by Real Business - Thursday, 30th August 2007

Charles Muirhead’s Orchestream saw the technical obstacles that hold back multi-usage networks; so he raised $8.5m and 40 software fiends to sort it out. The message is clear: don’t look at a product, look at a problem.

You’ll notice, too, a movement away from traditional distribution channels among our 50. There’s more than one mail-order business. And there are lots of firms whose main shop window is the Internet.

There are also plenty of companies, such as Thomas Hoegh’s Arts Alliance, that are tiny firms in size, but big players in influence. How do they do it? By orchestrating a network of agencies and contractors and keeping the centre small.

Finally, go-getting new businesses don’t create products or services. They create brands. The most extreme example is the Good Group. As yet it’s little more than a consultancy and a restaurant. But with a name that sells, who knows how far you can go?

Arthur Jupp
“By nature, I don’t lack self-confidence,” laughs Arthur Jupp. It shows. In year two of trading, the former RAF flight engineer is already talking about a £40m business. It ain’t glamorous stuff. Aimteq develops software for heating, ventilation and air-conditioning installations. But, says the winner of the 1998 Midland Bank Small Business of the Year award, “there’s no limit to our marketplace.” Well, not until the world stops putting up buildings.

Charles Muirhead
Charles Muirhead is in fine form. His business is pre-revenue, but he’s just managed to raise $8.5m from a group of investors that includes Reuters and Electra Fleming. Muirhead is the 23-year-old founder of Orchestream, one of the brightest lights in UK software development. The company is, says Muirhead, “all about taking networks to the next stage.” Orchestream’s software tackles the problems of congestion on networks that are required to carry an increasingly diverse range of functions. It’s a seriously technical, R&D-intensive world - that $8.5m will be spent by mid-1999 - but the ex-Imperial College Muirhead looks like a star in the making.

Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman
When Brent Hoberman suggested the idea of a Web site to auction airline tickets and hotel rooms to his consultant colleague Martha Lane Fox, her initial reaction was “terrible”. But last Easter he talked her into giving it a try and a month later venture capitalists dropped $1m into their laps. They’ve turned that into ten staff, “a lot of hardware” and projected sales of £6m in 1999. Eager suppliers of last-minute bargains include Lufthansa, Alitalia, Virgin, Sheraton, the Really Useful Group and the Royal Festival Hall.

Chris Ivory
A conversation with the Mushroom Growers Association set 56-year-old Chris Ivory on the path. Did you realise, he was asked, that 70 per cent of mushroom buyers don’t know how to cook them? Thus was born the idea of selling mushrooms and their sauce packaged together. Launched in the big supermarkets early in 1999, mushrooms are only part of Ivory’s plan. In his spanking new 20,000-sq-ft Ivory Sauces factory high above Halifax, the former MD of Sharwoods and Dalepak is plotting further acquisitions. The plan? To be a £50m food group.

Simon Murdoch
It’s been quite a couple of years for Simon Murdoch. Back in January 1998, after a long struggle, he secured venture capital backing for his mail-order books business, Bookspages. A few months later, it was snaffled up by the world’s best-known Web site, Amazon.com, as part of a three-company, $55m deal. But can Murdoch’s Amazon.co.uk replicate Amazon.com’s astonishing growth (at last count it had 4.5 million customers)? Over to you, Simon.

Mark and Ian Herbert
“Up until now, a rigorous e-mail system for a 20-employee firm hasn’t cost much less than at a 200-employee firm,” says Mark Herbert, age 32. He knows, because he used to make a lot of money installing them. Now, with brother Ian (36), he aims to own the SME e-mail market. Their company inty’s £595-plus-£10-a-month-per-user solution includes a dedicated server and guaranteed service levels. Sales started three months ago, and they are aiming for 4,000 installations by December 1999. Backing came from Chris and Mike Saunders, retail entrepreneurs, after a chance encounter in a theatre bar.

Graham Shaw
For those who thought venture capitalists are risk-averse, think again. Backed by 3i and Schroder Ventures, Graham Shaw’s six-man team are on “the bleeding edge” - investigating the digital “water-marking” of data files, including still images, audio and video. Started in July 1997, Signum spent its first year finding out where the opportunities for its innovative technology lay. Now it’s got to start bringing in the sales. The likely first market? Validation of digital documents. With Signum’s help, Shaw forecasts, police forces will be able to have digital camera shots admissable as legal evidence.

Stuart Melhuish
“We make complex material accessible. It’s partly in the architecture of our systems and partly in how we enable users to navigate through the material. Our technology is for big business, but we thought a good way to showcase it would be to make theoretical physics accessible to everybody in a multimedia consumer product,” says Stuart Melhuish of Amaze. Steven Hawking, as in A Brief History of Time, agreed with him. In 1999, the two intend to raise resources for that very project. Amaze grew out of John Moores University in Liverpool where Melhuish, 33, graduated from student president to assistant chief executive. One of his briefs was to oversee Amaze. When venture capitalists, ECI, were approached for funding, they insisted Melhuish join full-time. In 1999, the 50-person firm intends to double its head count and open a Californian office.

Marcus Brook
General fraud costs retailers around £8.5m a year. Edinburgh-based Data Discoveries reckons it can stop it - as do its clients which include Scottish Provident, Allied Dunbar and Scottish Power. It developed the UK’s first multi-confirmed database of all 44.5 million adults and 2.2 million businesses, and its state-of-the-art software can confirm both customer and co-habitee details provided by matching them against those on the database. “Identity fraud is compounded by the fact that around ten per cent of the population moves home each year, giving fraudsters access to the mail of previous occupants. Each year many businesses fall prey to customers who use false identities to purchase goods,” says Data Discoveries’ managing director, Marcus Brook.

Thomas Hoegh
A 32-year-old, Norwegian-born, Harvard-schooled ex-theatre director has got his eyes on Britain’s Internet industry - and on the way we invest in small companies. Thomas Hoegh’s specialist venture capital firm, Arts Alliance, only invests in Internet start-ups; and the returns come quickly (100 per cent in one year from the sale of PlanetAll to Amazon.com). Hoegh’s relationship with British entrepreneurial life deepened recently when he bought Venture Capital Report, the matching agency for business angels and businesses (no price disclosed). The plan now is to turn it into a tip-top online service. Watch this space.

Martin and Edward Hall
Few young companies can sport as many awards as London-based Datamark. Founded in December 1996, it has already scooped a SMART award, a Foresight Technology award, and a Millennium Products award. The money’s coming in, too. Turnover will near £1m this year. Datamark’s systems for “dynamic digital watermarking” allow operations, such as picture libraries, to promote and deliver content over the Internet, but at all times demonstrate their copyright ownership. Unsurprisingly, Datamark uses the technologies created by fellow 50-to-watcher Signum.

Peter Dawe
Internet pioneer Peter Dawe is currently raising £20m for his new company, Flute, to lay a cable network under the North Sea. Once laid, revenues could be as much as £50m in its second year. Optimistic? Hardly, says Dawe. “There’s a whole range of people waiting to buy, because we’re going to be one-tenth of the cost of BT. And we’ll be providing applications that just weren’t viable up to now.” It’s not exotic technology, Dawe stresses, "just the very latest off-the-shelf stuff.” And watch out for his other project - the Cambridge New Town Corporation.

Anthony Melder and Gavin White
February is launch time for Turban Guerrilla. Co-founder Ant Melder promises an “Asian Loaded”, a magazine that will cross all boundaries. “It won’t be about the colour of your skin,” says the 27-year-old former copywriter, “but about the way you think.” The big question facing Melder and White is whether to publish TG themselves or take up an offer from a big publisher.

Shara Quli
Which articles do people turn to first in consumer magazines? All the stuff about relationships, stupid. So why not launch a magazine devoted to relationships? In November 1998 Shara Quli did just that. But Couples is more than an impressive mag. To give it some real oomph, Quli launched it in association with Relate, the marriage guidance charity. Issue one came out in November, with the tag “Getting what you deserve out of life.” Quli is doing just that.

James Learmond and James Dean
Is this the next big high-street brand? The first Crussh juice bar and café opened in the City of London in October this year. By the end of 1999, there should be four more; then 40 in five years’ time. Co-creator James Dean first spotted the juice bar industry in the US. In the UK, says James Learmond, healthy food has a “new-age tinge” to it that can put people off. But add design flair, a top nutritionist’s menus and a dash of fun, and you have a concept that is more fast food than health food. So what’s Crussh’s top-selling drink? “Love Juice.” Of course.

Nicholas Cox and John Gummer
So that’s what he’s up to. Former Conservative environment secretary John Gummer went into the refrigeration business with Nicholas Cox in August 1997. Now they have Earthcare Products, a cracking little business selling environmentally-friendly cooling kit. It’s a “staid, introverted” industry, says Cox, so there’s room for a real innovator. The target is a stockmarket listing within ten years.

Ann Hacker
If the sales don’t kick in for five years, but venture capitalists have just invested £5m, we must be in bioterritory. Describing itself as the women’s healthcare company, 11-employee Metris Therapeutics sprang from Cambridge University’s Obstetrics and Gynaecology department. Its first target is endometriosis, a condition affecting the womb for which the definitive cure of hysterectomy is usually unacceptable. If trials prove successful, a $500m market opens up. As chairman Ann Hacker says, “We’ve got a lot to prove.”

Jeremy Old and Robert Miller
The approach at East West Biotech is pretty brazen: “The company will be worth £350m by the end of 1999 if all goes according to plan,” says co-founder Jeremy Old. East West, a supplier of herbal remedies, has just licensed its expertise to a US dietary supplement manufacturer. But “the big one is applying our unique breakthrough - signal transduction technology - to hepatitis C,” says Old’s partner Robert Miller. They seek to upgrade their herbal formulae into licensed drugs, via trials and a monster deal. Currently they’re raising $5m of seed capital.

Fraser Hay
Seaweed. Slippery old seaweed. Slippery old seaweed with natural healing properties. In the far corner of Aberdeenshire, Fraser Hay reckons he can build a public company on the stuff. So far the Shell LiveWire Young Businessman of the year has concentrated on mail-order sales for his healthcare products through his company Health Scope Direct. Next stage for the 31-year-old is to develop his retail presence through acquisition.

Steve Hilton and Giles Gibbons
The Good Cook restaurant is the latest step in an interesting venture from Steve Hilton and Giles Gibbons, two former M&C Saatchi hotshots. Their first business was Good Business, a “social marketing” consultancy. Now they’re building a group around the “Good” brand. The pair aren’t claiming to run “ethical” businesses, but each one will use some of its profits to campaign on a relevant social issue. “We’re not just a couple of do-gooders,” says Hilton. “We also want to be big and successful.” Hilton is keeping mum about specific future projects, but this budding brand surely has potential.

Sally Wheaton
“We want to be more than a cottage industry,” says Sally Wheaton of Pasta King, the business that she and her father Rick set up in 1994. Producing 15,000 meals per week sounds like that barrier’s been broken. Pasta King’s method of delivering pasta at the point of sale has become a big hit with mega-contract caterers, such as Gardner Merchant. The company provides operators with a servery counter, high-quality pasta and a range of ready-to-use sauces. A hot pasta meal can be prepared in ten seconds. The Wheatons are out to make a big impact, so they have hired eight-years-with-M&S Richard Yoffey to be their sales director. Go hunt, Richard.

Bruce Isaacs
Soupworks’ founder Bruce Isaacs has been in the catering business since graduation 16 years ago. Following a “creative discussion” in a pub with friend Johnny Acton, a former journalist on Eat Soup magazine, the idea for a retail chain focusing entirely on soup was born. “We wanted to act fast,” says Isaacs. The company ran an Ofex listing to raise £600,000 over the summer and was almost twice over-subscribed. The first outlet, which will sell 12 different types of soup, selections of breads and “froup” drink, will open at the end of 1998, with the second planned for February 1999. After that, the plan is to open a new outlet every two to three months.

Mary Neal
We clean our teeth. But we don’t clean the brush we clean our teeth with. So Mary Neal and former dentist husband Peter have come up with Brushtox, the world’s first antiseptic toothbrush cleaner. The ebullient Mary is on the trawl for venture capital backing. And why not? The UK oral hygiene market is worth over £500m. Say cheese.

Keith and David Williams
Thermatech Timber Structures is a family business that specialises in manufacturing timber-framed buildings. So what has timber got over brick? “Not only do our buildings last forever,” says David Williams, “they are cheaper, have more versatile interiors, and are quicker to erect and better insulated than anything made of brick.” The design also offers a cheaper and greener alternative than brick. Thermatech, says David, offers a low-cost accommodation solution. He expects demand to boom due to the need to house refugees and the homeless in the UK, as well as the need for quick-build housing in Japan, Russia, Georgia and the Falklands Islands. This year the company will hit £1.3m turnover, rising to £1.8m in 1999.

Denise Bell-King
Earlier this year, Denise Bell-King launched Health of the Nation, offering mail-order Chinese herbal products. “I saw at first hand how an intensive working life was affecting people’s health,” says Bell-King. She decided to use her knowledge of Chinese medicine to provide products for those suffering from problems, such as skin disorders, weight gain, hair loss and flu. She will soon be appointing a network of distributors for the UK and Europe. Next year, she aims to be on the shelves of retailers such as Boots and Holland & Barrett.

Charles Fallon and Alistair Angus
Eighteen months ago, Charles Fallon and Alistair Angus were looking for “a retail market untouched by home shopping.” Now their Pet’s Pyjamas catalogue has £3m-worth of annualised sales “and we’re aiming for £10m by 2000.” Their 60-page Christmas issue, fronted by Pet Rescue star Wendy Turner, features Burberry trouser suits for dogs, 28 different solutions to fleas and every brand of petfood you can imagine - all delivered within 24 hours or you get your money back.

Mark Dealtry
No-one trusts advertising. So why not market yourself on the basis of what your customers say about you? Mark Dealtry’s Referenceline collects and analyses your customers’ comments, so that whenever a potential client asks for references, they know they’re getting impartial, up-to-date comments. Inspired by 12 years in the “yellow pages” industry, 44-year-old Dealtry started off trying to tackle cowboy plumbers and decorators. Now his horizons are wider. “Connecting buyers and sellers is a £2bn industry,” he says. “This is a superior way of doing it.”

Trevor Crowe
Modern businesses can thrive anywhere. If you need proof, look no further than Trevor Crowe’s Eclipse Translations, which provides technical translation services to the industrial, medical and defence sectors. The business, based in the heart of rural Northumberland, has just won a £750,000 defence-related contract which should keep it on the fast track.

James Keay
Someone has to do the dirty work. And in Shrewsbury, that someone is James Keay. The workaholic 27-year-old already has a £2m national skip hire firm, Select a’ Skip. But he reckons it can be a £20m business ‘ere too long.

Jonathan Newth and Ian Baverstock
Born out of games company Eidos is Kuju Entertainment which specialises in flight simulation games - thanks to the aeronautical engineering backgrounds of its founders, Jonathan Newth, 35, and Ian Baverstock, 34. This is the team behind AV-8B Harrier and Team Apache, two of the best sellers in this niche. Newth has high hopes for Xenocracy, a space shoot ‘em up which launches next April. Three other titles have also secured publisher advances and in 1999, Kuju will be seeking venture capital to enable it to fund further projects.

Geoff Brown
After Geoff Brown floated electronic games company Centregold in 1993, he came across Tombraider being developed by a customer. Impressed, he bought it. The game, launched after Centregold’s takeover by Eidos, has sold eight million copies. Brown moved on and set up Geoff Brown Holdings in early 1997. GBH now comprises a cornucopia of properties, including Europe’s largest motion capture studio, two games developers and Michael Owen’s endorsement for his forthcoming game, World League Soccer 99. As Brown says, “Content is king, and we’ve got it.”

Matthew Lee and Doug Hart
Cheer up, punk fans. February 1999 sees the return - in dance-music form - of Siouxsie & the Banshees (they’re now called The Creatures and the album Anima Animus is out on Sioux Records). The business behind the relaunch is Hydrogen Dukebox, a small independent record label. The label’s identity has been carefully crafted and has a strong underground reputation. Now’s the time, says co-founder Matthew Lee, to up the number of releases, concentrate on Internet self-distribution and crack the radio market. Good call, Matthew.

Tony Hooley
While the technology guiding the music industry has changed beyond recognition, the loudspeaker had barely moved since 1925. Until 1... Ltd stepped in. With every aspect of the music process now working to digital technology, Cambridge-based 1... Ltd is set to become the first company to complete the circle by introducing a digital loudspeaker which will be the last step in near-perfect sound reproduction (even the very best speakers, at £10,000, still operate with 0.5 per cent distortion). Research funding has come from the DTI and local business angels, but not before the perennial R&D conundrum. As founder Tony Hooley puts it, “you feel very small and vulnerable, and think the safest thing is to not tell anyone what you’re doing.” Which makes it hard to get feedback and funding. The patents, however, are now in place (the first one was granted in 1995), and a number of audio companies are showing interest. But 1... Ltd is not a manufacturer. It aims to license the technology once the prices have come down sufficiently to make mass marketing and production a viable option. Hooley reckons the loudspeaker market is worth in excess of £10bn. Anyone who can broker a monopoly on the technology governing that marketplace has to be worth watching.

Su and Martin Allard
The irrepressible Allards set up their Harrogate store, Morgan Clare, to sell British clothes designers. Then the British design scene took off. The Allards’ big break was taking on the Ghost label; now they stock many big names. In their first 18 months, the couple (who met while working at Marks & Spencer) have bagged several awards, including Drapers Record’s Best New Store gong. But they need more room. They’re looking at menswear as well as more shops. But they ain’t becoming a chain store. “We aim to stay exclusive,” says Su.

Stuart Marks
Stuart Marks already has one hefty success in his career. At 27, he sold his Handling Solutions business for £10m. Next venture for the 32-year-old is the “intelligent transport industry.” ITIS (Integrated Transport Information Services) yokes together UK traffic and travel information (rail timetables, police congestion data) under the brand, Get There. Customers ring in or log on and can thus predict their journey times “with extreme accuracy.” Joint ventures with telecoms companies and car manufacturers are in the pipeline for 1999; ITIS may soon become acquisitive, too.

Graham Steele
A bust car radiator in Stirling gave Graham Steele the idea for Auto Shuttle Express. As his car couldn’t be fixed, and he didn’t fancy travelling back to Surrey in a transporter lorry, Steele flew back from Glasgow and had the car delivered back the next morning. So a service idea was born. In its second year of operations, Auto Shuttle Express will collect over 5,000 cars from Gatwick, Heathrow and Luton airports and deposit them the next morning at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness. And the airlines and the rail operators love it - Steele is delivering them bums on seats at no extra cost. But the real triumph for Steele in 1999 will be to have conquered the cancer for which he was being treated at the time of going to press. “I’ll bounce back in the spring,” he says, “uglier and more aggressive than before.”

Ronan McNamara
Only about 20 per cent of the millions who visit Ireland stop off in Northern Ireland. If permanent peace comes to the north, that could change. And it will mean great business for Ronan McNamara, the award-winning young entrepreneur who operates all manner of tours around the province. He’s also set his eyes on the hidden jewel of County Donegal. “There’s so much we could do,” says McNamara. All hinges on the politicians.

Michael Armitage
Armitage, a 43-year-old accountant, was looking for “a fragmented market in which I could build a national company via acquisitions.” The outcome was Slotz, whose nine buys to date have made it the UK’s number five vending machine operator. Last August, Slotz attracted a £28m refinancing package. Operating profits are currently around £2.5m, but Armitage reckons he needs to quadruple that before going public. His priority next year? “To infill our coverage. In this business, profits are driven by customer density.”

John Waites
Same background, same approach. John Waites, 38, qualified with Arthur Andersen, then looked for a fragmented industry characterised by poor management. He zeroed in on the signs business, raised seed capital from 3i, bought four companies, and now employs 300. Sign Investments turns over £20m and is the UK’s number three in signs. A £30m contract to renew all Rover signage worldwide has recently commenced and Sign intends to float on the AIM market next spring.

James Abrahart, David Shingilis and Jeremy Tarrant
In 1997, two years after selling their photocopier distributor to global giant, Ikon, James Abrahart and David Shingilis set up Alto and decided that this time, they would be buyers, not sellers. Their six acquisitions to date have taken annualised sales to £25m with the aim of raising that to £40m by the end of 1999. Vendors take shares in Alto: “We want to keep the talent. That’s where Ikon and Danka [Ikon’s main competitor] have gone wrong.”

Andrew Minto
Andrew Minto’s life changed when, as an agency chef, he was sent on a cooking assignment to a hotel in Wales. When he arrived, he was told he’d be doing the pastry. “But I can’t cook pastry,” he protested. In November 1995, the 31-year-old Minto set up his own specialist recruitment agency, Chefs Direct. Today he has offices in Chichester and London, with others in the pipeline. “We’ll become a household name for chefs,” Minto predicts.

Claire Rainey and Melanie Moloney
Even the June 1996 Manchester bomb, which destroyed their entire business, wasn’t enough to stop Claire Rainey and Melanie Moloney. The two Manchester entrepreneurs set up their recruitment agency, City Recruitment, in early 1996. Today they have offices in Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow. By the end of 1999, they plan to have agencies in London and the south-east - with customer service and honesty as the watchwords. Their wildest dream? “To be a large international player,” says Rainey.

Oliver Jones
“We will be introducing the kind of radical change to corporate property that the now huge fleet management industry did to company cars in the eighties,” says Oliver Jones, head of Citex. Three months after explaining this vision to US investment bank, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, it advanced him £15m to buy Bucknall, a property services consultant, in August 1998. Jones promises a headline deal in the first half of 1999 and intends to float straight into the ranks of the FTSE 250 within four years.

David Thomas, David Smith and Carole Barrow
An unlikely bunch of entrepreneurs, this. Three experienced factoring industry players have gone it alone - with £25m-worth of venture capital from Apax Partners - to form City Invoice Finance, a factoring business aimed solely at the smaller company market. Could be a smart move... In an economic downturn, which business always booms? Yup, factoring.

Graham Cove
Look out Colt, here comes Redstone. Telecoms superstar, Colt, became one of Britain’s most valuable companies doublequick by offering businesses calls at half the price of British Telecom. But its service is only available in London. Since September, Redstone Telecom has been rolling out the same prices to the rest of the country. “Our network covers the UK’s 38 biggest cities and it only cost us £10m,” says founder and boss, Graham Cove. Redstone has already shown Vodafone a clean pair of heels. Since the two got licences to sell personal numbers, Vodafone has racked up 35,000 customers. Redstone’s tally? 200,000. In 1999, Cove plans a big push into the freephone market.

Lennie Moffat
Moffat, 58, has won blue-chip customers such as RBS, Scottish Power and Vodafone since he set up his call centre business in 1995. Most recently he announced a £1m deal with Express National Newspapers. Based in the Highlands, Moffat is taking advantage of low costs and high staff loyalty in an economically depressed region. His first venture was in Rothsay and the second in Dunoon. He has already won the IIP award. Turnover has rocketed from £450,000 to £4.6m this year.

Ken Penton
When Ken Penton took over his father’s business, it was a small East End glass processing company. Then Penton went to Italy, and everything changed. There, he saw the potential to use his equipment on marble and granite. The result was Glass & Marble, a company which now produces and fits - where appropriate - furniture, flooring and worktops in glass and marble. It took 18 months to get the cash for the equipment together. Now the plan is to provide a one-stop shop service, from showroom to finished, fitted product. “We’re going to be large,” says Penton.

Peter Cololuca, Ian Pestell and Tim Waterton
Calls to your customer call centre are growing exponentially. Your nightmare is that the hardware won’t cope. You assign battalions of computer bods to carry out “predictive performance planning”. In 1999, you might also call Simulus to help. After 18 months of beta testing by British Telecom, the world-beating “simulation engine” developed by Peter Cololuca, Ian Pestell and Tim Waterton becomes commercially available in the new year. It has already attracted £1m of venture capital plus a commitment to support immediate entry into the US market.

Graham Skelton and Tom Hughes
“Technologies tend to be successful if the user doesn’t have to do anything,” observes Graham Skelton, co-founder of Virtual Access, an Ascot-based “cyber-corporation.” It’s fiendishly clever stuff, but the essence is that Virtual Access is enabling telcos and systems integrators to install and manage complex networks in ways that make it much less hassle for the end-user. “We see ourselves converting trials into substantial long-term revenue streams,” says Skelton. Substantial enough to put them onto the radar of Cisco - the big mama of the networking industry.

How we found them
We asked everyone we know. We sent out dozens of letters and enquiries. We plugged the list in the magazine. We could easily have done a “150 to watch.” Our search criteria were simple: the companies needed to be UK-based and independently owned (although we allow a bit of venture capital backing and, in the case of Simon Murdoch’s amazon.co.uk, we allow a private firm that’s recently been taken over). We wanted to see evidence of serious growth potential. It could be a new product or service, a major change of direction or sheer weight of ambition. Our list isn’t scientific, so if you’re aggrieved that you haven’t been included, there’s only one thing to do. Nominate yourself for next year’s “50 to watch”.

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