About Nesta

Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better. We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society.

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20 shades of startup

Taking a fresh look at different types of startups to better understand tomorrow’s innovators.

Digital startups have boomed in recent years and are now top of policymakers’ priority lists. The success stories we hear about often showcase digital businesses, located in London and enabled by venture capital to scale quickly.

But these aren’t the only companies contributing to innovation and economic growth. High-growth firms are spread across various industries and almost equally present in high-tech and low-tech sectors, so we interviewed a range of innovators from across the UK.

This is our list of 20 diverse startups to help us understand how hard-tech and non-tech startups as well as digital businesses differ in the challenges they face and the support they require.

What do you think? Please let us know on our blog.

Find out more about this Startups project.