Oct 12th 2023

Meet the Top 3 Super Startups of 2024!

Now in its fifth year, The Super Startups celebrates companies who are not only building game-changing products but are also creating amazing places to work – offering environments where people can learn, grow and be supported in developing their careers.

The competition for the Top 100 Super Startups was fierce this year, with several hundred nominations pouring in. Our selection process remains dedicated to recognising the strenuous efforts made by companies to create an exceptional environment where individuals can confidently launch and elevate their careers.

We’re thrilled to speak with the top 3 Super Startups of 2024: Urban Jungle, Yonder, and Incident.io, to get more of an insight of what it’s like to work there.

 

1st Place: Urban Jungle

Superpower: Urban Jungle is transforming the insurance industry and creating a world where everybody feels confident about their financial future.

In 3 words, how would you describe the culture at Urban Jungle?

Friendly, collaborative, and ambitious.

What do you like most about working at Urban Jungle?

As part of our onboarding process, we encourage all new starters to arrange 1-1 meetings with every member of the team during their first three months. It’s a common sentiment among new hires to say, “I almost didn’t believe everyone during the interview process when they mentioned how kind everyone is, but it’s absolutely true!”

It’s precisely this genuine kindness that fuels our enthusiasm for coming to work each day and what truly sets Urban Jungle apart as a special place to work.

 

What are Urban Jungle’s values and how are they promoted?

We have four core values at Urban Jungle: Customer First, Be Responsible, Keep Getting Better, and Aim for Extraordinary. Our core values are not merely theoretical ideals; they are embedded into the fabric of our business and most notably, how we interview potential members of the team and review the performance of existing employees.

At Urban Jungle, our value of “Customer First” is exemplified by the fact that every member of the team does customer support – our CTO & Co-Founder, Greg, still does several days a week. For us, it’s crucial that everyone in the team speaks to our customers firsthand to truly understand their wants, needs and challenges. We also believe that given the broad range of things our customers might need help with, having cross-functional support means solving issues faster. For example, a policy-related query can be quickly solved by a member of our insurance team and a bug on our website can be escalated by one of our engineers. Overall, we all rely on each other to ensure we deliver excellent support to our customers. 

“Be Responsible” is another one of our core values. It manifests itself in two ways: through our commitment to improving the world around us, and through taking responsibility for making an impact on the success of Urban Jungle. As a business, we care deeply about the planet and the impact we have on the environment. Over the past few years, we’ve been on a journey to formalise our approach and ensure we’re playing our part in taking care of our planet. Working alongside Carbon Neutral Britain, we’re measuring our carbon footprint and offsetting our total carbon emissions through internationally recognised projects, including supporting hydroelectric power in Brazil and wind power in the Philippines. In 2021, we certified as an official Carbon Neutral Business – having offset more than our emissions – and have been committed to being carbon-neutral every year since. More recently, we achieved the ultimate recognition by achieving B-Corporation (B-Corp) status in 2022. We’re now just one of only ten personal insurance businesses globally to secure the certification, supporting our ambition to make insurance fair for everyone. 

Doing the right thing isn’t just about our customers and the planet, it’s also about how we treat our people, and we welcome this scrutiny with open arms! We’re committed to helping our employees flourish in a supportive and inclusive environment through our “Keep Getting Better” value. To promote professional growth, we offer a yearly personal development budget of £600 to each employee which can be used to attend courses and events, or purchase books to support their role. We’ve built our own internal mentoring scheme which gives everyone in the business the opportunity to be mentored by a senior member of the team. Mentors act as advocates for the individual’s development and progression within Urban Jungle, as well as supporting them with anything else that crops up at work. These initiatives are supported by our quarterly appraisal and objective setting process which provides every team member regular 360° feedback on their performance and development to help them progress rapidly within their careers. To further aid the team’s development, we’ve curated a series of training sessions around the core skills for success at Urban Jungle – including feedback, communicating with impact, problem solving and project management.

Our final value, ‘Aim for Extraordinary’, is a guiding principle that infuses every facet of our business with purpose and impact. As our Head of Strategic Projects, Camille, puts it: “We don’t settle for just good – we want to lead the path and be trailblazers in the industry so that others follow suit.” We have the very highest bar: from our Joy Division (social committee) events, to the way we design and sell our products, to how we support our customers, we strive for extraordinary in everything we do. This mentality has earned us a strong reputation among our customers, investors, and awarding institutions alike. Not only do we have an Excellent rating on Trustpilot from over 8,400 people, we were also recently recognised in Finder’s Home Insurance Customer Satisfaction Awards 2023, with 91% of our customers surveyed saying they would recommend it to a friend or family member. We were named as InsurTech Provider of the Year in the UK Enterprise Awards 2023 and most recently: 1st in Tempo’s Super Start Ups 2024!

 

What are some of Urban Jungle’s standout benefits? 

In addition to our positive, open working environment, you can expect the following benefits of working at Urban Jungle:

• Bi-annual compensation reviews and share options to reward high performance
• Gender-neutral parental policies offering 10 weeks’ full pay
• £600 yearly learning & development budget
• A monthly budget for company-wide and team socials and events, including offsites 
• Weekly yoga sessions on-site and funding for team sports clubs
• Mental health support through Spill platform
• £1,000 referral reward for team members

 

 

2nd Place: Yonder

Superpower: Yonder are rebuilding the broken credit market and putting customers first.

In 3 words, how would you describe the culture at Yonder?

Transparent, Empowering, Supportive

What do you like most about working at Yonder? 

How long have you got?! 

Yonder feels like a really unique place to work, perfectly balancing incredible talent with great teamwork. Team matters more than anything at Yonder. Building the right team and the right culture has a multiplicative effect – great teams attract other great people, making building 10x easier and 10x more fun.

Everyone’s passion for Yonder is palpable; we all work incredibly hard on making Yonder a success and are really excited about its future. Then there’s our autonomy and trust that’s placed on every employee, which is fantastic for personal development.

Furthermore, our no-blame culture never allows others to fail. Being comfortable with taking bets that don’t work out – as long as the learnings are valuable – helps us be bolder and braver in our next decision.

But most importantly, we are incredibly supportive. Wins are celebrated, individuals are supported but not micro-managed, and mistakes are seen as an important part of our journey as long as lessons are learned from them.

 

What are Yonder’s values and how are they promoted?

Obsess over customers: We obsess over our customers, ensuring every interaction is seamless. We prioritise direct customer contact, expecting all Yonderers to engage with customers regularly. We value long-term customer satisfaction over short-term gains.

Move quickly and learn: We move quickly, make reversible decisions promptly, and foster a no-blame culture. We believe in learning from our mistakes, even if it means taking bold bets that may not always pay off.

Embrace the challenge, together: Great work is achieved by great teams. We encourage seeking help, challenging directly, and caring personally. We share the load and practise radical candour, maintaining high standards for one another.

Act like an owner: We set high standards, act in Yonder’s and society’s best interests, and give leaders the autonomy to own outcomes. Equity is not limited to a select few; every full-time employee shares in our success.

These values define our culture and guide our decisions, ensuring we deliver exceptional results while prioritising customer satisfaction, learning, teamwork, and responsible ownership.

 

What are some of Yonder’s standout benefits? 

At Yonder, we believe in taking care of our team members. That’s why we offer a range of standout benefits: 

• 16 weeks of enhanced gender-neutral parental leave 
• A £500 yearly budget for Learning and Development, enabling team members to invest in their personal and professional growth 
• Equity options as Yonder’s success is our success 
• Private healthcare with Aviva to support our team’s well-being 

 

3rd Place: incident.io

Superpower: Chaos-calming incident management through Slack

 

In 3 words, how would you describe the culture at incident.io?

Magic, Trust & Transparency

What do you like most about working at incident.io?

The people. Rarely do you find a company where every individual embodies purpose and passion in their roles. I eagerly look forward to each day at the office because I’m surrounded by a community that fosters camaraderie and unity. For example, during our recent offsite in Barcelona, the Engineering team efficiently organised their on-call duties in under five minutes, showcasing our team’s remarkable ability to come together when needed.

Also, our founders. It’s a unique experience to witness a founding team equally dedicated to their people as they are to their product. Our founders embrace an inclusive approach, forging personal connections with every employee. This commitment extends to our potential team members, with at least one founder participating in our final-round cultural interviews. This ensures that we not only attract top talent but also initiate a strong rapport with our leaders right from the start.

What are incident.io’s values and how are they promoted?

Make it magic: These are for the moments we go the extra mile for a customer. One example has been when a customer hits a milestone of 5000 incidents, we send them a cake to congratulate them. When someone hits their 1st anniversary in the business, we give them a mini incident flame neon light and a flame balloon over their desk to mark the occasion. 

Win together: Closing a deal with a customer doesn’t just involve the Sales team at incident—often this is a company-wide push. From the start, our Engineering and Customer Success teams are involved to ensure that customers do not have to wait for an answer to a question. Meanwhile, our Head of Legal is negotiating contracts and will often take time in the evenings to speak with customers due to time zone differences. 

Raise the pace: Within our Product team we ship our Changelog every week, showing our customers all of the amazing work we have been shipping. On the Talent team, we are able to interview candidates and extend offers before many other companies have had the opportunity to meet the candidate. 

Find a way: Like many companies that were caught up in the SVB crisis, Chris, Pete, Charlie, and Eva spent their weekend working through plans and scenarios. They also made sure to keep everyone in the business updated via Slack so we weren’t in the dark about what was happening. 

Trust by default: As a business, we are very open with how we are doing and don’t shy away from difficult conversations. We look at this as a challenge for us to tackle head-on in the next days, weeks, and months.

 

What are some of incident.io’s standout benefits? 

• Enjoy an extended weekend with our “Last Friday Off” perk, which conveniently aligns with payday.
• New joiners receive a £1000/$1000 stipend, allowing them to enhance their work setup with items like office headphones, improved lighting for video calls, or ergonomic remote desks.
• Customise your holiday schedule by selecting which bank and federal holidays you’d like to work, giving you the flexibility to use that time off on a more convenient date.
• We provide extended parental leave for all full-time employees with over a year of tenure at the time of their child’s birth/placement, along with dedicated adoption leave options.

 

And that’s all, folks! You’ve seen the top 3 companies to work for in 2024. We’re excited to see what these companies accomplish over the next 12 months!

If you’re looking for an opportunity at top UK startups, sign up to Tempo today.