Founder: Bianca Miller
Founded: June 2012
Website: http://the-be-group.com/

Founded on the premise that all people should be able to access services to support their development and own personal brand, The Be Group’s unique combined offering sets it apart from other leading consultancy companies. With a background in HR and recruitment at international firms, Bianca Miller realised that there was market potential for personal development throughout the life cycle and utilised her past experience to create a three pronged consultancy service; Be Styled, Be Employed and Be Branded. Running for just over a year, the business has already attracted major clients and is now one of the top personal styling services for Westfield London and, as part of an impressive deal with a global bank, has run workshops in universities across the country to encourage women to consider banking as a career option. Looking to the next 12 months there is a series of growth strategies in place, especially for its Be Branded division, as discussions with corporate clients are currently underway regarding managing their graduate training programmes. It seems it really is ‘time to BE’. 

Founders: Elizabetta Camilleri and Emilio Sanz
Founded: June 2011 (launched November 2012)
Website: www.salesgossip.co.uk

SalesGossip is generating serious buzz in the fashion world with a very simple concept; it is a site that aggregates all the latest deals and sample sales from high street fashion retailers, saving shoppers the time and energy of checking with the retailers individually. The site has grown by 30% per month since launch last year, and is about to celebrate reaching its 200,000th member; impressive growth for a service in its first year. Revenue is generated through online retailers and affiliates paying for more prominent exposure on the company’s colourful webpage, and SalesGossip now works with most of the major UK fashion retailers. After trialling the concept as a pilot, the company raised £250,000 angel investment to launch the site in November and is already planning an ambitious worldwide rollout in the next 12 months. 

Founder: Sheena Mackenzie
Founded: September 2011 (launched January 2013)
Website: www.lifesizetouch.com

It’s a scene straight out of Spooks – using your coffee table to surf the web, order retail products and read the news. LifeSize Touch has brought this futuristic ideal to life as the world’s first commercial designer and manufacturer of interactive furniture – bespoke tables, desks and counters with embedded glass touchscreens. Founded in 2011 by digital tech entrepreneur Sheena Mackenzie, the company specialises in large touchscreens for commercial and exhibition use. LifeSize Touch officially launched its first range of furniture in May 2013 and has already added prestigious names such as IBM and Schuh footwear to its client list. The majority of the company’s investment has so far been spent on research and development of its innovative products, but the brand has ambitious plans for global expansion following the establishment of its line of furniture in the UK.

Founder: Charlie Harry Francis
Founded: April 2011 (launched November 2011)
Website: www.lickmeimdelicious.com 

Quirky, fun and unique, Lick Me I’m Delicious creates high quality ice-creams using the world’s first nitro ice cream parlour, and more recently the first portable buggy. Founder Charlie Harry Francis is an award winning food inventor, but Lick Me is more than just a product business, it’s a theatrical experience where ice cream is concocted live in front of customer’s eyes using Francis’ fantastical contraptions. In a true Willy Wonka style experience, the machines smoke and pop as experimental flavours are created and no attention to detail is spared with the finished products served in edible white chocolate cupcake cases or on top of warm Yorkshire puddings. Available to hire for events, Francis and his machines have served a number of well-known clients including Google, Disney, Sony, Eurostar and the 2012 Olympics body. Not one to rest on his laurels, Francis is currently working on two new, non-ice cream, ‘top secret’ machines to grow and expand the Lick Me brand. Even we don’t know what they are but he promises they’re going to be ‘awesome’…

Founders: Ry Morgan and Anthony Ganjou
Founded: October 2010 (launched November 2011) 
Website: www.pleasecycle.com

A Startups 100 winner in 2012, PleaseCycle continues to enjoy success with its unique corporate scheme helping employers to motivate staff to cycle to work and reap the benefits of a healthy and happy workplace. The company’s innovative ‘BikeMiles’ programme rewards employees for every mile they cycle with incentives such as additional holiday time and discounts at retail outlets, as well as playing to their competitive side with company-wide competitions and leaderboards. PleaseCycle’s breakthrough moment came last year when global conglomerate Reckitt Benckiser signed up to use the scheme, and the company now has around 20 clients using its Cycle Hub system. One such client, international media giant Aegis Group, is launching the company’s product in 10 offices around the world this summer – marking the moment PleaseCycle goes truly global. The company have also announced the launch of a sister product, Stravel, which will allow users to record walking and running trips to work, and the founders say they have already had a number of clients pay to use the service upon launch. 

Founder: Matthew Stubbs
Founded: February 2011 (launched December 2011)
Website: www.yourworkspaces.com

Born out of a recognition that mobile working is an increasingly vital part of running a business, Your Workspaces has built the first UK-wide network of serviced offices, working with local business centres to offer rooms to rent for small firms and corporates on the move. The facilities can be searched, booked and paid for online, in real time and on a pay-as-you-go basis, allowing small firms to book locations according to their needs without being tied down to fixed-term contracts. As the company does not run the serviced offices themselves, they have been able to expand their network rapidly; less than a year after launch small firms can choose from more than 750 serviced office locations in the UK, USA and Canada. Matthew Stubbs expects big things of Your Workspaces; he has a vision to create a network of 10,000 serviced offices in 150 countries with a plan to expand into 50 more international locations over the next 12 months. 

Founder: Richard Hiblen
Founded: October 2012 (launched March 2013)
Website: www.greensquare.co.uk

With the British high street in well-publicised difficulty, setting up a bricks-and-mortar store dedicated entirely to the sale and installation of renewable energy products may seem counterintuitive. However, Richard Hiblen had spotted a gap in the market for renewable energy products targeted at domestic and small business consumers and realised that a franchise model based on physical stores would benefit from a significant tax advantage – Green Square can charge just 5% VAT to their customers whereas online suppliers must charge 20%. Already, the Raynes Park-based business is expected to hit £70,000 turnover in its first year of trading, and has just offered its first three franchises for like-minded entrepreneurs in the South East to hop on board. The company is launching a targeted marketing campaign over the summer to attract franchisees and the business plans to concentrate on PR and exposure in line with government grants for green businesses due to be published soon. 

Founder: Oliver Dickinson and Clive Banks
Founded: June 2010 (launched May 2012)
Website: http://weconnectstudents.com 

As a student himself, Dickinson was well aware of the trials and tribulations of the graduate recruitment market. Frustrated by what he believed to be an ineffective existing process, he had his light bulb moment; why not turn the process on its head? Charging either a one-off fee per search or a larger fee for unlimited access, We Connect Students provides employers with a searchable database of students, offering them the chance to find the perfect candidates without trawling through hundreds of unsuitable CVs. With 40,000 students currently on the site (and numbers doubling in size every three months) and 400 existing employers from start-ups to large multi-nationals, it’s a concept that is proving extremely popular. No stranger to success, Dickinson started his first business – a guerrilla marketing company – at just 16. Co-founder Banks is a seasoned investor, and former global head of FX at the largest investment bank in the world. Whilst not the most obvious pairing, the two appear to have a winning partnership. With £500,000 investment backing, another £200,000 round about to close and 17 employees, the duo have ambitious plans to monopolise the entire student market.

Founder: Patrick Tolhurst
Founded: September 2011
Website: www.wellseasoned.co.uk  

Founded as an offshoot of a blog celebrating seasonal foods, Well Seasoned made our 2012 list for its unique pesto sauce which uses ethically-sourced British ingredients that rotate with the seasons, including Kentish cobnuts, Northamptonshire rapeseed oil, and traditionally made Wiltshire cheese. The company has grown impressively over the past 12 months; its products have featured in stores such as Selfridges and Partridges, the number of independent deli stockists is into double figures and it recently signed its first major supermarket contract with Booths. In a measure of faith in the company, now-chief executive Patrick Tolhurst left his lucrative job as a City lawyer to work on Well Seasoned full-time and the company’s growth has also attracted a number of industry awards, including the Producers Bursary on the BBC Good Food programme, Best Food and Drink company in the Lloyds TSB PEA Business awards and the Green Supplier of the Year in the prestigious Grocer Gold awards. Having just taken on a distributor for the south-east region, Well Seasoned remains on course to treble its turnover in the next 12 months, with a wider plan to become Britain’s leading ethical food brand.