or add to a bag. If it senses an imminent cart abandonment, it responds before the buyer is aware of their decision to bail.

6. Femtech furore

Who knew femtech would prove so controversial? Last year, period tracking app Flo became the first ever femtech unicorn. It should have been a day of celebration for the burgeoning sector. But questions soon arose around why the most successful business in this entirely female-focused tech space had been “founded by men, led by men, and funded by men”. 

2025 will mark the year that women femtech founders replot the industry’s course. Our Startups 100 is filled with new software and everyday use products that are designed to service women’s health issues such as menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause.

Leading the charge are founders such as Hannah Samano, who launched Unfabled in 2021. Unfabled aims to address the data gap for women’s health; leveraging data from over 500,000 women to develop and sell sustainable, non-toxic products. There’s also Hormona. Started by Karolina Löfqvist and Jasmine Tagesson, Hormona offers accessible resources for hormone-related support, including an at-home hormone testing kit. 

By addressing the gender imbalance in women-focused tech design (and building the solutions women actually need), both of these startups are working to combat a social issue and have raised significant investment to bankroll their mission statements. 

One firm going further than others is Asan. As a social enterprise that produces sustainable menstrual cups and offers a free period tracking app, it aims to improve period education and reduce period poverty globally. We named it runner-up for our Social Impact award. 

7. Employee recognition on the rise

At the end of last year, we asked 531 SMEs to tell us what had been the biggest contributor to their success in 2024. 52% of business leaders identified a talented and motivated workforce as their secret weapon, a 12% uplift on the same survey carried out in 2023.

That employers are becoming more aware of the importance of their people might seem surprising given the narrative being pushed by Big Tech. If Silicon Valley is to be believed, workers are lazy, overly-reliant on remote work, and will all be replaced by AI in four years.

Yet our findings show that more leaders are linking employee talent and happiness to the bottom line. As a result, expect to see many bosses rolling out initiatives in order to build bridges with the UK workforce this year.

Their efforts will be supported by a string of employee-focused startups which can respond to the changing demands of today’s workers. They include Flexa, a job-matching tool for flexible working employers and job seekers, and UJJI AI, an AI platform that instantly transforms business specific resources into an interactive staff training programme.

Niche benefits programmes will likely win out over generic perks such as free tea and biscuits. Take our top startup for 2025, Lottie. Lottie boasts the UK’s only dedicated eldercare employee benefit, providing support to workers who are also full-time carers.