Link: Top 250 Scaleups 2021

Overview: 250 scaleups 2021

Lustrum Edition: Five Years of Top 250 Scaleups
Despite the COVID19-pandemic, scaleups are still an engine of job creation.

Top 250 Scaleups show that most fast-growing companies are located in sectors at the intersection of digitalisation, services and marketing & media. The fifth edition of Top 250 Scaleups is presented on 1st of June and is an initiative of Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship and nlgroeit. North Holland leads the list with 90 companies, followed by the provinces of North Brabant (51) and South Holland (42). Of all the Top 250 Scaleups, only 5% has a female founder, a further decrease compared to the previous edition.

This lustrum edition shows that fast-growing companies are benefiting from accelerated changes in customer demand and relationships, especially in the field of digitalisation as innovative revenue models were already implemented before the corona pandemic. Prof. dr. Justin Jansen, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Academic Director of Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship: “These companies are progressive in developing new solutions and also able to manage the high-growth of their organisation. They do this by continuously improving, accelerating and adapting the organisation to future challenges.”

Number 1 fast-growing company in the Netherlands

In autumn, Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship and nlgroeit will present the Top 10. During this occasion, the Number 1 fast-growing company in the Netherlands and winner of the Golden Grower Award will be announced. Last year, this honour went to Takeaway.com. The food delivery company created 4,703 new jobs (in FTE) and thus grew the fastest in the 2020 edition. The 250 companies from the previous edition grew by more than 30,000 FTE overall.

Top 250 Scaleups in the COVID19-pandemic

While vulnerable to crises, scaleups can also be the quickest to recover from recessions and act as an engine for economic recovery. ''The 250 innovative companies represented in this report are the perfect examples of scaleups as an engine for economic recovery. In total, these scaleups have created about as many new jobs as the Top 250 Scaleups before the pandemic," said Martin Luxemburg, director of the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship.

Growth capacity

Nlgroeit, an initiative of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate, Chamber of Commerce, NLevator and NL2025, is a multi-year programme that aims to increase the growth capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises.