Founders: Anna Szanto
Founded: October 2013 (launched April 2016)
Website: www.thegoodnessproject.co.uk

Anna Szanto was frustrated by the limited availability of healthy, natural, vegan and gluten-free products back in 2013 – even in London! And those that did have often had a limited and selection that lacked in variety.

After extensive research, she decided a subscription box would be the answer to the deficit of these healthy products. She called her idea The Goodness Project.

Today it delivers quality vegan, natural, gluten-free products and gifts in subscription boxes and office wellbeing boxes. Products come from a variety of brands in the space including Creative Nature, Yogi tea, Ombar, Inspiral, the Raw Chocolate Co, Nom, Propercorn, and Nakd.

The Goodness Project differentiates itself through its personalisation, with handwritten gift cards and personalised snack boxes for offices. Its loyal customer base is 2,000 strong and growing month-on-month. At Christmas, this number triples!

Pre-launch it had secured partnerships with the Diageo, the world’s largest spirit producer, and secured the right to be the exclusive online retailer of Baileys Almande (its diary-free, gluten-free, and vegan-friendly product) before it had launched.

Ready to scale up its unique offering, The Goodness Project will focus on raising investment and hiring key talent over the next 12 months – there are still only two people at the business at present – to join it in the journey of taking the business to the next level.

Szanto describes herself as an “eternal optimist”. Her long-term goal is to build The Goodness Project into a household name with a great team – and that’s one we can get behind.

Founders: Benn Corrigan, Jonny Plein, and Vikram Simha
Founded: May 2015 (Launched September 2016)
Website: www.joinpouch.com

UK shoppers like a deal: more than 850 million searches were made for voucher codes in 2017.

But too often finding them can be a wild goose-chase through the internet and they can often be fake or expired.

Young entrepreneurs Benn Corrigan, Jonny Plein, and Vikram Simha are here to help savvy consumers find legitimate voucher codes with their free browser extension Pouch.

The tool automatically shows the best available vouchers for more than 3,500 retailers and negotiates exclusive offers for its users.

Unlike voucher websites – which “often store loads of fake or irredeemable voucher codes” – the Pouch extension gives users authentic voucher codes automatically as you shop so you don’t have to browse around. This customer retention also means that retailers are more likely to secure a sale.

Impressively, more than 100,000 people have downloaded the extension while Pouch has helped to improve conversion rates for some of retail’s biggest players including Made.com, ASOS, Debenhams, Gap, Amazon, Currys, Argos and John Lewis.

Pouch also holds the rare distinction of securing offers from all five Dragons on Dragons’ Den – which has only happened three times in 14 years – with £75,000 investment in exchange for 18% equity split between Tej Lalvani, Jenny Campbell and Touker Suleyman.

The appearance also gave the business a significant PR boost: a week after the BBC episode aired it had acquired 60,000 users and appeared in articles everywhere from The Sun, to Forbes, The Telegraph, and the Times.

On a mission to become the best money-saving tool in the world, Pouch hopes to have one million users by Christmas and to have expanded into Germany, Australia, the Nordics, Canada and France

Founders: Sam Jarvis
Founded: July 2015
Website: www.hub-box.com

Nobody enjoys having to wait around for a package or parcel to be delivered – often with the requirement that you have to take time off work to be there when it arrives.

Trying to avoid this problem, Sam Jarvis had his packages delivered to work but soon encountered another when attempting to carry them home on the tube, during rush hour.

Jarvis was staggered that there were no existing solutions to this problem. At the same time, struggling with the sheer volume they were receiving, his workplace in the city stopped accepting personal deliveries.

Through some preliminary research, Jarvis found that fewer than 80 retailers offered collection points and yet more than a million parcels were being missed in the UK every single day. This was not only creating hassle for consumers but also a huge drain on resources for businesses.

Spurred on, Jarvis set about building HubBox: a nationwide network of local collection points that enables retailers of any size to offer click and collect regardless of what courier or e-commerce platform they use.

This software-based solution allows clients to fulfil deliveries using their current courier partners to more than 4,000 collection points without a costly integration process.

Whilst HubBox says that the UK has one of “the most crowded courier and logistics markets in the world” and it’s had difficulty explaining its value proposition to potential clients, more than 100 retailers have signed up to date. Among them are a number of top 500 retailers including Jack Wills, Warehouse, Joseph Joseph, and JOY.

The business also derives revenue from online shoppers who create an account to receive a unique HubBox ID and are charged £1.95 for each parcel delivery. More than 5,000 have registered for an account so far.

Now focusing on expanding its client base and investing in its direct to consumer product, Jarvis is striving to take on the big players in the “e-commerce space race”. We predict HubBox is set to blast off!

Founders: Nadeem Siam and Tuomas Hietanen
Founded: March 2015 (launched December 2017)
Website: welendus.com

Nadeem Siam and Tuomas Hietanen believe the UK’s short term credit industry has a problem.

The problem in question? That many profit-hungry organisations either will either lend to vulnerable customers in need of financial support but will inflict high fees upon them, or will overlook these people altogether for fear that they won’t pay up.

Siam and Hietanen’s solution to this is Welendus.

Offering ethical short-term peer-to-peer loans to those in need of emergency cash, Welendus provides fair and affordable repayment options, funnelling the returns back into society.

Pledging to be simple, transparent, fast and reliable, Welendus enables you to borrow any sum from £50 to £500 via a five minute application process. You’ll receive an instant decision and the money will be transferred to your account the same day.

Its flexible options include interest-free if the loan is paid back the same day, while Siam and Hietanen are keen to highlight that they don’t charge incredibly high interest rates or expensive late fees. Rather than late repayments incurring high fees, its short-term loans transition into affordable long-term loans.

Authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) – an achievement the founders refer to as a “breakthrough moment” for the business”, Welendus’ goal to offer fair and flexible solutions that respect those in need of short-term cash is one that the public is getting behind.

Since launching in December 2017, the business has attracted 3,500 registered active users – early growth which it expects to increase rapidly given the size of the UK population and the fact that its interest fees are comparatively low compared to other short-term lenders.

With projected turnover of £6m for 2018, the founders tell us the next 12 months will bring customer acquisition, expansion and growth.

Founders: Lilia Stoyanov and Desislav Kamenov
Founded: May 2015
Website: www.transformify.org

The proliferation of remote and flexible working has brought great advantages and new opportunities for workers the world over, but has created new problems for organisations…

Having held senior positions at the likes of online payments firm Skrill and Coca-Cola, Lilia Stoyanov had experienced first-hand the “pains” associated with managing relationships with freelancers, temporary workers, consultants, and experts.

This includes setting up the temporary worker in the system, collecting, updating and storing bank account details, processing and settling invoices., and monitoring project deadlines.

Stoyanov and her co-founder Desislav Kamenov founded the now two-time Startups 100-featured Transformify to ‘transform’ the hiring of these part-time workers into a business-to-business experience.

Focusing on small businesses looking to optimise their costs and accelerate the hiring process, as well as organisations interested in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and supplier diversity solutions, Transformify’s software is an easy way to manage projects and automate payments.

On the CSR side, the company has an admirable social mission: to provide access to jobs and secure payment to disadvantaged people worldwide. This could be people living with disability or autism, or those living in isolated areas, high unemployment areas or even war-torn countries.

By helping these people find work, Transformify is unlocking and empowering a huge section of the world’s talent that could otherwise have been wasted.

The platform derives revenue from two sources: software-as-a-service clients pay a subscription fee for every user, and a commission for transferring payments through Transformify CSR Recruitment.

Stoyanov’s unique approach saw her scoop the First Women Disruptor of the Year Award at the 13th First Women Awards in July 2017 – a annual awards ceremony that celebrates the achievements of “trailblazing” women.

The company now has 310 business clients across the US, the EU and Asia, and is expecting to hit $15m turnover for 2018 – truly astonishing growth for a start-up in its third year of trading!

Founders: Ben Prouty and Jan Vanhoutte
Founded: October 2016 (April 2017)
Website: www.shepper.com

Investor Carl August Ameln was spending a lot of money on making sure his holiday home in the mountains was secure.

Even then it would involve security companies travelling long distances to inspect the property just to post a status update through the letterbox.

He enlisted the help of Ben Prouty and Jan Vanhoutte to deliver his idea: a network of trusted local people who could check on your property for you and send updates and photos through an app. Startups 100-listed Shepper was born.

Starting from just £10, customers pay per inspection. This could be one-offs or recurring and even in-depth inspections (for a slightly higher price). After being given a where and when, Shepper sends someone over to take photos and provide relevant commentary. The customer then receives an instant report on the property’s status.

Shepper claims this peer-to-peer (P2P) model drives down costs considerably and, as it uses locals, speed up delivery significantly.

Whilst the service is available for individuals, most of the start-up’s inspection volume comes from just over 50 corporate clients including the likes of JCDecaux, JustPark, L’Oréal and many of the Airbnb management companies such as fellow Startups 100 businesses Hostmaker and Airsorted.

Its clients cover France, South Africa, Australia and it’s due to launch in the US later this month. Most have a portfolio of properties that need regular inspection, with subscription packages available for regular checks.

Now in the midst of a multi-million-pound raise, Shepper is set to expand its international footprint even further in the coming months and invest in a next generation product with “a wide range of functionality”.

Ultimately, Shepper is on a mission to create the world’s biggest network of local trusted people.

Founders: Peter Goodman and Andrew Craven
Founded: 2015 (Launched October 2017)
Website: www.homelyfe.com

Tired of “jumping through hoops” and answering the same questions over and over whilst trying to buy travel insurance, serial entrepreneur Peter Goodman knew there had to be a more customer-centric approach to buying home insurance.

He teamed up with Andrew Craven – with whom he’d already founded social advertising platform Brighter Option (now Social.com) which they sold to Buddy Media and subsequently Salesforce – to launch Homelyfe.

Homelyfe is a digital home insurance service that enables consumers to find and buy cover in under four minutes. Free to download, the business takes aa commission on every policy sold.

Built from the ground up, its technology has been able to do away with “unnecessary questions” and streamline the customer experience.

In fact, the process is so streamlined that the record time for a Homelyfe customer to find and buy insurance through its platform is 85 seconds!

Focused on home insurance for the time being, Homelyfe says its technology allows it to create new lines of insurance in “a fraction of the time” it would take a traditional company.

But Goodman and Craven admit it wasn’t easy to get started: as a regulated business, the start-up still had to jump through a large number of hoops before it could start trading.

However, it was the reactions of “amazement and enthusiasm” from senior people in the insurance industry that told them they were on the right track – and backing from investors helped concrete this.

Homelyfe raised an impressive £2.4m in a seed funding round led by Talis Capital and Peterson Ventures just after its full launch in October 2017, which it used to invest in technical development and recruitment.

The next 12 months will see the start-up embark on a campaign of customer acquisition and explore new opportunities for fast and comprehensive cover. Beyond that lies the ambition of becoming one of the “most recognised” names in insurance and global growth.

Founders: Chaz Englander, Rosie Dallas and Owen Turner-Major
Founded: November 2016
Website: fatlama.com

When Chaz Englander, Rosie Dallas and Owen Turner-Major were tasked with refurbishing an office space in 2015, they found they needed all sorts of equipment that they didn’t have – from ladders to vacuums to tiling tools.

With equipment hire shops proving too expensive, too niche or too inconvenient, the trio wasted £5,000 buying items they only needed to use for a few hours. This was frustrating – especially when they knew other people in the office building would no doubt have the same items lying around.

From this frustration came their solution: Fat Lama.

Launched in 2016, Fat Lama is a peer-to-peer platform through which members can rent out their unused possessions – anything from professional camera equipment and musical instruments to campervans, drones, VR consoles and more.

With its users at the forefront, Fat Lama doesn’t charge to list items on the site, instead it takes a 15% service fee when an item is borrowed. Furthermore, possessions are insured up to the value of £25,000, encouraging the peace of mind necessary for a successful rental.

It’s an offering that has certainly struck a chord with the public. Fat Lama is operational throughout the UK, with over 60,000 users in London alone.

At the start of 2018, the platform launched in New York – and was inundated with interest, with more than 1,300 items listed in its first 48 hours stateside.

Now with 20 team members, the start-up has attracted $3.1m in seed funding and plans to launch in more US cities.

As for the more distant future, Englander, Dallas and Turner-Major say the fact that users can rent anything at all, from kayaks to prams, is the “game-changer” that will make the company go far, and “means the model has the potential to be the biggest business in the world”.

With such early traction under its belt, we expect to be hearing a lot more from Fat Lama in the coming year.

Founders: Riya Grover and Lyz Swanton
Founded: January 2016
Website: www.teamfeedr.com

Back in 2015, city workers Riya Grover and Lyz Swanton found it “shockingly” difficult to find both healthy and delicious food whilst they were working despite an abundance of food vendors in London.

They decided it was time to bring workplace meals into the 21st century, making them healthier and more easily accessible.

With Grover having spent time in the US where a lot of innovation had already taken place around workplace food, the pair were inspired to start Feedr in January 2016.

An online marketplace connecting delicious and healthy artisan food vendors with corporates and their hungry employees, Feedr targets companies of between five and 1,000 employees that typically don’t have their own in-house canteens.

The business takes a commission from the vendors and doesn’t mark up prices for the customer, with a small delivery charge applied to group orders.

More than 250 customers have used the marketplace to date including Central Working, Chanel, DHL, Etsy, eve Sleep, Hearst Publishing, Nike and Thoughtworks.

Feedr works closely with its vendors in every part of the process including meal design, packaging, and pricing, helping to create and offering that’s tailored to the office environment. It also provides a virtual canteen service, allowing users to pick and purchase meals from a daily rotating menu of healthy options in their own office.

Additionally, the start-up has a charitable arm. It donates one healthy meal to a school in India for every meal ordered and wants to continually improve its business model to decrease waste and achieve a lower carbon footprint as it scales.

Feedr hopes to hit a run rate of 500,000 meals per year and have its virtual canteens in over 50 companies in London over the next 12 months.

It’s eventual aim? “To revitalise the way we eat at work by giving businesses and their employees instant access to a unique community of food vendors, who make great food, have transparent supply chains, use simple, clean and honest ingredients and provide eco-friendly packaging.”

Founders: Jack Jenkins, Daniel Jefferys, Christian Samuel and Sam Zappi
Founded: November 2014 (launched October 2016)
Website: universitycribs.co.uk

With 30 years of experience in student marketing between them, the founders of Cardiff-based University Cribs – Jack Jenkins, Daniel Jefferys, Christian Samuel and Sam Zappi – were well placed to shake up the staid student housing market.

Jenkins and Jefferys had previously built the Bubble Card, a student discount card and mobile app, before Jefferys and Samuel joined forces to create a student events business that now covers 46 cities in the UK and sees 250,000 attendees a year. University Cribs is their latest business targeted at the student market.

The founders first realised there was something “inherently wrong” with the way students search for their new home whilst they were still at university back in 2010.

By 2014, “the university property market was booming” and they decided the time was right to set up University Cribs: a search engine for university accommodation that simplifies the process for letting agents and its 40,000 student customers.

Launched in 2016, the website acts as a marketing platform, charging agencies and halls of residence to advertise. It has already secured more than 150 clients across the UK, Japan, Ireland, and Germany, including Foxtons, Student Roost and Fresh Student Living.

Since making its debut in the Startups 100 2017, the last year has seen University Cribs diversify its offering with two innovative products that set it apart from other competitors in the space.

The first of these is CribsVR, which offers virtual reality house tours online. The second is Cribs Bills (launching this summer), a household bill splitting platform. These developments were supported by the close of a £450,000 seed funding round in September 2017.

The next year will see the start-up continue to expand and develop new products as it looks to become an all-encompassing platform for student housing, listing property in every single student city in the UK and snaring 1,000 clients by the end of 2018.