The numbers in this piece come from the Companies House register: 1,863 dissolutions among the 29,609 UK marketing companies incorporated since January 2025, analysed 13 July 2026. Method at the bottom. We publish this because the pattern is useful to anyone hiring a young supplier, in any industry.
Young companies do not fade away. They die in two waves.
Plot the age at which young companies dissolve and you do not get a smooth slope. You get twin peaks. The first wave hits at months 4 to 9: these are voluntary strike-offs, founders who applied to close their own company. Month 4 is close to the fastest a company can legally be dissolved after forming, which tells you something stark: a meaningful share of companies die about as quickly as the process allows, having likely never traded at all.
The trough comes around the first birthday. Then the second wave rises, peaking around months 14 to 16. This one is not chosen. A company’s first confirmation statement falls due roughly a year and two weeks after incorporation; miss it, and Companies House eventually begins compulsory strike-off. The second wave is the registrar’s broom, sweeping up companies that stopped answering, or never really existed as businesses in the first place.
The quitters and the ghosts
Two waves, two different failure types. The first wave is honest, in its way: someone tried, or decided not to, and closed the company themselves. The second wave is the more useful warning for buyers, because a company in it looks alive right up until it is not. Its website may still be online, its socials still standing, while its filing record quietly goes overdue and the strike-off notice works through the system.
What this means when you hire a young company
Under about 9 months old: you are inside the first wave’s window. That does not make a young firm a bad choice, but it makes basic protections sensible: pay by card or in stages, confirm a real address, and expect responsiveness now, not promises about later.
12 to 18 months old: one free check cuts through everything. Open their Companies House filing history and look at the first confirmation statement. Filed on time: the company is administratively alive and someone is at the wheel. Overdue: that is precisely the profile of the second wave, and no website polish should override it.
Any age: this pairs with the register checks in our guide to checking whether a marketing agency is legitimate. Companies House is free, public, and takes minutes; it remains the most under-used buyer tool in Britain.
Method, so you can check it
Cohort: all 29,609 companies with marketing-services SIC codes incorporated at Companies House between 1 January 2025 and 12 July 2026, of which 1,863 had dissolved with a recorded cessation date at analysis time. Lifespan is measured in whole months from incorporation to dissolution. Honest limits: companies at the 18-month boundary are excluded from wave analysis because the cohort itself is only 18 months old, so that bucket is inflated by measurement timing rather than mortality; and dissolution timing reflects administrative process as well as commercial failure, which is part of the finding rather than a flaw in it. The pattern is drawn from marketing companies; the confirmation-statement mechanics apply to every UK company. Data is public and the analysis is reproducible. Corrections welcome at hello@modemarketing.co.uk.
Where Mode fits
Mode Marketing Limited is company 16231339, filings on time, prices published, and we put those checks in writing because we pass them. If you are choosing between young suppliers, run the five-minute checks above on all of them, including us.
