UK startups outside of London should have more than one founder, ensure gender diversity and join an accelerator, according to the findings of a recently published report.
The study, ‘Scaling UK Regional Fintech’, was conducted by Innovate Finance, Streets Consulting and Whitecap Consulting.
It found that among 250 fintech scaleups located outside of London those with multiple founders generally achieved more revenue growth. Furthermore, those with female founders achieved 30% more turnover growth than those with only male founders.
Yet despite this finding, only 16% of the 250 surveyed startups have a female founder. “The data on diversity from this report is bitter-sweet,” said Julia Streets, CEO of Streets Consulting.
“Once again we see the benefits of diversity and inclusion, since fintechs founded by women significantly outperform those founded by men; but once again we see the size of the challenge, as fewer than a fifth of FinTech firms are founded by women.”
Consequently, the report calls for more initiatives to encourage more diversity in fintech leadership and to build on the newly convened government taskforce designed to create dedicated funding for female-founded fintechs.
The report also insists that the success of the startups outside of London shows that vocation is more important than location.
“The main message for us from this report is that in today’s world, where you scale a business is nowhere near as important as how you scale a business,” said Julian Wells, director and fintech lead at Whitecap Consulting.