Founder: Logan Naidu
Founded: July 2012
Website: www.dartmouthpartners.com

Appearing in the Startups 100 for the third year in a row thanks to its unique approach to the saturated recruitment consultancy market, Dartmouth Partners focuses on linking ambitious companies with the brightest and best candidates, starting at campus level, thus uniquely building its network from the bottom up.

Founder and Young Gun Logan Naidu said he started the company in 2012 after “spotting a gap in the market”, and it’s clearly a niche with legs as the consultancy firm now works with some of the most prestigious names in the business world across the financial services, consulting and corporate sectors. With over 100 clients to-date, and an eye-watering£3.7m turnover for 2014, the next 12 months will be spent launching its office in Germany as well as continuing to explore a New York base.

Having grown at around 100% year-on-year since launch, the ambitious firm hopes to achieve the same level of success this year – with its international expansion playing a key part in the business’ growth trajectory alongside expanding into new areas for its London base.

Founders: Garry Partington and Rolfe Swinton
Founded: April 2012
Website: www.realitymine.com

Key to any business is understanding the behaviour of the consumer, and with an estimated nine billion internet enabled devices in the world today, there’s a veritable goldmine of lucrative information floating out in the ether. The problem is how to retrieve, organise and analyse that data to exploit its full potential.

Manchester-based big data analytics company, RealityMine, does just that – it mines multiple data sources across a range of  platforms using tools that help its clients understand their consumers’ digital behaviour. The service offers three components: data collection, data analytics and manipulation of large data sets tailored to each client. Clients in market research and media and global consumer facing brands pay for the service most frequently on a subscription basis in order to access data at their convenience. Companies including WPP, Taylor Nielsen, Omnicom and Zenith are all already signed up.

Founders Garry Partington and Rolfe Swinton’s years of experience and understanding of the mobile industry is evident, with the three year old company turning over £2.5m last year and with projections to more than triple that to £9m in 2015. The next 12 months look to be an exciting time for RealityMine, with plans for further global expansion – on top of its current 22 countries – as well as the inclusion of facial analysis, and exposure to broadcast media and out-of-home advertising.

Founders: Richard Prime and Damon Chapple
Founded: January 2012
Website: www.sonovate.com

With two decades of experience in the industry, Richard Prime and Damon Chapple were well aware of the struggle recruitment businesses faced when trying to secure finance for their contractors. So together they founded Sonovate, a contract finance solution making paying and managing contractors simple and profitable for smaller recruitment firms.

Like many recent fintech disrupters, the company provides an alternative to the “rigid, off-the-shelf finance products offered by the banks”, with solutions tailored specifically to the recruitment industry, charging them a small percentage of the total contract turnover that requires funding.

Originally launched as an all-in-one solution for recruitment businesses, including website management and time-sheeting software, Sonovate shifted its focus to contract finance and now services 142 customers, growing at a rate of 20% a month.

Having secured £4m angel investment from Bebo co-founder and angel investor Paul Birch and thanks to a £10m funding line from American bank PNC, Sonovate will aim to finance up to £250m of the contract market over the next three years.

With turnover of more than £6m, and a projected turnover of a massive £25m for 2015, this fintech company looks to have found a high potential and lucrative niche.

Founder: Ross Bailey
Founded: November 2012 (launched February 2013)
Website: www.appearhere.co.uk

Appear Here wants to “completely disrupt” the commercial property industry and, given its track record to date, this goal looks well within reach.

A platform which allows entrepreneurs to rent space for pop-up shops across the UK, Appear Here is the concept of 23 year-old Young Gun Ross Bailey – a young entrepreneur who has already accomplished more than most established business owners could hope to achieve.

Since appearing in our 2014 index, Bailey has grown the tech company to a team of 25 employees, profitability and a client list which spans over 10,000 brands with names such as Marc Jacobs, Google and the BBC on its books.

Bailey’s growing property portfolio is no doubt part of the major attraction for these stellar clients. The company now has 600 spaces available and deals with some of the biggest landlords in the country with exclusive agreements with British Land, Transport for London, Hammerson, Capital and Regional, and Land Securities.

In November 2014, the company took its total investment to £6.1m when it secured $7.5m in a deal led by Balderton Capital and it’s clear that, as far as ambitions to expand the company go, the sky’s the limit. Bailey plans to launch in two international cities over the coming year so that budding entrepreneurs can “make their ideas travel” while his long-term goal is for users to be able to “rent a space anywhere across the globe”.

Founders: Liam James and Matthew Green
Founded: February 2012 (launched March 2013)
Website: http://theioutlet.com/

The modern obsession with having the latest model of everything and the phone industry’s propensity to introduce a new one before the next has left the shelves has opened up a huge potential market for second hand phones.

Liam James and Matthew Green seized this opportunity by buying iPhones in bulk, refurbishing them and selling them to cash strapped consumers at a much lower cost than the RRP. The iOutlet uses eBay as its main sales channel, keeping costs low and opening up access to a global market.

The company appeared just outside the top 20 in our Startups 100 2014, and has since seen total sales exceed 30,000 units in over 40 countries at an average of around 120 phones per day. It gets busier during the Christmas period, with an average Christmas weekend selling more than 450 units.

Of course it’s an easy model to copy but the entrepreneurs cite their focus on customer service and simply having more pictures of the products as key to their success. With a couple of physical stores now in operation and a number of corporate clients signed up, turnover of £8.5m for 2015 with a substantial profit seems well within reach. And this simple eBay business shows no signs of slowing down, with plans to expand its range and open one or two more physical locations in the next year. If only we’d thought of it first!

Founders: Husayn Kassai, Ruhul Amin and Eamon Jubbawy
Founded: August 2012
Website: www.onfido.com

After plenty of experience working in the city Husayn Kassai, Ruhul Amin and Eamon Jubbawy were all too familiar with the slow, frustrating and cumbersome process of performing background checks on job applicants – the market was crying out for an automated data-driven service.

Using funding from Oxford University they launched Onfido, an automated, online background checker. With the goal of democratising access to the service, it operates on a pay-as-you-go model, with clients only paying for each check carried out. Around 500 organisations use the service including large recruitment firm Hays and cleaning company (and fellow Startups 100 entry Hassle). Unlike traditional background checking companies, which rely on labour intensive human data processers, Onfido automatically aggregates and delivers data in a fast and cost effective manner.

Having recently raised VC backing from Wellington Partners and Crunchfund, the company plans to invest heavily in technology and expand its teams in its London and US offices ahead of further international expansion. The only problem with being a global business is that the quality of checks relies on the data infrastructure of each country. Provided they can overcome this small issue, becoming the world’s go to destination for background checks should be a breeze.

Founders: Miguel Amaro, Mariano Kostelec and Ben Grech
Founded: May 2012 (launched June 2013)
Website: www.uniplaces.com

Meeting as student entrepreneurs, Miguel Amaro, Mariano Kostelec and Ben Grech noticed that, unlike other industries, technology seemed to have neglected the hugely lucrative global student market. What’s more, the trio felt passionate that students should be able to book accommodation quickly and securely – particularly as it was increasingly becoming a barrier to education for some. Inevitably, it wasn’t long before an idea began to form with Amaro, Kostelec and Grech spotting a  potential opportunity for an easy and secure online student accommodation marketplace.

Uniplaces connects private landlords, property managers and purpose built student residencies with students from 130 different countries looking for accommodation. The company has seen more than 450,000 nights booked through its platform so far, taking a performance based commission from each one.

Started with their own personal savings and now with $5m investment, these young entrepreneurs are 100% focused on their target market, with a mission to become the global gateway to the student market. The next 12 months will be a period of ambitious expansion for the company and its 70-strong team as it seeks to rollout its services to the world’s major student hubs. With a global industry that is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions, this disruptive start-up is in pole position to exploit it.

Founders: Kevin Flood and Mike Harty
Founded: February 2012
Website: www.PowerLinks.com

Programmatic native advertising platform Powerlinks Media is a recurring member of the Startups 100 list (and a Startups Awards nominee), having originally secured a place due to its revolutionary approach to affiliate advertising. The start-up has since proved its staying power by securing a number of impressive publishing clients like Unruly Media, as well as following through with overseas aspirations by securing major global and American contacts including Vibrant, Pubmatic and ShareThrough.

The business, launched in 2012 by serial entrepreneurs Kevin Flood and Mike Harty on the back of their successful social shopping site Shopow, is enjoying a period of accelerated growth. Its innovative technology, which powers new ‘native’ digital advertising formats for leading global buying and selling networks, saw the duo secure 50 further major advertising platforms for the next six months. The latest raft of client integrations will see the company serving over 50 billion native adverts per month.

As the first native advertising company to make in-app ads available on a highly targeted basis for content marketers – which they expect to be huge as the market is predicted to grow to $8bn by 2018. The group, whose mission it is to create a “more personalised and less annoying internet”, plan to continue to lead in the affiliate advertising world and will be launching partnerships in Latin America and Scandinavia later this year.   

Founder: Brynne Herbert
Founded: September 2011 (launched July 2012)
Website: www.moveguides.com

Focused on moving global talent, MOVE Guides’ cloud-based HR service enables companies to manage new hires, employee relocations and fixed-term employments using “never before used technology” – a claim which its founder, 31 year-old Brynne Herbert, proudly asserts.

A former investment banker for Lehman Brothers and Standard Charter operating across the Asia region, it was on moving to the UK to an apartment with no hot water, no internet and no bank account that Herbert found herself asking the question ‘Why is it so hard to plan a move and so easy to plan a holiday?’ This question would mark the lightbulb moment for MOVE Guides and, after completing an MBA at London Business School and closing £1.5m funding, Herbert was able to turn her initial idea into a business offering; and an attractive one at that.

Since featuring in the 2014 Startups 100, MOVE Guides has become the favoured HR relocation solution for high-profile firms such as Tesco, Survey Monkey, King and Societe Generale, and now supports staffing moves to over 100 cities across six continents.

With a team of 45 staff and growing, MOVE Guides is making noticeable headway in London’s tech scene and its early success has not gone unnoticed. Earlier this year, Herbert was selected as one of 19 top female tech start-up chief executives to attend an exclusive trip to Silicon Valley following a roster of industry awards.

In October 2014 the company raised $8.2m Series A funding and now plans to grow its international team, add to its client portfolio, and is even eyeing up a Series B round. Impressive stuff.

Founders: Arthur Kay and Benjamin Harriman
Founded: January 2013
Website: www.bio-bean.com

Up 70 places from its entry into our list last year, bio-bean’s unique proposition has started to gather real pace, garnering a host of award wins, attracting investment and securing a range of big name contracts.                     

Truly a “world-first”, bio-bean collects waste coffee grounds and converts them into advanced biofuels for the heating and transport industries.

Co-founder and architecture graduate Arthur Kay conceived the idea whilst designing a coffee roasting plant and shop, investigating how waste could power a building. Pairing up with co-founder Benjamin Harriman to make the idea a reality, bio-bean now has a team of 20 and the waste is taken to the company’s 20,000 square foot processing facility where it is recycled to be sold as biomass pellets for biomass boilers, and biodiesel for transport fuel.

The firm has contracts with a number of large-scale, big name coffee producers across London, as well as key waste management contractors to deliver grounds to its facility. According to Marketline data, the UK biofuel market is expected to double in size over the next three years, and with £3m backing and no shortage of ground waste in the coffee loving capital, this green energy start-up looks like it could follow suit.