From Deliveroo to Revolut: the biggest Startups 100 success stories

Everyone wishes they were an early investor in Facebook. Or Apple. Or Uber. But identifying the fastest-growth companies that will go on to become startup unicorns is a hard task. Thankfully, it’s something we at Startups have a lot of experience in.

Every year since 2008, we’ve picked out the most exciting new businesses in the UK that we think are destined to become market leaders in their respective fields. So far, we’ve listed over 1,500 of them in our annual Startups 100 Index.

Ahead of the 2025 Startups 100, which we’ll be publishing next January, we’re looking back at the businesses that are now household names to everyday consumers, who we’ve known since they were budding newborn businesses.

Below, we open up the photo albums to go back through 17 years of Startups 100 winners, and discover what they’re up to today.

Deliveroo

When Deliveroo first came onto our radar in 2014, it was still known as Roo Foods. At the time, the grocery courier was little more than a canape-sized startup founded by Young Guns William Shu and Greg Orlowski. Still, we spotted it as an ingenious business model that the struggling restaurant industry “has been crying out for” to grow its customer base.

One year later, we placed Deliveroo at #3 in our 2015 Startups 100 Index. Since then, it has developed an unstoppable appetite for growth. Today, the company operates in ten regions, works with around 182,000 partners, and is reportedly valued at $3.95bn. Tasty!

Revolut

We knew Revolut was destined for big things. We named it winner of our 2019 Startups 100 Index, describing it as “disruptive, innovative, and with amazing global growth potential”. Yet, five years on, Revolut’s total dominance of the fintech sector has surprised even us.

Founded in 2015, the neobank has won a global customer base of 45 million ‘Revoluters’, almost equalling the population of Argentina. It secured a valuation of around £34 billion in August, and it has more than doubled its headcount in the past two years, now employing over 7,500 people. Excitingly, it was also finally granted its UK banking licence this June.

Still on a hiring spree, Revolut shows no signs of slowing down. Having moved far beyond its ambitions to make it easier for customers to spend money abroad, its mission statement is now to “simplify all things money”. It’s a bold vision. But who would bet against Revolut?

Monzo

In many ways (okay, maybe just one) the Startups 100 index is like X Factor. It’s not always the winners you want to look out for. Monzo smuggled its way into our 2017 Startups 100 Index at #68. Even then, our judges spotted it as a shiny coral-coloured diamond.

“Monzo is a true example of a disruptive business creating a “first” in an industry”, we said. Seven years later, Monzo is breaking records left-right-and-centre. In 2024 alone, it recorded revenue of £880m, was valued at £4bn, and secured £500m in one of the largest fundraising rounds for a UK tech business ever. Plus, it hit its most exciting milestone yet: profitability.

Zoopla

It seems unthinkable now that we used to search for properties in the local paper. But this was life before Zoopla, the ‘the Wikipedia of the property market’ that house hunters and sellers have since become dependent on, and that we named #52 in the 2008 Startups 100.

The brainchild of Alex Chesterman and Simon Kain, Zoopla has now grown into the multi-brand software company, Houseful. Silver Lakes Partners bid £2.2bn to acquire the company in 2018, an offer that was accepted. Chesterman went on to launch Cazoo using the money acquired from the sale. That’s another story with a less happy ending..

BrewDog

When BrewDog made our list in 2008, it was a one-year old business billing itself as “the antithesis of the corporate brands”. Since then, it has nearly become the very thing it aimed to destroy, with the founders accused of creating a toxic work culture and underpaying staff.

Still, regardless of its leadership drama, the story of a Scotland-based ‘punk’ brewer who built a $2 billion IPA empire is remarkable. Whether through mad marketing or product innovation (both of which it had aplenty) BrewDog has shown pub and beer businesses that there is still space for evolution in a sector that had previously been at risk of going flat.

The Gym Group

Like its customers, The Gym Group has bulked up considerably since it first featured in the Startups 100 in 2010. At the time, we said founder and CEO John Treharne, who is still in charge today, had torn up the “gym owners’ handbook”. Today, he has rewritten it.

Since the grainy snap above was taken, John has grown The Gym from six outlets to 239, and from 30,000 users to nearly one million. Revenue is soaring, and the pull of low-cost, low-commitment gym subscriptions has helped The Gym to an enterprise value of £650m.

Beatthatquote.com

We couldn’t look back through the ages without paying respect to beatthatquote.com. The price comparison site was named the fastest-growing website in 2007, beating a baby-faced Facebook.com to the title.

We named it our first ever Startups 100 winner in 2008 (complete with a blurry pic of founder John Paleomylites). Shortly after, beatthatquote was acquired by Google for £37.7m.

Apply to the Startups 100 Index

Our above ‘Magnificent Seven’ startups might be the biggest companies to have arisen from the Startups 100. However, there are still plenty of other, huge household names that have won the red Startups rosette in the past 17 years.

They include supermarket staples such as Ella’s Kitchen, Steven Bartlett’s game changing agency, Social Chain, and ecommerce hero, Not On The High Street. Not forgetting newbies like The Modern Milkman; named Europe’s eighth fastest-growing startup in 2024.

If you think you could join them, why not apply for the 2025 Startups 100? Businesses founded after 2019 have just under a month to compete for one of 100 hotly-contested spots on next year’s list, and entry is 100% free