Founders: Stuart McClure, Mark Solomon and Dave Bishop
Founded: 2015
Website: www.lovethesales.com

In essence, Love the Sales brings a whole world of online discounts (on designer fashion, accessories, homeware, apparel and more) together in one place, making it easy to find what you want at a great price.

However, what makes this rapidly growing brand special and what has earned it multiple Startups 100 entries, (most recently, it was 17th in 2018) is how it does it.

Love the Sales is powered by a specially developed in-house artificial intelligence called Minerva, that analyses the inventory of around 1,000 of its retail partners, to assign standard attributes. What this means is that retailers can sell their excess stock faster, and for more money than they would have otherwise been able to.

This helps to tackle a crisis in fashion retail where margins are stretched to breaking point, 30-50% of all stock is being discounted on any given day, and, in 2020 alone, L.K. Bennett, Cath Kidston, and Warehouse all went out of business. And equally, if not more important, it also helps to reduce the piles of unsold clothes that are simply burnt every year.

Minerva also helps with the company’s marketing efforts, ensuring that the 4.5m+ shoppers using Love the Sales are alerted when items they want go on sale.

With the aid of this cutting-edge tech, Love the Sales makes shopping easier and cheaper for anyone and everyone – expect to hear far more about this stylish startup in the years to come.

Founder: Alex Chesterman
Founded: 2018
Website: www.cazoo.co.uk

Cazoo was formed to solve one simple problem. Loads of people love cars, but hardly anyone loves the process of buying a car. The trips to car dealers, the haggling over price, and the long drawn out process of it all.

Alex Chesterman, a serial entrepreneur who was previously the driving force behind Zoopla and LoveFilm, founded Cazoo in 2018 with a very different approach. Everything is done online, and your new car is delivered directly to your door (with a 2-hour window) in as little as 72 hours. In other words, it’s quick, easy, and convenient, just like the way you buy anything else online.

Cazoo owns all the cars it sells, and every one is thoroughly reconditioned before it goes on sale. All cars also come with a 90-day warranty and 90 days of free RAC roadside assistance.

Once your car arrives, you have seven days to drive it and, if you change your mind for any reason, the car gets collected and you get your money back.

Cazoo was 13th in last year’s Startups 100 and has since gone from strength to strength, launching a national marketing campaign, and being recently announced as the main partner of Everton Football Club in a multi-year deal.

Since it was founded, Cazoo has already raised more than £180m in funding, and we expect this dynamic startup to continue zooming up our rankings.

Founder: Jeff Kofman
Founded: 2016
Website: www.trint.com

You may think that transcribing audio has been done before. And it has. But not to Trint-level accuracy. Using both automated speech recognition (ASR) and natural language processing (NLP), Trint’s AI accurately transcribes speech into text. And it doesn’t just transcribe English, either – it can process 31 global languages.

Founded by former journalist Jeff Kofman, Trint was developed to solve the pain points of the broadcasting and publishing industries. It now means interviews, speeches, and conferences can be automatically transcribed into accurate text. And problems are even solved for niche industries too, thanks to the Trint Vocab Builder, which allows people to input words that the AI may not automatically recognise.

But Kofman didn’t stop there. He also recognised that people need to play around with the text once it has been transcribed, so he developed tools that allow businesses to search, edit and highlight text, then download it in a range of file formats.

Its subscription plans are split into individual, team and enterprise, meaning freelancers to entire publishing houses can take advantage of the technology.

All of this impressed us back in 2018, when Trint reached number 20 in the Startups 100. But this year, its new additions of real-time transcription, translator tool, and project workspace has proved to us that Trint is a startup business that’s going to stick around and evolve with the times.

Founder: Andrew Needham
Founded: 2015
Website: www.headbox.com

Impressively, HeadBox has made the Startups 100 list several years in a row, working its way from a solid 74 in 2016 to position 23 in 2018. This year, it’s headed all the way to the top 10.

HeadBox’s software as a service (SaaS) products empower businesses to find the perfect events space, and plan, build, manage, and track their events on one online platform. The company is heavily built on AI, believing that the best events come from a mix of machine AI and human EQ (emotional quotient).

Founder Andrew Needham’s business model is simple: make commission for every event booked through the platform, and make money on every software sale to both demand and supply customers.

Its online platform hosts over 9,000 event spaces across the UK and Europe, and businesses can use its ‘brief builder’ to narrow down event space options to those that fit their needs. Particularly innovative are HeadBox’s 3D virtual venue tour function and AI pricing tool, both of which allow businesses to research and budget for their event way in advance.

The event-tech company has attracted some big brands, including Skyscanner and EDF Energy, and has already seen some very attractive revenue figures. We therefore have no doubt that once Covid-19 is over, HeadBox is going to make even more headway into becoming one of the most essential tools in the events industry.

Founder: Ian Henderson
Founded: 2016
Website: www.boilerplan.com

There are more boiler companies out there than most people have had hot showers, but Boiler Plan is a boiler company with a difference. It recognises that not everyone can afford a new boiler outright, so it’s developed a solution that enables customers to buy a boiler on finance, or even offset their costs with an energy-efficient boiler.

With a simple ecommerce business model, customers purchase its services and boilers on the website, and an efficient follow-through service means customers can have their finance plan set up and a new boiler installed within 48 hours.

But it hasn’t stopped there. Showing true innovation and dedication to changing the way in which people buy boilers, Boiler Plan founder Ian Henderson has even developed his own boiler product. This means customers have the option to purchase a high quality, A-rated boiler for less, but also have the option to choose from a range of branded boilers if they want to.

Boiler Plan believes heavily in transparency, with a non-pushy sales team, no hidden costs, and free online quotes. This, in addition to its servicing and repairs and care plans, has earned Boiler Plan a five star Trustpilot rating and lots of positive reviews across the web.

When it boils down to boiler replacements, repairs, and services, Boiler Plan is certainly building itself a solid market presence and definitely deserves a spot in our top ten.

Founders: Digby Vollrath and Hugo Campbell
Founded: 2017
Website: www.feast-it.com

Feast It is changing the way people organise events by allowing event organisers to book their suppliers in just a few clicks. And because it operates in B2B, B2C, and the public events space, the scope for business is huge. In fact, Feast It’s successes have impressed us before, as they reached a rather delicious 34 in the Startups 100 2018 index.

So, how does it work? The events organisers provide Feast It with their event requirements and the system pairs them up with catering companies, bars, and photographers based on their needs. It’s a lead generation company with a difference.

The event platform has 1,000s of carefully curated suppliers in its books – from Patty & Bun to Nanny Bill’s – and has assisted the likes of Amazon, Nike and Warner Studios with finding suppliers for their events.

Feast It is a thriving company built on a commission model, meaning it’s only paid once a booking has been made. And because it relies on bookings to make money, it has invested interest in its suppliers – it even has a dedicated support team.

But founders Vollrath and Campbell aren’t stopping there. They’re plugging even more gaps in the events market by building financial products that allow their customers to choose between paying the cost of the event upfront or putting down a deposit and paying off the event on a monthly basis.

Their success stories so far include being booked by and feeding celebrities including Angelina Jolie, Taylor Swift and Tom Cruise, as well as catering for huge public events like London Pride and Hackney Half Marathon. We know this company will give us plenty to feast our eyes (and mouths) on in the future!

Founders: Chris Forbes and Julie Chen
Founded: 2016
Website: cheekypanda.com

With a passion for the environment and a heavy social conscience, The Cheeky Panda Founders, Chris Forbes and Julie Chen, wanted to find a way to make one of the world’s most-used products more world-friendly.

Recognising the fast-growing properties of bamboo, The Cheeky Panda Company was born, and its ultra sustainable 100% bamboo toilet paper was created. The product hit the market with great success, and even made position 48 in the Startups 100 2018 – just two years after The Cheeky Panda Company was born.

Over the last four years, Forbes and Chen have developed a range of 15 bamboo products, including toilet roll, kitchen towels, wipes, and professional hand towels – and they’ve saved over 120,000 trees in the process.

The Cheeky Panda Company has wiped the floor when it comes to interest from retailers, securing partnerships from the likes of Tesco, Boots, Morrisons, and WHSmith. Its professional range has also secured them partnerships with janitorial distributors PHS and Lyreco.

Forbes and Chen have big aspirations for the future, as they seek to become one of the first pure play green companies to list on the main market of the London Stock Exchange. But their passion for the environment is always at the forefront, as they edge towards their company goal of saving 200,000 trees.

Founders: Ben Chatfield and Ollie Povey
Founded: 2017
Website: www.heytempo.com

Whether you outsource your recruitment or do it in-house, finding new staff can be an expensive and laborious process, with a lot of time and resources wasted on back and forth with unsuitable candidates.

But shouldn’t it be the opposite? A chance to bring on board the kind of fresh ideas and energy that can help your startup thrive.

Racking up its third appearance in the Startups 100 is Tempo, the recruitment startup on a mission “to make work an adventure and recruitment the most exciting thing companies do”.

Founders Ben Chatfield and Ollie Povey claim their unique recruitment process cuts the average ‘time to hire’ to just four days and the cost of hiring by 65%… So, how does it work?

Both the business and the candidate create a “rich-format CV”, which contains a wealth of information about everything from skills and experience to company culture and salary expectations. Candidates also create profile videos, and companies can upload videos to give candidates a feel for what it’s like to work there.

Tempo then uses machine learning to match candidates to suitable companies based on key criteria, preferences, and behavioural data from the platform.

By the time the company and the candidate have been put in touch, both parties have much more information about one another, leading to better, faster decision making.

Tempo has two payment models, pay as you go, and subscription, where clients pay a monthly fee for access to the platform.

So, can recruitment be the most exciting thing a company does? Well, 2,500 UK businesses seem to think so, including the likes of Monzo, Bulb, and ASOS, who currently have a database of more than 70,000 candidates to choose from. This impressive startup is definitely setting a new tempo for hiring in the UK.

Founders: Gauthier van Malderen and Matt Davis
Founded: 2016
Website: www.perlego.com

Do you remember being a student? Or maybe you still are a student. Those academic textbooks sure are pricey aren’t they?

In fact, UK students spend an average £400 per year on textbooks, on top of their already astronomical tuition fees.

Founded by Gauthier van Malderen and Matt Davis in 2016, Perlego is the startup that’s fixing this “broken academic publishing industry” by making educational material accessible for all.

For just £8/month, Perlego users gain access to an entire digital library of academic texts, as well as effective learning tools such as highlighting and annotating. The idea is so novel that Perlego claims to not have any direct competitors.

But what about the publishers? Well, Perlego’s distribution model has been set up to reclaim the revenue lost to piracy and the second-hand market. Everyone’s a winner.

The startup is currently experiencing an astonishing 116% month-on-month increase in new subscribers, and is already targeting key strategic markets in Europe for its next stage of growth.

Now backed by a $9m Series A funding round, Perlego is well placed to democratise access to academic texts the world over. That’s a mission we can get behind.

Founder: James Harford-Tyrer
Founded: 2017
Website: www.cudoni.com

According to Luxe Digital, the luxury secondhand market is worth $24bn worldwide. And it’s growing at four times the rate of the primary luxury market.

Seeking to capitalise on this massive opportunity is Cudoni, the three-time Startups 100-featured company that makes it easy for people to buy and sell “pre-loved” luxury goods.

Founded by James Harford-Tyrer in 2017, Cudoni aims to provide “absolute convenience” to its customers, by taking care of everything from in-house collection to professional photography, listings, and fulfillment.

There are no up-front costs. Instead, Cudoni takes commission upon the sale of an item. Customers include celebrities, businesses, and professionals in the luxury goods space.

And you might think that the global buying and selling of high-end goods doesn’t usually go hand in hand with environmentalism, but Cudoni claims that its business model can reduce carbon, water, and waste by 73% compared to buying ‘fast fashion’.

When it first appeared in our index in 2018, Cudoni had sold more than 15,000 products over 60 countries. In 2020, the company is expecting to sell more than 100,000 products to more than 100 countries.

That explosive growth is why Cudoni has taken the very respectable number 3 position in our 2020 index. And with a number of high profile campaigns with celebrities including Millie Mackintosh lined up, we’re expecting even greater things from Harford-Tyrer and Cudoni.