Founder: Rich Martell                
Founded: January 2011
Website: www.floxx.com

Floxx started as a joke, founder Rich Martell cheerfully admits. Its first product, the somewhat controversial FitFinder, started life as little more than a (technically impressive) university prank. But developing it, as well as further products Spottd, MapChat and Appdaq, involved Martell working with agencies to develop mobile apps, a process he found so frustrating that he decided to do it himself – better.

Today the company specialises in creating apps and websites, and has built up solid revenue streams, both from its agency business, doing work for clients for hire, as well as income from app sales (downloads, in-app purchases and subscriptions). Having raised around £300,000 in investment so far, the next 12 months are focused on growth, with plans to build the team, currently of eight, as well as the client base.

Founders: Hiroki Takeuchi, Tom Blomfield and Matt Robinson
Founded: January 2011
Website: www.gocardless.com

The GoCardless founders overcame significant regulatory hurdles in order to launch their new type of payment system. Aimed at small businesses – typically excluded from accepting Direct Debits – the co-founders (three Oxford grads) have devised a compelling offering. ‘PayLinks’, a secure link which small firms can e-mail, tweet or add to their website, directs customers to the GoCardless payment system, and for each transaction there is a transparent 1% fee. Growing quickly since launch, more than 1,000 merchants are already on board.

The company, a progeny of Silicon Valley’s famous Y-Combinator accelerator, has also landed $1.5m (aprox. £1m), in a funding round led by Accel Partners (early backers of Facebook). With its simple solution to a very real problem, this is a start-up worth banking on.

Founder: Robert Durkin, Lee Brignell-Cash, Chris Conn
Founded: March 2009
Website: www.fusepump.com

Put simply, FusePump helps anyone selling products through an e-commerce website to improve their online sales. It does this by distributing products and offers from the e-commerce website into digital marketing channels like price comparison sites, affiliate websites, marketplaces, search engines and display networks. FusePump extract products and offers from the ‘front end’ of the e-commerce website so that retailers can benefit without any technical effort. With a strong focus on – and investment in – developers and technology, the company has amassed an impressive client list since its launch in March 2009.

FusePump is currently working with more than 50 companies, in sectors ranging from retail, travel and media to telecommunications, as well as building its international presence, with clients in Spain, France and the US.

Founders: Spencer Hyman, James Aylett, Brian Fulkerson and Chris Ryan
Founded: September 2010 (launched March 2011)
Website: www.artfinder.com

Dubbed ‘the Last.fm of the art world’, Artfinder creates a home for art online. The company has partnered with more than 400 galleries, museums and individuals to curate a catalogue of over 225,000 works, which users can discover, ‘collect’ and share online – as well as buying real-life pieces for their homes. Its impressive iPhone app can identify paintings using image recognition technology, and tell you about the artist’s life and works.

Few companies secure backing from investors with such standing as Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, and prolific business angel Sherry Coutu (as well as several top venture capital firms). Having achieved this before its second birthday, Artfinder is certainly one to watch.

Founder: Suleman Sacranie
Founded: October 2010 (launched September 2011)
Website: www.99pwholesaler.com

Growing up watching his father (and grandfather) lose their weekends to trawling cash and carries, Sacranie felt there must be a better way to get a good deal – and keep the costs of running a retail business down. The 22-year-old was so sure in fact, he left university in order to create it. 99p Wholesaler started as an online cash and carry, but now hosts the first comparison engine for the sector – and has received glowing praise from the press.

His proposition has also proved interesting to investors and, having secured significant seed funding, is now on course to achieve an impressive turnover of £1.26m for 2012. With multiple revenue streams, and new products in the pipeline, there is no sign of slowing down.

Founder: Rachel Oxburgh
Founded: April 2012
Website: www.casabu.com

Oxburgh’s story is a fantastic reminder that the entrepreneurial urge can come to anyone. A former geochemistry lecturer at Edinburgh University, she holds a phD from Columbia, New York. Her second start-up Casabu has jumped on the flash sales bandwagon, with a tailored website for mothers, offering up to 80% off all they need – from pregnancy through to adolescence.

With industry giants such as Fisher Price on board, Casabu has attracted more than 30,000 private members within three months of launch – as well as the financial support of several investors. Offering a ‘you beat it, we’ll meet it’ price promise, Oxburgh is confident her products can’t be found cheaper anywhere else online – and is targeting turnover of £5m for her first year of trading.

Founders: Dan Shrimpton and Mike Stevens
Founded: April 2009 (launched January 2010)
Website: www.peppersmith.co.uk

Shrimpton and Stevens were told multiple times that making mints and chewing gum without synthetic ingredients was impossible (if you still want them to taste good). However, their products today prove the nay-sayers wrong. Over 2,000 stockists, including Sainsbury’s, Boots, Harvey Nichols, Virgin Atlantic and Waitrose, sell their range – which will expand into other confectionary in the next year.

Consumers have been attracted to the idea of mints which are actively good for teeth (with accreditation from the British Dental Society to prove it) and have been willing to pay slightly more for the products. The founders, who met while working at start-up superstar Innocent Drinks, are now looking beyond the British Isles and have just secured their first major listing in Australia. Impossi… what?

Founders: Chris Prescott and Daniel Noz
Founded: October 2011
Website: www.fantasyshopper.com

Talk about hitting the ground running! Just three weeks after launching in beta, Fantasy Shopper was selected by Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the most exciting online start-up in the world today. The AWS Start-up Challenge winner enticed the judges with its unique social shopping game, which allows Facebook users to create and share their ‘fantasy’ wardrobe, based on real items that are available online today.

Adding a monetary element to the free-to-play game, users can purchase the garments they love with the touch of a button – as well as win real-life vouchers to spend in their favourite stores. Based at Exeter’s pioneering Innovation Centre, in January Fantasy Shopper raised more than £2m from Accel Partners and NEA. Game on.

Founders: Jason Trost and Hunter Morris
Founded: August 2009
Website: www.smarkets.com

Few start-ups see £200m pass through their business in their lifetime, but that’s exactly the amount Smarkets is expecting to trade this year, as its users set their odds on events ranging from football matches to political elections. Four years ago, Trost and Morris set themselves a brief to come up with a reliable betting exchange with low transactional costs – a combination that has proved popular with users.

The revenue model is simple: punters return 2% of their winnings to their host (a low commission rate relative to the rest of the industry). With nearly 7,500 members now registered on the site, and the social network element it incorporates attracting further growth at a rate of 15% per month, Smarkets is one business worth betting on.

Founder: Assad Khan
Founded: April 2011
Website: www.bubbleology.co.uk

As far as career changes go, leaving the equities trading floor at JP Morgan for a Taiwanese tea café is quite a drastic move. But founder Assad Khan clearly believed bubble tea – a tea-based soft drink made with chewy tapioca balls – had a bright future in the UK.

So far, his instincts have been proved correct and just three months after opening Bubbleology’s first bubble tea café, in Soho, in mid-Spring last year, he launched a café concession in Harvey Nichols. A branch in Notting Hill is set to follow. Assad estimates that 500 bubble teas were sold per day in 2011 – a number which continues to rise – and international expansion is already underway.