Why Abound and GoCardless Both Chose the Harder Problem
Every business we looked at this week had the option to chase something flashier, but didn't.
A lender that could have built another quick buy-now-pay-later app but built a credit engine instead. A payments company whose own co-founder left to build one of Britain's most talked-about neobanks, while the one who stayed kept working on Direct Debit. Retailers, defence startups and even a house full of founders in East London, all quietly choosing the harder, less photogenic version of the same bet.
None of it made headlines when it started, but it all worked out at the end.
This week's UK startup news moves from consumer lending to payments infrastructure, deep tech and pension capital and the same pattern holds across all of it.
We started this week trying to answer another simple question: How does Abound make money?
The real story wasn't the loan book, it was Gerald Chappell and Michelle He deciding, back in 2020, that a credit score was lying to them. Banks were rejecting good borrowers because a score couldn't see what a bank statement could. So Abound built a lending engine that reads the statement instead.
Six years on: over £1 billion lent, profitable within three years, "unusually early for a UK fintech" by Chappell's own account, and 490% growth that topped the 2026 Sunday Times Tech 100.
Read the full breakdown of How Abound makes money?
That same refusal to take the easy, obvious path showed up again in How Does GoCardless Make Money. Founder Hiroki Takeuchi built the company on Direct Debit, arguably the dullest payment method in Britain, while his co-founder Tom Blomfield left to build Monzo instead. Takeuchi stayed with the boring rails. GoCardless now moves $130 billion a year across 30+ countries, and is being acquired by Dutch rival Mollie for a reported €1.05 billion. Sometimes staying boring gets you bought.
Also on EP+ This Week:
Beyond Abound and GoCardless, this week's UK startup coverage on EP+ also spanned retail technology, exit mechanics, founder finance and legaltech:
- What the Ocado-M&S Partnership Really Reveals About UK Retail Technology: The Ocado-M&S joint venture is under real strain, yet the quieter business operating underneath it keeps signing new customers regardless. A useful read on where UK retail technology is actually holding up versus where the headlines suggest it's cracking.
- What Are Drag-Along Rights?: Drag-along rights are the clause that decides who actually controls a startup exit nobody saw coming. Worth understanding before a term sheet lands, not after, for any founder working through a UK startup funding round.
- Startup Accounting Basics: A practical primer on startup accounting basics, built for founders who'd rather learn the fundamentals before the investor call than scramble through them during it.
- Beyond the Cheque: Questions where the "safe" capital option for UK founders actually sits, challenging the usual assumptions behind early-stage UK startup funding decisions.
- Bridge Round Startup Funding: The companion piece makes the same case from the other direction: for many founders, bridge round startup funding turns out to be the deliberate choice rather than the fallback.
- UK LegalTech's AI Reckoning: A look at a sector where the winners weren't the obvious favourites going in, as AI reshapes who actually wins in UK legaltech.
The Wider UK Startup Ecosystem Told a Similar Story
The UK’s pension funds have spent years being told to back homegrown tech and mostly hadn't. This week, Railpen and Nest entered talks with the British Business Bank on a proposed £1 billion UK Scale-Up Fund, described by the Prime Minister as "a vote of confidence in British business."
The timing wasn't subtle, it landed weeks after France reportedly tried to block Britain from the EU's own €5bn Scaleup Europe Fund.
Deep tech quietly had a great week. Manchester's Nuclear Turbines raised €17.5 million for a compact reactor design that skips steam turbines entirely. Cambridge's TidalSense raised €16.6 million to take its AI respiratory diagnostics global. Neither will trend on X. Both are the kind of hard science that tends to outlast whatever is trending on X. Momentum in UK deep tech funding rarely trends, but it compounds.
Defence and property had their own moment as well: Agon raised $30 million building virtual battlefields for military training, and Dwelly raised $170 million on a simple thesis, buy up UK's letting agencies one by one, then run them on AI.
Worth a longer look: TechCrunch spent an afternoon inside Lift House, an East London founder house betting that journaling and volleyball beat 72-hour sprints. London AI startups alone have raised $12 billion of the $14.7 billion raised across all London startups this year, so the six people choosing piano nights over burnout might be onto something. It's a reminder that London startup funding keeps concentrating in AI, even as founders experiment with how they actually work.
One Pattern We Noticed
Nobody made the flashy choice this week, and that's exactly why it's worth noticing.
Abound built the harder engine instead of the easier app. Takeuchi stayed with Direct Debit while his co-founder chased the neobanking spotlight. Ocado's quiet platform business is outlasting its noisiest partnership. A pension fund industry famous for sitting on its hands just moved. Six founders in East London are betting that volleyball and sleep beat 72-hour sprints.
The businesses compounding fastest right now keep being the ones that picked the less impressive-looking option early and simply didn't flinch from it.
Whether that holds once everyone else notices is, as always, the thing we're watching next.
One Number
490% - Abound's revenue growth over three years, enough to top the 2026 Sunday Times Tech 100 as Britain's fastest-growing private technology company.
Question of the Week
This one's for the founders:
Hiroki Takeuchi stayed with Direct Debit, while his co-founder left to build Monzo instead.
Have YOU ever made that same call, staying on the thing you'd already started building while someone close to you jumped to the next big idea, and been glad later on that you stayed with your initial idea?
We'd genuinely like to know, so do reply and tell us.
Sources: Abound and GoCardless coverage draws on EP+'s own reporting, published this week. External figures from Sifted (UK Scale-Up Fund, Lift House founder culture via TechCrunch), EU-Startups (Nuclear Turbines, TidalSense), Tech.eu (Agon, Legora), and Startup Fortune (Dwelly). All figures reflect the most recent data available at the time of writing.
