TechRound is delighted to announce our 29 under 29 for 2020.
It’s been a pretty abysmal year. But it’s not all bad: Hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs are trying to make the world a little better and a little brighter on a daily basis. We want to raise up and celebrate some of the most forward-thinking and business-savvy minds that have been on our radar this year. From fighting plastic pollution to creating safer ways for women to travel solo, this compilation is jam-packed with inspiring changemakers who we believe you should watch.
Selected by the TechRound team, we recognise those entrepreneurs that:
- Have taken on huge responsibilities from a young age
- Have shown entrepreneurship across a variety sectors including education and non-profits
- Have demonstrated an ability to solve problems and help social issues
- Have demonstrated success through concept, generating revenue or funding rounds
Above all, we hope that this celebrates the hard work of all young entrepreneurs and provides inspiration to the next generation by watching and learning from these 29 entrepreneurs.
For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.
Number 29 – Heeral Pattni – Amica App
Name: Heeral Pattni (22)
Company: Amica App – A friendship app for female travellers, who want to meet like-minded people in a safer way.
About: In 2019, Heeral was desperate to travel, and was planning a trip alone but became hesitant as she didn’t have the confidence to take the leap alone. After talking to other women who had similar hesitations, the idea for Amica was born.
Amica is more than just an app, Amica is a growing community for women travelling solo, aiming to connect and inspire women so they can flourish. The Amica App is a travel brand created by women, for women. Users can sign up to the app and choose to connect based on shared interests such as preferences within culture, activity, food and drink, as well age and distance. In doing so, the Amica App empowers women to travel solo by providing opportunities to create meaningful friendships along the way.
The COVID-19 pandemic gave the Amica App an opportunity to create an online community called The Travel Plug. This community gives women the opportunity to share their travel experiences and tips, wherever they are in the world.
Number 28 – Nathan Shoesmith – The Speaker
Name: Nathan Shoesmith (19)
Company: The Speaker – A digital news media company on a mission to inspire the next generation in politics.
About: The Speaker was born out of an idea in a classroom in Norwich in 2018 by Nathan and other students who felt that there was the need for a youth-focused news website delivering impartial and understandable political coverage.
Since launching, The Speaker has attracted audiences across the globe. Its headline, analysis and explanatory content is trusted by ever-growing audiences across the UK and beyond. Much more than just a news website, The Speaker’s educational content helps members of the public, students and organisations discover more about politics, how it works and how they can get involved.
As Managing Director, Nathan specialises in political coverage in England and Wales, while overseeing the company’s operations and driving its continued strong growth and development. Alongside this, Nathan, is a multi-award-winning social entrepreneur working on a variety of charitable and socially focused projects, while continuing to enhance his skills as a student at Lancaster University.
In the future, Nathan is targeting continued rapid growth for The Speaker, with plans to launch more targeted education content to further explain politics to the next generation.
Number 27 – Catalin Voss – The Autism Glass Project
Name: Catalin Voss (25)
Company: The Autism Glass Project – Using Google Glass technology to help children with autism to interpret other people’s emotions through facial expressions.
About: A graduate from Stanford University, Catalin Voss is an inventor who worked to develop emotion-recognition software for Google Glass with his team at Stanford.
With 1 in 62 children in the US having autism, Catalin wanted to help children who had difficultly recognising emotions. Catalan proposed creating a pair of wearable smart glasses with an outward-facing camera on the glasses that uses machine learning to track faces around someone and facial expressions, and give the child feedback there and then.
After developing facial recognition technology, Catalin designed games and applications to transform the technology into a useful learning aid. For example, the software allows someone to look back at a recorded situation and learn from it. As well as reading facial expressions and providing social cues within the child’s natural environment, the glasses all record the amount and type of eye contact, adding an additional layer for behaviour intervention.
Number 26 – Sasha Haco – Unitary
Name: Sasha Haco (28)
Company: Unitary – Developing computer vision models to understand online content and make the internet safer.
About: Before entering the startup world, Sasha was using mathematics to solve the mysteries of the universe. During her PhD at Cambridge, she worked with Stephen Hawking on the black hole information paradox and spent a year as a visiting fellow at Harvard. Along with a First Class Honours from the University of Cambridge in Natural Sciences, Sasha was also awarded the Institute of Astronomy Prize and the Queens’ College Natural Sciences Prize whilst at Cambridge University.
Taking a leap into entrepreneurship, Sasha founded Unitary in June 2019. Making the internet safer with AI, Unitary is viewing online content including audio, images, text and video, to identify harmful and inappropriate content. The aim of Unitary is to prioritise their users’ safety, providing advertisers with the assurance on brand safety. Since 2019, Unitary has acquired over 22 million subscribers.
Number 25 – Lauren Sharpe – Lollybakes
Name: Lauren Sharpe (23)
Company: Lollybakes – Cake designer and Instagram influencer
About: Lauren Sharpe has always had a love for baking and after deciding university wasn’t the path for her, Lauren decided to go to Le Cordon Bleu to train to become a pastry chef. After 9 months of intense training, Lauren received a diploma in pastry! After receiving this diploma, Lauren continued her path and worked at Soho Farmhouse for 2 years before starting Lollysbakes from home.
After just a year, Lauren Sharpe has 50,200 followers on Instagram and is making her customers cake dreams come true, making every cake and dessert with love. Recently, she has also started to teach others how to design a cake with cooking classes in her kitchen at home.
For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.
Number 24 – Jeremy Evans – Explaain
Name: Jeremy Evans (28)
Company: Explaain – Turning articles into chunks of data, helping to increase engagement on news sites.
About: Jeremy Evans is an entrepreneur, journalist, web developer and teacher at City University in London living in London. In 2014, Jeremy founded Explaain.com, a journalism platform and tool that brings articles to life with interactive fact cards.
Evans’s venture Explaain turns articles into chunks of data that connect together to form a big ecosystem of news for readers to discover. The startup has created a plugin which adds interactive content cards to online articles, allowing readers to learn more about the topics around each story without leaving the page. Explaain does this by scan article content and automatically linking it up to Explaain cards.
Number 23 – Matthew Sarre – Jumpstart
Name: Matthew Sarre (27)
Company: Jumpstart – The UK’s start-up graduate programme, helping graduates to get exciting start-up jobs.
About: Matthew and his co-founder, Kabir Bali, always felt slightly disenchanted by the lack of alternative career paths outside of big corporate graduate schemes. Everyone encourages graduates to apply for big professional services companies, but no one tells them that start-ups can offer unparalleled learning opportunities and exciting responsibility early on.
After discussing the idea for Jumpstart for a while, lockdown became the perfect opportunity to get started after seeing 1000s of big corporate graduate jobs being delayed or cancelled. The COVID-19 pandemic became an incredibly important time to provide structure and support for graduates that would otherwise be unemployed or starting work remotely with employers who had never done remote recruiting, on boarding, or training.
Each month, Jumpstart offers 10 graduates the chance to have their support and on-going mentorship. They then connect the job-seekers with UK-based startups on the lookout for diverse and trained talent. Jumpstart graduates receive ongoing mentorship, support and networking opportunities, with a guaranteed minimum salary of £25,000 once they find a job.
Number 22 – Charlotte Horler – Nula Carbon
Name: Charlotte Horler (28)
Company: Nula Carbon – A climate action platform, helping companies and individuals to offset their emissions by protecting forests.
About: Prior to starting Nula Carbon, Charlotte lived inside the Kasigau forest she is now working to protect them. In 2017, she moved out to Kenya to work for SOKO Kenya, an ethical manufacturer and community trust. After three years of working alongside Wildlife Works and the Kasigau community through SOKO Kenya, she grew to realise how important forest protection is in the fight against climate change. More importantly, how this tool is far more effective when delivered in partnership with the communities on the ground.
However, she realised that there was a disconnect between the carbon offsetting concept and the consumer. The narrative at the time did not include individuals and small businesses and too few companies had invested time and money into the education and behaviour change process. She set up Nula Carbon to bridge this divide in January 2020.
Charlotte works closely alongside her friends and colleagues at her project delivery partner, Wildlife Works, to ensure that individuals and businesses feel like they are the agent of change. Seeing carbon offsetting as good for business and a catalyst for wider climate advocacy and action.
Nula Carbon are on a mission to get the curious climate active. They are working to make carbon offsetting and climate action so easy and enjoyable that forest protection becomes part of everyday life. To make this possible, they are dedicated to demystifying the carbon offsetting process and offering an accessible route to action.
Nula Carbon has partnered with Wildlife Works to deliver forest protection carbon credits. They invest the finance from these credits in the communities and ecosystems that live alongside the forest. These communities in turn work with Wildlife Works to ensure the forests remain standing, maintain healthy biodiversity and keep carbon where it is meant to be; in the trees and soil. Ultimately, it is an investment in people to protect the planet.
Both individuals and businesses can access Nula Carbon’s platform, purchasing subscription carbon credits so that they can offset their own, or their employees, lifestyles to become carbon neutral. Businesses can also take their action one step further and offset their operations whilst also giving back to the planet through Nula Carbon’s climate positive, tree planting scheme.
The platform has been created to connect curious individuals and businesses, asking them to share their ideas and plans because we’re more powerful when we work together.
Number 21 – Declan Spiro and Jacob Kalms – 20SHOTS
Name: Declan Spiro (27) and Jacob Kalms (27)
Company: 20SHOTS – Creating Fantasy Sports Betting Experiences.
About: Fantasy sports’ growth over the past 10 years has been crazy, with over 7 million players of the English Fantasy Premier League game, over 50 million for fantasy cricket in India, and 60m+ in USA. Currently all fantasy sports games are ‘peer-to-peer’, which makes it slower, harder and uniform across all platforms. Declan and Jacob thought the only way to properly monetise fantasy sports is with real-odds, instant gratification, ‘sports betting’ games. Recently, Declan and Jacob released a brand new free-to-play fantasy sports concept, Fantasy5, where users can win £10,000 each week
With the experience of Declan working at the world’s leading sports betting hedge fund and Jacob’s experience with lead marketing and acquisition for a UK betting operator, they were well-placed to bring 20SHOTS product to market. Since January 2019, 20SHOTS has aimed to monetise fantasy sports through sports betting. 20SHOTS develop in-house algorithms to accurately predict football players’ performances, combining this with innovative UI designed to simplify all our games.
For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.
Number 20 – Urenna Okonkwo – Cashmere
Name: Urenna Okonkwo (28)
Company: Cashmere – Helping modern trend-focused millennial’s save towards and purchase luxury goods and experiences guilt-free and without having to dip into their personal savings.
About: Urenna is an award-winning entrepreneur and founder of fintech startup, Cashmere. Cashmere is a social savings and e-commerce platform that helps young female aspirational consumers save for and buy their favourite luxury products and experiences in a financially responsible manner and without falling into debt. By bridging the gap between FinTech and luxury e-commerce, Urenna’s mission is to empower modern millennials all over the world to be good with their money so they can afford and unapologetically live the lifestyle they desire, enjoying luxury responsibly.
Prior to this, she was a financial adviser at a leading wealth management firm, providing financial and investment advice to high net worth individuals and a forensic analyst at KPMG. Urenna also worked at Sanderson House as an assistant financial planner. During her time at Sanderson House, Urenna advised high net worth clients, helping them understand their financial circumstances and how to reach their short-term and long-term financial objectives.
Number 19 – James Omisakin – Compare Ethics
Name: James Omisakin (28)
Company: Compare Ethics – Connecting conscious shoppers with brands leading by example.
About: James is an innovation and product specialist and certified Agile PM Practitioner. Along with his co-founder Abbie Morris, James became concerned with global impact and the effects of investing in sustainability at scale.
Compare Ethics is a data-driven startup using technology to verify sustainable products, establishing trust and transparency between consumers and retailers. The 2018 startup works to create MVP iterations of their technology, ensuring the best possible opportunity for success and market-fit. The technology assesses products and brands across ten crucial categories, spanning supply chains, governance, circular economy, certifications and more.
In its short time, Compare Ethics has been named in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in the Ecommerce and Retail space, and selected for the highly competitive Google for Start-ups 1st Accelerator Program. In April, Omisakin and his team managed to secure pre-seed funds to scale their B2B offering. Over the next year, the startup will focus on continuing to utilise sustainable innovation technology to increase their impact, working with both independent SME brands and exploring the opportunity to work with larger retailers.
Number 18 – Vihan Patel – The Power Of Music (POM)
Name: Vihan Patel (21)
Company: POM – A dating app that seeks to connect users based on their shared love of music.
About: Vihan is a recent graduate from Cardiff University. Having successfully raised seed capital for his startup in just under 4 weeks he begins his journey as the founder of a disruptive new dating app called POM, the dating app for music lovers.
Vihan came up with the idea for POM when he accidentally sent a playlist he had made for a friend to the wrong person. Luckily fate stepped in – he got a song back from the stranger as she liked the playlist he had made. They ended up communicating purely by sending songs back and forth for a while, eventually they met and ended up dating. Music had brought them together and this idea stayed with him.
POM uses the emotional indicators embedded within your music taste in order to match you with others. POM places the emphasis on emotional compatibility as the basis of any successful relationship. In order to do that POM uses the music people love to introduce them to others who feel the same. Studies have shown that music compatibility is one of the main things people look for in prospective partners, and POM’s API allows the app to integrate with the user’s streaming service of choice, helping POM build an honest picture of who you are. This frees users from the hot-or-not swiping game that drives so many dating apps now. POM is exclusively inclusive – it’s all about loving what you love, being unapologetically who you are and finding the perfect match for the real you.
Number 17 – Valentina Melanoma – Daye
Name: Valentina Melanoma (25)
Company: Daye – A female health research and development company on a mission to bridge the gender gap in product innovation.
About: Graduating from the University of Buckingham, Valentina Melanoma earned degrees in Economics, Business and Law. Born in Bulgaria, Valentina began her career supporting companies Founder Factory and Techsters. In November 2017, Valentia embarked on her own journey and founded Daye.
Date is an online e-commerce platform providing female health research and innovative products designed to improve standards in the feminine hygiene industry. The company operates out of a CO2 neutral facility in South London. It also creates CBD tampons, which are produced by women who used to be part of the criminal and care system.
All the tampons are ethically sourced and organic, putting sustainability and customer care at the front of their core values. Products are purchased on a subscription basis, with customers building their own package with a choice of regular and super flow CBD and ‘naked’ tampons.
Number 16 – Jamie Bolding – Jungle Creations
Name: Jamie Bolding (29)
Company: Jungle Creations – Creating and distributing branded content across media brands to help them achieve their marketing objectives and reach their audience.
About: Jamie Bolding attended the University of Manchester completing a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management. After graduating in 2013, Jamie went on to work on founding Jungle Creations and was running by July 2014.
Jungle Creations is a social-first publisher that owns and operates several media brands that together have over 117 million followers across social platforms. Jungle Creations creates and distributes original and curated content for its owned media brands, as well as offering marketing services for brands., which include the likes of VT, Twisted, Craft Factory Level Fitness, Four Nine, Lovimals and Blue Crate.
Jungle Creations is home to The Wild, its full-service creative agency that connects brands to communities, culture and commerce and offers full creative solutions, events, social media management, production, influencer and performance marketing.
Jungle Creations campaigns have been awarded ‘Branded Content Team of the Year’ for three years in a row. The marketing company has approximately 120 employees, with offices in London and New York, with clients ranging from Monopoly, Hasbro Heinz, McDonald’s, and more!
For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.
Number 15 – Tom Leigh – Social8
Name: Tom Leigh (26)
Company: Social8 – A multi-faceted digital marketing company that specialises in influencer marketing, paid social, amazon marketplace advertising and Google SEO.
About: Having been a model and social media influencer himself, Tom saw too many brands partnering with the wrong influencers who had the wrong audiences for their products. Too often, influencers were buying followers and charging brands thousands of pounds for work that resulted in 0 sales. Using his insight of how the industry worked on the back end, Tom used his network of influencers and models to partner brands with the best talent – and Social8 was born in July 2018.
Social8 initially aimed to partner with brands with real influencers, whose reviews and promotions resonated with their fans and followers. From there, Social8 grew with their clients and started offering a wider range of services. Today, Social8 is a rapidly expanding social media and digital marketing company, specialising in Paid Social, SEO and Amazon Advertising and has taken clients from strength to strength during COVID-19.
Number 14 – Hayley Leibson and Scott Wu – Lunchclub
Name: Hayley Leibson (25) and Scott Wu (22)
Company: Lunchclub – An AI-powered networking platform, built to facilitate one-on-one interaction.
About: Hayley Leibson is a startup founder, angel investor, and writer with expertise in consumer tech, marketplaces, community and health and wellness. First, Hayley co-founded Lunchclub, the world’s first AI super-connector valued at $100+ million and backed by a16z, Lightspeed, and more.
Next, Hayley founded Lady in Tech, an award-winning tech lifestyle blog. She writes to inspire, motivate and encourage millennials and Gen-Z women to enter the tech industry. More recently, Leibson co-founded Neverland, a modern plant company powered by technology and community.
Scott Wu attended Harvard University to study Economics. After university, Scott became a Software Engineer at Addepar and soon became a startup founder, founding Lunchclub along with Hayley. Lunchclub uses Al technology to create networking opportunities for professionals across various industries. The invite-only service exists in cities across the US and the UK, and has helped thousands of people to meet investors, to recruit workers and to find business partners. Lunchclub’s mission is to power a future of work where making new connections is easy, meaningful, and fun.
Number 13 – Alexander Coleridge and Tom Montague – TapSimple
Name: Alexander Coleridge (29) and Tom Montague (29)
Company: TapSimple – A feel-good fundraising platform, using technology to help charities fundraise in an increasingly cashless society.
About: Alex and his school friend Tom Montague worked together on a campaign to tackle homelessness in London and they saw there was a real need for technology solutions to help improve the fundraising process. There were so many points at which, during his fundraising experiences, they were both frustrated by the opportunities they felt were being missed when potential donors couldn’t contribute because they weren’t carrying cash. To combat this, Alex and Tom launched TapSimple in 2018, to help provide charities with the tools they need to innovate and adapt.
TapSimple’s first product, The Clip, was a device that enables contactless and chip and pin donations when paired with the TapSimple app. The Clip has been proven to increase donation engagement and the amount donated by donors. It is powered by a sophisticated reporting dashboard that can be used to track and analyse donation patterns and behaviour, and manage fundraising activities.
Recently, TapSimple launched a new product to further support charities fundraising during the pandemic, helping charities connect remotely with fundraisers and raise money online, much like Zoom or Skype, but with the ability to donate directly from the page.
The platform has been used successfully by many charities already, including the NSPCC, Children with Cancer UK and Christian Aid. Charities have been hosting all sorts of innovative events via the TapSimple virtual events platform, from quizzes to supporter Q&As, virtual cocktail making classes and even a duck race.
Number 12 – Bharat Signh Chaturvedi – Sanitree
Name: Bharat Signh Chaturvedi (22)
Company: Sanitree – Tackling period poverty and the stigma surrounding menstruation in a sustainable, collaborative and ethical way.
About: Bharat read Economics and Politics at the University of Edinburgh on an Undergraduate Global Scholarship. Principal’s Medal 2018 awardee. The ethos of his institutions of study has always emphasised character-building, giving him the required confidence to keep testing his abilities.
Bharat has spent the better part of the past five years in and around purpose-led businesses and organisations with exposure through consultancies and not-for-profit organisations. He is currently interning at the office of Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi MP and in past assisted Monica Lennon MP in her End Period Poverty Bill.
His brainchild Sanitree is an award-winning social enterprise, acclaimed by the Scottish Parliament and Clinton Foundation, aimed at addressing the stigma around menstruation through an environmentally friendly, and to tackle period poverty in his hometown of Bhind. Bharat believes that altruism and gender equality should be prominent in the nation-building process.
While at university, Bharat formed Sanitree the social enterprise in September 2017 under the society Enactus Edinburgh. Sanitree ran their pilot scheme in Bhind by January 2018, which, through the skill of our beneficiaries there, is now totally self-sufficient. Alongside Bharat is 14 members of the student-led Sanitree team in Edinburgh who attend university together. Most of their fundraising is done here, and recently they have started collaborating with some local independent eco-focused companies. Today, the team is currently breaking into the UK market with their pads to further subsidise the cost of our pads in Jaipur, and help to fund other Jaipur ventures.
Number 11 – Lydia Jones – Housemates
Name: Lydia Jones (21)
Company: Housemates – A student-first digital housing platform that believes securing student accommodation should be as smooth as booking a holiday.
About: Lydia founded Housemates in December 2018 to help students around the world book their accommodation quickly and securely online by paying a holding deposit. The end-to-end marketplace removes the need for out-dated lead-generation processes and frees accommodation operators from traditional challenges in filling occupancy, whilst also removing upfront costs.
Housemates are set to launch in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Dublin in 2020, but has an ambitious plan to expand across other cities in the UK, Ireland and internationally in 2021.
Number 10 – Melissa Roberts – Kidcrowd
Name: Melissa Robers (21)
Company: kidcrowd – A secure, online gifting platform built to tackle the issue of unwanted gifts in the UK.
About: With older friends who have children, Melissa noticed that they were all complaining about their children’s birthday parties. Their main complaint was that after their child’s birthday party, they would find that their house would be full of plastic that was then never played with. This made the parents feel guilty that friends had spent money on their child, but that it really had gone to waste.
Melissa’s entrepreneurial mindset kicked in, leading her to think about a way to give gifts differently. Using her knowledge, resources, and skills, Melissa created a basic platform to start changing the way we give gifts, kidcrowd. Kidcrowd is an online gifting platform built to tackle the issue of unwanted gifts in the UK. By using kidcrowd, gift-givers are able to gift meaningfully, sustainably and encourage kids to save money.
The platform can be accessed via any online browser, and it allows parents to create a page for their child, add in a message about what their child is saving for, add an image of their child, and then the system generates a unique link that parents can send out to their child’s friends and family, ahead of their birthday. This enables gift-givers to securely contribute towards a larger, more meaningful gift, which they know the recipient will love. This inevitably makes gift-giving easier for parents and more enjoyable for children, while teaching children the value of money versus the cost of goods.
For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.
Number 9 – Nina Rauch – Pink Week and 30|30
Name: Nina Rauch (25)
Company: Pink Week (A week of events aimed at raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer care) and 30|30 (Facilitating alternative networking events, tailored to groups who would not have the opportunity to meet, but deserve an equal professional shot).
About: When Nina was 18, she founded her first social initiative in Clare College, Cambridge, Pink Week, in honour of her late mother. Pink Week has since expanded to 12 university campuses around the UK and US and raised $300,000 to date (including $48,000 in under an hour), organising events ranging from 50 guests to 500 guests. Pink Week aims to engage and educate students, altering the common rhetoric surrounding breast cancer and encouraging self-awareness of the body.
During her undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, Nina was head of Calais Refugee Action Group, and spent time volunteering in the Calais refugee camps. At 24, in 2018, Nina founded 30|30 after graduating in 2017 and moved to Tel Aviv in July, where she leads Social Impact for Lemonade. 30/30 organises unique networking events, pairing local charities with leading professionals, and innovators. Each guest is carefully matched according to professional background, and experience.
Number 8 – Amy Williams – Good-Loop
Name: Amy Williams (29)
Company: Good-Loop – A revolutionary, ethical approach to advertising, making the connection between brands and people more meaningful.
About: The idea of Good-Loop was born whilst Amy was working at a global advertising agency. The more Amy learned, the more she noticed a disconnect between brands and their audience. To overcome this, Amy set out to find a positive solution, one that not only made advertising more positive for people on the internet but also a way for the industry to do good.
Alongside her co-founder, Daniel Winterstein, they launched Good-Loop in 2016. The aim was to connect people, brands and good causes in a meaningful and effective way. Today, Good-Loop is an ethical online advertising platform that seeks to make using the internet a more philanthropic experience. The business model is simple: if viewers watch at least 15 seconds worth of ads, then 50% of that revenue is gifted to a charity of their choice, and this donation is funded by the advertiser.
Good-Loop is now running active campaigns in multiple markets across Europe and LATAM and earlier in 2020 Good-Loop launched into the US, which is an exciting, high-potential market for the company.
Number 7 – Alexandru Ionut Budisteanu – SkyHub Social Network, VisionBot and WebDollar
Name: Alexandru Ionut Budisteanu (26)
Company: SkyHub Social Network (A Forum 2.0 Social Network that rewards users with ads revenue), VisionBot (Providing reasonably-priced materials used for making electronic boards), and WebDollar (A cryptocurrency fully native to the World Wide Web, entirely written in JavaScript, built around the concepts of simplicity, lightness and portability).
About: In 2014, Ionut founded VisionBot which is a Pick and Place assembly machine to help makers, electrical engineers and SMEs to turn electronic prototypes built in a garage to advanced products. By providing reasonably-priced materials, technicians do not need to rely on big electronic factories as VisionBot provides an increased accessibility to this equipment.
In 2016, Ionut founded SkyHub to revolutionise the focum technology. SkyHub includes concepts of AI and allows all users to get revenue based impact of the content they create. This new web platform allows people to create new kinds of forums where the users get a share from the platform’s revenue based on the users’ activities and the impact of their content. This allows the platform to expand rapidly because this platform allows people to earn money simply by connecting, engaging, typing and discussing with others who share the same interests with them. This kind of platform can create many jobs for those who couldn’t be integrated in the real life, but they know how to operate with a computer and how to share their experience and knowledge on the web.
In 2017, Ionut founded his third startup, WebDollar. WebDollar’s mission is to foster the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency. In order to make that vision a reality, WebDollar is addressing all kinds of users. WebDollar uses a Non-Interactive Proofs of Proof of Work (NiPoPoW) consensus mechanism, which means that the trust less factor is done without requiring the download of the entire blockchain history from the genesis, but only the hardest proofs and blocks that distinguish attackers from honest nodes (miners) which keep the correct blockchain. This means that users will not need to download hundreds of gigs of data to start mining and you can access the blockchain for mining from any device, almost immediately.
Number 6 – Joshua Browder – DoNotPay
Name: Joshua Browder (24)
Company: DoNotPay – The world’s first robot lawyer, helping millions of consumers solve their problems for free.
About: Joshua Browder is a British lawtech entrepreneur who has received a hefty cash injection from a string of high-profile Silicon Valley investors. In 2015, Joshua Browder founded ‘DoNotPay’, an artificial intelligence-powered programme that fights parking tickets, delayed flights and unfair charges.
DoNotPay makes the law free for consumers through artificial intelligence. The company is backed by an investment from Andreessen Horowitz and Greylock Partners. It has saved an estimated $15 million in parking fines and now works in hundreds of legal areas.
For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.
Number 5 – Boyan Slat – The Ocean Cleanup
Name: Boyan Slat (26)
Company: The Ocean Cleanup – Developing advanced technologies to get rid the of the world’s oceans of plastic.0
About: At the age of 18, Boyan Slat, Dutch inventor, founded The Ocean Clean up in 2013 in his hometown of Delft, the Netherlands. Dropping out of college, Boyan was keen to approach the issue of the growing tons of plastic entering the ocean every year. Approaching this mission, the Ocean Cleanup is on a mission to capture and recycle the plastic waste floating in the world’s oceans and rivers.
The nonprofit creates rubbish collectors called ‘Interceptors’, which are solar-powered and follow rivers’ currents to pick up waste. Bryan Slat, together with corporations and governments from all over the world, aims to tackle 1,000 of the most polluted rivers all over the world in the next five years.
The project helped Boyan win the title of the youngest ever person to receive the UN’s Champion of the Earth award. As well as this, Boyan Slat has been awarded the maritime industry’s Young Entrepreneur Award in 2015 by HM King Harald of Norway, and was also chosen as European of the Year by Readers Digest in 2017.
Number 4 – Jake Lazarus – Keakie
Name: Jake Lazarus (24)
Company: Keakie – An online streaming platform for radio shows, podcasts and mixes
About: Whilst studying at university, Jake Lazarus was involved in a successful radio project that soon attracted the interest of Universal Music.
Jake’s continued being an entrepreneur after university, running a social media marketing and working with other young entrepreneurs.
Eventually, Jake founded Keakie with Eloka Agu, and officially launched in May 2020. The startup prides itself on introducing users to new music, and on curating top quality playlists, which are hand-picked by the Keakie team.
In less than a month, Keakie managed to attract over 400,000 listeners. The goal of Keakie is to spark people’s musical curiosity, whilst helping the people who put musical experiences together, the content creators and the artists.
Keakie creates an immersive experience, attracting current fans of genres such as Lo-Fi, Future Beats, and Ambient, and inspires millions more to escape their Apple Music and Spotify playlists. Keakie aims to have 2.5 million users by the end of 2021.
Number 3 – Shreya Nallapati – NeverAgainTech
Name: Shreya Nallapati (19)
Company: NeverAgainTech – Using machine learning and predictive analytics to analyse and prevent future mass shootings.
About: When Shreya was 17, she was incredibly moved by student activist Emma Gonzalez’s powerful speech. The speech addressed the deaths of Emma’s 17 classmates at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida. Growing up with Columbine, Shreya was tired of hearing friends and family being impacted, without being able to do anything about it. Rather than posting her thoughts on social media, Shreya was inspired to take action in a way that would make a positive change.
Shreya Nallapati used her knowledge in machine learning and artificial intelligence to create NeverAgainTech. NeverAgainTech is a tech platform that uses predictive analytics and data mining to identify and potentially prevent future mass shootings. Currently, over 105 teenagers, policymakers, and industry professionals are participating in this project.
NeverAgainTech analyse historical gun violence data according to factors such as the socioeconomic status of the perpetrator and the availability of firearms in the affected state. We then implement predictive analytics into software such as Tableau to find the likelihood/prevalence of the next attack. Currently, NeverAgainTech is developing a patent-pending algorithm that uses social media mining to conduct threat analysis. Shreya’s ultimate goal is to dismantle the mystery of gun violence by providing data analysis that governments and schools in the United States can use to develop effective policies and respond proactively to avoid unsafe situations.
Number 2 – Davie Fogarty – Calming Blankets and The Oodie
Name: Davie Fogarty (25)
Company: Calming Blankets offers soft, weighted blankets to help reduce stress and anxiety and promote good sleep. The Oodie is a large oversized jumper, providing comfort and warmth when chilling around the house.
About: e-Commerce specialist Davie Fogarty is the founder of Calming Blankets and The Oodie.
Originally from Adelaide, Australia, Davie found a gap in the market to take the ‘weighted blanket’ and make it a mainstream household product. Heavy-duty or ‘weighted blankets’ have been used in hospitals since the 1970s, providing comfort to those with sleeping disorders, autism and restlessness.
Fogarty saw an opportunity and began manufacturing these in China in 2016, with the aim of selling them to help everyday people to overcome their daily stress and anxiety.
By 2019, Fogarty had sold over 50,000 blankets across Australia, driven largely through paid Facebook and Instagram marketing, whilst hosting the site through Shopify.
Later came the Oodie, an oversized jumper with patterns of avocados, toast and penguins to name a few – the ultimate companion for kicking it back on the couch.
Calming Blankets launched in the UK in 2019, based out of a warehouse in Northampton. Since 2016, the company has generated over £100 million worth of sales (yes, £100 million, that is not a typo).
Number 1 – Jamie Cox – TreeCard
Name: Jamie Cox (23)
Company: TreeCard – A free top-up debit card that reforests the planet with your everyday payments.
About: Jamie Cox is a 23-year old who co-founded TreeCard, an ethical FinTech product. The idea came from his mother who made a passing comment but Jamie turned the comment into a company tackling the deforestation crisis. TreeCard creates wooden debit cards that plant trees with the money from its transaction fees, with every $60 spent planting a tree. Backed by the green search engine Ecosia, the company recorded some 10,000 signups in the first two hours that its waiting list went live.
Users are able to use their regular bank alongside TreeCard, meaning you do not need to switch banks, but it means when you use TreeCard you will be growing your own forest and track your impact with the TreeCard app. The card is made from sustainably sourced FSC cherry wood and is powered by Mastercard’s network, supporting chip and pin as well as contactless payments.
The aim of TreeCard is to fight climate change, create and restore animal habitats and revitalise and support communities. Trees help to restart water cycles and restore drylands, prevent the spread of deserts, as well as being the most effective carob captures we have on the planet.
As well as this, growing fresh produce in agroforestry systems provides food and income for those who need it most. By regenerating the land people won’t have to migrate in search of better living conditions. By regenerating the land, people will be able to find stable employment and earn an income of their own. All of this contributes to the stabilisation of the socio-political landscapes of these countries.
For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.
