When it comes to pulling off creative ideas, Marie Owen is your go-to leader. Founder of an award-winning production services company, she is the advertising and film industry’s real-life dream-maker. Since starting the business in 2006, Marie has worked with the likes of Harry Styles, Meryl Streep and Marcus Rashford. But it hasn’t all been celebrities and glamour. “I didn’t take a wage for at least four years. But there was always a hunger within me to do more and be better.”

Tofoo produces organic, gluten-, dairy- and yeast-free products from soybeans. Husband-and-wife team Dave Knibbs and Lydia Smith have built the business to sales of £18.6m in 2021. The North Yorkshire firm says it is the fourth-largest brand in the chilled meat-free market, with more than one million households buying its products regularly. Its recent growth is partly due to winning listings in major retailers including Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose.

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.

Beijing-born twins Jake Xu and Shane Carnell-Xu launched this men’s cosmetics brand in 2019 after raising funds from angel investors Sally Preston and Neil Mather of Kiddylicious, the children’s snack business. Bestsellers in Shakeup’s skincare and makeup range include moisturiser, under eye concealer and face masks. The brand is stocked by national and overseas retailers, such as Harvey Nichols, Superdrug and Australia’s Myer, and it recently launched its new Face 4ward range in China. The Xu brothers previously set up READY, a creative agency based in Bath.

In 2014, whilst on vacation in Thailand, three friends from London noticed the amount of rubbish and plastic bottles on a remote island. Founders Josh White, who had previously launched an events company, Perry Alexander, a self taught graphic designer, and Ariel Booker, a headhunter, started researching and discovered that cans are more recycled than […]

The Salad Project runs five salad bars across London. Florian de Chezelles met his friend and co-founder James Dare whilst studying hospitality management at university. The pair founded The Salad Project with a mission to bring healthy and quick food to customers living and working in the City. The duo launched their first site in […]