Founders: Alexander Will and Henry Erskine Crum
Website: www.spoonfed.co.uk

Helping customers sort through thousands of events quickly and easily, Spoonfed is a web and mobile guide to London entertainment. Henry and Alexander were inspired to create an entertainment guide to London while studying at the London School of Economics. They felt no current listings guide made it easy to find out what’s on in the way that young, tech-savvy consumers have come to expect. Using the Bullseye cloud service for marketers in the entertainment and leisure industries as the focus of its revenue model, Spoonfed already tops 250,000 unique users and since June 2009, site traffic has been growing at 25% month-on-month.

Founder: Jamie Murray Wells
Website: www.hearingdirect.com

HearingDirect.com is the latest offering from Jamie, who started online specs retailer Glasses Direct in 2001 at the tender age of 21, and has since grown it into a £10m turnover business. Applying the same model to hearing aids, Jamie’s new site offers customers the same products for a fraction of the price of high street outlets. The average price for fitted hearing aids on the high street runs into the thousands but HearingDirect.com prices start at £99.

Founder: James Davis
Website: www.upad.co.uk

Upad is a new breed of letting agent without a high street branch. The service streamlines the lettings process for landlords by applying technology to the traditional model. ‘Accidental landlord’ James rented out rooms in his first house to allow him to pay his mortgage when he was just out of university. This was the start of his ‘12-years-and-counting’ property interest. Launched in October 2008, the site receives about 450 tenant enquiries per day.

Founder: Karen Hastings
Website: www.cupcakemum.com

Cupcake is a members club for pregnant women, mums and their families. The chain of clubs offer spa treatments, crèche facilities, fitness classes and a range of seminars on everything from interior design to entrepreneurship. Founder Karen opened her first club in Putney, London in April 2008 and quickly built up the club’s reputation. Just 18 months later a second site opened, and Cupcake’s third club is due to open this year. Having attracted significant angel investment, former marketing director Karen is now hoping to roll the concept out across London.

Founders: Alastair Lindsay, Chris Wickson, Oliver Sidwell
Website: www.ratemyplacement.co.uk

Launched in August 2007, RateMyPlacement.co.uk is a ‘complete online marketplace’ for students, universities and employers involved in undergraduate work placements and internships. The three founders, Alastair, Chris and Oliver, came up with the idea for the company after completing year-long placements as part of their degree studies. They felt there was an information gap when it came to work placements and internships, and decided they could bridge it.

RateMyPlacement.co.uk’s forum style rating system provides undergraduates with valuable insight into placement opportunities, and boasts clients including Morgan Stanley, Debenhams, Nestle and IBM.

Founder: Alex Meisl
Website: www.skins4things.com

Creating bespoke high quality vinyl skins produced in the UK, skins4things allows customers to personalise a wide range of electronic devices including iPods, laptops and games consoles. A seasoned entrepreneur, Alex has been in the direct response industry for 20 years, initially as CEO of Legion, with involvement too with Sponge, the UK’s most successful and longest established mobile agency working across Europe and the Middle East. Meisl’s clients include Northern & Shell, IPC, O2, MTV and Mini.

Founder: William Chase
Website: www.chasedistillery.co.uk

Potato aficionado William burst onto the entrepreneurial scene a decade ago with his Tyrrells crisp brand. After selling the company in 2008, he turned his attention to alternative uses of the lowly spud and settled on vodka. Using some of the cash he pocketed from the Tyrrells sale he set up The Chase Distillery and now produces a range of spirits and liqueurs from his farm in Herefordshire.

Within two years he’s cemented his position as a spirits perfectionist and triumphed at the 2010 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, beating off rivals from around the globe to secure the title of best vodka in the world.

Founders: James King, James Herbert, Marco Geninazza
Website: www.findinvestgrow.com

With backgrounds in start-ups, bluechips, banking and PR, the founders of Find Invest Grow know all about raising finance for business. They also know about the difficulties of raising finance as an undergrad and recent graduate, no matter how promising the entrepreneurial project. By providing a pragmatic approach to investing in young entrepreneurs, Find Invest Grow hopes to change that. And with 22 investors already on its books since its 2009 launch, things are looking up for budding young entrepreneurs.

Founders: Dr Kate Hersov and Dr Kim Chilman-Blair
Website: www.medikidz.com

Medikidz produces comic-style books explaining medicine in a way that young people can understand. Doctors Kate and Kim came up with the idea for the business while working as paediatricians. They found it frustrating that they were unable to provide young patients with appropriate resources to educate them about conditions they had been diagnosed with. Within months of launching, Medikidz secured partnerships with several global publishers including Harper Collins, and in the summer of 2009 100,000 copies of the ‘Medikidz explain Overweight’ book were distributed to 30,000 UK schools.

Founders: Darren Fell, Steve Crouch, Drew Griffiths
Website: www.crunch.co.uk

Online accounting service Crunch serves the number crunching needs of freelancers, contractors and micro-businesses. The business, which has secured investment from Bebo co-founder Paul Birch and Skype chairman Michael van Swaaij, was founded after an accountancy practice owner and web agency boss were approached with the idea by a major high street bank. The idea behind the concept was that businesses could kiss goodbye to paper expense receipts and manage their bookkeeping in one easy location. The company has since secured deals with a number of other retail banks.