Kane Fulton, December 13, 2021 5 min read
One year ago, we launched our inaugural ‘The 12 Days of Scaleups’ campaign to unveil our Rising Stars 3.0 Winners. This December, we’re revisiting the festive theme to announce and celebrate our Rising Stars 4.0 Regional Winners from across the UK as part of our latest 12 Days of Scaleups.
Now into its fourth year, Rising Stars remains the UK’s only national early-stage tech scaleup competition. It is once again fully virtual and our judges have selected not one, but five winners from each region.
Last week, we announced the competition’s Regional Winners from the North West, North East, Yorkshire, Midlands, and the East of England. Today, we are excited to announce the London Regional Winners of Rising Stars 4.0: Deployed, Punk Money, Renude, Social Reputation, and Trust Keith.
Deployed is a collaborative statement of work platform that makes it simple to define, track and review work for projects that start smarter and finish stronger. CEO Emma Rees tells us more.
How does it feel to be a Rising Stars regional winner?
Being one of the Rising Stars 4.0 London Winners demonstrates a wider market understanding of the growing importance of statements of work within enterprises across all industries.
Punk Money lets communities, friends and families lend money easily and securely between themselves through a formalised contract and automated repayments, facilitating easy and secure loan arrangements between individuals. CEO Ewan Dickie tells us more.
How does it feel to be a Rising Stars regional winner?
Punk Money is the revolutionary new way to lend and borrow money. The current financial system is broken for much of the population, as millions of people are excluded from affordable credit while trillions of pounds sit dwindling in savings accounts earning no virtually no interest.
Our products use the latest technology to empower people to lend between friends, family and communities, faster, cheaper and more inclusively for everyone. In a world where student loans are for life, and the housing ladder is out of reach, Punk Money is the answer.
How has your region supported you in your journey so far?
As the epicentre of tech and finance, London is the best place for a disruptive fintech like Punk Money to find insight, support and talent.
Renude is a licenced expert and AI-powered online skincare suggestion service. Customers are connected to a professional specialist who helps them create a customised skincare programme based on their skin goals, budget, and preferences. Their intelligent platform analyses customers’ skin using computer vision while also tracking their preferences in order to tailor their recommended skincare plan to their specific needs. Cofounder Pippa Harman tells us more.
How does it feel to be a Rising Stars regional winner?
We’re absolutely thrilled that Renude has been chosen as a Rising Stars Regional Winner. It is brilliant to be recognised as one of the companies leading the way in bringing innovative technology to the UK beauty industry. Our mission is to make personalised skin support accessible to all, and we’re looking forward to helping many more people achieve their healthiest skin as we continue to develop our AI technology.
How has your region supported you in your journey so far?
We are based in London, and are lucky enough to have a whole host of opportunities for networking and learning. We went through an accelerator programme based in the capital, and through startup-focused events in the region we have been able to connect with mentors, investors and talent across a variety of sectors. In fact, it was at one of these events that we first met as cofounders!
Social Reputation is a digital financial service startup that uses an innovative model (of social reputation scoring) that enables individuals with limited access to use formal financial services.
The social reputation score is a measure of trust and social reputation, leveraging this as a measure of creditworthiness for several financial services including access to insurance, financial inclusion, KYC, and leasing, etc, for new migrants and students in the UK and USA.
The solution is available to users who do not have smartphones (using USSD and SMS channels). Social Reputation helps financial institutions and other partner organisations offer financial services based on social reputation to individuals who are underbanked or have little or no access to formal financial services.
How does it feel to be a Rising Stars regional winner?
It’s truly exciting days for us at Social Reputation. We are overjoyed at being selected as a Regional Winner and we look forward to making everyone in the team super proud. We are building a social network for trust, credit, insurance and much more.
Globally millions of people lack access to affordable credit and other formal financial services. This is a multi-million dollar problem. Our main focus is to help these people with thin files and people that are financially excluded access formal financial services.
We aim to continue to leverage the opportunity of being Regional Winners and the support of Tech Nation to expand our reach and equip more people with Social Reputation Score which will allow them to access formal financial services quicker, more affordably and bring about economic empowerment over time.
Trust Keith combines real humans with technology to help UK tech scaleups successfully comply with all data regulations, reduce their breach risk, and protect their staff online. Founder and CEO Rory Codrington tells us more.
How does it feel to be a Rising Stars regional winner?
We’re super excited to be recognised as a regional winner. With the support of Tech Nation, we look forward to continuing our mission of helping startup and scaleup founders become and stay data compliant, so they can scale with confidence.
How has your region supported you in your journey so far?
Shoutout to the London startup community and our customers – all of whom have been instrumental in helping us achieve our mission so far.
