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.

 

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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.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Andy McLoughlin recently the co founder and EVP strategy at Huddle, a B2B online collaboration & content management company. Andy discusses how he started the company and grew it to a 70+ employee company that it is today and with an office in London and San Francisco explains the benefits and problems encountered when expanding to the US. Andy also gives valuable advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, it’s one not too be missed!

Interview with Andy McLoughlin, Co Founder of Huddle by RishiYHP

——
Follow Andy McLoughlin
Follow @rishi_chowdhury

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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.

So I’m here at Startup Weekend London (#swLondon for all you tweeters), 27 hours in and Social Stadiums is taking shape. What is Social Stadiums, well it’s a stadium fan engagement application!

Yeah I know, what?!

Essentially ‘Social Stadiums’ is a mobile application that helps sports clubs engage with their fans and enhances the match-day experience through digital content and interactive services.

Features?

Initially:

• A set of rich digital feeds containing spectator comments, photos, and videos. It will also allow the host to upload premium content such as instant replays and stats but only on the premium app.
• A poll feature which allows spectators to put a question to the rest of the crowd in real time – such as should it have been a penalty? Or voting for Man of the Match? – and the plan is to also provide a service through which the results can be displayed on the big screen during half time and the end of the game.
• A retail feature through which spectators can purchase food/drinks/merchandise/tickets using their mobile device and pick it up from the fast track counters. Benefits include; spread peak demand for Food/drink sales and it will give the club an opportunity to sell merchandise while the fan is emotionally engaged. (Future feature)

We have come up with enough feature ideas to last the next 10 years. As I write our fifth revenue model is being discussed. I think we are settling on a freemium model with a premium subscription package as well, then bringing on merchandise deals with clubs later, after have grown our userbase.

Just looking at the early, early prototype, it’s looking cool.

We’ve had some great mentors come and help us over the weekend, we have quite a large team so often we can lose focus, and they have often set us back on track.

So that’s the update, it’s changing all the time, being refined, but I will update again after the pitches! In the mean time sign up to be alerted when you can access the Social Stadiums App here – http://socialstadium.kickofflabs.com/

Let me know what you think of the idea in the comments below or tweet me!

Follow @rishi_chowdhury

I recently caught up with Diana Proca to talk about her startup, Workinstartup. Check out what we talked about.

Diana Proca is the Founder of Workinstartups.com. WorkInStartups is the perfect place to find the job opportunities from UK startups and beyond, the website is currently in its BETA stage.

Here’s the full interview.

Hi Diana, thanks for joining us on YHP, how are you doing?

Hey Joseph, I’m very well thanks!

Can you quickly give us some background information about yourself before we move on?

Sure! I am originally from Romania where I have previously worked in the corporate world (P&G and banking) and realised that it just wasn’t for me. I wanted to have more impact in the business that I was working on and in the corporate world that meant at least another 10 years of work.

Therefore I decided to find a job that I’ll enjoy and I came to London where I did a MA in Events Management and started working with Launch48. Needless to say that after seeing so many startups being created during the Launch48 events I caught the entrepreneurial virus and decided to give it a try, and that’s where I am now.

When did you know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

Ever since I was little I knew I wanted to build something that will bring value to other people and that will improve the way they work or live. After the Romanian Revolution (when we got rid of communism), both my parents took the entrepreneurial path deciding that they want to build their own businesses and I hope I’ll someday be as good as them.

Lets talk about WorkInStartups and how did the idea come about?

Interacting with a bunch of newly created startups while working at Launch48 I’ve noticed the stringent need that the startup scene has for valuable people. Initially the idea was to raise awareness about the benefits of working in a startup as learned from my own experience.

I was also looking for a job in a startup in UK and realised that there is no centralised place for all the startup jobs. All the websites or job boards were dedicated to programmers only or they were promoting only internships. However, every startup that I knew was hiring mostly for paid positions and not only programmers but also sales people, marketers, project managers etc.

At that point I decided to create the job board that will centralise all the startup positions so people looking for an opportunity within a startup will know where to look for. We’ve also started our blog that aims to get an insight into the startup life and to showcase the startups that are currently hiring.

Ok, can you get more granular on the problem WorkInStartups solves for individuals?

Our main goal is to help people find jobs that they love and give people an alternative to working for big corporations.

WorkInStartups is a place where you can find the job opportunities from UK startups and beyond. People don’t have to search for jobs on every startup webpage as they can find on www.workinstartups.com the openings.

Many people are not aware of the benefits that working in a startup could bring so we try to highlight them get as much advice and feedback from startups and startup employees as we can.

Furthermore, on our blog we interview the startups that are currently hiring so people will get an insight of their culture, team and benefits they offer.

How do you intend to charge for your service?

At the moment we are in Beta and the service is free of charge. We intend to keep it this way throughout Beta but we are going to launch soon (end October) new features of the service that will be paid for. Unfortunately I can’t say more about it for the time being but we will let you know details soon.

How is your startup being funded so far?

At the moment we are bootstrapping but we are also in discussions with potential investors.

What would you say was probably the most difficult part of starting the business?

The most difficult part was definitely deciding that I wanted to take the idea one step further and transform it into something tangible and as well getting mentally prepared for it.

I’ve previously had business ideas but I had never tried to pursue them, as the effort you have to put into it is significant. And as they say, entrepreneurship is not a sprint but a marathon so you have to be prepared for the long run.

You’re the Event Manager at Launch48? Tell us some of your experience working with the Launch48 team?

Actually I’m not working with Launch48 anymore, our roads have separated in May when I decided to focus exclusively on WorkInStartups.

However, working with them was an awesome experience as I met a lot of amazing people, seen many businesses being created and listened to a lot of mentors giving advice. That’s why I truly believe that everyone should experience working in a startup at least once in their lifetime.

Tell us some of the key lessons you’ve learnt so far through the beta-process?

We are now almost 5 months old and our product has changed a lot since we’ve first launched it. Here are some lessons that we’ve learned so far:

It is best to have the MVP launched asap and build on it as it accelerates the learning process;
It’s not about the number of applications for each job but what matters is the quality of the people;
Communicating with the customers is key as feedback is precious;
Always think of the next moves/features as they will drive fast progress;

When should we be expecting the full launch?

As previously mentioned we will be launching new features in October but the full launch of the product will be ready early next year.

What can we expect from WorkInStartups in the future?

We are currently busy with building an improved product that we plan on launching early next year. I can’t tell you more details at the moment but we hope to solve the recruiting problem that startups have.

Do you have any advice to young entrepreneurs looking to launch their startup?

Be prepared for the long run as it’s not the speed that makes the difference but the perseverance.

Thanks for your time Diana.

Thank you and best of luck with YHP!!

Hi Tim thanks for joining us on YHP today

So give us a bit of background about you and what you do:

I am a 23 year old serial entrepreneur, currently running businesses within the Entertainment industry.

I started off in the city when I had just turned 17 working for Swiss Re / GE Insurance within IT, I was their youngest ever employee in the world across the brand of over 10,000 + people. I went on to become operations manager by 19 a SME I.T outsourcing business which I doubled the growth of within 9 months.

Our businesses presently include a ticket and hospitality company with growth of over 200% last year and an events showcase business which runs a show called Showcase:LIVE, Showcase Live is one of the most reputable unsigned music showcases in Europe, since the launch in 2007 we have had many then unsigned acts including Jessie J and JLS with coverage in everything from the Mirror to Music Week and some amazing supporters. We are just completing a rebrand across the board to push it out across Europe and America within the coming 12 months.

As well as this, I also do consultancy work and presently I am consulting for one of the largest e-commerce businesses in the world on business strategy within the European market.

Over the last few years I have also begun to get quite heavily involved with the development of our 25 year old Family business in food and wine. My focus here has been in implementing a Re-brand and bringing the logistics and sales models up to speed with the continuous development of technology and media tools.

How do you manage many different projects at once?

I think having great people around you and a great team helps significantly. I have always been of the mind set that you should enjoy what you do so it never feels like work!

With this in mind I try to structure our business models to be flexible around the everyday challenges of change. My theory is that everyone in the company needs to be happy and feel appreciated in order to get the most out of them. Due to the often erratic nature of the time schedules involved with an entertainment business, we are of the mind set that if we are flexible with hours (start and finish) then our team will be too.

I am also fortunate enough to have a great other half which supports me in everything I do and with whom I have a great working partnership with as well.

For me it’s so important to have that other person with whom I can go over things with and that understands exactly how I work. We have very similar aims and goals in life (although in totally different fields) and I know that I can always run something over with her even if its in the middle of the night when an idea springs to mind or understand when I am on a 5 hour conference call on the beach in Thailand. (Although I’m sure she would disagree!)

­As a young entrepreneur, how have you found trying to build credibility and bridge the generation gap?

This has been difficult over the years, I really feel credibility and respect doesn’t come straight away from anyone but when you work hard and give a lot of substance you can really prove people wrong.

Fortunately I got firsthand experience starting my career in the City and being the youngest person out of 10,000. Of course this was challenging, but what I very quickly learnt was to work with everyone and understand the issues with the generation gap instead of working against it. For me, working with team with members that could double or triple your age was motivating and intimidating to start with, however this quickly built my confidence with the realisation that although there was an age gap I was doing the same as them. I worked really hard to prove myself and after no time at all, they began to realise that they could infact also learn from me and that it was a unique and beneficial advantage to have such a young member of the team.

Those days seems like such a long time ago now and I have since gained many close friends in their 50’s + (CEO’s of the large businesses) with whom I regularly go for dinner with and share our different experiences. I feel you can always learn from everyone and this excites me.

Did you ever feel university was right for you? If not why?

For me it would never have worked, I came out of School with hardly any GCSE’s but one thing I did know was how to build computers, and to sell. I would sell sweets and drinks to every kid and teacher at School despite being told by the canteen it was a conflict of interests. It was this which led me on further to do what I really wanted to do, which was to set goals that I knew no one had ever achieved. I like to take risks. Without risk there can be no gain.

My Passions were about ‘doing business’ not in learning about how to do business. I feel experience is everything and this is something I look at when I am employing myself. For me I feel that formal education will make you a living but self education will make you a fortune.

Who is your biggest inspiration in business?

I wouldn’t say there is just one person that I look upto. I don’t think its healthy to look up to just one person, but instead I try to take the ‘best bits’ of many different entrepreneurs and leaders including Sir Alan Sugar and Sir John Madjeski and put these into practise with what I do myself. I have real respect for anyone who has built themselves up from nowhere and those who lost everything and made it all back.

What advice can you give to other aspiring young entrepreneurs?

What I will definitely say is the difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will. If you put your mind to it and set goals and targets you will get anywhere you want to be just don’t give up!

–

Follow Tim Connor @timmycon
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Glenn Shoosmith is the founder and CEO of BookingBug, an online booking and reservation system for small businesses.

Companies can use the system to share availability of services with it’s customers and take bookings online. Options can be customised for the type of serviced offered, availability can be shown by the day, week, hour, class, event or course. The system updates in real-time and has the options of a widget that can be shared and published via blogs, social media and affiliates.

Glenn founded BookingBug back in 2008 with the goal to revolutionise the booking and reservation process for SMB in the services sector. Glenn wanted to make it easier for a small business to fill it’s available slots, thus be more cost effective and efficient, but also help the customers by allowing them to easily see availability and book services there and then.

BookingBug used the embeddable booking widget to partner with affiliates who help open up the reach for businesses. This adds value for the customer who gets the bonus of added convenience for customers, while providing more traffic and therefore more conversions for the business.

Glenn is a software developer and has worked at many large companies before including Bank of America, CNBC, Reuters and most recently RBS who he left to start BookingBug.  It can often be hard to leave a good job and risk it all to start your own business, but the rewards can be far greater. As well as the opportunity to make more money, the fact that you can work on something you are passionate about and make your own decisions, work your own hours, that’s the main attraction.

Earlier this year BookingBug secured investment of $350,000 from a group of angels. Glenn notes that it’s “only a small round but it’s designed to pursue more aggressive growth.” Glenn hopes this round can take the company to the next level and prepare for a larger round of funding in the future.

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This is a just a quick post to remind all uk startups, existing businesses, anyone can pitch for the chance to turn a great idea into an even better reality to not forget to enter the competition.

The Aim
The aim of the Barclays Business Take One Small Step Competition is to find people with ambition, passion and, most importantly, a great business idea.

The brief is open — it could be a lifelong ambition or a recent brainwave. It could be a personal experience or a distant dream. Even a revolutionary concept that changes the world. It’s an open invitation and anyone with a great business idea and the drive to make it happen could win.

How to Enter

1. Register your contact details
2. Tell us about your idea
3. Upload your video
4. Preview and submit

Hurry up!
You have until midnight on 16 May 2010 to submit your entry. The shortlisted entries will be announced on 7 June 2010.

Things to think about..
Whether you’re starting up, developing a product range or looking to move into new markets, your business idea could be the one the public votes for. First you have to impress the judges, and they’re looking for:

* Originality
* Viability
* The benefit to your community
* A clear, focused presentation
* Passion and commitment
* Potential to succeed

For more information about the competition: click here