Andrew is currently studying for his Masters at Manchester University, in addition to running a Student Urban Fashion Brand – PieBoy clothing – He is also the Vice-President of Manchester Entrepreneurs – an organisation he hopes inspires and supports up and coming entrepreneurs in Manchester.

Andrew was recently accepted to the Entrepreneur First program, a national graduate scheme for aspiring entrepreneurs.

I caught up with Andrew as we spoke about his background, entrepreneurship, studying for a Masters, PieBoy Clothing, being the VP of Manchester Entrepreneurs and EF

Hi Andrew, great to have you on YHP, how are you doing today?

Pretty awesome thanks! The sun is shining and there lots of exciting things on the agenda for the next couple of weeks!

Before we move on, could you quickly give us some background information about yourself so that the YHP audience can get to know you better?

Sure, I’m a born and bread Manx man (from the Isle of man) who went to school in Yorkshire and the States before starting my undergraduate at Lancaster in business. Since then I’ve worked on a graduate programme and started my first enterprise in the automotive industry before coming to Manchester University to do a Masters of Enterprise. As well as my Masters, my big focus while being here has been PieBoy clothing. A Student Urban Fashion Brand focused on making Uni merchandise cool again!

Let’s take a step backwards a little, tell me how you got into entrepreneurship originally, what was your motivation?

I guess its some thing I’ve always grown up with, my grandparents, parents and siblings all starting and owning successful business’s. I guess it wasn’t so much a question of if but when. Away from being influenced by my family, the freedom to decide your own destiny has been another big motivator.

So what was your first real shot at starting a business?

I’ve had lots of little side things going on at various times. While doing my Undergrad at Lancaster a good friend of mine and my self used to go down to the pound shop and find stuff we thought was decent and put it on eBay. If we could make more than a 100% markup on something we’d go down and buy a heap more stuff and sell it. We didn’t make much but we certainly had a darn good beer kitty!

After that, did you get involved in anything else?

After graduating I worked for 18months at an offshore bank on a grad scheme until another good friend convinced me to start one of the many business opportunities we had been researching. Quickhubs.com (now called quickvehicleparts.com). We had some success and after my business partner left I established a living wage from it. However it became apparent the business was operating in a very price sensitive market and we really needed to innovate, this is when I started looking at other opportunities.

You’re currently studying for a Masters at University of Manchester? Right? Why study for a masters, I mean you seem very entrepreneurial, why not start a business straight after finishing your degree?

Good question. I don’t think there is necessarily a right or wrong way to get into enterprise. Some people start out when they are 10 years old selling sweets. Some people start when they are 50 after a big corporate career. I think for me at the time I’d had some practical enterprise experience and some corporate experience and I felt getting plugged into the enterprise scene in a big city while enhancing my enterprise skills through a Masters was the right way to go and looking back it was definitely the right decision.

You’re also the Vice -President of Manchester Entrepreneurs, how did that come about and how are you coping doing that in addition to studying for a Masters?

Ahhh Manchester Entrepreneurs. What an Organisation! I met current President Stan Reinholds last year and we’d working on a couple of thing prior. He knew I was studying a masters of enterprise and had some prior practical enterprise experience and then last summer out of the blue he asked me to be Vice President. We spoke about the big plans for the year and what we wanted to achieve. I mulled it over for a week and then said yes. It’s been a lot of extra work but has definitely been worth it. I think we’ve helped inspire and support up and coming entrepreneurs in Manchester as well as put our own skills to the test with organizing big events and lobbying to give enterprise a bigger agenda in Manchester

What would you say are some of the key things that you’re learning from the whole experience?

So much. From a skills perspective you have to do so many varied things in a start up so I really have put my sales, marketing, accounting, web build, project management etc skills to the test so I feel very competent in a lot of areas. From a developmental and growth perspective it has made me much more creative, accepting of uncertain situations, passionate and content. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t work hard and do the very best you can it just means that make sure what ever you do, you do it with a smile and don’t get stressed out.

About Pie Clothing – how did the idea come about?

PieBoy didn’t start out as a big ambition to change Uni merchandising in the UK. It started out from a friend and my self identifying a gap in the market. At the time when we launched PieBoy, bobble hats were becoming the trendy winter fashion accessory. University’s weren’t selling these so we had a few samples made, gained good feedback and then sold 250 on a pop up stall in about a week. Everything grew from there really including vision for what we wanted to turn PieBoy into.

What has been toughest part of starting the business and how have you overcome that?

There are a lot of hurdles to over come at various times. I think at the very beginning it’s about finding what your customers value and really delivering on that. Undertaking market research is all very well and good and it’s easy for people to say they will use or buy your product. But when people actually have to put their money where there mouth is you could find your market research going out the window. Luckily for us when we started out our intuition and basic market research was sound and people were willing to put their money where their mouth was and buy our product. Often you don’t know if it’s a goer until you get to that point, so I would say experiment and try selling your products early on to get consumer feedback and find out what works.

You’ve just recently been accepted into the Entrepreneur First program? How did that come about?

Last November I found my self going to a talk by Entrepreneur first as we needed a couple of the Manchester Entrepreneur committee members there to help set up and I was keen to find out more about the programme. As I was listening to what they were talking about I found my self thinking, “Wow, this is really for me”. Soon after, I applied and got through all the various rounds of the interview process and was offered a position earlier this year! I was obviously over the moon to be accepted, as it is an amazing opportunity!

What are some of the key things that you learnt from the whole application process?

That there is a hell of a lot of talented, young and hungry entrepreneurs in the UK, which only bodes well for the UK as a whole. There was a lot of people who applied and when we went for the interview and assessment day the calibre of every one was exceptional. Exciting things to come I feel.

Is this something that you would recommend to other aspiring entrepreneurs? What’s the value in it?

I haven’t officially started the programme yet as it starts in August so it’s unfair of me to make accurately comment on this at the moment. However I have met all of the cohort, the founders and some of the some sponsors a number of times and every thing is really gearing towards the start of something very special! The talent they have involved speaks for its self and I’m excited! But in short if a young entrepreneur is aspiring to start a high tech, high impact start up then I would defiantly recommend applying for Entrepreneur First

What would you say has been some of your most memorable moment so far?

In terms of my enterprise career. Winning or being shortlisted for awards is obviously very flattering and there have been a couple of those like Shell Live Wire or Lloyds TSB awards. In terms of having fun some of the viral video stuff like Manchester’s Gorgeous Girl was amazing. In terms of passion and exciting, when I started my first start up with a friend and we took over one of the bedrooms in his parents house it was 3 months of sheer excitement as every thing was so new. And in general terms just meeting with and working with so many great people has been amazing!

What advices would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to start their own business?

If it’s your first business, just get out there and give it a go on a very small budget. You can learn so much by just doing so do some research identify your opportunity (solving peoples problems is always a great starting place for that) and just go out and do it. Make sure you get passionate, start very lean with very little capital outlay and just get on and do it. Like I said you will learn so much you can take to your next venture and if your making money it’s a bonus! If your going for some thing in a more serious capacity that you want to grow into an empire with some more capital investment really make sure you understand how you are delivering the value to your customers. Make sure you know their problems, make sure you know the opportunity clearly that you are pursuing and work your darn hardest to make it a reality.

So now – What should we be expecting from you in 2012?

So the rest of 2012 hey… I have to finish my masters, which is a pressing priority now. More people are going to be involved in helping run PieBoy and we have some exciting initiatives in the pipes which will be pushed out later this year. Ill be starting entrepreneur first come August which will result in the creation of a team and business in the high tech sector! Very exciting times ahead!

I’ve been trying to get hold of her, like forever, a few weeks ago she was at the Natural and Organic show in london and quickly apologised that she was all tied up and was too busy and couldn’t do the interview. Running a startup can be like that, especially when you are the only employee in it and you’re also raising two kids.

Fiona is someone I’ve been following since she won the £50,000 in Barclays take one small step competition in 2010 and have been so impressed with her progress, which was one of the reasons we named her in our YHP’s Top 20 Young Entrepreneurs to watch out for 2012.

Yesterday, I finally got the chance to speak to to Fiona Wood about her company – Naturally Cool Kids, being a mum, challenges she faced when starting up and advices for other mums out there.

Please introduce yourself to the YHP readers?

I’m Fiona Wood creator of Naturally Cool Kids, a natural winter and summer skincare for children.

I am married to David and we have two children Rhys 17 and Finlay 5 years old. I live in Cleckheaton West Yorkshire and in the last 12 months have gone from stay at home mum to business woman.

How were you able to fund the business at the start?

I won the Barclays take one small step competition in 2010 which provided me with £50,000 to make my business idea a reality. I created the whole business from formulas to branding. I pride myself on it been a wholly made in the UK business that cares about the environment and the little people within it.

Tell us about your products?

I wanted to create a range that were free from nasties, I was fine with my everyday skincare products for my children, but when it came to coughs and colds in winter and sun cream for protection in the summer, I felt let down by the lack of great products that don’t just appeal to mum but that the children actually want to use. The innovative stick packaging is great for little people and is fun and parents have the piece of mind that they are safe and less likely to react as with using a chemical version.

What was the next step for you after creating the products?

I launched in March 2011 and John Lewis were the first stockist to take the range. We only had two meetings with them and they loved it and placed an order straight away, then along came lots of independents and Tesco Nutri Centre and Amazon. After a whirlwind year I thought how do we top that in year two, we celebrated our birthday three weeks ago the big 1 year, and yes we continue with plenty of health food shops and now pharmacies stocking us. We have worked with the UKTI and we are now exporting and selling in Sweden, Malta, Gibraltor, Poland and South Africa are sights are now set on Australia where the British Embassy have taken a look at the range.

What can we be expecting next from you and Naturally Cool Kids this year and years to come?

We are working hard to take on as many retailers as possible in the UK and also setting ourselves in other countries too. I would love to see everyone using Naturally Cool Kids and will work hard to achieve it. I am still juggling the business alone and doing the school run but it’s the best decision I have ever made and wouldn’t change it.

What would you suggest other stay at home mums go about starting a business?

I think a lot of mums have ideas but feel there is no way they could ever follow it through and that is such a shame.  I would encourage anyone with a great idea to take the first step which is scary but every step after that becomes so much easier is to look at their competition visit consumer or trade shows, take photos of what you see, chat with people aske them what the industry is like or any tips they may have.

Is there a company in the industry that isn’t in direct competition that you can make friends with and ask advice and help from. Helen and Polly at Cuddle Dry were great with me I visited them at the trade shows and they gave me valuable advice about how to save money and the does and don’ts, we forget that people love helping others and by asking you can learn so much.

I would also suggest buying magazines about your idea and looking at websites and you tube at what other people are doing and how they have done it, there is a wealth of information only a click away.

The one thing I didn’t take on board which many people said was “just think how difficult it will be working for yourself and that you will put more hours in than any employed job” I didn’t believe anyone I thought it would fit in perfectly and I’d get round it.  I have worked around it but it’s a damn site harder than I ever imagined it would be don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t change it for the world but be prepared for some long long days.

You also need maximum support from your partner as there are times when you really do need someone to fall back on be it the house work, shows to attend etc and they need to be able to just take over from you.

What were your main challenges starting up and how have you managed to get around them?

Time and lack of it, I need an extra couple of days in a week just to get even.  It’s also difficult when you have meetings with manufacturers or retailers then its show time and you have to be out at different times of day and away for days at a time.  It is hard as I am very maternal and don’t like leaving home.  I do get around it by making sure we take the kids with us wherever possible or that I am not away for more than two evenings.  I would say this is one of the hardest parts of running your own business.

Another challenge I would say is juggling the amount of work there is to do, as my company is only 12 months old I still do the majority of the work myself, this is everything from marketing and PR to building our customer base both with consumers and retailers and then also arranging the orders and having them shipped, I then have all the follow ups and exhibitions to arrange too, it can be very demanding at times and you do think at extreme times how will I get through this or I can’t cope anymore but that is such a normal feeling and it does pass and you get back on with it.

How is your work/life balance now?

I am one year in and we are starting to get a routine flowing a little better than it has been.  I don’t think you can ever get the right balance but I try my best.  If I need an afternoon off for home life then I work my way up to it and prepare to cause as little disruption to work as possible, if we have a few days away then I will make sure that I work for an hour or so when the kids are in bed or if my husband takes them to do an activity, just so that I don’t fall behind.

I am always there to take the youngest to school and pick up, I would never miss a school pantomime or anything like that as you never get those precious moments again. You have to also remember to embrace them while they are young and growing as it doesn’t last very long then they are off doing their own thing and you wonder where the time went.

Hot on the heals of the top 20 entrepreneurs to watch, here are my top 20 UK Startups to watch in 2012. Their really are some great companies coming out of the UK right now and these 20 are no different.

 

Pay As U Gym

Founders: Jamie Ward, Mike Blake, Neil Harmsworth

Gym memberships can be expensive especially if you have to sign up to an annual contract. Well no more is this a problem, Pay As U Gym does ‘exactly as it says on the tin.’

The website allows you to purchase discounted pay as you go gym passes. Although launched only in London at the start of 2011, Pay As U Gym now has over 250 gyms across the UK with no membership, no fees and no inductions.

2012 could be a big year for Pay As U Gym.

 

Tribesports

Founders: Jenna Anians, David Hickson, Steve Reid, Andrew McDonough

Tribesports is a social network aimed at helping to motivate people to do more in their sports. Setting and sharing goals and having a peer network helps users keep improving on their sporting achievements.

Users in the community can set challenges and users join tribes dedicated around a chosen sport.

Created for sports enthusiasts and powered by sports enthusiasts, Tribesports delivers a social platform supported by a refreshing mix of affiliate marketing and social integration to the under-serviced active sports market.

 

Picklive

Founder: Tim Morgan

Picklive is a live Fantasy Football game where users make bets in real time. Users can play for free or for cash and basically choose a team and can see live stats for players as they pick up points. The game is split into 5 minute sections and so you can win multiple sections to win overall.

In what is an entertaining and addictive game it can certainly become a big hit as the quickness of the game and continuous live scoring and sections means that users are engaged throughout the game whilst not distracting from the game.

Starting of in football Picklive hope to expand into other countries and sports as they grow. As word spreads I can see Picklive picking up many sports fans over the coming year and expanding into other sports.

 

Housebites

Founder: Simon Prockter

Housebites allows you to order gourmet takeaway from great chefs in your local area. Any chef can start selling their home cooked meals (after being vetted) on Housebites and even make a living out of it. And all of this can be delivered to your door for the price of a pizza delivery.

The ease of the takeaway, but with the quality of a restaurant meal, delivered to your door, not bad. It also allows you to rate chefs and it’s delivered to your front door via a Housebites courier.

It’s a very cool idea and is backed by Paul & Michael Birch, who sold Bebo for $890m, the startup could take off massively this year.

 

Adzuna

Founder: Andrew Hunter, Doug Monro

Adzuna is a job search engine. It aggregates jobs from across multiple networks so you can search and apply for jobs from one site. But Adzuna is more than a massive jobsite, it integrates your social connections so that you can leverage your connections to give you an advantage when looking for a job.

Adzuna raised $300,00 from Passion Capital last summer to ramp up and start them on the way to becoming the biggest and best classifieds search engine globally.

 

Duedil

Founder: Damian Kimmelman

Duedil is a free database of information on companies in the UK.

Drawing on data from Companies House, Intellectual Property Office, Google, Social Networks, basically scraping the internet to pull in multiple data sources to build a company profile with financial records, litigations, director profiles, company credit check, stock information & more.

The fact that it is free and so simple to find so much aggregated data for companies it makes it informative & addictive for those looking for company information. It also has a ton of features and can already claim to be the largest database of free company financials in the world!

 

Blippar

Founders: Ambarish Mitra, Steve Spencer, Omar Tayeb

Blippar was launched in the summer of 2011 and already it has seen it’s augmented reality app put into the spotlight as they have teamed up some big brands for some cool interactive campaigns. Blippar allows brands to create interactive ads to engage audiences in a way which is more fun than the usual billboard or poster.

Augmented reality regularly comes up as one of the future next tech trends and Blippar is getting on the potential augmented reality advertising bandwagon early.  As it’s popularity increases and more brands take up the idea Blippar is in a good position to grow rapidly as well.

 

 

 

Hailo

Founders: Jay Bregman, Russell Hall, Caspar Woolley, Gary Jackson, Ron Zeghibe, Terry Runham

Hailo was founded in 2010. It’s a network that matches passengers and licensed taxi drivers. I have the app myself and it has been brilliant.

It uses your GPS to find where you are and locate the nearest taxi to you. From there you can hail the  taxi at the touch of a button and choose how you want to pay. The taxi will then get your, umm ‘order’? and come pick you up. When I used it, the taxi driver called me straight away to confirm where I was and that he was on the way.

Jay Bregman partnered with 3 taxi drivers as co founders, as well as two other internet entrepreneurs, and looks to change the way we hail taxis in London, and eventually other cities as the company grows.

Jay has already created a great business in eCourier which will be valuable in making Hailo a similar success.

 

 

MarketInvoice Limited

Founders: Anil Stocker & Charles Delingpole

These two university friends escaped the city in 2010 to startup their own company. Anil & Charles launched Marketinvoice, an innovative new cloud-based working capital platform, which enables small businesses to flexibly raise cash from a network of global investors.

They look set to disrupt an industry which has generally been lagging behind when it has come to innovation and have made some great strides in 2011 and the two young, smart entrepreneurs hope to take it to the next level in 2012.

We interviewed the guys back in June, you can take a look here.

UberLife

Founder: Sanchita Saha

With people socialising more and more online Sanchita founded UberLife to help people meet online in order to enable real world community and connections, in what she has coined an ‘Online2Offline’ service.

UberLife allows you to arrange a hangout when you’re doing or want to do something & see who’s free to come join you or you can simply join a hangout.

As we go more and more social online I think this will translate into more offline meetings and Sanchita’s creation, UberLife could go big in 2012 making this happen. It is already getting a large number of the tech startup scene using it, who tend to be the influencers of these kind of apps.

Find out a little more abut Sanchita here.

 

Crowdcube

Founders: Darren Westlake, Luke Lang

Crowdcube is the brainchild of Darren Westlake & Luke Lang and launched in February 2011 to much fanfare. The idea is that entrepreneurs invest in business ideas in an effort to crowdsource funding. It’s crowdfunding.

The benefit of the model is that those who pitch their ideas and businesses on Crowdcube then promote and share it across their networks and look to help get as many people to share it as possible which in turn brings traffic to the site and helps minimize the amount that the guys need to spend on marketing at this early stage.

With Dragon’s Den bringing the concept of angel investing to the masses, Darren & Luke realised that many people will have watched many ideas come out of the Den without any funding and thought to themselves that they would have put in a bit of money into that.

Now they can, with the ability to invest as little as £10 anyone can now invest in a business idea and see it come to life!

 

Bantr

Founder: Peter McCormack

Bantr is a social network for football fans. Fans can use Bantr to check-in to games, vote on the action, view live stats and as their name suggests, banter with other fans.

With social networks becoming more and more common in our daily lives, niche sites which cover a topic, especially one as popular and team based such as football will continue to grow as users can share and interact with others with the same common interest rather than the general nature of broader social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

That is why I see Bantr doing well this year, especially fans from older sports forums, from the likes of the BBC, are closing down due to streamlining of their services. They have already now expanded into covering Spanish and Italian leagues and I’m sure many more will follow in the near future.

Check out our interview with Peter here.

 

Editd

Founders: Geoff Watts and Julia Fowler

What happens when you get a fashion designer and an expert at analysing big data? You get Editd, a fashion intelligence startup. The company based in London is able to offer market intelligence and spot trends using huge amounts of data crawled from multiple sources.

Editd offers customised industry trend data to clients which include retailers, merchandisers, designers and buyers.

They already have 10 high street retailers as customers & having raised their first bit of funding, $1.6million of seed funding they will hope to use that to grow further this year.

 

CloudBees 

Founder: Sacha Labourey

CloudBees allows you to build, run and manage java applications in the cloud letting companies build and test different user interfaces without having to worry about servers.

With more and more companies moving various IT services over to the cloud, the startup founded in 2010 could be in a good position to make the most of the interest as companies look to become more efficient and save costs.

2012 could be a good year for this cloud company.

 

Made.com

Founders: Ning Li, Julien Callede

Made.com are a online made to order furniture store. Made allows you to order furniture straight from some of the best furniture makers in the world. What’s best is this cuts out the plethora of middlemen that normal take a cut along the way and put prices up.

By cutting out the middleman made.com can offer very competitive pricing for furniture and with original designs, and the chance for users to vote on new designs to see them commissioned, I think once more people find out about made.com they will just have to worry about scaling the business quick enough.

 

 Pusher

Founders: Damien Tanner, Max Williams

Another cloud based service, Pusher allows developers to quickly and easily add realtime functionality to webapps. This means that people can create collaborative tools, multiplayer games, chat, realtime dashboards and more.

They raised $1million in seed funding in the last quarter of 2011 and can be confident of further funding at some point as they look to help developers make awesome stuff.

 

Lanyrd

Founders: Natalie Downe, Simon Willison

Social is everywhere right now, even at this conference directory startup Lanyrd. The directory of conferences, events and speakers allows users to sign in with Twitter to see what events their friends are attending and add their own events or even build a personal speaking profile.

It’s an interesting idea which has lots of potential to grow it’s offering in an attempt to make conferences even more social.

 

Buffer

Founder: Joel Gascoigne

Buffer is a social media app that allows you to store content in Buffer and schedule it to be posted on your social networks through the day. Just add content that you find, as you find it and add it to Buffer, it will then automatically be shared by Buffer and you can see all the analytics from your tweets inside the app.

 

Lookk

Founder: Gilbert Wedam, Tamas Locher, Andreas Klinger

Lookk connects designers with consumers. Designers can showcase their fashions building their brand and selling their fashions to an engaged audience.

You can support your a favourite designers and help influence what is in the Lookk store. Is this the future of fashion shopping?

The company raised funding last August led by some great investors in Eden Ventures, Dave McClure and Sherry Coutu.

 

Righster

Founder: Charlie Muirhead

Rightster is a technology and services company which makes distributing, marketing and monetising digital video content simple.

Digital media strategies are becoming ever more important for companies, including ITN, the British news producer, who are using Rightster to manage its online ad sales platform so that it is unified and Rightster will also syndicate all of ITN’s content online.

This is a big step forward for the startup and they will hope to get bigger deals like this over the course of the next year.

 

———

Who have I missed? Who do you think are the startups to watch in 2012?

Let us know in the comments we would love to hear from you!

Follow @rishi_chowdhury

Be sure to check out the YHP magazine and subscribe for news and the latest articles from YHP.

 

 

Each year we take a look at the young entrepreneurs, based in the UK, who we think are set to have a great year, you can see our 2011 list here, and this year is no different.

So here are 20 entrepreneurs, founders and co founders, who you may want to watch in 2012, there are some great companies here and I’m sure you will be hearing a lot more about them over the next 12 months.

Here they are:

 

 

Josh Buckley (MinoMonsters)

Josh Buckley is the CEO and founder of MinoMonsters, a Pokemon type game where you can battle and trade pet monsters. Josh is the youngest CEO to have raised funding from investment giant Andreessen Horowitz at 19 years of age.

The Kent born youngster sold his first company at the age of 15. He created ‘Menewsha’ a community where users create whimsical avatars and interact online for fun. He sold this for a six figures sum while still in school.

He then moved to Silicon Valley & participated in Y Combinator to help take his company to the next level and take on Pokemon brand. His USP is it is a game for iOS where Pokemon is not available.

Expect to be hearing more of this young CEO as he ventures into the mobile gaming space with no fear.

 

Nick D’Aloisio (Summly)

Nick D’Aloisio is only 16 years old but he has already managed to raise $250,00 in funding for his startup, Summly. He created an app that offers a simpler way to browse and search the web by automatically summarising search results, web pages and articles to make content easier to sift to and find what is most relevant to you.

In it’s first 4 days after it reached 17k downloads and is now well over 100,000. Still studying for his GCSE’s he had to get special dispensation to delay his mocks while he traveled to San Fransisco.

So to sum it up, he is one to watch in 2012!

 

James Gill (GoSquared)

James Gill is the CEO and co founder of GoSquared a real time web analytics service which he started during his gap year. rather than taking the year to travel, he decided to build a web app which people would pay for and by the end of the year him and his co founders realised they had done just that.

James now works on GoSquared at White Bear Yard from which GoSquared got their angel funding and they are surrounded by other great startups which will help them as they look to grow and take on their main rivals Chartbeat.

You can see our video interview with James here.

 

Lucian Tarnowski (Brave New Talent)

Lucian Tarnowski is the founder and CEO of Brave New Talent, a social recruitment network.  The passionate young entrepreneur loves social media and leverages the sharing and engagement inherent in social networks and applies it to job recruitment.

Lucian has also been honored as Europe’s youngest Young Global Leader (YGL) by the World Economic Forum. He is also the youngest  entrepreneur to join UKTI (United Kingdom Trade and Investment) so age isn’t a factor as he goes about his mission to change the face of job recruitment and skills building.

He is a confident leader and looks set to have a big year in 2012.

 

Maria Constantinescu (Slick Flick)

Maria Constantinescu is the founder of SlickFlick, which allows you to create storyboards on the iPhone using your photos. An ex lawyer Maria left law to start Curious Quests and the Slick Flick app.

Maria is trying to take creativity to the masses and has been get the app out into the film industry and creative industries to get support and name out amongst a sector which will find it used by most. Being based in the heart of Shoreditch she is surrounded by creatives in every direction which should serve her well.

Having secured an association with Apsmart, they have a great partner which can help them continue to improve the app and add weight to their proposal when they go for funding.

 

Ry Morgan (PleaseCycle)

Ry Morgan (right) is the founder and CEO of PleaseCycle, provides products and services for organisations to encourage cycling within the workplace.

Ry went from being an intern at CURB media (a really cool startup by the way!) to founding PleaseCycle with the founder & CEO of CURB media, Anthony Ganjou (left). A born entrepreneur Ry has gone from top student, to graduate to founder & CEO.

He has a great drive to grow PleaseCycle massively and his determination and vision has helped him build a great experienced team which will in no doubt help see them progress rapidly in 2012.

Find out more about Ry from his guest post on YHP.

 

Michael Korn (KwickScreen)

Michael Korn is the founder of KwickScreen, a portable, retractable, room divider which provides isolation or privacy solutions. Initially the design was meant to be used in hospitals to act as a privacy barrier between patients and it was perfect for this. It’s small size and easy and quick set up was perfect for the hospital environment.

Michael has now seen the product, which took 4 years of design iterations to get it ready for release, enter new markets and is being used in universities, exhibitions, offices etc…

It is a well thought out design and the ideas has already received recognition. Michael was named Shell LiveWIRE Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2011.

Look out for KwickScreens popping up near you in 2012.

 

Emi Gal (Brainient)

Emi a young Romanian entrepreneur started Brainient in 2009. Brainient is a a video advertising technology company, based in London’s silicon roundabout, and currently has two products. First an interactive video advertising product and second one is a personalised video retargeting platform.

Emi has a lot of experience with startups at his young age, having previously founded two and has also been an advisor or helped out on various other tech startups.

This experience will hold him in good stead and help as Brainient looks to grow further in 2012.

Check out our video interview with Emi here.

 

Damian Kimmelman (Duedil)

Damian founded Duedil in April 2011 with the aim to make business more transparent, helping executives and entrepreneurs make well-informed business decisions, by allowing users to easily find company information for free.

Damian has pivoted Duedil from a people recommendation system, like a ‘Yelp for people’, to it’s current state as a database of companies.

He has also overseen Duedil raise funding from some of the investors behind Skype, LastFM & Yahoo as well as being chosen as a Microsoft Bizspark company which should help his disruptive startup make big strides in 2012!

 

Kevin Flood and Mike Harty (Shopow)

Kevin & Mike started the company, a social shopping engine and community, straight out of university raising £830,000 in angel funding.

Founded in early 2010, it was launched in May 2011 and currently works directly with over 22,000 online retailers to help give them the most accurate price comparison.

Currently available in the US & UK they look to grow further in 2012 and with the social nature of the site and strong community it has the ingredients to  rapidly accelerate growth as members share recommendations across there networks.

The company is expecting to surpass £3million in revenue in it’s first year has already seen it’s popularity abroad with 50% of revenues coming from overseas.

It has been dubbed the ‘Facebook of shopping’ & the two founders have already been named in Growing Business Young Guns.

 

Chris Prescott and Daniel Noz (Fantasy Shopper)

Fantasy Shopper is a social shopping game, only launched in October 2011 and has already seen massive interest. Users spend fantasy currency to buy clothing & create a virtual wardrobe full of different outfits from over 300 real high street shops. It’s a bit like creating a wishlist but what’s great is you can then buy your virtual outfits from the real life stores.

It’s a fantastic idea that Chris dreamt up one night and has proved very popular to date. apparently it is very addictive and it shows. Within 2 weeks of launching, the platform was seeing a fantasy sale every 14 seconds.

One feature that brings users back for more is that every hour you gain more credits, so users login multiple times a day to collect their virtual paydays.

The fact that it is linked to your Facebook also helps increase awareness of it to your network and this social sharing will greatly help with it’s growth.

Chris has come up with a great idea and is described on the Fantasy Shopper site as “having all the traits of a mad inventor… i.e. he’s a little bit nuts!” Which is good right? Even better is he is backed up by Dan, the tech guy who ‘get’s stuff done’.

All this will help Chris & Daniel take Fantasy Shopper to the masses in the next year.

 

Fiona Wood (Naturally Cool Kids)

As a mum Fiona has had to deal with all sorts of skin allergies which led her to search for natural skincare products for her kids, but to her surprise found a lack of natural skincare products for kids.

She entered the ‘Barclays Take One Small Step’ competition, where she was one of the 10 regional winners, after mum’s across the country voted for her idea. She started the company in July 2010 and has not looked back since.

Fiona spotted a gap in the market and is taking full advantage of this. She has the passion and determination to see her products being sold across the world. After her initial plans to launch two skincare products, she actually launched with six products and has already seen them in over 20 retail stockists, including John Lewis & Tesco Nutri centre, as well as online.

She has big plans ahead and look out for her products across the UK this year as she looks to further expand the number of stockists.

 

Luke Hood (UKF)

Luke Hood is a 19 year old from Frome, Somerset who is taking Youtube by storm with his UKF channels. After starting putting up his favourite dubstep tunes up on youtube and showcasing fresh new music he found his subscribers rocketed and he was soon over 1 million!

What started as a hobby has become a business. He is super passionate and since this was what he was passionate about in the first place it will help in growing it as a business.

He has started expanding into events and live online events as well so youngsters into dubstep and drum n bass who can’t get into these events can view it from online.

There is lots of scope to grow and he already has the subscribers, maybe in 2012 he can do what Jamal Edwards has done in 2011.

 

Jack Smith (Vungle)

Jack Smith is the founder of Vungle, a mobile app user acquisition platform focused exclusively on video ads. The company helps those with apps to show the apps full potential through video advertising rather than just text descriptions and user reviews. Using video to help acquire quality users.

Although just 22, Jack has a fair bit of experience having started his first company at the age of 15 and then while at uni, set up ideabox an undergraduate business ideas competition and was MD at Mediaroots.

He has now seen Vungle expand to the US with an office in San Fransisco and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Jack get funding for Vungle this year.

 

Joshua March (Conversocial)

Joshua March is now onto his second business, Conversocial an integrated Social CRM and marketing software which helps companies with marketing and customer support via social media.

With social media becoming a mainstay in our day to day lives it is essential for all businesses to be active on social networks and be able to effectively monitor conversations around your business and industry.

Josh saw this and started Conversocial a couple years ago and has developed it too a position where they can expect to grow rapidly as more and more businesses start realising the potential of social media.

Josh previously founded the first preferred Facebook Development company in the UK with Dan Lester and has lots of experience in the social space from it’s early days.

 

Helen McAvoy and Naomi Kibble (Rocktails)

Helen & Naomi two Cardiff based young entrepreneurs tapped into the huge popularity of cocktails drunk by the population on nights out. Despite this there isn’t a competitive offering for easily making cocktails at home.

These two cocktail fans went about changing that spending over £20,000 developing frozen cocktails in a pouch. Great for consumption at home with friends, the two friends managed to secure a six months trial with Sainsburys which could lead to a wider deal.

Helen & Naomi have already secured a big deal early on in the companies life & are ahead of their forecasts, this should hold them in good stead as they look to expand in 2012.

 

Mansoor Hamayun, Christopher Baker-Brian & Laurent Van Houcke (BBOXX)

Christopher, Laurent & Mansoor started BBOXX a company which develops methods of distributing renewable energy to developing countries. The three young entrepreneurs have spun off the company from e.quinox, a charity at Imperial College London.

With power consumption growing in developing countries, solutions to cope with the increased demand for energy will be more in demand than ever and these two entrepreneurs are making sure they are in a position to supply a suitable solution in the way of portable solar products.

They will look to rapidly expand on their partnerships in developing countries over the next year.

 

Emma Sinclair (Target Parking)

Emma Sinclair is a passionate young entrepreneur. She had the high powered, high paid city job but she left it to start Target Parking. After investing in a small car parking firm she set up Target parking which offers services for car parks across Britain. Including cash handling, security & facilities management.

The 29 year old is the youngest person to float a company on the Alternative Investment Market and her business acumen has seen her tie up some big deals which helped the company see revenues of just over £1million and she fully expects that to grow further in 2012.

She is excited to see what the future holds and determined to make the company the best in it’s industry and her background suggests she has what it takes.

 

Russell Whitter (Rate Your Player)

Russell Whitter (right) is the founder of Rate Your Player (RYP) an online social football network. Having started it after seeing his favorite football forum close it’s doors he has developed the website into a fully fledged social network based around football.

Russell is the brother of footballer Wayne Routeledge (left) and has therefore been able to call on him and his footballer friends to help endorse the site and increase it’s popularity. He was able to call on his friends to help him build the site and keep costs down and hopes to see the site increase in popularity as social networks do. Since this is targeted specifically to football which has more fans than any other sport in the UK he has a large market to tap into.

Russell hopes to expand the network into other sports as well and looks to grow the number of users quickly in 2012 as the social aspect snowballs with more and more users helping it grow further.

 

Rashid Kasirye – (Link Up TV)

Rashid Kasirye started Link Up TV, an online music and talent platform, straight out of college and has seen it grow from humble beginnings to a strong online community, which sees their YouTube page hitting over a million monthly views and thousands of fans on Facebook and Twitter.

Rashid has already seen the company make music videos for artists on some of the top UK music channels and his popularity is sure to keep growing in the industry. As we journey through 2012 and Link Up TV step up their video production capacity I’m sure you will see even more music videos in the charts made by Rashid and his team.

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Who have I missed? Who are your young entrepreneurs to watch in 2012?

Let us know in the comments we would love to hear from you!

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