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Thrive is set up by Funding London, a venture capital company bridging the finance gap for early stage businesses based in London. With over a decade’s experience in supporting the startups of London through a variety of funding vehicles, Funding London sensed a need to illuminate the ever-evolving scenario of London’s early stage businesses.

Thrive features interviews with and opinion from budding entrepreneurs, investors and industry experts. A mix of contributors from all areas of the industry is desired in order to spark genuine discussion about ongoing critical issues. While it showcases the effectiveness of successful ventures, it also encourages sharing lessons learned from missteps and unsuccessful projects.

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Trends · 3 December '18

Trends in the Tech Recruitment Market 2018

London remains a buoyant ecosystem for technology and innovation, retaining a leading role over all other European cities. The flow and abundance of capital form the bedrock for an entrepreneurship culture and an epicentre for global talent.

Most trends in the recruitment market start in major cities like London, New York and San Francisco, then ripple throughout the globe.

For anyone in the City, it is clear that the conventional approach to recruitment is mostly a relic of the past.

High growth companies want advisors and complete solutions, not just placing candidates. The meat conveyor belt for graduate and mid-career professionals is not working as requirements and standards increasing. Agencies and consultants need to manage both the talent and client expectations in the process.

It is a market for employers, a highly competitive ecosystem where the candidates of today are propelled to unimaginable highs if placed in a suitable role. The days of proportional results are gone, and the impact of a great hire is exponential.

In 2018, the recruitment market activity has intensified in the early stage ecosystem as a record number of companies backed by VCs compete in the market for the same highly skilled talent.

The London Co-Investment Fund has created over 700 new roles in part of 2018, over 1,700 since inception, with an even split across operations, marketing and technology, highlighting the recruitment of a diverse employment and talent market to sustain this economic sector.

For most technology companies to grow, a mosaic of skills will be required. It would be the understatement of the century if we focused only on technical roles or placed a higher value on them.

In the early stages of business development, every employee has an important role, and every skill gap is critical. Complementarity principles are most often applied to deliver unique, sometimes borderline impossible, projects and technologies. The people and their roles are no longer neatly contained, and professional development plans and strategy are brought forward than anticipated.

The trends we are seeing are a flowing consequence of the business development cycle which is shortening as more capital flows to growth stages. For existing portfolio companies, international expansion commences earlier than expected, shifting the pressures from technical roles to those sustaining operations and sales.

Most corporations required decades of growth to achieve genuinely global reach, while most VC infused companies raising at over $1bn valuations, an attempt on delivering the same results in 3-5 years and with a substantially lesser workforce.

It propels many organisations, sometimes unintendedly, in the same playing field as large corporations, pressured to develop global recruitment strategies while competing for exceptional talent across regions.