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.

Dock & Bay was created in 2015 to reinvent the beach towel. The company’s lightweight towels are made from recycled plastic bottles and are quick drying, compact and sand repellent. In 2017, co-founders Andy Jefferies and Ben Muller appeared on the BBC’s Dragons’ Den, securing a £75,000 investment from Deborah Meaden…

Sixty-five-year-old Mike Clare brims with boyish enthusiasm, even over Zoom. As he chats, it’s not hard to imagine him turning a £20,000 investment into £222m Dreams Beds, which is precisely what he did. And his energy is such that it makes you believe you could do something similar – even during a pandemic…

Entrepreneurs set themselves testing targets – it’s what they do. From hotel owners to jewellery makers, they must strike out alone or with a small team and forge something special. Doing so requires a deliberate dash – naked at first – into a painful daily hailstorm of challenges. It’s a tough calling by nature, and there are as many different dreams burning holes in founders’ pillowcases each night as there are stars in the sky. But of all the entrepreneurial goals, there can be few more demanding than the one Dima Kats set himself in 2016.

Pizza oven maker Ooni’s year-on-year growth is turbo-charged, but the stat that most exhilarates co- founder and co-ceo Darina Garland is not directly related to revenue at all. The number that makes her happiest is the company’s Employee Net Promoter Score, which is a whopping 74. The global average eNPS – a measure of employee engagement – is 12, with anything above 30 regarded as outstanding. So 74 is an outlier that proves that Ooni’s team absolutely loves working there.

Startup Logistics provides services including shipping, bulk storage, and website support to e-commerce brands. The company was founded by Udhi Silva and Nick Coleman, who previously founded online healthcare supplier Medical Supermarket in 2011 and snack company Snaffling Pig in 2013. As a result of their experience building Snaffling Pig, they understood what consumer brands […]