Founders: Kevin Flood and Mike Harty
Founded: September 2011
Website: www.powerlinks.com

Flood and Harty founded Shopow, the social shopping network, in 2009. From this, not only did they create an extremely successful business, but they soon realised they’d also sown the seeds for a second. Powerlinks Media, originally part of Shopow, has now been established as its own company and already in its short life counts 22,000 advertisers, including a number of blue-chip brands, among its clients.

Targeting the same market as Vibrant Media, Powerlinks converts key words within a site’s editorial copy into text links – which display relevant pop-up ads when a cursor hovers over them – with the aim of delivering more targeted returns for advertisers. Used by leading web publishers, ad networks and agencies to incrementally grow their online advertising businesses, the co-founders believe their offering will change the shape of affiliate marketing as we know it.

Founders: Danny, Virraj and Yuvraj Jatania
Founded: February 2010 (launched November 2011)
Website: www.pockit.com

When Danny Jatania champions a new trend, sit up and pay attention. The eminent entrepreneur behind the Lornamead Group (valued at more than half a billion pounds) has his sons on board his latest start-up – which aims to help recession-hit consumers better manage their money. In the emerging pre-paid card sector, Pockit is fast becoming a frontrunner.

Not only does it allow consumers to load money onto the card, but it is the first to allow users to request cashback in-store. It also offers an unrivalled range of exclusive voucher codes and deals. Powered by Mastercard, dozens of leading high street retailers are already on board, offering discounts – and more than 3,500 UK consumers have a Pockit in their pocket.

Founder: Andy Sutton
Founded: January 2011 (launched May 2012)
Website: www.bagthat.com

An eminent list of career touch points – NASA, IBM, Oracle – doesn’t appear the natural route to starting a site offering a social way to shop online, but 47-year-old Cambridge-educated engineer Andy Sutton had an epiphany. The group buying concept allows users to name a price on products, then wait to see if the power of crowds enlisted through social media sites can help them hit the magic number – or take lower.

While group buying and discount deals sites are widespread, Sutton hopes his twist and a focus on quality, branded products and services, will help it turn a pretty penny. With initial angel funding to the tune of £450,000, followed by £2m institutional funding via Oxford Capital Partners, the company is targeting a turnover of £250,000 by the close of 2012.

Founders: Sharon Stephens and Rachel Bryan 
Founded: June 2009
Website: www.veritaslanguagesolutions.com

When it comes to high-powered business dealings, translation errors can be costly. Consequently, Veritas Language Solutions strives to eradicate this risk, handpicking linguists who specialise in various professional fields to ensure accuracy and clarity during cross-country transactions.

Today, Sharon Stephens works with more than 5,500 linguists, and with growing demand for the company’s services Veritas is looking to recruit an extra 2,000 highly skilled translators by the end of the year. Providing specialised services to clients across a broad range of sectors, including legal, medical and finance-based professionals, Veritas goes beyond the A-Z of translation – and not just because its list of languages ranges from Albanian to Zulu.

Founders: Jamie Ward, Mike Blake, and Neil Harmsworth
Founded: September 2011
Website: www.payasugym.com

The market for payasUgym is enormous. With over 350 gyms signed up, there’s plenty of scope for growth among the UK’s 6,000-plus gyms, which would use the service as an additional revenue stream. Gym-goers have been attracted by the discounted daily passes for local gyms, which literally enable them to ‘pay as they gym’, and which they can buy via an app on their smartphone or through the website.

It’s a win-win scenario, and one that investors spotted too – the start-up secured first-round funding through investment circle Envestors, and has this year completed second-round funding to help drive further expansion into the UK. The founders aim to make payasUgym one of the biggest fitness brands in the country, and are well on their way.

Read our Just Started profile

Founders: Rob Symington and Dominic Jackman
Founded: January 2010
Website: www.escapethecity.org

From anonymous blog to successful start-up, Escape the City has made the difficult transition into revenue generation by implementing a flourishing job board. A site which helps those bored of the rat-race make a change to their lives, it lists only adventurous or entrepreneurial opportunities that are a little out of the ordinary.

The business has solidified its proposition by starting to offer events, e-books and affiliate services such as career coaching. It reached out to its 70,000 registered members recently when seeking finance, and subsequently raised £600,000 through crowdfunding. This now allows the business to create a matchmaking service, to intelligently connect organisations with people, something the founders describe as a “forward-looking LinkedIn”.

Founders: Daniel Land and Jeremy Sanders
Founded: April 2011
Website: www.cocodimama.co.uk

In a hugely competitive market, Coco di Mama has carved itself a lucrative little space, with the help of some Sicilian pasta and proper coffee, that has the potential to become much bigger. London’s Fleet Street is not short of places for nearby city workers to grab lunch on-the-go. But Daniel Land and Jeremy Sanders spotted that among the plethora of quick service restaurants, there were no Italian options. Coco di Mama, then, was created with a focus on authentically made pasta, tasty sauces, coffee to remember, and low prices.

The restaurant is now serving around 800 customers a day, and a second London site has just opened. Investors include Sir Stuart Rose, ex-chairman of Marks & Spencer, and Arjun Waney, the backer behind Zuma and Roka restaurants.

Read our Just Started profile

Founder: Warren Knight and Julian Morency
Founded: September 2010 (launched January 2011)
Website: www.gloople.co.uk

With social commerce set to see explosive growth in the next few years, the rewards for pioneers in this space are potentially huge. Through its innovative e-commerce platform, Gloople is well placed to cash in. As well as enabling customers to purchase goods through a retailer’s own website or Facebook fanpage, on a smartphone or tablet device, Gloople offers ‘social sharing’ features. Customers can invite their friends to join in on a group discount; share their purchase on Facebook or Twitter (and be rewarded with a discount for doing so); and review products.

Realising that existing e-commerce platforms weren’t designed for the growth of social or mobile commerce, the co-founders spotted a gap for a simple, ‘out-of-the-box’ solution, to help small businesses take advantage of these channels with minimal effort. As well as selling its own software, Gloople works a digital agency, developing online stores for brands.

Founder: Daniel Callaghan
Founded: June 2009
Website: www.mbaandco.com

Businesses need freelancers; freelancers need businesses. Daniel Callaghan launched MBA & Company to provide an online platform to help the two sides meet. What sets it apart is that the freelancers it is designed for are the crème de la crème of consultants. Small businesses are the target market – the founder recognised the difficulties smaller firms have in affording the traditional model of hiring management consultants. Freelancers are attracted by the idea of working on short-term projects with small exciting companies while either looking for full-time roles or building their own businesses.

Today the platform has hundreds of companies using it, with projects ranging from the tiny to those worth over £250,000. It has, since launch in 2009, also attracted over 10,000 freelance consultants. MBA & Company has climbed 42 places since its appearance in our 2010 Startups 100 list.

Founder: Chris Ward
Founded: October 2011
Website: www.bluedotworld.com

Having been creative director on nationwide charitable events Comic Relief and 1GOAL, Chris Ward (pictured right, with Coldplay’s Chris Martin) knows a thing or two about the third sector. So when he read that shoppers spent more in Westfield in one year than the combined total of money raised for Comic Relief and 1GOAL, he decided to do what he could to incentivise people to give more. His business’ ‘blue dots’ can be given to anyone who has supported a good cause, and are redeemable for rewards such as exclusive downloads or gig tickets.

Businesses can buy blue dots to give to employees as part of their ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) strategies, and brands and businesses also pay to have an item in Blue Dot’s store. The website is approaching 10,000 users and as the idea of ‘social currency’ gains traction, the business is well-positioned to be at its forefront.