TechRound’s 29 under 29 for 2019

TechRound is delighted to announce our top 29 under 29 (entrepreneurs under the age of 29). Selected by the TechRound team, we recognise those entrepreneurs that:

  • Have taken on huge responsibilities from a young age
  • Have shown entrepreneurship across finance, sports, tech, education, property and more
  • Have demonstrated an ability to solve problems and help social issues
  • Have demonstrated success through generating revenue or funding rounds

Above all, we hope that this celebrates the hard work of young entrepreneurs and provides inspiration to the next generation.

For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.

 

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Number 29 – Simi Awokoya – Witty Careers

Simi-Awokoya-profile

Name: Simi Awokoya (27)

Company: Witty Careers – an organisation that helps women learn the necessary skills to pursue careers in tech.

About: Awokoya started to take an interest in science from a very early age and studied Electrical Engineering at Imperial College London. Upon completing her degree, Awokoya got an internship in investment banking, specifically focused in the area of coding.

Awokoya is a passionate advocate for increasing diversity throughout the tech industry, wanting to encourage women into this field and the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) area as a whole. To help Awokoya achieve this goal, the young entrepreneur founded Witty Careers, a non-profit organisation helping women, particularly those who are black and ethnic minorities in general, to develop skills necessary to pursue a career in tech.

Witty Careers is run by a team of successful, professional women in STEM, who have the same passion as Awokoya for helping to improve diversity within the tech industry. The organisation host events at various different tech companies to help women learn and improve upon their tech knowledge, as well as offering career opportunities at their partner companies.

 

Number 28 – Jonathan Lemer – Brains Digital Marketing

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Name: Jonathan Lemer (28)

Company: The Brains – The Brains is a digital marketing agency helping SMEs to grow by improving their digital marketing solutions.    

About: Jonathan Lemer is the founder of The Brains – a London-based, award winning digital marketing agency. Formerly knowns as Brainbroker, one of the country’s fastest growing marketing agencies, The Brains is tailored to SMEs ambitious for future growth and success, helping these flourishing businesses to develop the optimum digital marketing solution for their entire digital marketing operations. The company claim that the company was inspired by their biggest frustration in the industry; watching smaller companies with better products being stunted by the bigger brands.

In response to this, Lemer set up a agency which took tactics used by bigger brands, and created a marketing package affordable for SMEs. Prior to setting up The Brains, Lemer worked on behalf of such big brands as BP and Pepsi to help both in the set-up and scaling of various different micro businesses. This has provided Lemer with fantastic insight into growth strategy, of which he has used to fuel this latest business venture.

The business claim that all of their campaigns are run on the following two ambitions: “To provide a transformative change to our client’s business” and “To make each budget have maximum impact”.

 

Number 27 – Ed Hollands – Driven Media

Ed-Hollands-profile

Name: Ed Hollands (25)

Company: DrivenMedia – Driven Media is an organisation that advertises businesses (its clients) on commercial trucks.

About: Ed Hollands is the founder of Driven Media, an advertising company that uses commercial trucks as mobile advertisements. These trucks cover an average ground of more than 150 miles a day, and after a client’s advertising campaign is over, Driven Media will recycle the advertisement into bags for the company to dispense out to their own clients and customers. Hollands’s company offers flexibility with their campaigns, being able to run along specific roads of the clients choosing and even able to dictate the amount of mobile advertisements used.

Hollands came up with the idea for Driven Media when he was 23 years old after picking up his fiancée from work. The successful entrepreneur noticed some trucks which had not been wrapped with anything, which kick-started Holland’s idea for Driven Media.

After developing his idea further, Hollands then appeared on the popular TV show Dragons’ Den at the start of 2018, and managed to secure £30,000 of investment for an exchange of 20% equity. Hollands has claimed that whilst many have doubted the successful entrepreneur based off his age, he rather sees this factor as something which is key to his business’s success; willing to be as flexible as possible in order to provide the perfect campaigns that his clients desire.

 

Number 26 – Artem Fedyaev and Daria Rebenok – Grabr

Artem-Fedyaev-and-Daria-Rebenok

Name(s): Artem Fedyaev and Daria Rebenok (both 28)

Company: Grabr – Grabr is an online platform connecting shoppers with hard-to-get products from abroad via travellers within the area.

About: Before moving to America, both Fedyaev and Rebenok lived in Spain, and soon after the move started to miss the area’s local goods and products. Frustrated  by this struggle in having to lug back hard-to-get items only stocked in certain countries whilst on abroad, the two decided to set up a company making the process more convenient.

The business is called Grabr, and works through an online platform that connects shoppers with those in the location of the hard-to-get product, who are also then travelling to the shopper’s location.

The service is a win-win opportunity for both the shopper, who gets their hard-to-get products, and the travellers bringing the product over, who gets paid for their services. Grabr has recently raised $8 million through a funding round, and is becoming one of the top services for acquiring locally-sourced and hard-to-get items from all across the globe.

The company claim that “Whether craving macarons from Paris or the latest gadget from New York, Grabr offers a faster and friendlier way to shop the globe, and at the same time, empowers travellers to monetize extra space in their suitcases.”

 

Number 25 – Jonny Plein – Pouch

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Name: Jonny Plein (28)

Company: Pouch – Pouch is a browser extension that automatically searches for any available discounts with retailers when users browse through their website.

About: Upon finishing an EY graduate programme, entrepreneur Jonny Plein  co-founded the company Pouch – a discount code browser extension that is free for all of its users. When browsing a retailer’s online website, Pouch will automatically search for and display any discounts the company may be offering. The service Pouch offers is designed to take the hassle out of searching for great deals and discounts on desired products, offering them up to consumers whilst they go about their online shopping.

The company was developed by Jonny Plein along with Ben Corrigan and Vikram Simha, and launched in 2016. Funding for Pouch initially consisted of family and friends, which helped to raise £18,000 for the company. After this, Pouch secured £145,000 from an investor in the software industry.

In 2017, Plein, Corrigan and Simha pitched Pouch onto the popular TV series Dragons’ Den, and managed to get an investment from the Dragons of £75,000 for 18% in equity. However, this investment deal never materialised off-screen, Pouch claiming that “Post-Dragons’ Den filming, we were offered nearly triple the investment amount for an equity amount we felt much more comfortable with, putting Pouch at a deserved multi-million pound value.”

 

Number 24 – Michael Bush – Climb Online

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Name: Michael Bush (25)

Company: Climb Online – A digital marketing agency that was founded in 2014 by Apprentice-winner Mark Wright and Lord Sugar.

About: Bush is the Commercial Director at Climb Online, which is currently one of the fastest growing digital marketing agencies in the UK and Europe. Bush was one of the first hires under Apprentice-winner Mark Wright and has been promoted to Commercial Director within 5 years. The company has over 50 staff in London and has set its sights on expansion across Dubai and Australia in the next year. High profile clients include Groupon, Be Wiser, Emirates and Hewlett Packard.

 

Number 23 – Marcus Eriera and Luke Shelley – Tavistock Tutors

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Name(s): Marcus Eriera (27) and Luke Shelley (27)

Company: Tavistock Tutors – Tavistock Tutors is a tutoring agency ranging from A-level exams to prepping for job interviews.

About: Eriera and Shelley founded  Tavistock Tutors in 2009. With only a mere handful of tutors, Tavistock Tutors has grown to now offer more that 1,000 tutors, and is currently one of the capital city’s most successful tutoring and education companies offering help with GCSEs, A-level subjects to Oxbridge entrance exams and interviews.

Following in the trend of their greatly accommodative range of tutorial options, the Tavistock Tutors makes all of its services extremely personalised to the customer in question; collecting not only their basic information, but also probing into a deeper analysis as to both their attributes and interests. The company then analyse this data to find the perfect tutor to match each customer and/or student. This tutor then tailors their lessons around both the chosen, specified curriculum in addition to what interests the pupil.

 

Number 22 – Nicholas Shekerdemian – headstart

Nicholas-Shekerdemian-profile

Name: Nicholas Shekerdemian (24)

Company: Headstart – Headstart is an online recruitment platform that is helping to create equality within the workplace, and revolutionise how companies view job applicants.

About: Nicholas Shekerdemian is an impressive young entrepreneur, who is not only a Thiel Fellow, but also a co-founder of the successful company Headstart. Headstart is an innovative online recruitment platform that was co-founded by Shekerdemian along with Jeremy Hindle. This transformative recruitment service was created by the two when Shekerdemian was only 21 years old.

Headstart is an online platform that uses data science and machine learning to help revolutionise the process of recruitment. Launched in 2016 on the ethos that “people are more than a piece of paper” the platform contextualises its users data to help transform how companies view their job applicants. Since its launch a mere 3 years ago, the company now work with an impressive list of brands; including Vodafone, BP and L’Oreal to name a few of many.

Headstart aim to help create equality amongst the workspace, using their technology to help organisations find potential job candidates greatly suited for the open position, regardless of how old they are, their ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender. The organisation is based in London, however has a “hub” in San Francisco, and is claimed to be the very first recruitment system of its kind, being driven by diversity.

 

Number 21 – Louise Leolin – DinoByte Labs

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Name: Louise Leolin (28)

Company: DinoByte Labs – DinoByte Labs is a business that develops games whilst also offering its services to help others creating their own games.

About: Having grown up watching her Mother launch a business, Louise Leolin combined her love of gaming with her entrepreneurial environment to develop the indie games company DinoByte Labs.

Leolin has commented in numerous different interviews that she always wanted to go into a creative career, and felt that the gaming industry was the right fit, becoming an advocate and further role model for women working in the male-dominated games industry.

Co-founded in 2015 by Leolin and Christian Lovdal, DinoByte Labs is built on a true love of creativity and gaming, whilst also raising awareness of women within the industry as a whole. The business has developed numerous different games, including dark narrative-driven game Mildi and educational games for children.

The games company offer a range of different services for those developing games and claim that they can “cover the complete development pipeline, meaning we can design and develop a full product, or we can help you out with smaller tasks where our expertise is most needed.”

 

Number 20 – Benjamin Shalom – Ultimate Boxxer

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Name: Benjamin Shalom (25)

Company: Ultimate Boxxer – Ultimate Boxxer is a boxing brand helping more people to enjoy the sport by tailoring its content towards the casual fan.

About: Benjamin Shalom is the founder of Ultimate Boxxer, a boxing brand in which “8 pro boxers go head to head in an exhilarating spectacle for life changing money & contracts.”

The business is set to host its fifth tournament later in the month, and provides athletes passionate about boxing the chance to win serious money for their games, each one being paid a guaranteed £2,000, and the winner walking away with £16,000 for winning a total of three times in the space of two hours. These payments are set for each athlete, regardless of how many tickets are sold for the tournaments.

Ultimate Boxxer gives undiscovered talent the chance to get noticed, and help their boxing career to properly take off. Young successful entrepreneur Shalom has defined Ultimate Boxxer as a “boxing and entertainment brand” that aims to both appeal and cater to the casual boxing fan, and helping to bring them closer to the sport.

 

For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.

 

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Number 19 – Jessica Moses – NanaBowls

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Name: Jessica Moses (27)

Company: NanaBowls – NanaBowls is a smoothie bowl company helping to promote healthy, clean eating.

About: Jessica Moses is the co-founder of award-winning smoothie bowl company NanaBowls. NanaBowls offers its customers delicious smoothie bowls filled with vegan protein and free from dairy, soy and gluten. Jessica Moses found inspiration for NanaBowls whilst spending time in Phuket, Thailand. The co-founder realised there was no where on the tropical island to get a smoothie bowl, and upon realising gap in the market in the Phuket market, decided to then start her tasty and nutritional business venture.

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Moses’s NanaBowls is inspired by not only this exciting gap in the market, but also her passion for health and nutrition. The NanaBowls co-founder claims she used to love smoothie bowls, however realised that they are often overladen with sugar and additives. Moses describes herself as a ‘sugar-free activist’ and thought up the idea for an all-in-one smoothie bowl that not only looked and tasted great, but also held good nutritional value.

Since opening, NanaBowls has won numerous awards for its success and the healthy eating lifestyle that it helps to promote; including the Health Food Brand of the Year Award 2018 and the Young Entrepreneurs of the Year Award in 2019 of the Thais Business Excellence Awards.

 

Number 18 – Kike Oniwinde – BYP Network

Kike-Oniwinde-profile

Name: Kike Oniwinde (27)

Company: BYP Network– The BYP network is an online networking platform for Black Young Professionals (BYP), helping to increase diversity within the workplace.

About: Interestingly, Kike Oniwinde did not pursue a career in the tech industry until she had firstly become a GB javelin thrower athlete. After graduating with an MSc from the University of Florida, and being awarded the Southeastern Conference Academic Honour award, Oniwinde returned back to the UK. It was upon her return that this impressive entrepreneur decided to get involved in the tech industry, working for a fintech startup.

Oniwinde witnessed first-hand the lack of diversity throughout many different professional organisations, and with a passion for increasing this diversity throughout the workplace, BYP Network was created. Often described as “LinkedIn for black professionals” the BYP Network (Black Young Professionals Network) is a professional online platform black, ambitious professionals can use to network through.

Since first launching, the platform has more than 30,000 members. Also since the BYP Network launch, Oniwinde has been named as one of the Sky Women in Technology Scholars, and received a grant to support her future plans for improving diversity throughout the professional sphere. The BYP Network also work with other organisations to help improve diversity. Oniwinde hopes that through her pursuit of increasing diversity she inspires minorities of all kinds to help make important changes to the world.

 

Number 17 – Sam Morgan – SM Creps

Sam Morgan

Name: Sam Morgan (18)

Company: SM Creps – SM Creps is a personal shopper service that has catered to numerous premier league footballers and other celebrities.

About: One of the standout entries in the TechRound 100, SM Creps founder Sam Morgan has had an entrepreneurial spirit from a very young age, and has gone from selling sweets in the playground to becoming the personal shopper for numerous different celebrities and premier league footballers. On top of this, Morgan has built up his incredibly successful personal shopper business alongside finishing school, and now has A-Levels in economics, psychology and maths.

Morgan’s first ever client was professional footballer Cohen Bramall, who quickly spread the word about Morgan’s impressive talents for sourcing hard-to-find fashion items. Morgan has claimed that he owes SM Creps’s success down to the fact that he can provide clients with “stuff that isn’t available in shops” in a quick and hassle-free way including brands such as Gucci, Yeezy and Balenciaga.

With two years’ experience in the personal shopper business under his belt, this impressively young entrepreneur has already received singular deals as big as £22,000. Morgan claims to have gotten some of his clients by connecting with them on the video game Fortnite, and others from word of mouth amongst the professional footballing community. With his list of high-profile clients and growing publicly, the future of SM Creps is looking incredibly bright.

 

Number 16 – Josh Hart – yulife

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Name: Josh Hart (29)

Company: yulife – yulife is lifestyle insurance business helping employees to improve upon their overall health and wellbeing.

About: Josh Hart is the co-founder of lifestyle insurance business yulife – a life insurance brand with a wellbeing app to encourage good health and staff participation.

The business was launched in 2018 with £3 million in seed-round funding, and has since raised a further €11.3 million in Series A funding. The company started to help improve the lives of employees by improving the dynamics of life insurance, creating “lifestyle insurance.”

All accessible through an online platform, yulife combines the fun of gaming with lessons on healthy living and self-care. The service does this by encouraging users to complete simple and easy activities throughout the day. Users receive ‘yucoin’ for every mile they walk or for meditating or doing other exercise – which can be converted into Amazon vouchers, free health drinks and more.

The wellbeing programme offered by yulife is inspired by Dr Rangan Chatterjee’s (yulife’s Chief wellbeing Officer) theory of the four pillars of wellbeing; these being to relax, to sleep, to eat and to move.

 

Number 15 – Karina Sudenyte and Maciek Kacprzyk – Flawsome

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Name: Karina Sudenyte (24) and Maciek Kacprzyk (27)

Company: Flawsome! – Flawsome! is a company helping to minimise food waste by making drinks from the “ugly” fruit that sellers would have otherwise discarded.

About: Having won the 2017 Young Entrepreneur of the Year in the NatWest Great British Entrepreneur Awards, both Sudenyte and Kacprzyk have had an entrepreneurial spirit for most of their life. Both of the Flawsome! founders have recalled having an interest in selling products from childhood including Sudenyte having helped her Mother to sell various different household goods.

At the ages of 20 and 23 (Sudenyte and Kacprzyk respectively) the two had generated funds from a successful round of crowdfunding, and launched the company Get Wonky. The aim of this company was to minimise both plastic and food waste by making drinks from “ugly” fruit that is usually discarded. In addition to this, all bottles the drinks are held in are recyclable (being made from glass).

The company has since been renamed to “Flawsome!”, and has saved 750,0000 fruits from being wasted in the last year. The two founders frequently donate drinks to charity, and help those growing fruit produce to increase their revenue by selling products they would have otherwise thrown away, living up to their claim “We exist to create a world where food isn’t wasted needlessly!”

 

Number 14 – Ben Towers – Towers Design

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Name: Ben Towers (20)

Company: Towers Design – a web developing company that has merged with Zest The Agency to become “One of the largest marketing agencies in Kent.”

About: Being dubbed by Richard Branson as “one of the UK’s most exciting entrepreneurs”, Ben Towers began his web developing business venture at only 11 years old when a family friend asked him to build up their website. At this stage, Towers had no previous experience in developing a website, however still took the challenge on, learning how to build up a site through YouTube tutorial videos. The family friend paid out £50 for the site, which became the start of Towers professional web developing career.

Throughout his secondary school education, Towers started to develop his freelancing into a much larger business – Towers Design. The young entrepreneur began to hire other web developing freelancers to help keep on top of the business’s work load when Towers was occupied with school. During this time, the business began to flourish, and Towers set up an office for his team after completing his GCSEs.

Towers had to hire himself as an apprentice to his company (and is the first person to ever do this) in order to meet legal requirements – with those under the age of 18 having to be in full-time education/training. In 2017, Towers Designs was involved in a multi-million pound merger with Zest The Agency, and is now one of the largest marketing agencies in Kent.

 

Number 13 – Harry Sanders – StudioHawk (SEO)

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Name: Harry Sanders (21)

Company: StudioHawk – a Search Engine Optimisation company in Australia with over £1 million of invoicing per year.

About: Sanders is the founder of SEO business StudioHawk, built on the ethos of providing its clients with honest, ethical and trustworthy tactics to help boost their online presence. In the shady world of SEO, the StudioHawk approach refers to using “100% white hat SEO to make sure your site succeeds without putting it at risk from Google penalties”.

Sanders learnt first-hand the impact that dishonest SEO providers can have on a business, after his Father’s boat licensing company suffering financially after signing up for a marketing company that “did absolutely nothing.” Upon seeing his Father struggle, Sanders decided at the age of only 13 to start learning SEO marketing strategies himself to help with the business.

After learning the ins and outs of SEO strategy, the family’s business was starting to get a great online presence, so good that at the age of just 17 Sanders decided to set up his own SEO company. However, during his time setting up StudioHawk, Sanders found family circumstances prevail that saw him become homeless on the streets of Melbourne. It was here the 17-year old started to call people offering his SEO services. He then got four clients, and built his company quite from the ground up.

Sanders started StudioHawk at the impressive age of 17, and now boasts an impressive list of over 150 clients, and a annual billable value of $1.3 million. The young entrepreneur is hoping for this number to exceed $2 million by the end of the year. The company has recently gone global, opening up an office in the UK’s capital, and Sanders stating “Our mission is not just to be the best in Australia, but the world”.

 

 

For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.

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Number 12 – Brandon Johnson – Serac Homes/Entrepreneur

 

Brandon Johnson Entrepreneur

Name: Brandon Johnson (19)

Company: Serac Homes – a property development company building luxury houses both in and around London.

About: One of the youngest self-made millionaires in the UK, Brandon Johnson has shown an entrepreneurial attitude from an impressively early age. Serac Homes is one of the latest of Johnson’s business ventures, being a property development business that is currently in the process of developing beautiful luxury homes around the country’s capital city.

Serac Homes is just one of many ventures that the self-made 19-year-old millionaire has done, his first starting at the age of just 12 years old, making a small profit on a silver coin he bought on a trip to a WWII memorabilia fare. Since then, Johnson has upscaled his investments, working his way up throughout his teenage years with home sprinkler systems, selling imported cars and non-stain clothing. At the age of 17, Johnson developed his company Serac Homes, with two properties currently on sale for £800,000.

The Serac Homes founder has a two-year business plan for the startup, which, if going according to the plan, will make Johnson a property portfolio exceeding £5 million by the time he is 21 years old. One of his major career aspirations is to leave his “footprint on the London skyline” by adding his very own skyscraper to the city, claiming “if someone else can put a building like that up there, why can’t I?”

 

Number 11 – Joe Zender – Nez

Joe Zender, Founder Nez

Name: Joe Zender (27)

Company: Nez – an app offering great deals on food and drink within the country’s capital.

About: Having grown up in London himself, the founder of successful startup nez had experienced the exciting growth of the city’s restaurant and bar scene. Walking past chalk boards outside of local shops offering discounts on fantastic food and drinks, Zender then realised that this was not something that had yet been translated into the digital world. Inspired by this gap in the market, nez founder then set off on his pursuit to connect Londoners to local restaurants and bars who were offering fantastic deals on their food and drinks.

Nez was initially launched in London’s district of Fitzrovia, and became the app for both workers and residents throughout the area looking for great food at great deals. From its popularity within this initial district, the app has since expanded to cover Bank, Chancery Lane, Covent Garden, Farringdon, London Bridge, Holborn, Soho and St Paul’s. The company state that this is only the start, and have claimed in an interview with TechRound that they are planning to have a “loud and fun presence” throughout the UK capital throughout the next year. There is also an employee benefit perk, offering discounted meals to office teams.

The nez app is free to download, and has helped to grow the city’s ever-expanding food and drinks scene; offering London foodies great deals on their next meal whilst helping to increase revenue to local shops and businesses.

 

Number 10 – Ben Jeffries – Influencer

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Name: Ben Jeffries (23)

Company: Influencer – an influencer marketing company connecting products and brands to influencers.

About: Ben Jeffries is an impressive entrepreneur who became one of the pioneers in what is now called influencer marketing. At the age of only 16, Jeffries started a clothing brand (Breeze), but struggled to boost his online visibility when noticing that many people used ad blockers. In order to get around this, Jeffries then decided to get endorsements from influencers, and got his products sponsored by YouTubers and other social media figures with substantial followings. Through influencer marketing, the young entrepreneur was able to penetrate the ad blockers, and got people talking about his brand.

Jeffries decided to quit his Breeze venture to pursue his own influencer marketing agency – Influencer, in May 2015. Since its launch, the company has won the Young Start-Up Talent competition (winning £50,000), has raised £150,000 in a crowdfunding round, and has been profitable from its very beginning. The company has already seen an impressive range of clients, from Uber to Primark and many more, and claim their ethos to be:

“We believe in the power of peer to peer communications. People trust recommendations from people they know. When purchasing a product, people don’t just want to know about what a brand has to say about themselves – it’s superficial – they want to know what others are saying about that brand and this is where we help to change the game.”

 

Number 9 – Emma Smith – Eversend

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Name: Emma Smith (27)

Company: Eversend – a “multi-currency e-wallet” enabling those in Africa to transfer money through their mobile devices.

About: Emma Smith is a young entrepreneur based in London who has a love for tackling the biggest social and environmental challenges around the world. It is with this passion that she co-founded the revolutionary online platform Eversend; a startup that allows Africans to send money through their mobile devices (i.e. mobile smartphones). This innovative startup describes itself as a ”neobank for Africans” and a “multi-currency e-wallet that allows you to exchange, spend and send money at the best possible rates.”

The startup currently has over 9,000 users, and uses blockchain technology to enable consumers in Africa to exchange, spend and send money all whilst avoiding the often staggering transfer fees. The Eversend e-wallet claims to save African consumers up to an impressive 70% in foreign exchange and other fees that come with global transfers.

Eversend can also allow users access to its services without any internet, using USSD channels. This means that all consumers need to access Eversend is a mobile phone device. The platform also allow users to hold and manage multiple different currencies, these including GBP, USD, EUR, NGN, KES, UGC and RWF. The system is revolutionising the way African consumers both manage and move their money, having since its launch transferred an astonishing $5.4 million.

 

Number 8 – Jenk Oz – iCoolKind/Entrepreneur

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Name: Jenk Oz (14)

Company: iCoolKid – a website for users between the ages of 8 and 15 years old, publishing content on the latest trends and news for young people.

About: Jenk Oz has had an entrepreneurial spirit from an incredibly young age, founding his first business venture iCoolKid at only 11 years old. With the help of Mum (former Managing Director of Goldman Sachs) and Dad (a surgeon), Oz managed to create an online platform for users between 8 to 15 years old. The platform made national news and put Oz on the map.

The platform publishes content in the form of various different articles, news on the latest trends, and interviews, all relevant and interesting to young people. It was built to promote how the online world can be a safe and entertaining place for young people.

Founded in 2016, Oz has already interviewed such major public figures as David Haye and Idris Elba for his online platform, and has continued to keep the site up, running and relevant alongside his schoolwork. Since becoming CEO and founder of iCoolKid at only 11 years old, Oz has gone on to speak at a TEDx Youth event, the 2018 Amazon AWS Summit in London, and Retail Week’s 2018 Tech festival (in which he was on a panel as leaders of tech for the next generation).

 

Number 7 – Carlos Pierre – Badi

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Name: Carlos Pierre (29)

Company: Badi – an online platform that matches tenants to landlords through their shared interests, promoting a more positive rental experiences.

About: Carlos Pierre is the CEO and sole founder of the innovative rental app Badi. Initially starting in Barcelona, this online platform matches tenants and landlords together based off of various different details the users put into the app (e.g. their interests and personalities). It helps to further ensure a happy rental experience, attempting to match tenants and landlords with similar personalities and qualities.

The company is focused all around people, and want to ensure a hassle-free, and more successful experience for those trying to find a place to rent. Users simply have to sign up for Badi by completing a profile about themselves, decide whether they are renting a room out or wanting to find a room to rent. After this, users can explore profiles and enquiries, being able to read through profiles that are matched based upon common interests and other qualities in your profile. Renters can then secure the first payment from a new tenant securely through Badi.

The rental platform was inspired by Pierre’s frustration with the rental process and the founder experiencing first-hand how tedious and stressful it can be when trying to find a place to rent in Barcelona. The company has already managed to raise an impressive $45 million in funding, and since its 2015 launch, has become the number one rental platform to use throughout Spain. Badi has expanded its services, now catering to a European market within the following cities: London, Paris and Rome.

 

Number 6 – Marcin Kleczynski – Malwarebytes

Marcin-Kleczynski

Name: Marcin Kleczynski (29)

Company: Malwarebytes – an internet security business protecting devices from the very latest cyberthreats.

About: Kleczynski started his Malwarebytes journey in the year 2004, when the co-founder’s family computer got infected with a malware infection. This was even with a “big-name” antivirus installed, and it took Kleczynski three days to remove the malicious code from the system. Upon realising that traditional antivirus methods were not able to keep up with the latest evolutions of malware, the young entrepreneur decided to then teach himself code and develop his own anti-virus software that could keep up with the seemingly constant evolution of computer viruses.

Along with his business partner Bruce Harrison, Kleczynski then co-founded Malwarebytes, an internet security company which claims to eliminate the most recent, advanced cyberthreats before other organisations have even acknowledged their existence.

The company state that the more traditional forms of antivirus software can often be slow to react to new types of cyberthreats, whereas Malwarebytes uses “layers of technology”, including detection of anomalies and behaviour matching to help the software destroy new viruses upon first contact.

The technology developed by both Kleczynski and his co-founder Harrison can be used to not only stop new viruses from getting into a computer, it can also help to clear up a machine that is already infected by malware and/or hackers. This technology is the “only “flawless” clean-up score from the folks at AV-TEST.org”, and is available for both businesses and for personal computers, and can be used with Android, Chromebook, iOS, Mac and Windows.

 

Number 5 – Gauthier Van Malderen – Perlego

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Name: Gauthier Van Malderen (27)

Company: Perlego – an online platform offering an extensive library of academic e-material to users, including e-textbooks.

About: Whilst studying at university, Gauthier Van Malderen, like many other students, experienced the frustration of spending hundreds of pounds on heavy old textbooks that were vital for his degree. Whilst forking out more than £300 a year on these out-dated books, Van Malderen wondered if there was a way to revolutionise this aspect of his life, as the entrepreneur stated: “I was using Netflix for films, Spotify for music and thought, surely this could work for textbooks!”

From this idea, Van Malderen teamed up with his old friend Matthew Davis, and together the two created Perlego. The business launched at the start of 2017, and is an online platform with which its users have access to an impressive range of e-textbooks and other types of academic and educational online literature.

As the platform is aimed at students, the two co-founders wanted to ensure Perlego was affordable and manageable for those on a tight budget, and charge a small monthly subscription fee in exchange for access to its wealth of e-textbook material. After only a year from the launch date, the two co-founders had managed to raise £850,000 in funding, with angel investors such as Alex Chesterman (Zoopla) and Simon Franks (Lovefilm).

The online platform has revolutionised how students access their academic material, creating an accommodating, affordable and positive space for students in need of academic literature.

 

Number 4 – Jeff Cripe – Cargo

Jeff-Cripe-Cargo

Name: Jeff Cripe (29)

Company: Cargo – a business providing customers of vehicle transporting services with convenient goods and other products.

About: Jeff Cripe is the co-founder and CEO of Cargo – a business which is transforming the way people experience vehicle transporting services such as Taxis. The company has already raised an impressive $30 million from various different investors, of which include the likes of Coatue Management and Founders Fund. The company’s goal is to connect “millions of riders with millions of products, everyday” and to further “upgrade the rideshare experience with affordable access to daily essentials and discovery goods whilst celebrating the driver.”

Cargo achieves this goal by providing rideshare drivers with boxes that are filled with various different, convenient goods and products; including snacks, drinks, and even phone chargers. The drivers can make orders via a smartphone app, making the process of ordering in more stock both mobile and therefore easy for drivers to complete whilst on-shift. Cargo has had partnerships with some impressively big brands, including the likes of Starbucks, Kellogg’s and Mars Wrigley Confectionery.

 

Number 3 – Aamar Aslam – Funding Invoice

Aamar Aslam

Name: Aamar Aslam (26)

Company: Funding Invoice – helping to financially support small businesses suffering from delayed invoice payments.

About: Aamar Aslam is one of the most well-known young entrepreneurs in the UK.

Aslam was running a chauffeuring company whilst studying economics at the University of Warwick. During his time chauffeuring clients, the entrepreneur found himself struggling with how long it would often take for invoices to be paid. Inspired by his struggle, and wanting to provide a service to help alleviate this challenge many business owners face, Aslam then began to raised funding for his latest company, Funding Invoice.

Funding Invoice helps to financially support small businesses, helping SMEs receive up to 80% of their invoice value. With over £50 million lent out so far, the company has found a niche in helping fashion startups receive money upfront to meet the orders and demands of a growing business.

Number 2 – Akshay Ruparelia

Akshay Ruparelia

Name: Akshay Ruparelia (21)

Company: Doorsteps.co.uk – an online estate agency helping to make the process of house hunting more time and cost effective

About: Akshay Ruparelia has stated that he “always had an entrepreneurial spirit and ambition”, growing up selling sweets in school from 12, and later becoming a carer for his deaf parents. It is with this ambition and matured sense of responsibility that the young entrepreneur developed Doorsteps; an online estate agency that has completely revolutionised the way people search for a home.

The concept of Doorsteps initially came from Ruparelia’s experience moving house as a child, being shocked by how estate agents were receiving such a high commission for a job that seemed reasonably simple. Through this experience, the founder then started to develop a business model for an estate agency that took the hefty fees and the hassle out of searching for a house.

Doorsteps online estate agency offers house hunters 24/7 access to its team of professional agents from anywhere and everywhere. In addition to this, those signing up to the Doorsteps agency will only have to pay a fee of £99 per annum to use its services. In its first year alone, Doorsteps has helped its customers to save an incredible £1 million in agency commission fees. It has sold £120 million in property and was valued last year at £12 million – making Ruperalia one of the UK’s most wealthiest and successful entrepreneurs.

 

Number 1 – Husayn Kassai, Eamon Jubbawy and Ruhul Amin – Onfido

OnFido-founders

Name(s): Husayn Kassai (29), Eamon Jubbawy (27), and Ruhul Amin (now 31)

Company: Onfido – a software company helping businesses to improve their identification processes.

About: Kassai, Jubbawy and Amin together co-founded the company Onfido, aimed to help other businesses to better their identification processes. The software does this by implementing a photo-based identity document alongside AI algorithms in order to improve upon both the speed, and accuracy, at which businesses can verify someone’s identity.

Onfido has become one of the leading trusted experts in helping businesses with their ID verification globally, used by such big names in the industry as Revolut, Orange, Zipcar and Bitstamp, to name a few of the many. In the past 7 years, the founders have taken a startup with an impressive concept and goal to great heights, now being used by more than 1,500 companies, and holding offices in Lisbon, London, New Delhi, New York, Paris, San Francisco and Singapore.

 

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