How my side hustle became a multi-million pound business
More Founder Stories
‘What creates good entrepreneurship? Obsession!’
This year, Meatless Farm launched a vegan steak made from pea protein, adding to its range of plant-based food that includes meat free mince, burgers and chicken. Danish entrepreneur Morten Toft Bech founded the Leeds-based business in 2016. It opened production hubs in the Netherlands and Canada last year and now exports to more than […]
How we blagged meetings with buyers to build our brand
Husband and wife team Manav and Rimi Thapar started LoveRaw: a plant based chocolate brand with £600 and a food processor. Today, the confectionery is sold in 20 countries, and stockists include Asda, Coop and WH Smith. LoveRaw secured £2m of funding from investor Blue Horizon Ventures in 2020, after rejecting an offer in the BBC’s Dragons’ Den.
‘Don’t overreact to curveballs. Focus is everything’
Kubrick Group was launched to overcome the digital skills shortage by building a data, AI, and cloud technology workforce. It provides staff with training before deploying them as consultants. It has trained over 1,000 professionals and supports more than 100 clients, including BP, Morgan Stanley, and Jaguar Land Rover. The London-based company was co-founded in 2016 by managing partners Tim Smeaton and Simon Walker and is backed by private-equity firm Bowmark Capital, which invested an undisclosed sum last year. Sales have risen by more than 50% a year since 2018, reaching £29.2m in 2021.
‘As an entrepreneur my job is to be a hype-man and recruiter’
Founded in 2016 by then 23-year-old George Melhuish, this West Bromwich based company supports over 30,000 customers. Safe Fence is a manufacturer, hirer, distributor and installer of non-mechanical construction site plant. Expansion into areas such as groundworks, scaffolding and material handling equipment has seen sales more than double in two years, reaching £13.8m in 2021.
6 ways to create a killer brand
Why do some brands fly? What is it exactly that makes the ‘feel’ of a product or service so instantly enticing that it attracts customers like a magnet? To find out from someone who’s built one of the most successful UK brands of the past 10 years, we interviewed Juliet Barratt, co-founder of sports-nutrition brand […]
SECRETS OF A SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR: HOW ACTIVATE GROUP ENTERED THE FEBE GROWTH 100 HALL OF FAME
What fuels a serial entrepreneur? What motivates a founder who, having sweated blood and tears to launch, develop and exit a business, repeats the exercise, swerving the beach in favour of more early morning wake up calls and interminable spreadsheets? In the case of Mark Wilcox, the answer may surprise you. This serial entrepreneur says his second multimillion-pound company came about because his wife kicked him out…