The Skinny Food Co sells low-calorie products such as ketchup, beef jerky, low-carb rice and ‘100% Pure Cookie Dough Skinny Peanut Butter’. It sells online through its website and via the likes of Morrisons, Spar, B&M, and Holland & Barrett. Wayne Starkey and James Whiting co-founded the Nottingham-based company in 2018 with £3,000. The pair […]

London based Bloom & Wild delivers flowers and plants to households across Europe, and was launched in 2013 by Aron Gelbard and Ben Stanway. It acquired Dutch rival bloomon and France’s Bergamotte in 2021, consolidating its position as Europe’s leading online florist, operating three brands across eight countries. To date the company has raised over £100m in funding from leading global investors including Index Ventures and General Catalyst.

Entrepreneurs Henry de Zoete and Will Hodson made Dragons’ Den history by netting the best cash-to-equity deal in the show’s history and a year later, they sold their business, for £12.5m. Business-wise, years don’t come much better. Read their full story and more about what they have planned next here…

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 […]

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.

James Noble, founder of MyFirst, joins us to share the incredible story of building one of the UK’s fastest-growing insurance businesses from absolutely nothing. Starting with just £10,000 from investors he met while caddying at Wentworth Golf Club, James left behind a career in professional golf to tackle one of the biggest frustrations facing young […]