How to Discover the Fastest Growing Companies in Your Area with Beauhurst

Sarah Cheesman, 21 September 2023

Fast-growing companies, also known as high-growth or growth-stage companies, typically exhibit a rapid increase in revenue, earnings, or market share over a relatively short period of time. For obvious reasons, they offer an exciting and valuable opportunity for investors, as well as local councils and governments, but finding them amongst a sea of other businesses can be a challenge.

In this article, we’re taking a look at what constitutes a high-growth company, and how you can use our data to find them.

What’s a high-growth company?

Understandably, it means different things to different people, with varying definitions based on growth in employee count, turnover or revenues. For us at Beauhurst, we use eight different triggers to indicate if a business is actively growing or creating ambitious growth plans. These are:

Secured equity investment

We track both announced and unannounced equity fundraisings. Around 70% of UK equity deals are undisclosed to the press but unearthed by our proprietary technology.

Secured venture debt

Venture debt is a subset of debt finance, comprising mezzanine debt, convertible debt and debt provided by angel networks or venture capital firms. This trigger doesn’t include debt from high-street lenders and most peer-to-peer lenders.

MBOs and MBIs

Management buy-outs (MBOs) and management buy-ins (MBI) are transactions in which an incumbent or incoming management team takes a majority stake in a company. We also track secondary MBOs and MBIs, provided that a majority stake is sold as part of those transactions.

Accelerator programmes

We track company attendance at selected accelerator programmes that validate the ambition and growth potential of their participants, have a competitive application process and no or low attendance fees.

10% and 20% scaleups

Scaleup companies have an annualised average growth rate of at least 10% or 20% in turnover/headcount over three accounting years and at least £200k in revenue/20 employees in their base year.

Academic spinouts

Academic spinouts are companies that have been set up to exploit the intellectual property (IP) being developed by a recognised UK university. Spinouts are particularly common in the life sciences, pharmaceuticals and artificial intelligence sectors.

Innovation grants

We track companies that have received large innovation grants, defined as a £100k+ (or €100k+) award for a specific innovation project. These include grants from Innovate UK, H2020/FP7, Scottish Enterprise, the Development Bank of Wales and Invest Northern Ireland.

High-growth lists

We cover high-growth lists, such as the Deloitte Fast 50 and LSEG’s 1000 Companies to Inspire Britain, that hold competitive and selective (but free) application processes which validate the ambition and growth prospects of chosen companies.

What is Beauhurst?

Beauhurst is a data platform that brings together information on every registered company in the UK. The searchable database allows you to download detailed lists with all the information you need for your decision-making processes. The unique search filters enable you to find data you can’t get elsewhere, including details on unannounced deals, putting you in the perfect position to find opportunities before your competitors.

No matter what your needs, we have a product to suit you. We have four data platforms, built specifically to suit the needs of customers in different industries. Our BeauhurstInvest platform has been designed specifically for investors and accelerators to help them find ideal companies and opportunities to invest in, never missing out to another fund again.

The BeauhurstImpact platform is for local, regional and government bodies, LEPs and universities, giving them the insights and data they need to identify, track and support businesses in their local areas and understand their economic ecosystems.

How can you use Beauhurst to find high-growth companies in your area?

There are a variety of different reasons for why our users want to track high-growth companies. For investors, they represent a greater opportunity for potential future returns, while for local council and government bodies, they can highlight the successes of strategic scaleup support that they’ve provided in the past.

At Beauhurst, we currently hold detailed information on the 47k+ high-growth companies that have hit one or more of our tracking triggers. Using the different search filters, users are able to quickly and easily find companies that fall into their interests, whether that be based on location (country, UK region, county, borough, council, constituency, ward, local enterprise partnership or postcode), or even the industry they fall under. You can search for specific buzzwords within a wider industry category, for example, if you want to find companies that work in Artificial Intelligence or cyber security. Thanks to our trade and patent data sets, you can also use these as filters to narrow down your results. For a full look at all our data, visit our data page.

The level of detail that we provide allows you to quickly sift through large quantities of data, leaving you with the ‘cream of the crop’ of companies that are best aligned with your interests and needs.

Your lists can then be downloaded, including accurate and up-to-date contact details for your business campaigns.

Working with Beauhurst

Our data platforms have been designed specifically with our users in mind. Using a combination of AI and 60+ expert data analysts, we have created the ultimate UK private company data source. And we’re always adding new data.

We understand that every user will have a different priority and requirement when it comes to their data needs, which is why our Account Management team is always on hand to make sure that you can get the best from the platform. They’re able to help you build out specific lists, set up automated alerts, as well as advise on industry trends.

If you’d like to find out more about the BeauhurstInvest platform, speak with a member of our team, or book a demo to see us in action.

Grow your business.

Get access to unrivalled data on all the companies you need to know about, so you can approach the right leads, at the right time.

Book a demo today to see all of the key features of our platforms, as well as the depth and breadth of data available.

An associate will work with you to build a sophisticated search, returning a dynamic list of organisations that match your ideal customer profile.

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