Founders: Saurav Chopra and Chieu Cao
Founded: January 2015
Website: www.perkbox.co.uk

Our very respectable runner-up in last year’s Startups 100, thanks to its 300,000 paying members and multi-million revenues, employee benefits company Perkbox remains among our top 10 for continuing to fulfil its mission of increasing workplace happiness, engaging teams and boosting motivation.

Launched in January 2015 by Saurav Chopra and Chieu Cao, the company offers hundreds of rewards to small and medium-sized businesses to help them improve their teams’ productivity, fostering more attractive working environments and engaging their customers.

Pricing for the service is dependent on size, with a huge variety of rewards including everything from free mobile phone insurance and cinema discounts, to high street shopping vouchers and free coffees.

Major customers include British Gas, Holland & Barrett, WorldPay and AXA (although we can ensure AXA had no bearing on ranking!), with clients having boasted achievements such as a 100% increase in active users and a 50% reduction in staff turnover.

And for a company with a sole aim to help firms keep their employees happy, it’s hardly surprising that Perkbox was recently recognised in The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work for 2017 index.

In October last year, Perkbox was among a select number of start-ups to secure equity funding from tennis star Andy Murray OBE on crowdfunding site Seedrs and in the same month it secured a £2.5m funding round from Draper Esprit. On the back of this funding, the firm launched its second office in Sheffield in January this year and now has more than 135 employees, with ambitions to have 150 staff by the middle of 2017.

Perkbox has continued to post hugely impressive revenues and is continuing to invest in the development of its product and in ongoing growth – fully justifying its thoroughly deserved position in this year’s index.

Founders: Steve Moore and Paul Barham
Founded: December 2014
Website: www.flightclubdarts.com

Until recently, Darts has been widely regarded as a fairly passé pub game – a relic of smoky old taverns, traditionally played by burly men with ruddy faces.

Well not anymore…

Long-time friends Steve Moore and Paul Barham have brought darts flying back into the 21st century with Flight Club– a Shoreditch-based social darts venue which takes the esteemed runner-up spot in this year’s Startups 100 index.

Able to cater for groups of between two to 390 people, there’s no messing around with chalk and mental calculations at Flight Club. Instead its state-of-the-art technology takes care of all the calculations and guides the players through fast-moving multiplayer games – it can even host 100+ tournaments, moving teams around and can host player showdowns. And if you’re after pizzas, burgers, a beer or some bubbly, Flight Club also features a full restaurant and bar.

Since opening in October 2015, 150,000 customers have passed through Flight Club’s doors, throwing a collective 14 million darts between them and helping the venue towards a projected £8.7m in turnover for 2017.

With a team of 180 staff and growing, the company is set to open its second location very soon on Oxford Street before taking aim at Bristol, Manchester and beyond. Moore and Barham also have global ambitions and, over the next five to 10 years, hope to have four or five Flight Club venues in locations worldwide:

“We know people get bored easily, so we’re in a state of almost constant product development. We’re conscious of not getting complacent of the success we’ve had so far”, Moore and Barham explain.

Has Flight Club hit the bullseye? If its early success is anything to go by, we think so.

Founders: Jas Bagniewski, Kuba Wieczorek, Felix Lobkowicz, James Fryer, Abid Ismail
Founded: January 2015 (launched February 2015)
Website: www.evemattress.co.uk 

When two-year old mattress retailer eve Sleep submitted its entry for the Startups 100 back in March 2017 it was a privately-owned business.

Fast forward two months and the London-based start-up has just announced its IPO (initial public offering) on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange – testament to the business’ early success and supporting evidence of why it warrants the number one slot in this year’s index.

As the first direct to consumer mattress box in the UK, eve Sleep’s start-up journey over the course of the past two years has been an inspiring, and fascinating, one to follow.

We’ve seen the emergence of the ‘battle of the beds’ with competition from stellar start-up rivals (check out number five in this index) yet eve – creator of the “world’s most comfortable” mattresses – has continued to reign supreme with phenomenal growth and backing from high-profile investors.

Since featuring in the 2016 Startups 100 list, eve has increased revenues by 355% – from £2.6m to £12m – grown its team to 80 staff, has expanded trade to 10 countries, and now has six products in its range with plans to evolve outside of mattresses to other bedroom-related wares.

These developments have been assisted by investment to the tune of £17m from backers such as Octopus Ventures and DN Capital. It’s that funding, alongside the subsequent £35m raised via its AIM listing, which enabled it to sustain EBITDA losses of £11.3m in the last year – a heavy figure, but a sign of the investment in R&D, its team, infrastructure, and marketing as it seeks to steal as much of the fragmented market’s share in double-quick time.

With an ultimate goal to “wake up the tired sleep industry”, eve’s transition from start-up to scale-up is being led by an impressive founding team with Young Guns Jas Bagniewski [former country manager of Rocket Internet], Felix Lobkowicz, and James Fryer, alongside Kuba Wieczorek [ex-Channel 4 executive] and Abid Ismail at its helm. The start-up also boasts Paul Pindar, former Capita CEO and current non-executive of 2015 Startups 100 winner Purplebricks.com, as chairman.

While “ambitious marketing plans” and “growth of distribution channels” are currently underway, co-founder Bagniewski notes that critics who question eve’s concept have become a driving force behind the business and its ambitions of “becoming a household name”.

“We’ve had people who’ve not seen the potential of the brand and how far it can take us. We’ve come across plenty of non-believers when we’ve said we’ll make the mattress industry cool… But that hasn’t fazed us; it’s just meant we’ve had to work harder when pitching the idea.”

So what’s next for the mattress start-up which quickly built a following on the back of its 100 day return policy? Bagniewski tells us that his overarching aim is to “continue to bring innovative products to market that revolutionise the sleep industry”.

And what about its rivals? “Our brand is also what separates us from our competitors. Most mattress companies are quite literally sleepy.”