The UK entrepreneurial scene is certainly coming together, with all its inadequacies – Investment, Billion dollar exits etc. It is certainly coming together.

In a year where other businesses have been forced to close down, others have being unable to keep up with competitors. It’s always good to take some time to reflect, praise and encourage those startups that have done a great job in remaining resillient, competitive and profitable.

2012 is already gearing up to be an even more successful and exciting year in the UK startup scene, we are already seeing a lot of exciting companies starting up.

As the year gently comes to an end, I decided to put together a list of companies who I thought came out on top this year.

This is in no particular order.

 

OneFineStay

Imagine being able to rent some of central london’s elite houses (which cost up to £1 million) for the price of staying in an luxurious hotel. If you’re someone that prefers that homey feeling whilst travelling then this will certainly appeal to you. Onefinestay allows you to stay in a beautiful home while the owner is out of town, while enjoying all the convenience and comfort of a hotel.

Earlier this month, the company added seven new Central London homes to their growing list of properties.

Onefinestay was founded by Greg Marsh, Demetrios Zoppos and Tim Davey in 2009.

Mixcloud

Themed after their launch as the “YouTube of radio” – Mixcloud allows its users to connect to great radio content and helps content creators promote their radio shows and podcasts.

If you are a DJ, broadcaster or run a podcast show, Mixcloud gives you the platform to reach hungry music and audio content consumers.

The startup was founded by Nikhil Shah and Nico Perez in september 2008.

 

Shutl

Why would you ever wait around for a courier if you could get your shopping delivered to you in a matter of minutes… or at a time chosen by you? Seriously, why would you?

This London-based internet start-up aggregates a platform of thousands of small courier companies to collect online orders directly from high street stores, instead of a distribution hub, allowing it to deliver quickly to customers’ homes or workplaces.

In August, Shutl expanded to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leeds and Manchester

The company was founded by Tom Allason the founder & former CEO of eCourier.co.uk in 2008.

 

Struq

Struq is the leading specialist in Personalized Retargeting; a powerful new alternative to standard/static display advertising. Their technology A.R.T. technology (Advanced Retargeting Technology) enables brands to identify and retarget only the most profitable in-market users with completely personalized ads optimized in real-time using scientific principles.

On average, for every £1 a retailer spends, they get £19 in revenues in post-click sales.

Struq was founded in 2008 by Sam Barnett

 

Songkick

If you’re a music fanatic, especially when it comes to watching your favourite artists perform live then you will understand why over 1 million people are addicted to using Songkick.

Songkick offers music enthusiasts a place where they track their favorite bands and receive email alerts when a tracked band plays a gig nearby and also providing personalized news about live music events.

Singkick was co-founded by Ian Hogarth, Michelle You and Pete Smith in October 2007.

 

BraveNewTalent

BraveNewTalent are a social recruiting platform where employers can form and manage an engaging relationship with candidates in advance of the job application. We build targeted talent communities based on the employers needs. Users are given a simple management tool to see and engage with people within their community. Candidates get a way to keep up to date, educate themselves and be better matched to companies and roles.

BraveNewTalent was founded by Lucian Tarnowsk in 2008

 

GroupSpaces

Thinking about starting up a society or currently looking for ways to manage your existing one online with tools to maintain your mailing list, update members, and receive payments – Group spaces makes administration of groups more effective.

GroupSpaces is an online platform that provides technology to help real-world clubs, societies, associations and other groups manage their membership and activities, and promote themselves online which help improve members communications and saves organizers time.

GroupSpaces recently hit two million memberships on the website. GroupSpaces was co-founded by David Langer and Andy Young in October 2007.

 

Huddle

Huddle being in the list has nothing to do with the fact that Rishi works there, but everything to do with the fact that they kicked serious ass this year, you will need to have serious balls to be going head-to-head with microsoft (sharepoint). Lets not forget the controversy surrounding them telling Google to remove Google+ feature called Huddle from their platform.

Huddle is a cloud collaboration and content management platform for enterprise, it allows companies to share files, organize meetings, and collaborate even when they are not operating within the same firewall.

The company was founded by Alastair Mitchell and Andy McLoughlin in 2006.

 

ParkatmyHouse

Getting a parking space can sometimes be such a headache, especially when you’re looking for a parking space in London during peak times or sometimes you find out that the parking prices are just too expensive. And then on the other hand, you have property owners that have free parking spaces either because they have no cars or use their cars during the day for work etc.

ParkatmyHouse allows property owners to rent out their parking space either long term or just for a few hours. For those people who are looking for a parking space all you do is enter the postcode or address in the search engine and the website will give you a list of potential parking spaces which you can use in negotiating with the owner.

The company has 125,000 drivers registered with its service. The site has helped property owners make more than £1m from renting out their driveways, spare land and parking spaces.

The company was founded by Anthony Eskinazi in September 2006.

 

Skimlinks

If you run a blog, forum and any other sites that deal with content distribution and you are looking to make some revenue through it – this is where Skimlinks comes in handy.

Skimlinks turns links on content sites into their affiliate marketing link equivalents on-the-fly, so publishers can focus on creating quality content rather than creating and maintaining affiliate links with no technical or admin effort.

The website was co-founded by Joe Stepniewski and Alicia Navarro in 2006.

 

Moonfruit

I can still remember the first time I used moonfruit, one of my friends in school had just started his music career and was really excited to share his new music with all of his friends on msn, me included, this was way before myspace and other music sharing platforms started to spring up. I ended up creating a page using a tool called SiteMaker for the sake of it under 20 mins.

I am pretty sure almost everyone had a go making their mini-websies on moonfruit when it first launched. A lot has happened since then, the dotcom bubble etc.

The company is still growing and for those newbies still wondering what moonfruit does, it allows less tech savy individuals to create website with ease using their website construction tool called SiteMaker.

The website was founded by Wendy Tan White in 1999

 

Bookingbug

If your business is offering a service and looking for a system where you can manage all your booking, enquiries and reservations – Say hello to BookingBug.

BookingBug enables businesses to share their availability – by hour, day, week or as classes, courses or events – and take bookings and enquiries online. The system is both realtime and distributed in that it’s booking and enquiry widgets can be embedded onto other sites, or affiliate partners and through social media.

The site was co-founded by Greg Bock and Glenn Shoosmith in November 2009

 

Brightpearl

Brightpearl is an integrated end-to-end web based solution that helps companies streamline the management of core business processes: accounting, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), stock control and order management, customer support and e-commerce.

Brightpearl offers its customers exceptional functionality around ERP for SMEs, particularly for businesses who are e-tailers/retailers, distributors, wholesalers, as well as businesses who are billing time.

Customers are able to pick and choose any of the available modules to address individual business needs and challenges.

Bristol-based Brightpearl was founded by Chris Tanner and Andrew Mulvenna in 2007

 

Basekit

Especially with the demand of website services, it is unimaginable that any business does not have a website nowadays, It’s very much like your company identity. Not every business owner out there know how to build a website, most of them more concerned about the business side of things than the technicality of getting a website up and running, certainly dont know how to get their hand dirty with some html and css.

Basekit allow people with little or no web expertise to build their own website, without the need to hire expensive developers. A business which would generate attractive, captivating websites using templates and drag-and-drop.

BaseKit is based on a flexible layout structure and allows users to create a site directly from a Photoshop design, or customise a pre-made site themes to get online faster.

The company was co-founded in 2008 by Simon Best, Richard Best and Richard Healy

 

Smarkets

Smarkets is changing the traditional way of betting, so instead of betting against a bookie, you are now able to bet against other members with smarkets. Smarkets allows traders to agree odds amongst themselves. Smarkets also offers betting on sports, current affairs and popular culture.

Smarkets is a web-based, person-to-person betting exchange platform built on the fusion of social networking and trading technology. Unlike traditional methods of betting, online betting exchanges remove the bookmaker by allowing users to bet directly with other users.

Smarkets was founded in 2008 by Jason Trost and Hunter Morris.

 

Peerindex

Imagine every decision, interaction that you make online being tracked? PeerIndex measures your online influence by gathering data on your activity, audience and authority to either maximise your online relevance and insight or just tell you how bad you’re doing. Authority measures how relevant your activity is to the community. The Authority measure is boosted whenever others like, comment and/or engage with your activity.

The london based company provide these analytics based on users activities on social media services such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Quora.

PeerIndex was founded in 2009 by Azeem Azhar, Bill Emmott and Ditlev Schwanenflugel.

 

Mendeley

I’m unsure if the discovery of mendeley would have done my researching and courseworks any favours during my time at university, maybe it might have helped, who knows? I guess if you’re doing any academic research and finding it hard of where to get quality research done with the ability to network with academics, then i guess mendeley wouldnt be a bad place to start.

The website allows users to manage and research papers – discovering data and collaborating online.

The website was co-founded by Paul Foeckler and Victor Henning.

 

People per hour

With the high increase in unemployment constantly rising in the UK, no wonder job seekers are switching attention to online job listing sites for a way out and thats what exactly People per hour offers: The websites connects people looking for work with jobs, that simple.

In more details, Clients are able to post ads on the website looking for part-time, a bit like what gumtree does, but i guess in a more professional and structure online environment, I guess they are currently doing what you would have expected gumtree to do, most clients post jobs for freelancers, mostly part0time, sometimes full-time but to get those jobs, you had to bid and whoever bids came successfully got the job/contract.

The company was founded by Xenios Thrasyvoulou and Simos Kitiris in September 2007.

 

Sports New Media

Think about the countless number of athletes around the world, the number of tournaments being watched by sports lover across the globe, crazy right? Now think about those individuals and associations and their need for social presence, with the growing presence of facebook, It’s not hard to understand why big corporates would be paying big bucks in order to be connected directly with their brands through facebook.

The start-up manages Facebook pages and campaigns for athletes, sports agents, sporting governing bodies and associations.

Their in-house technology allows them to automate much of the process of providing relevant and timely content to fans across social networks, and to monitor a brand’s activity within those networks.

The company was founded by Jae Chalfin and Nick Thain in April 2008

 

Brainient

If you’re looking to make some money from your video online. Brainient makes it easier for advertisers to get the most out of their video campaigns through interactive video advertising and personalized video retargeting.

Brainient was founded by Emi Gal in 2009

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

The Start-Up 100 Awards were handed out last night and the winner of the overall award went to the music streaming service Spotify, ahead of there much anticipated US launch, having already made a large impact across Europe launching in eight European countries. The award honours promising technology start-ups in Europe.

The winners for each category are below:

Advertising and Marketing

Struq

Social Networking and Collaboration

Groupspaces

Virtual Worlds

MindCandy

Audio and Media

Soundcloud

Education and Recruitment and Jobs

Mendeley

Security, Storage, Collaboration and Databases

Huddle

Finance, Payments and E-commerce

Made.com

–

Startup 100 media partners, The Telegraph, have been following the nominations and winners as judged by:

The Start-Up 100 awards were judged by a panel of experts including venture capitalists and angel investors. Entries were collected over the last six months.

The panel was supported by a team of analysts, including associates from Balderton Capital, Accel Partners, DFJ Esprit and others, who are helping to define the criteria and methodology our judges will use in their deliberations.

Read more here.

Andy Young co-founded Internet Company Groupspaces.com in 2006 with university buddy David Langer. He and David came up with the idea for GroupSpaces while studying Computer Science at Oxford University.

Groupspaces.com provides a platform for groups and communities to manage themselves online. The inspiration came about after experiencing the frustration arising from poor online organisation of societies at Oxford.

Andy was a part of many clubs and societies at university, including the Oxford Entrepreneurs student society and felt the need for a better way of organising themselves online. He and David were inspired to run with the idea and the business venture began.

Andy decided to take a year out to start the business. This proved to be a good move for him as the business developed nicely, and he even managed to complete his degree in 2009. He shows it is possible to start a business while at university.

Andy has many years experience of professional web development working for a number of firms and is heavily involved in GroupSpaces product development.

After trialling the service with 300 societies in Oxford during 2006-07 they managed to secure 40 advertising contracts with blue chip companies.
This was after seeing 5,000 unique visits a month. GroupSpaces managed to get funding through Angel Investors, sought through Oxford Early Investments, following a successful pitch. This allowed for the rapid development of their product.

GroupSpaces has seen encouraging growth with over half a million users and expansion internationally.

Andy is a young exciting entrepreneur with an interest for music. Andrew had the bravery to execute his idea and present to some of the biggest companies. His belief and commitment, to solving a problem he has encountered, at a young age is commendable and he surely has a bright future.

After last year and also with the financial instability of the country, everyone was practically diving into the pool of entrepreneurship and i just wanted to highlight some of the entrepreneurs that i think due to their hunger, passion and dedication(Giving credit to whom credit is due or something like that) to their work are definitely going to kick ass in 2010.

Enjoy and Share

Rajeeb Dey

Check out my interview with him.

Rajeeb Dey is the 24 year old Founder & CEO of Enternships.com- Enternships provides ambitious and dynamic students and graduates with an opportunity to learn about business and enterprise through work placements in entrepreneurial and innovative environments, from start-ups to global venture funds around the world.

David Langer

David Langer is the CEO/Co-Founder at GroupSpaces, A funded startup making it easier to manage groups online.

Funny Enough, I actually just finished an interview with him, check it out!

Kieran O’Neill

Kieran O’neill is a 22 year old serial web entrepreneur and Co-Founder/CEO of Playfire.com – the fast growing social network for gamers.

Samata Angel

Samata Angel is a British-born Ghanaian award-winning fashion entrepreneur, author, designer and TV personality. Samata’s Muse clothing label specialises in womenswear with clients including the likes of Dawn Angeliqué Richard and Jennifer Lopez with press to date including VOGUE.com, Fashion United, Look Magazine (UK), Pride Magazine, ITN, London Lite, Fashion Africa and Fashion Capital.

Check out my interview with her

Andre Campbell

21 years old Andre Campbell is the Founder at Enfuse Youth a youth led consultancy aimed at improving the life opportunities for young people; a start up he intends to turn into a global organisation for the betterment of young people across the world.

Julian Polzella

Julian Polzella is CTO at VouChaCha- VouChaCha powered applications find the hottest deals within walking distance of your location, Great deals on your iPhone. He also holds a 1st class BSc (Hons.) degree in Computing Sciences.

They just recently partnered up with lastminute.com on the snaffle application.

Lucian Tarnowski

Lucian Tarnowski is the 25 years old founder and CEO of BraveNewTalent.com- An initiative to give young people a place to engage and have their voices heard about their future.

Jude Gomila

Jude Gomila is a 25 year old British entrepreneurand one of the co-founders of the website Heyzap- Heyzap is a casual games and monetization platform which allows users to embed games on any website or blog by way of a widget and/or API.

Hermione way

Hermione Way is the 24 years old founder of Newspepper.com and Techfluff.TV.

Techfluff TV showcases the more vibrant, lively side of the European tech scene, with interviews, reviews and features on tech start-ups and entrepreneurs.

Newspepper.com makes the hottest video for the internet, from events coverage to live streaming and video PR to promotional videos.

Robert Matthams

Robert Matthams is the 25-year-old founder and CEO of Shiply.com – Shiply helps you find cheap courier services by matching yourself up with couriers & delivery companies already making similar trips across the UK & Europe.

Watch out for our interview with him in 2010

Let me know your thoughts

It’s not everyday you hear someone reject to work with corporate giants such as JPMorgan and McKinsey to pursue life as an entrepreneur.

David Langer made this decision and he’s loving every single moment of it.

This is a must read interview for every entrepreneur starting up, especially those based in the UK. David covers a lot of ground in this interview, he talks about:

• Why he started GroupSpaces.
• How he secured funding for GroupSpaces and what you should start doing right now to be in a better position to get funding for your startup.
• Why he’s not going to work for either JPMorgan or McKinsey.
• Why as an entrepreneur you should be getting connected.
• Why you don’t need to be in Silicon Valley to be successful.
• Why he shares some of Barack Obama’s views on fitness.
• Why he would like to have a cup of coffee with Winston Churchill.

Can you quickly give us some background information about yourself?

I’m a 24 year-old Internet entrepreneur, born and bred in Wimbledon, currently based in Oxford having completed a Mathematics degree at Oxford University in 2007. In addition to working on my startup GroupSpaces, I also write for The Gateway newspaper as their Entrepreneurship Columnist and train for my current sporting passion: triathlons.

So David, tell us about your company and what inspired you to start it?

GroupSpaces is an Oxford-based Web startup which takes the pain out of managing clubs, societies, associations and other real-world groups.

I started GroupSpaces in 2007 with my co-founder, Andy Young, based on our personal experiences on the committee of various clubs and societies at Oxford University.

We observed that every real-world group we came across was managing itself using a mash-up of disconnected tools and processes. This was really inefficient and meant these groups were spending an unnecessarily large amount of time on admin, distracting them from their group’s core purpose.

The status quo was a mailing list on Gmail or a Yahoo!/Google group, a membership database in Excel, events on a Facebook group, payments being collected by cheque or cash and a website which was time-consuming to update and disconnected from everything else.

Andy and I thought that it would be much quicker and easier to manage all these things from one place, which is what inspired us to start GroupSpaces.

What makes your business different from other competitors?

GroupSpaces’ main competitors are Excel spreadsheets, Cc email threads, cheques and some other Web applications solving one specific problem for groups e.g. Eventbrite for event management.

GroupSpaces differentiates by providing an intuitive, all-in-one Web-based solution for group management.

What role do you perform in your company?

We currently have a small team which means I perform many different roles. A typical week for me involves wearing several different hats such as user support, marketing, sales, finance and operations. I currently work on every area of the business except for coding the actual software which I leave to our brilliant team of developers.

How difficult was it getting funding for your business? Is there a right way for young entrepreneurs to get funding?

Prior to raising our angel funding, we had already built a prototype product, had a few hundred groups using it and were generating revenue so we had a fairly good ‘proof of concept’, something which angel investors often look for. We ended up receiving multiple offers of funding for our angel round and the one we took came via the Oxford Early Investments business angel network. It took us about 5 months from our first conversation with prospective investors to getting the money in the bank.

If you’re a first-time entrepreneur and you think that you are going to need to raise funding for your business, I would encourage you to start building relationships with potential investors as early as possible and ask them what they will be looking for you to achieve before they would be comfortable investing in you. This can vary a lot between different investors, countries and markets, so the best thing to do is to just start talking to potential investors.

David you’ve worked in some pretty big companies so far such as Lehman Brothers, JPMorgan and McKinsey. Why didn’t you go down that route and get yourself a safe secured job?

Having done some courses and internships in the corporate world, it was crystal clear to me that being an entrepreneur was my best option. There were several strong reasons for this:
• I could do what I love and am passionate about every single day.

• I could have far more positive impact on the world by starting my own company and this was personally a very important factor when considering how I would spend years of my life.

• The long-term financial upside was greater if you are successful and I don’t think that it’s anywhere near as important to have money in your early twenties versus when you’re older and have a family etc.

• I could spend every day doing what I thought and felt was most important. I didn’t have someone telling me differently.

• Andy and I were already underway working on GroupSpaces and were very excited about its potential so we definitely wanted to continue working on this to start with.

• I’m not sure how safe and secure taking a job with Lehman Brothers would have been…
What are key ingredients that you think makes a successful entrepreneur?

Persistence, persistence and persistence. One of my favourite entrepreneurial books is Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston (Founding Partner, Y Combinator) – it’s composed of 32 short interviews with successful technology entrepreneurs such as Steve Wozniak (Apple), Max Levchin (PayPal) and Evan Williams (Blogger, Twitter). The book concludes with a quote from Ron Gruner, founder of Shareholder.com and Alliant Systems:

“The key to success, if you had to sum it up in one word, is persistence.”

I asked Jessica about this quote a couple of years ago after I had first read the book and she said that it was a deliberate decision to end with this. From her experience at Y Combinator having invested in dozens of startups, it was clear to her that the ones with the most persistent founders were the ones which went on to succeed.

Also from my personal experience both as an entrepreneur and interacting with hundreds of other entrepreneurs over the past few years, it’s clear that the ones who do the best are prepared to do anything and everything to make their companies successful and they don’t give up. Whether that means changing their initial idea, changing team members, raising more money, whatever is required, the most successful entrepreneurs don’t give up, they persist and keep persisting until success comes their way.

Do you feel that there are things which entrepreneurs are doing wrong to break into the entrepreneurial world?

I think anyone starting their first company should try to meet and build relationships with other entrepreneurs. This might mean relocating somewhere with a greater density of entrepreneurs but I believe this can be done in other places besides Silicon Valley. You just need to seek out a couple of other entrepreneurs who are slightly further down the line than you are and can share with you some of the lessons they learned and offer you advice on the challenges you are facing.

I also think peer pressure can be a big motivator for first-time entrepreneurs. Y Combinator companies benefit a lot from this – I remember Paul Graham saying that not screwing up at Demo Day in front of all your friends is a much bigger motivator than getting rich. Similarly if you can just find a couple of other young entrepreneurs at a similar stage to you, it will give you a significant sense of urgency to get shit done if you think their startup is progressing faster than yours.

Why do you think is so difficult for young entrepreneurs to get funding for their company whereas in the US there are tons of investment opportunity e.g. Silicon Valley

There are a couple of ways of looking at this. On the one hand there are far more angel investors and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley than anywhere else in the world, but there are also far more startups there. Obviously this results in a lot more startups being funded in Silicon Valley than anywhere else but there are also quite a few active angel investors and venture capitalists throughout the UK, you just have to look a bit harder to find them.

I’m not in a good position to comment outside of the UK or Silicon Valley as I haven’t spent any time being an entrepreneur there, but certainly in the UK if you are a first-time entrepreneur, you should be able to draw up a shortlist of 10-15 investors who do deals at the size you are looking for. These lists of VC firms for UK-based startupssources of angel financing are good starting points. If you put in the effort to network and get personally introduced to all these investors, get meetings, and still are not able to get funding, then your business is probably not far enough developed for the stage of financing you are trying to raise e.g. if you’re struggling to raise angel financing, you might still need to get more of a ‘proof of concept’ and if you’re struggling to raise your first round of Venture Capital then you probably don’t have enough early traction.

What are your hobbies?

When I’m not working on GroupSpaces, I enjoy working out, spending time with my girlfriend and heading to the occasional drum n bass rave.

In particular, I am a firm believer in ‘healthy body, healthy mind’. This old adage was in fact scientifically proven recently. A lot of people I speak to say that they are too busy to work out but I don’t believe that this is a healthy attitude. My mind functions faster when I’m at peak fitness and that means exercise is an essential part of my life. I make time to keep fit, even if this means sacrificing on sleep sometimes. In the summer I enjoy training for and racing triathlons and in the winter I tend to spend more time in the gym.

If you ever believe that you are too busy to work out, I would encourage you look at Barack Obama. The President of the United States is probably busier than you, even though you may be very busy. However, in a recent interview of Men’s Health magazine, Barack said:

“Most of my workouts have to come before my day starts. There’s always a trade-off between sleep and working out. Usually I get in about 45 minutes, six days a week. I’ll lift [weights] one day, do cardio the next. I wish I was getting a 90-minute workout.”

Who has been your greatest inspiration so far?

I find the most inspiration in people who are able to repeatedly apply themselves to a world-class level in multiple disciplines. As a mathematician, I often see patterns when I abstract parts of my and other people’s lives and I think the ingredients that make one successful in business, sport, politics, entertainment and most other fields are actually very similar.

Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers does a good job of explaining this – Gladwell claims that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practising a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours. There are obviously other factors in play, but I would relate the point made back to my earlier point about persistence being the key driving factor of successful entrepreneurs.

Specific people who have inspired me in this way are:
• Arnold Schwarzenegger for becoming the best bodybuilder in the world then turning his hand to acting and becoming world-class at that and now building a fantastically successful career in politics, becoming Governor of California.

• Mark Zuckerberg for changing the way hundreds of millions of people understand their relationships with their friends. What particularly inspires me about what Mark has achieved is that Facebook isn’t so successful because he executed one idea really well. He has continually innovated and adapted his company to grow and succeed, all at such a young age.

• Marc Andreessen for starting two billion dollar companies (Netscape, Opsware), being on the way to having started a third (Ning, valued at $750M last round) and having now started his own venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, which seems to be on the way to building a world-class portfolio.
If you had a chance to have a cup of coffee with anyone dead or alive, who would it be and why?

Winston Churchill. By all accounts his determination and data-driven approach to strategy were second to none. Some people laugh at books like Sun Tzu’s Art of War for Executives but I firmly believe that the characteristics of a successful leader in war are very similar to the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs. I’d love to experience Churchill first hand and compare with some of the most inspirational people I have met in my life so far.

Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?

My primary focus is building GroupSpaces into a world-class company and I’m not really thinking beyond that at the moment. Long-term I’d like to probably do at least one more startup, write a book, travel the world and perhaps start a venture capital firm. We’ll see what happens.

Do you have any tips for aspiring entrepreneurs?
• Before making important decisions, double check that both your heart and head are in agreement.

• If you aren’t already in regular contact with other entrepreneurs at a similar stage to you, go and find some – the peer support and peer pressure this will generate is really important.

• Once you’ve settled on your initial idea and founding team, focus on core and be the most persistent person you’ve ever met.

• Finally, I’ll offer a quote from Dharmesh Shah, founder of OnStartups: “The shortest piece of startup advice ever: GO!”

Thanks for your time David and good luck.

To find out more about David, you can follow him on Twitter (@langer ) or view his profile on LinkedIn.