The Times recently reported that Britain is now home to 80 billion-dollar start-ups, more than any country except the US and China. With 23 new unicorns created in the past year, this is Britain’s highest-ever total – a welcome sign of the entrepreneurial ambition, innovation and talent our economy needs to thrive.
With Andy Burnham set to enter Number 10, his government should focus on how to build on this momentum by creating the conditions that enable more firms to scale while keeping their roots in Britain. This means ensuring we are an attractive country to invest in, and stay in. As the second biggest exporter of services, the UK has every reason to be recognised as a credible service-led country, and we need to be shouting about this! We can generate real growth, momentum and confidence if we focus on the key differentiator – the customer experience.
But government policy, valuations and funding rounds cannot guarantee long-term success. For many of these companies, sustained growth will depend on building a distinctive and reliable service proposition that earns and maintains customer trust.
Our UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) consistently demonstrates that organisations delivering high customer satisfaction also achieve stronger loyalty, greater trust and better long-term financial performance. For Britain’s fastest-growing companies, service should be seen not as an operational cost, but as a strategic asset that drives sustainable growth.
That matters even more when only 10 of the country’s 80 unicorns make physical products. The rest are built on software or services, underlining the UK’s strength as a service economy.
From start-up success to service-led scale
Services underpin many of Britain’s next-generation firms. Companies such as Octopus and Kraken show that growth depends not only on innovation, but on the ability to deliver simple and reliable experiences, communicate clearly and earn customers’ trust.
The challenge for fast-growing companies is to maintain service quality as they win more clients and customers. Rapid growth creates opportunity, but it can also expose weaknesses. That is why businesses must keep prioritising customers, old and new, at every stage of their growth.
Start-ups are often focused on delivering results for current and potential investors, but the best investors also understand the value of customer experience and a long-term approach. A reputation for quality, consistency and trust is one of the strongest foundations for long-term success – and founders should not shy away from making that case.
Building the next generation of British success stories
The next Prime Minister has a real opportunity to support Britain’s most innovative, high-growth companies: to build on these 80 success stories and create the conditions for more to emerge. Government can help by investing in skills, digital capability and regulatory certainty.
Ultimately, however, lasting success will depend on how organisations serve their customers. Britain’s next generation of companies can increase long-term revenues and strengthen UK productivity by combining entrepreneurial ambition with consistently high standards of service.
That means using AI to improve productivity and customer outcomes, and knowing when human support is needed and ensuring it remains available. It means protecting the service proposition that won firms their first customers, and recognising that empathy, judgement – based on analysis but also intuition – and reassurance remain fundamentally human strengths.
Britain’s entrepreneurial success should be celebrated. But the companies that define the next decade will not simply be those that scale fastest – they will be those that earn the greatest trust. By putting service at the centre of growth, today’s unicorns can become tomorrow’s enduring success stories, strengthening their own businesses and the wider UK economy.
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