The fortunes of 4 British startups in 2014

YPlan

YPlan has emerged as one of the brightest stars from the U.K. startup scene with its mobile-first approach to discovering the best events to go to today.

The last-minute ethos to booking events such as bands and live theater has clearly proved popular, with 30 percent of Londoners having the app installed on their iPhone — that’s quite a feat.

The company finally expanded beyond London with its New York launch in late 2013, before arriving in San Francisco in February this year and then Las Vegas. It has had 1.5 million downloads to date.

Fresh from a $24 million funding round just last month, in addition to the $12 million it raised the previous year, the company is looking to expand its offering from last-minute events into a marketplace that catches the entire long tail of events.

“This funding will be used to expand our footprint as well as product and engineering teams as we launch a range of new features, including ‘Invites,’ ‘Feedback,’ and ‘Preferences’ which will be released in the next few weeks,” said founder and CEO Rytis Vitkauskas.

Before that, YPlan has been busy building additional features, including a “Date Night” offering, acknowledging that many people use YPlan when looking for something to do with their partner.

YPlan has come a long way since its London-only beginnings back in 2012, going from a heavily curated “six to eight events” at any one time to many more. “We thought curating such a tightly focused list was what people wanted, but over time, we’ve learned that it’s not one size fits all,” said Vitkauskas. “There is an optimal number of events we can show you – it’s more than 10 and less than 50, and can vary from person to person – but it took time for us to realise that.”

Today, YPlan’s event curators shortlist as many as 100 events each day from around 1,500, before narrowing down its final selection for users. And by understanding its users more, YPlan should go from strength to strength next year.

“Knowing that 1.5 million people in the U.S. and U.K. recognize the value of what we do is a significant endorsement for us,” Vitkauskas said. “In addition to that, we also saw 300 percent growth year-on-year from 2013, and we have great momentum going into 2015.”

TransferWise

TransferWise has emerged as a key player in the so-called Fintech startup realm, serving up a smart peer-to-peer international money transfer service that cuts out the banks to help save you money.

In June, TransferWise announced a $25 million funding round, with big-name investors such as Richard Branson and Peter Thiel on board. It also launched its service on Android, some six months after it had first gone mobile with iOS.

The company embarked on a major “stop hidden fees” drive, too, with a dual offline-online antibank marketing approach ensuring it maximized its potential audience.

It seems this will continue to play a pivotal part in TransferWise’s push to garner the world’s attention, with the widely held notion that “banks are evil” proving an easy means of getting people on its side.

“Our biggest challenge is still getting people to understand how banks rip them off,” said Taavet Hinrikus, the cofounder of TransferWise, before adding that it managed to secure 18,000 signatures for its campaign to make the currency exchange market more transparent.

Looking forward to 2015, it’s going to be all about knuckling down and getting bigger. “We’re still going to be focusing on growth,” said Hinrikus. “We’ll be opening up new currency routes, localizing the website in new countries and, of course, we’ll keep working to make the FX market transparent and fair for consumers.”