Sisense, the business analytics software company that offers business intelligence products has revealed in a new study, an increase in “confidence” in the UK tech sector through 2014.

Analyses of a decade worth of startup data on 12,000 UK companies against data on approximately 300,000 companies in the CrunchBase database sheds light on investment patterns, leading technologies and geographical distribution providing “a bird’s-eye view of industry trends and developments,” explains Sisense.

“Our analysis indicates the rise in, and assurance of both the UK market and the overall European tech scene,” says Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist of Sisense, Adi Azaria. “Until now, there was much talk and buzz about a resurgence. In just a few minutes, our dashboard provides the evidence to support this, along with the details on where and how much.”

Key findings of the study indicate that:

• A 140% growth in total investments in startups in UK was charted in 2014 compared to 2013 and 270% (vs 2009) over the past five years

• On average, UK startups raised more Series C and D funding than startups from any other country globally in 2014 for those same rounds, including the US

• The greatest number of investments in 2014 were in software, with mobile attracting the most funding and the return of bio-tech as a key UK sector

• London, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Dublin startups attracted the most investment

• UK startups attract Series A funding faster than those in the US, averaging around 6 months. In comparison, startups based Stateside usually take 18 months to raise Series A. However, while Series A and Series B rounds tend to be weaker in the UK, series C and D rounds are stronger than anywhere else around the world.
• In 2014, the UK tech sector grew, with a total investment of $6.7 billion (£4.4 billion) as compared to 2013’s $2.7 billion (£1.76 billion), with 80% of it fashioned for early stage startups. Older tech outfits garnered funding larger than those raised by companies globally.
• Software, mobile and biotech have been the leading tech sectors. Mobile witnessed a 465% year-on-year growth to £650 million ($900 million), while the biotech sector saw renewed interest in 2014, with the highest median raise (87%) of investment per company at £3 million ($4.7 million).
• Territorially, London managed nearly two thirds of total tech investment, securing £2.9 billion ($4.5 billion) from more than 460 companies, while Cambridge startups, raising a funding, totaling £135 million ($209 million) across 34 companies in biotech, software, manufacturing and mobile, stood a distant second. Edinburgh’s 21 startups secured just over £50 million ($79.9 million) and the 72 startups based Dublin attracted £200 million ($310 million), reports Sisense.

A dedicated, interactive Dashboard that is updated in real-time based on the CrunchBase database and is part of the Crunch Analytics project, provides investors and entrepreneurs with a worldwide view of the same data.

Image credit: Sisense

On a global scale, both genetic distance and phonemic distance between populations are significantly correlated with geographic distance, where phonemics has to do with sound units that distinguish meaning between words in language.

As populations move away, it brings about change in both the linguistics and genes of the respective populations.

Greater the dispersion in geographies, greater is the change in both genes and phonemes.

These findings were made true by data analyses conducted jointly and in parallel, from phoneme inventories from 2,082 worldwide languages and microsatellite polymorphisms from 246 global populations, where Microsatellite polymorphisms are individually varying DNA sequences.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study was carried out by a research team that comprised of anthropologists and biologists from Stanford University, University of Manitoba and  Brown University.

Using statistical data analyses, study revealed certain other nuances as well: “Geographically close language pairs share significantly more phonemes than distant language pairs, whether or not the languages are closely related,” the research says.

It was also found that although “geographically isolated populations lose genetic diversity via genetic drift,” phonemes act differently: “within a given geographic radius, languages that are relatively isolated exhibit more variance in number of phonemes than languages with many neighbours.”

Read the full study here.

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(Image credit: ЕленАндреа, via Flickr)