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.

Dr.PawPaw makes more than 30 skincare products sold in 30 countries through the likes of Boots, Superdrug and Sainsbury’s. Johnny and Pauline Paterson set up the company in 2013 when their daughter was diagnosed with eczema. The husband-and-wife duo searched for a natural alternative to steroid prescription creams and realised there was a gap in the market. They invested £20,000 to create a multipurpose balm using papaya extract.

FOUR FOUNDER LESSONS When Dr Guy Braverman and Dr Allen Hanouka became businessmen, little did they know that they would build a multimillion-pound company that would save many, many lives. Their career paths seemed set when Dr Guy Braverman and Dr Allen Hanouka were working at North London’s Royal Free Hospital in the early 2000s. […]

Stay unbelievably close to what your customer wants.” This simple piece of advice helped to propel Clare Hornby’s fashion brand ME+EM from a “naive idea” to a £40m-turnover business. “The key thing is to get your product right – and you only do that by understanding your customers,” she tells FEBE…

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.

When Wayne Spriggs’ company, Lusso, was chosen to kit out the bathroom of The Equinox Hotel’s penthouse suite on Manhattan’s West Side in 2019, he couldn’t help but smile. Flashing through his mind were vivid memories of the two-bedroom houses he used to fix up in his hometown of Middlesbrough. The Equinox was a world away. Yet without starting out on those humble houses in England’s Northeast, the glamorous New York hotel project would never have come about. Moreover, if Wayne hadn’t taken that first step, Lusso – on track to turn over £45m this year – would not exist.