13 early-stage UK tech startups you should know about in 2016

1. AimBrain

Based in: London
Founded in: 2015
No. of employees: 5

AimBrain, a next-generation biometrics engineering company, helps financial institutions easily, securely, and accurately authenticate their mobile banking users. Using a patent-pending, context-based step-up authentication methodology, AimBrain is helping some of the world’s largest financial institutions know if their users are really who they say they are. It delivers advanced biometrics technology to banks so they can stay ahead of mobile fraud through a secure and frictionless authentication experience. Supported by Episode1, a leading UK venture capitalist.

2. BrickVest

Based in: London
Founded in: November 2014
No. of employees: 14

BrickVest was founded by experienced real estate and technology professionals with backgrounds in real estate investing, managing and financing. BrickVest was created with one goal in mind: to democratise real-estate investing by making the investment process more accessible, transparent and less costly for a broader range of investors through technology.

3. CharlieHR

Based in: London
Founded in: 2015
No. of employees: 8

CharlieHR is the free HR platform for small companies, automating many of the administrative headaches and time burdens from collecting payroll details to tracking holidays and sick days. HR admin is tedious, and CharlieHR frees up time for SMEs to spend more time on work that really matters.

4. Goji

Based in: London
Founded in: 2015
No. of employees: 10

Goji empowers peer-to-peer lending by providing investors access to new markets and products including ISAs and pensions. Goji works on an API-based technology that integrates with platforms’ existing frameworks. Goji is building an offering to institutional investors to provide clients with easily investable options into marketplace lending.

5. Hubbub

Based in: London
Founded in: 2014
No. of employees: 17

Hubbub.co.uk brings the best independent shops, producers and markets together in one simple delivery, making it easy for people to shop locally, and helping small shops challenge the dominance of the supermarkets.

6. MeasureMyEnergy

Based in: Chandlers Ford, Hampshire
Founded in: 2012
No. of employees: 15

MeasureMyEnergy is an all-encompassing circuit level energy monitoring solution for businesses of all sizes from SMEs to global corporations. Having this granular level of detail and visibility alongside the simplest of user interfaces allows businesses to uncover measurable and actionable insights to improve performance, identify energy wastage, change behaviours and ultimately reduce their bottom line.

7. Metafused 

Based in: London and Manchester
Founded in: 2014
No. of employees: 11

Data-driven decision-making is incredible difficult. By 2017, 70% of businesses expect to be delivering data driven decisions, yet less then 50% are happy with the outcomes today. The problem is that by the time the data is applied to decisions, the very premise its worked from has changed. Metafused is delivering the last mile of automated decisions in real time, driven by the business user, by fusing multiple data sets, including its own data asset, with cognitive analytics and unlocking new revenues for companies. The product is like IBM Watson, but designed with the needs of the business decision-maker to drive data driven decisions in real time with its first application in marketing. The company is generating early revenues, working with the likes of Experian, The Cloud Networks and retailers in Scandinavia. It’s expanding its scope to adjacent markets like finance with Barclays in the UK.

8. Monuva

Based in: Greater London
Founded in: 2009
No. of employees: 1

PACE Financial Group Ltd (PFG) is a limited company. Monuva is the brand through which PFG will deploy its latest payments capability. PFG turns over £2 million a year, with £67,000 per year in profit. The group processes over 5,000 transactions per year, and is a member of a leading FinTech incubator, Level 39.

9. PIE Mapping

Based in: London
Founded in: 2009
No. of Employees: 20

PIE Mapping provides a transportation and logistics solution that every business with a vehicle or fleet can afford, easily use, and can scale up and down for the greatest operational cost visibility and efficiencies.

10. qodeo

Based in: London
Founded in: 2011/12
No. of employees: 3+ contractors

qodeo provides interactive tools and data that bring the global venture community together, saving them significant time and transaction costs to find funders, entrepreneurs and advisors; analyse performance and portfolios; and be informed with insight via data, reports and partner content.

11. Racefully

Based in: London
Founded in: September 2014
No. of employees: 6

Racefully is the first truly social fitness app, allowing users to exercise virtually with people in real time, wherever they are in the world. The company is capitalising on a predicted $5 billion activity tracker market (by 2019), with innovative IP, a smart B2C and B2B offering, and a rapidly growing user base.

12. WhiskyInvestDirect

Based in: London
Founded in: 2015
No. of employees: 1

WhiskyInvestDirect is the new and efficient market for buying and selling Scotch whisky as it matures in barrel – a compelling asset class delivering better than 7% annual appreciation after storage costs and inflation over the last decade. WhiskyInvestDirect supports this centuries-old business by providing cash-flow during the maturing process, enabling investors large and small to own the single malt and grain spirit which blended brands need, stored in bonded warehouses as it matures.

13. WiseAlpha Technologies

Based in: London
Founded in: 2014
No. of employees: 4

Technologies WiseAlpha is the first online marketplace allowing individuals to invest in secured corporate loans of major British companies. Its online investment platform offers members access to senior secured loan investments yielding on average 5% to 8% in some of the UK’s leading companies. Until now, the corporate loan market has remained largely untransformed by technological innovation, but wiseAlpha is making this asset class accessible to a wider investment audience.

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Ben Rossi

Ben was Vitesse Media's editorial director, leading content creation and editorial strategy across all Vitesse products, including its market-leading B2B and consumer magazines, websites, research and...

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