Rising Stars 3.0 is the UK’s most exciting competition for innovative, early-stage tech companies. Designed to showcase the best the country has to offer, we provide the platform for businesses from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to shine bright.
You’ll benefit from significant profile raising on both a national and international level, as well as the opportunity to put your business in front of leading investors, influencers and corporates. We’ll even work with you to ensure your business is investor ready.
Applications are now closed.
Rising Stars 3.0 is the UK’s only truly national scaleup competition, designed to be accessible to the best early-stage tech companies from all areas of the country.
Entrants are supported throughout the application process, and given training and support at each stage of the competition to enable you to compete to your best ability and deliver the perfect pitch.
The competition culminates in the top 20 companies being showcased online and promoted to a highly curated audience of investors, corporates, influencers and the wider tech ecosystem. The judging panel will then deliberate over the final 20, selecting 10 companies to be named as this year’s Rising Stars, who will feature in a high-profile celebration event, held exclusively online.
We’ve spent time listening to feedback from previous Rising Stars winners and curating a bespoke package of support to help take your business to the next level, including:
Pitch training and coaching by Sunderland Software City
Meet potential investors through a series of VC office hours and AMAs
Opportunity to showcase your business to a curated audience of investors, accelerators, entrepreneurs and corporate leaders
Tech Nation content campaigns and national press coverage
Induction into the Rising Stars and wider Tech Nation alumni network
Speaking opportunities, thought leadership and press through the Tech Nation network
We want to showcase the brightest and best that UK tech has to offer. Businesses must meet a few simple criteria though, including:
* no agencies or consultancies, sorry.
London | Fintech | @ClearGlass
ClearGlass is a digital intermediary between asset managers and pension funds. It collects underlying costs and performance data from asset managers and helps pension funds decide which is the best fund to invest in for their members.
Truro | Digital Entertainment | @quizkit
Codices Interactive provides viewers with a live interactive video platform, enabling any broadcaster to create interactive shows. Its first product is now the most used gameshow creation tool on the Twitch platform, with 1,000+ monthly active broadcasters and 300,000 unique monthly viewers.
London | Tech For Good | @hypdev
CoGrammar operates the largest coding education provider in Africa - HyperionDev. Through this, they source, select, train, and integrate full-time code reviewers from top African tech talent. This allows Western companies to affordably assess developers and technical team quality, whilst creating hundreds of jobs in African countries.hypdev
Norwich | Edtech | @developexperts
Empowering teachers and parents to teach science with confidence through a library of over 700 interactive, online science lessons.
Cambridge | Hardware & Devices & IoT | @FoundriesIO
Rising Stars 2.0 winners Foundries.io address security and device management for IoT and Edge devices by developing software micro-platforms. They provide a self-service cloud solution with turnkey services to develop, secure, deploy and maintain embedded IoT and Edge compute products. They enable secure IoT devices and provide lifetime software maintenance at a fraction of current costs.
Bristol | Hardware & Devices & IoT | @MetasonicsCo
Developing the next generation of customised, scalable acoustic metamaterials, changing the way we use and interact with sound.
Edinburgh | Tech For Good | @neatebox
Tackling personal loneliness and communication, the Neatebox “Welcome” platform removes barriers and promotes empathetic relationships between consumers and customer service teams, promoting real societal change and heralding a new age of understanding and communication.
Ringwood | Artificial Intelligence | SaaS | @peoplematterltd
People Matter Tech’s mental wellness platform is a safe online space that measures and improves mental wellness at work, without surveys. Their AI learns who you are and how your digital environment impacts your burnout risk, offering personalised recommendations.
Chorley | Data Analytics & Cyber security | SaaS | @ppcprotect
Rising Stars 1.0 alumni PPC Protect develop automation software for PPC advertisements, aiming to minimise the effects of click fraud and ad fraud for digital media advertisers, a criminal activity that is estimated to cost up from $19bn in 2019 - and it shows no sign of slowing down.
London | Lawtech | @seedlegals
The world's first and only automated legal service for funding rounds, SeedLegals make it super easy for startups to raise investment and manage company equity at a fraction of the cost of traditional service providers. No paper. No law firms. No accountants. Everything's done digitally on their platform. Launching back in 2016, today they are the largest closer of funding rounds in the UK.
Harwell | Tech For Good | @serelaytech
Enabling mobile device users to capture verifiable photos and videos, and platforms receiving these to query them for authenticity of content, time and location.
Birmingham | Ecommerce & Marketplace | @shopperdotcom
Shopper.com is a community-driven global marketplace for online and offline voucher codes, covering thousands of e-commerce sites. It automatically applies the best value voucher code at checkout in one click for both mobile and desktop devices.
Southampton | SaaS
Working in the retail and fashion space, Sparkbox uses machine learning to reduce stock, improve profitability, and prevent over-discounting by optimising prices. Their AI helps retail teams leverage their data, understand the impact of pricing decisions and make the most of the inventory they own
Glasgow | Healthtech & Biotech | @TMedicines
Talking Medicines captures the digital voice of the patient, aggregating it into patterns of behaviours and commercialising it to brand managers in pharmaceutical companies through subscription access. They put patient centricity at the core of what they do, aiming to improve outcomes of medicines.
Lincoln | Hardware & Devices & IoT | @tended
Offering intelligent personal safety wearables and monitoring systems that provide all-round safety solutions for individuals and businesses.
Liverpool | Fintech | @my_tickr
tickr is transforming impact investment for Europe’s next generation of investors. For people who want to invest, but want to have a positive impact on society and the environment at the same time, tickr's app allows users to invest in socially responsible companies with as little as £5.
Manchester | SaaS | @tootootofficial
tootoot is award-winning software that supports the psychological safety and wellbeing of individuals within education, sport and the workplace. tootoot provides a way for individuals to raise a concern to their organisation with complete confidentiality
Leeds | Healthtech & Biotech | @PetJoii
Combining the expertise of qualified vets and groundbreaking new technologies to deliver mobile, on-demand veterinary care, direct to pet parents.
Oxford | Healthtech & Biotech | @vitaccess
A platform that produces real-time data on how diseases and treatments impact patients’ everyday lives, based on tailor-made apps installed on their smartphones.
Cardiff | Artificial Intelligence | @ebuild_bots
We Build Bots delivers AI powered automation to the public sector, helping organisations deliver better, faster and cheaper citizen services. Leveraging bots, voice and conversational analytics, they help the public sector make better use of the data they collect, making it more predictive and more productive.
No one likes being judged, but in the case of a competition, it’s a necessary evil. That’s why we’ve pulled together an industry leading panel of judges to impartially judge entrants to this year’s competition.
“Winning Rising Stars was great for us as it gave us credibility, increased our visibility and boosted our profile among the investor community and the wider public.”
Sonu Bubna, Co-founder, Shopper
“Rising Stars was crucial in helping us perfect our pitch. After we won we sent around our winning pitch to investors and managed to very quickly close our Seed Round.”
Tim Edwards, CEO & Co-founder, Codices
“There were 3 reasons we entered Rising Stars – it raises your profile and spreads your name among other startups and investors, being involved with Tech Nation is a great stamp of approval and builds trust and recognition, and finally it’s a big morale booster for everyone involved in the business”
Anthony Rose, Founder & CEO, SeedLegals
