Overleaf is described as “like Google Docs for science” and was co-founded in 2012 by mathematicians John Hammersley and John Lees-Miller. They created a collaborative writing and publishing tool that makes it easier to produce scientific documents. It is used by more than 9m students and academics at 6,800 institutions worldwide, including Caltech and the University of York. The London-based firm has a team of more than 50 in the UK and US, and sales climbed to £5.7m in 2020.