Founders: Steve Smith and John Price
Website: www.truecall.co.uk

trueCall is a small electronic device which allows users to block nuisance phone calls at home. With a UK patent already granted the ‘phone spam filter’ has sold thousands of units since launching in March 2009. Founders Steve Smith and John have both worked in the call centre industry for over 20 years.

In 2005 they published research showing the extent of the problem caused by nuisance calls which led to the idea for the device. When Steve appeared on Dragons’ Den last year he was offered investment from all five Dragons but eventually accepted a deal with Peter Jones.

Founder: Cathy Bartrop
Website: www.travelguru.tv

With the plan to enhance consumer confidence in booking online holidays, Cathy founded TravelGuru.tv in June 2007 after she spotted an opportunity to create niche online programming.

Online video created a window of opportunity to get ahead of the game, and so Cathy decided to focus on the more mature, discerning traveller looking for quality package deals from specialist operators.Within three months of its launch in January 2008, the site won the Travelmole Best Use of Video Award, and has since gained more than 30,000 registered members. The site was also a BT Business Essence of the Entrepreneur winner in 2008.

Founders: Lopo Champalimaud and Salim Mitha
Website: www.wahanda.com

Wahanda is a comprehensive global health, beauty, fitness and wellness resource that connects users with businesses and professionals through online content, community interactions and e-commerce. Both Salim, who was European director for Yahoo! Search, and Lopo, who was managing director of European Lifestyle for Lastminute.com, have a long-standing interest in wellness.

They set up Wahanda because they were frustrated with the lack of online resources to help consumers make informed buying decisions.

Founders: Neil Waller and James Street
Website: www.mydestination.com

While on work placement at university, business students Neil and James were unable to find any travel information online for Marbella. Believing they had found a gap in the market, they decided to create their own. Founded in January 2007, MyDestinationInfo.com provides online travel guides for individual destinations that are run, in franchise style, by local experts on the ground.

From only 12 sites at the beginning of the 2009, the network now has over 65 franchised destinations, and some 7 million visitors to the site a year. This year they were also winners of the UK Trade & Investments London Young Exporters Award.

Founder: Anthony Ganjou
Website: www.mindthecurb.com

Curb uses sustainable natural resources to create fun, innovative and effective advertising campaigns in the greenest possible way. Clients include big brands such as Häagen-Dazs, Waitrose, Budweiser Budvar and Wagamama. Its campaign for Kia cars was, when launched, the biggest clean advertising campaign ever delivered in the UK. In the two weeks it was live, the campaign drove over 145,000 visitors to Kia’s microsite. Thanks to Curb, major media planners and creative agencies now talk about Natural media as a credible category.

Founders: Caroline Ashcroft and Duncan Cheatle
Website: www.thanksto.com

Both founders of ThanksTo, Caroline and Duncan, have worked with entrepreneurs for many years as part of The Supper Club. Their venture ThanksTo is an online social enterprise programme which teaches young people about entrepreneurship while promoting community cohesion.

A story about a Baltimore teacher and the positive influence that he had on a generation of kids’ lives sparked the idea for the site. Launched in November 2009, the ThanksTo Social Enterprise programme is supported by the ThanksTo website platform, and will roll out over the coming 12 months.

Founders: Marc Lyne and David Ingram
Website: www.brownbook.net

Following many years in the directories industry, Marc and David realised crowd sourcing and user generated content had huge potential in their industry and could be utilised to tremendous effect. The self-titled ‘Wikipedia of the yellow pages industry’, Brownbook is an editable global business directory.

Launched in May 2008, within its first few months it launched in four countries on web and mobile, and is still enjoying rapid growth in all sectors. Currently running with 34 million businesses listed in 240 countries, it’s fair to say the site, which allows businesses to enhance their listings with text, photos, videos and widgets, is worth looking up.

Founders: Matthew Hagger, Eugene Kouumdjieff, Jonathan Friedman
Website: www.bizk.it

Founded in May 2007, Bizk.it is an intuitive document management application for enterprise, offering an entire business infrastructure based in the cloud. Seasoned start-up entrepreneurs and directors of various businesses including e-Man, Zkatter and car4share.com, Matthew, Eugene and Jonathan wanted to create an application aimed at start-up founders.

Bizk.it offers tools for accounting, banking, administration, CRM and location based services, all in one place. The service had its beta launch in 2009 and bagged 5,000 registered users within months.

Founder: Natasha Courtenay-Smith
Website: www.talktothepress.co.uk

A media consultancy that provides media strategy publicity advice and journalism services to individuals wishing to sell stories to national newspapers and women’s magazines, Talk To The Press was founded by former freelance journalist Natasha in January 2008.

The idea is to allow interested parties a way of contacting the press instead of being sought out by the journalists. On finding some 5,000 searches in Google each month for ‘sell my story’, ‘talk to the press’ etc, Natasha felt she’d found a niche. Clients include GMTV, This Morning and The Daily Mail.

Founder: Olga Kubassova
Website: www.imageanalysis.org.uk

Image Analysis provides specialist software to support MRI research in hospitals and clinical trials. The company’s main product, DYNAMIKA is used in the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis and breast imaging.

Among other things, the software automates the process of reviewing MRI scans to avoid the lengthy and time-consuming manual review by medical staff. The software was the result of Olga’s PhD research at the University of Leeds and it’s now used in hospitals and clinical departments across Europe.