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7 min read
Published on October 7, 2026
What drives exceptional growth? That was the question I was asked on stage at the Sifted Summit last week, in front of 1500 attendees, more than 60 partners and over 200 investors packed into Protein Studios in Shoreditch. It's the Summit's fifth year now, and the room felt like it. If you've been to one of these, you know the difference between a first-year event and a mature one. People weren't there for inspiration. They were there for answers.
My answer probably wasn't what the panel expected.
It's what happens after the conversation that matters most.
I've spent enough time working with growing companies to see the pattern. The ones that scale well aren't necessarily the ones with the best pitch or the biggest round. They're the ones who've figured out how to close the gap between deciding something and actually finishing it. A strategy session that turns into real tasks before anyone leaves the room. A customer call that generates follow-ups the team can act on the same day. That loop, from conversation to completion, is where growth either compounds or leaks.
I said "conversation to completion" probably three or four times during the panel. It was a bit much, I'll admit. But it kept fitting.
The part that got the most energy in the room was about AI. One of the other panellists, a VC who's been advising companies for a decade, made the point that AI is showing up in almost every pitch deck right now. His question: is it actually changing the operating model, or just changing the slide?
I think it's changing the model, but only when it's built into how a company works day to day. Five years ago, a company of 50 needed to hire analysts, ops leads, project managers, and CX specialists before it could operate like a serious business. Today, you can use technology to compensate for the expertise you can't yet afford. Meeting summaries that capture decisions. Follow-ups that travel with the work. Context that carries across teams and time zones without someone manually passing it along.
A company of 50 with the right setup can operate with the discipline of a company of 500. We see it in our Solopreneur 50 programme, where solo founders, selected from nearly 3,000 applicants, are running real businesses with lean teams and real recurring revenue. AI isn't their pitch deck. It's their operating model.
If that's possible for a company of one, think about what it means for the companies in the Sifted 250.
The panel got into what constitutes high-quality revenue. ARR, retention, margins. My honest answer: there's no such thing as "good revenue." There's just revenue. What makes it last is whether customers actually get what they were promised.
In a subscription model, you need happy customers. And customers are happier when they're not stitching together five different tools to get one job done. When the product delivers after the sale, not just during it, that's when retention holds and expansion follows. That's the platform argument, and it's the one I keep coming back to.
The numbers are worth your time. 56 of the 250 companies are AI-native, up from 18 last year. B2B SaaS is the biggest category again at 81 companies. Average revenue CAGR over two years across the full ranking rose from 225.8% to 249.3%. The bar is moving up, not just the leaders.
The stat I keep coming back to is about team size. Auk generated €21.2 million in revenue with 15 employees. Toduba did €41.8 million with 39. n8n, valued at $5.2 billion, wants to reach a billion users with fewer than 1,000 people. n8n's CEO Jan Oberhauser put it well: "When everyone has access to the same powerful tools, the only thing that's different is the people."
AI changes the economics of scaling. But it makes the quality of your people and your conversations more important, not less.
Thank you to Sifted for having us on stage and at the roundtable. It's one of the few events where the conversations between sessions are as good as the ones on stage.
Get the complete Sifted 250 report
The Sifted 250 is an annual ranking of Europe's 250 startups with the highest percentage revenue growth over three financial years, published by Sifted. The 2026 edition highlights the dominance of AI and fintech companies and covers sectors from climate tech to deeptech.
The Sifted Summit took place on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, 2026, at Protein Studios in Shoreditch, London, with 3,000 attendees and 200 speakers across two days. Topics included what drives exceptional revenue growth, how AI is reshaping startup operating models, and how companies turn a breakout period into a repeatable engine.
AI built into a company's daily workflow, such as meeting summaries, automated follow-ups, and persistent context across teams, can reduce the need for early specialist hires and help small teams operate with the discipline of much larger organizations. Zoom Workplace includes many of these AI features in its paid plans.
Zoom's Solopreneur 50 programme selected 50 solo founders from nearly 3,000 applicants, providing grants and tools to help them build their businesses. It demonstrates how the right AI infrastructure can help smaller companies operate at scale.
