Revolut: UK is ‘entrepreneurial hub of Europe’
UK entrepreneurship has stormed ahead of its European rivals, according to findings from the region’s most valuable fintech company.
Fresh data from Revolut’s business arm shows half of British businesses using its services are startups, a figure that dwarfs its European counterparts.
Their closest rivals, the Netherlands and Ireland, sit at near 40 per cent. Meanwhile Romania and France trail at close to 30 per cent, and Switzerland, Germany and Spain lag behind at around 20 per cent.
James Gibson, general manager of Revolut business, credits the UK’s status as “the entrepreneurial hub of Europe” to the relative ease with which founders can start a new company.
He told City PM: “Starting a company in some European countries is still quite hard and you have to get notaries involved. There’s complex stuff, released capital deposits that you have to go through.
“Whereas in the UK, with Companies House, it’s actually relatively easy to start a business on the kind of practical, like medium corporate side.”
Gibson said the UK has maintained “some of the highest rates of funding in Europe”.
Revolut business’ operations have ballooned over the last year, as its monthly active businesses topped 250,000. This was fuelled by 20,000 new businesses joining each month.
Monthly transaction volume also topped $17bn.
Gibson said the firm’s activity had reflected the UK’s “fantastic job of attracting international talent over the last ten years.”
Revolut was founded in 2015 and has since become one of UK’s most prized companies, alongside its London-based fintech peer Monzo.
In order to maintain its status as a country with “successful companies which generate jobs and attract investment,” Gibson said it was “crucial” government strategy helped streamline business growth.
He highlighted growing competition from the US where “naturally, everything’s bigger, there is more money, there are more of these big companies.” The Middle East was also cited as an “increasingly” competitive threat.
AI changes the game
AI has redefined the business landscape and Gibson said new tech tools had made it easier to start up companies.
He said this is reflected in the falling average age of start-up founders in the UK, which averaged at 36.
“Using AI, you can spin up a company in a couple of weeks and start to monetize that quite quickly.
And so I think if you look at the lead time now, the lead time from going to start a business to ‘I have a product that it can monetize’ will be significantly quicker now…because you’re using technology and so then it suddenly opens it up for much younger people to be able to even content by doing,” Gibson said.
He cited young people’s creativity and flexibility in making the demographic a key pioneer of AI in business.
“I think it’s opened up a whole new world for those people to create companies.”