Founders: Aidan Rushby, Logan Hall and Tony Edwards
Founded: October 2013
Website: www.movebubble.com

Citing the traditional estate agency model as “archaic,” Movebubble was created to shake up the lettings industry as we know it; the collaborative platform connects property owners, renters and contractors to a trusted marketplace, allowing users to “manage and maintain their homes from anywhere in the world and on any device.”

Launched just a few months ago, Movebubble already has eight employees working within its ambitious and innovative business model, which contains a number of revenue streams – Movebubble charges renters a £50 security fee as well as utilising an affiliate model for ‘added-value recommendations’ such as energy and insurance. With 3,500 registered users in just a few months and 5,000 unique visits to the site a week with no outbound marketing, their ambitious targets seem within reach. On the verge of closing a second round of funding, the young company has big plans for the future and with an identified user base of 16m in the UK and nearly 200m globally – there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be hearing a lot more from Movebubble.

Founder: George Ovidiu Ghiuta
Founded: October 2012
Website: www.gqdecorators.co.uk

Offering high quality painting and decorating, London-based GQ (George’s Quality) Decorators has quickly established a strong reputation amongst private homeowners, landlords, and construction companies alike with its “workmanship, friendly service and value for money”. Launched in 2012 by company namesake George Ovidiu Ghiuta, in two years the service, which initially started with savings alone, has secured contracts with the L&Q London Housing Association, leading women’s charity Solace Women’s Aid, and Axis Ltd. What’s more, it has since won backing from the government Start Up Loans agency and been granted accreditation by Dulux and the Contractor Health and Safety Assessment Scheme (CHAS); an impressive feat given it has a team of just three employees.

Whilst a trades business isn’t exactly unique, the small company is already profitable and predicts a solid turnover for 2014 of £135,000. Over the next year, the painting and decorating start-up is intent on expansion and wants to secure larger contracts of over £15,000, as well as recruiting six new employees. Increased energy efficiency is also on the cards with plans to implement new, more resourceful, ways to undertake jobs as well as an aim to recycle over 80% of its waste.

Founder: Jules Quinn
Founded: May 2011
Website: www.the-teashed.co.uk

With quality, artisan coffee now well-established as a trend in the UK, it was only a matter of time before the humble cup of tea underwent a similar gentrification. Newcastle-based young entrepreneur Jules Quinn started her design-led tea business The *Teashed on the very cusp of this trend, and has been reaping the rewards ever since. Targeted at a young, urban, affluent crowd, The *Teashed sources quality whole leaf tea from Sri Lanka, creating individually-designed and quirky packaging and selling it across the world.

Quinn’s commitment to a strong, unified brand is inherent in everything the start-up does, from the blends and design to a number of regular tea-themed events hosted by the company. Already with 150 suppliers in the UK – including John Lewis – and distributors in Europe, the US, Asia and the Middle East, coping with spiralling demand would seem to be the biggest challenge The *Teashed could face in the future. Having organically generated revenues of £90,000 in 2013, with £30,000 profit, Quinn expects to see turnover of £250,000 this year as the business launches a ‘top secret’ new product in Waitrose. Watch this space!

Founder: Dawson King
Founded: February 2014
Website: www.healthberry.com

When 23 separate NHS organisations sign up to your service less than 24 hours after launching, it would be fair to say you may have stumbled upon something big. Created as a response to government efforts to improve patient accountability in the NHS, HealthBerry is a Software-as-a-Service platform (SaaS) which allows organisations to aggregate patient feedback across different social media outlets in a single feed, reading and responding to it in real-time.

Founder Dawson King said that despite some initial confusion from NHS clients about the nature of a SaaS product – as they were more used to software that “comes on a CD and does what it says on the box” – uptake and initial feedback has been strong, and with 31 organisations signed up within two weeks (including NHS England and Great Ormond St Hospital), it’s hard to argue. Currently free whilst in beta, the service will charge £50 per month for the service to its clients, helping to drive expected revenues of £1.4m in Healthberry’s first year of existence.

Founders: Joanna Alpe, Nick Redwood, Paul van’t Hof, Sarah van’t Hof
Founded: July 6 2012
Website: www.makelightinteractive.com

What would it be like to be transformed at a concert into one single pixel of a huge lightshow, all through your smartphone? This left-field idea was the genesis of Makelight Interactive, and with its four founders possessing more than 40 years’ experience in live events, the start-up seems to have hit upon a recipe for success. Customers download the Makelight app and select their concert or event from the list provided; holding up their phone transforms them into a part of a huge special effects show, representing a spectacular alternative to the old mainstay of holding a cigarette lighter aloft.

And Makelight’s app is more than a visually appealing piece of tech; by encouraging widespread audience engagement in this way, the start-up gains access to valuable consumer analytics which they can then sell to their live event clients. Boasting an all-star client list with names including Nokia, Samsung, Vodafone Germany and O2 in addition to backing from the prestigious Wayra tech incubator, Makelight has ambitious plans for the next 12 months; from continuing to release new products around locationing and communications to a US office.

Founders: Pascale Barget and John-Michael Sookias
Founded: September 2012
Website: www.twentysomethinglondon.com

Twenty Something London has matured from a small blog written in University by founder Pascale Barget to ‘the’ guide for young Londoners and a business with multiple revenue streams and affiliations with some of the best businesses in the city. Listing is generally free on the site but Twenty Something monetises the site through an affordable marketing service, onsite advertisement, premium listings and it runs its own events. And although the idea has developed rapidly, Twenty Something London keeps its founding mission at its core – to connect people to amazing locations and experiences.

Barget (one of our young entrepreneurs to watch) and co-founder John-Michael Sookias are united by their passion for independent businesses; to date, the company has promoted over 300 successful and small independents. The two have their first investment pitch scheduled for later this year and are labouring towards redesigning the site and getting Twenty Something London to go mobile, and eventually global.

Founders: Stephen Stevens and Bethan Stevens
Founded: February 2012
Website: www.sosbanandtheoldbutchers.com

Anyone who has visited a restaurant will know the familiar agony of having to choose between dishes on a menu – uniquely, Stephen and Bethan Stevens’ Anglesey-based restaurant takes that dilemma away, creating ‘surprise’ four-course menus tailored to a customer’s exact dietary needs and food preferences, so they don’t know what they are getting until they arrive.

As the restaurant essentially chooses what to serve, food wastage is reduced to near-zero, meaning Sosban & The Old Butchers can create an unforgettable food experience with locally-sourced ingredients for the competitive price of £43.70 a head. The concept is so popular the founders say they have been full every evening this year to-date (they’re currently open three nights a week) and are already taking bookings six months in advance. With listings in both the Good Food guide and Michelin Restaurant Guide 2014 and a determination to “continue to excite and intrigue” both new and loyal customers, the hype around Sosban & The Old Butchers is only set to increase.

Founders: Benita Matofska and Nick Tong
Founded: January 2013
Website: www.compareandshare.com

One of our Top 20 Startups of 2013, Benita Matofska and Nick Tong’s start-up Compare and Share was formed with the principle of sharing at its very core. Billed as the world’s first sharing economy comparison marketplace, Compare and Share launched in January of last year as a car-sharing comparison site, quickly attracting a range of leading providers including Zipcar, Blablacar and Liftshare. En route to signing up more than 90% of the lift-sharing market, the founders have wasted no time in adding accommodation sharing to Compare and Share’s offering. Early signs point to this, too, being a success, with 16 corporate affiliates already signed up including Housetrip, Homeaway.com, Flipkey, Alterkeys and Roomarama.

Compare and Share made history in January 2014 when it became the first company to triple a funding target on a crowdfunding website, raising more than £151,000 on Crowdcube. It is clear members of the public are just as enthused about the burgeoning sharing economy as the start-up’s founders. The next 12 months will prove pivotal for the young business, as it looks to raise an additional £2.5m and expand the range of sharing services it offers.

Founder: Catherine Kennard
Founded: January 2013
Website: www.loveworkuk.co.uk

Winner of the Freelance and Home-Based Business of the Year award at the Startups Awards 2013 and a Startups Top 20 winner, Lovework is one of those start-ups playing a crucial role in the UK’s enterprise landscape. 27 year-old Catherine Kennard’s recruitment consultancy is focused squarely on helping fast-growing start-ups fill vacant positions with exceptional candidates, helping UK success stories such as onefinestay, PayasUgym and BEAR Nibbles find the perfect employee for them.

Started on a shoestring budget of just £10,000, Lovework generated hugely impressive profits in its first year of trading. These figures and its achievements to date are in part, Kennard says, to an increase in entrepreneurialism and popularity of start-up careers, with the company “flooded with CVs [from people] more than happy to take a significant drop in salary to have a more interesting role in an entrepreneurial business.” Now working with around 50 start-ups, Lovework plans to build on its extremely strong position by raising awareness amongst candidates and employers alike, with an expectation to quadruple turnover from last year.

Founder: Deepak Tailor
Founded: March 2012
Website: www.latestfreestuff.co.uk

As an avid user of freebie sites himself, Deepak Tailor was disappointed with the selection available on the internet, finding most services focused on advertising rather than actually providing consumers with free products. He decided to launch LatestFreeStuff.co.uk as an innovative competitor, offering consumers genuine freebies, deals, bargains and special offers, without any marketing hoops to jump through. With no advertising budget, the site has grown organically through clever search optimisation and now ranks highly for all relevant keywords such as ‘free stuff’ and ‘free samples’.

With a growing presence on the web, in just a couple of years, the site has amassed more than 400,000 visitors, with a 50,000+ strong army of consumers on social media networks – making it the UK’s largest freebie site. The growing client list includes household names such as LOVEFiLM, Fitness First, T-Mobile, Vodafone and more, drawn by the site’s effective lead generation campaigns. Finally, with an ambitious plan to crack the US market, this freebie site looks set to make some serious money.