Dr Will’s is on a mission to reduce our sugar consumption. Its sauces, dressings and mayonnaise are made with only natural ingredients and are sweetened with dates rather than added sugar. Its eponymous cofounder, Dr Will Breakey, teamed up with Liam White and Josh Rose to launch its products in 2017, and they have since won listings in the likes of Tesco and Waitrose. In 2021, they secured £1.1m on crowdfunding platform Seedrs to invest in marketing, e-commerce, recruitment and packagi

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Connie Nam felt her confidence draining away. The founder of London-based lifestyle jewellery brand Astrid & Miyu had built a fast-growing, multi-million-pound company, but that didn’t matter. As unbelievable as it sounds, imposter syndrome was creeping in. The Seoul-born, US-raised Londoner explains why: “I’d hired someone who’d started to challenge how I ran the business. They were an expert in that field; I wasn’t. I saw myself as a founder, not a CEO, so the criticism hit home.”
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‘WE’RE FOUR YEARS IN AND WE’VE JUST TURNED DOWN AN £85M BID’
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.