Until last year, Wayne Starkey still filed his own VAT returns. Many co-founders of four-year-old companies do – old habits die hard and it saves a few quid in accountancy fees. What VAT-DIYers don’t do, however, is turn down £85m buy-out bids. Ever. Yet that’s the jaw-dropping offer Wayne and co-founder James Whiting rejected just a few months ago. Those facts indicate how far and how fast The Skinny Food Co has come since its 2018 launch. They also reveal how down-to-earth yet ambitious these two entrepreneurs are.

Huel makes nutritionally complete food: drinks, bars, instant meals and protein products. Serial entrepreneur Julian Hearn and James Collier founded the brand in 2015, and chief executive James McMaster joined two years later. In 2018, the Hertfordshire firm raised £20m from investor Highland Europe to launch new products and drive international growth. Huel has sold […]

Vanilla Underground’s recent growth has been formidable, with online sales of its officially licensed clothing and apparel going – to use a technical term – completely ballistic. Armchair shoppers are ordering Minecraft T-shirts, Peppa Pig slippers and Harry Potter rucksacks faster than Sonic the Hedgehog. And the trend has handed the company’s Tamworth-based co-founders, married couple Deniz and Jason Yarnell, a heady combination of excitement, joy, and – because you can’t run a business without it – worry.

Lucy Locket Loves makes colourful fitness clothing and accessories for women. The Derbyshire business caters for a wide range of body shapes, with sizes spanning six to 26. Former personal trainer Lucy Arnold founded the company in 2018 after suffering a back injury. While recovering, she created leggings to sell to former clients. Customers include Made In Chelsea star Rosie Fortescue and the company launched a collection with Strictly’s Dianne Buswell last year.

In today’s world of high-tech medicine, it’s ironic that a product made of paper could play a leading role in improving global healthcare. The idea that an A6 piece of card might have a greater impact on global health than, say, a fleet of surgical robots seems ridiculous. However, the simplest ideas often pack the biggest punch…

We live in an era of remote working, office pool tables and CEOs signing off emails with smiley emojis. But beneath the fluff, many people still believe deep down that fun and work do not go together ­– that fun is expensive and a distraction from the DEADLY SERIOUS business of running a company. In these people (you […]