If there is someone you would like to add to the list, please email us directly. Please see our shortlist below!
Lee Skyrme – Futr
Futr was born in 2017, when Lee and co-founder and CEO Andy Wilkins saw the massive opportunity to use cutting edge artificial intelligence to transform the way we access public services. Four years later, with the support of an amazing team and fantastic VC’s, Futr is proud to include the police, the NHS and a number of amazing charities and social services as valued customers.
Lee attended Kingston University and graduated with BSC in Mathematics and MSC in Information Technology.
Having gained a degree in Mathematics and a Masters in IT, Lee’s lifelong enthusiasm for technology has enabled him to progress through roles including full stack developer, system architect, product owner, principle big data architect and CTO. He has also built a number of products and companies online.
Dash Tabor – TUBR
DASH Tabor studied for a Masters at Kingston University in City Planning and Sustainable development and now runs TUBR – a machine learning company innovating how we tackle everyday annoyances and we started with helping commuters travel while avoiding crowds.
Dash always had ambitions to run her own business and those aspirations stretch back to her time at University. But she couldn’t have predicted when and where my ‘lightbulb moment’ would come. In the end it happened when she was on the morning commute and had her face wedged into another passenger’s armpit.
She thought there had to be another way in the 21st Century – we must be able to make it easier for people to move around and stand back from the crowd.
From there her business TUBR was born. They use cutting-edge technology and algorithms to predict how busy every minute will be and we share this information to commuters on their free-to-download app – it is already helping thousands of Londoners returning to offices following more than a year of home-working. They have ambitious plans to expand to other cities too.
Utilising data is at the heart of what they do. They realised early on that access to the data they needed to solve the issue of crowding was non-existent, so they started tackling the problem. Crowding on a public transport system presents a unique challenge because the flow of data can be inconsistent and sparse over a period of time. They set out to solve this problem as part of their solution and ended up advancing time-series machine learning technology to predict in smaller environments with fewer data points..
She is passionate about her business because she am the user. She has been able to build something that can fundamentally change the way we move around cities for the better. We can optimise every minute and fall back in love with the public transport systems that we can’t live without. She has invested most of her savings but the biggest sacrifice has probably been the amount of time needed to drive success to a bootstrapped business.
They want to grow the business fast and smart, expand to other areas where they’ve seen demand and transform the way we think about planning our daily travel. They’re already looking at new cities, including Manchester. Long term they see themselves as a deep tech company that builds insightful solutions for the world’s “smaller” data problems. They want the app to be our travel assistant for giving you control over the experience society wants to have. Right now they provide crowding predictions. But as they develop they’ll offer individualised suggestions for when to travel in order to get the experience customers most desire.
Richard Walton – AVirtual
Richard Walton attended Kingston Business School and has founded several successful businesses since graduating in 1998. Richard founded his first successful company at the age of 21, and is currently the head and founder of AVirtual. AVirtual is currently based in South Africa, where Richard now resides. He has a clear insight into the world of business and also portrays firm beliefs in the importance of having a work-life balance, leading him to be featured in numerous publications including the Times, the Financial Times and SUCCESS magazine.
Richard started his first business immediately after university. This business is called GVI and is still in operation. GVI specialises in volunteering abroad and is now over 20 years old. Richard has also founded multiple other businesses which includes a safari field guide training school, however his most recent business is specialises in the creation of a virtual PA.
Richard’s latest venture, AVirtual has provided him with a major sense of achievement as he has been able to provide jobs in communities where they are in short demand.
Neomi Bennett BEM – Neo-Innovations
Neomi Bennett is a Registered Nurse practitioner who attended Kingston University and graduated in 2012. She is now a successful entrepreneur and has invented Neo-slip. Neo-slip is an innovative product which helps hospital workers to apply medical stockings to patients .
Neomi graduated with a Nursing degree and began working in the local hospital after her graduation. She originally began developing her product in her spare time as part of her studies. This became difficult alongside working full-time as a nurse, and so Neomi decided she should turn her hobby into a full-time role instead and quit her job in the hospital.
Currently, Neomi’s business is in the process of supplying 34 hospitals across the United Kingdom with Neo-slip. Neo-slip is also available by prescription from the NHS and has also become available via a framework agreement with the NHS from 2017.
If there is someone you would like to add to the list, please email us directly.
