The FT 1000 - The Complete List of Europe's Fastest Growing Companies 2018

For those of you interested in start-ups and growth businesses, this list will be invaluable. It's a link to the FT 1000 which lists the companies in 31 European countries that have achieved the highest compound annual growth rate in revenue between 2013 and 2016. Note the measurement is revenue not profit.

It's worth a glance if you have any interest in business. The data is downloadable as a spreadsheet and searchable. The FT also shares their methodology.

Top line findings:

• Technology dominates the list with 155 entries and Deliveroo at #1 replacing Germany's HelloFresh
• London has held on to its position as the most popular base for HQ with 74 entries (Paris has 62, Milan 25).
• Fintech has performed well (Good news for London).
• UK, Spain, Germany and France all have a strong presence in the Top 20.
• The lowest average growth rate in this year's ranking was 34.6% vs last year's 16.1%.
• Germany leads the way in the advertising sector as they also do in the Automobile sector. I would have expected the latter but not the former. I wonder why British advertising companies aren't showing similar growth.

I haven't heard of the majority of these companies. Am I out of touch? Maybe. Or is that successful companies very often get there completely under the radar? Or maybe it's down to my focus and visibility of British companies. I'm thinking probably the latter. Something for me to ponder on over a cup of tea...

You can find the list here.

Swedish Beers Barcelona #13: Thank yous and photos

What a fab time we had at Swedish Beers a couple of weeks back in Barcelona. Admittedly, the weather wasn't up to much, but Muy Buenas gave us a very warm welcome despite us drinking the bar dry and having to have an emergency beer and wine delivery at midnight!

First up some thank yous:

Swedish Beers Sponsors & Supporters BCN 2018

To Carolina and her team at Muy Buenas for looking after us so well.

To Rosa, Patrick, Irene, Ida and Angel for being the welcoming committee with me at the door.

To Erika Arias for her fabulous photographs once again. Check out more of her fabulous photos here.

To all our sponsors for providing the cash for the beer tokens and being such good co-hosts on the night. They are - Equal Experts, x-Mobility, Headforwards, 51 Degrees, Evernym, 1NCE ably supported in cash and in kind by NOBA, Kairos Future, ZZZ Accommodation, Idka, White Bull Summits, Trustonic, Joshua PR, When in Barcelona and Claire Coombes.

And to all of you who came and who keep the Swedish Beers spirit alive and kicking.

The photos
I've uploaded all the ones I've received and all the professional ones by the fabulous Erika Arias. But if you have any to add these, please let me have them and I'll include them in the Swedish Beers party albums on Facebook and Flickr with appropriate credits. Feel free to tag yourselves in the photos and share away!





Thanks again and hope to see you at another event soon.

Skal

Helen

It's predictions season... Here are GP Bullhound's Top 10 for 2018

GP Bullhound, a leading technology advisory and investment firm, has released its 2018 Technology Predictions Report. Their Top Technology Predictions for 2018 include (comments are mine):

1. Tech giants face political scrutiny 
Inevitable I think. It's not just political scrutiny, I think tech giants will be under greater scrutiny from their customers and users, especially around ethics and security issues (see next point).

2. Consumer cyber security becomes a number one issue
About time - our digital lives feel so precarious when so many companies and organisations are getting hacked for personal details.

3. Mobile usage will exceed TV in China 
I haven't followed the Chinese market much to date but this is certainly interesting if China is one of your (potential) markets.

4. Language recognition and translation becomes everyday 
Hmm, I've never really thought about this much, but I do like the automatic translations of Facebook posts. Some of the translations are pretty good.

5. The death of email 
I've seen this prediction in the past, but it never seems to happen. Email is still very effective when it comes to marketing, I can't see it dying in 2018. I think we're reducing reliance on it, but death is probably too strong a word.

6. International labour arbitrage flourishes
This is interesting. As cost of living increases, small tech companies move to cheaper tech hubs. This bodes well for UK cities like Leeds and Manchester and European hubs like Berlin and Barcelona. This kind of activity has been touted for a year or two now but I see no sign of tech start-up activity decreasing in London. If anything, it's still growing.

7. Organic expansion and consolidation of software sector 
The return of SAAS. If SAAS is your thing, then I highly recommend Mark Littlewood's Business of Software conferences in the US and Europe.

8. Industry 4.0
The digital transformation and manufacturing i.e. the next industrial revolution. Not my area of expertise but feels kind of inevitable. The rise of the robots and AI etc.

9. The rise of Blockchain and ICOs 
No big surprise there base on activity in the last month alone. ICO stands for Initial Coin Offering (Wikipedia definition here) and is the crypto currency equivalent of IPO. Blockchain and crypto currency are topics I plan to learn more about and cover more in 2018.

10. Augmented reality breaks through 
I think this will happen. Arguably, it's already happened as the little dot on Google Maps that moves according to our position is Augmented Reality. It's so pervasive, we hardly notice it. Note that AR is not VR. They are similar but different.

The report is well researched and each point is examined in some detail so I think it's well worth a read. They also review their predictions from last year and they weren't far off... You can download the report for free from the following link in exchange for your contact details.
https://www.gpbullhound.com/news/gp-bullhound-releases-2018-technology-predictions-report/

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