by Real Business - Thursday, 30th August 2007

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Let’s make something clear straight off: our “50 to watch” comes in no particular order. The thing about potential is that it’s impossible to rank. Our 50 includes businesses in technology, retail, conference organising, radio, private equity (we’ve generally steered clear of science-based companies because we covered these in depth in September’s “21 companies for the 21st century”). .. Our criteria? The 50 need to be under four years old; have a distinct product offering that’s just a tad disrespectful to orthodoxies; and show unusual potential. But perhaps most vital: they had to have, well, balls. Nerve. Fire in the belly. We talked to all 50 companies. We met 35 of them at our photo shoot. We looked for people and ideas that smack you in the eye. Yeh, yeh, the marketplace may be crammed, but does this team have the irreverence and the imagination to bypass such obstacles? If the sector is new, do they have the product and the marketing plans to make a splash? Sure, next year we’ll eat a bit of humble pie. But many of these companies will make it big - and you will have read about them here first.

PR and marketing
Tony Harbron, Alexandra Saint-Marc, Get Real!
Which niche market has an annual spend of £10bn but is largely ignored by marketeers? Yup, students. Former Red Bull marketeers, Tony Harbron, 34, and Alexandra Saint-Marc, 30, have turned traditional marketing on its head by recruiting students to work with big brands and penetrate universities from within. The “Student Brand Managers” (SBMs) create a buzz with competitions, give-aways and sampling on campuses across the country. The companies benefit from “access to a difficult market and valuable research,” says Saint-Marc. The students get, erm, cash. When Lastminute.com re-launched its site, it e-mailed 400 SBMs who road-tested the new offering. With a turnover last year of £1m (with no outside investment), 15 full-time employees and a network of 500 SBMs, Get Real! is at the canny end of the dot-com market. What next? “Global domination would be good,” laughs Saint-Marc.

Internet

Julian Pancholi, Giles Richardson, Jonathan Menmuir, Corin Jenkins and Pablo Slough, Dooyoo.com Another company using the Net as a market research tool. Dooyoo collects (wait for it) “e-pinions” from consumers across a range of subjects. And it pays them for their views. Consumers can check these objective reviews before making a purchase - a la Which magazine. Launched in the UK in May this year by a group of young ex-City types, Dooyoo has 3i money behind it and expects to break even in seven to eight months’ time. With 250,000 unique users each month, this looks a web business with some true grit.

Internet
Henry Hallward, VportalZ
Hallward was running an African Safari business in Zambia when he came up with this one. “Two years ago, I was trying to search the internet for Safari-specific information,” he says. “I had a choice of about 1.5 million sites. I knew then that someone had to make searches easier.” After months spent in internet chat-rooms talking to 15-year-old Americans and Canadians, Hallward decided peer-to-peer networking was the way forward. Two years on, and he’s developed a way of creating mini search engines for specialist areas. For a taster, try out his safarilink.com. VportalZ has also built a co-branded version for none other than AOL and is doing VreportZ on specialist areas for corporate clients such as Merrill Lynch. What’s more, Hallward is confident that the company will move into profit in the next 12 months. He’s also set his sights on an IPO in the next three years.

Legal services
Subhash Shukhla and Leon de Costa, Judicium
Never want to talk to another lawyer as long as you live? Well, if Shukhla (ex-Ricoh UK president) and de Costa (barrister) get their way, then you may well not have to. “Our vision over the next three months is to automate legal services,” says de Costa. “We started out asking ourselves how much legal work could be automated. In fact, 80 per cent of legal work is routine.” Okay, so that’s not exactly news to the rest of us. But until now, no-one’s done much about it. In September, Judicium launched freelawyer.co.uk, which gives free legal advice to the public and small companies. It can then refer you to a lawyer - if necessary. Revenue comes from the lawyers that register - there are currently 350; projections for 2001 suggest there could be 1,200. In its first five weeks, the site had 3,000 to 4,000 visitors and generated 2,000 leads. And then there’s E-settle, an online settlement service between insurance companies and lawyers. That’s currently in pilot stage with five major insurance companies. Set up in April, this company is looking to be income-positive by July 2001. But more than that, if Judicium stops us from having to interact with insurance companies and lawyers, Shukhla and de Costa could become national heroes.

PR and marketing
Debbie Wosskow and Laurence Dore, Mantra
A new PR company launched in February 2000, after Wosskow and Dore left blue-chip outfit, Brunswick. A very impressive client list ranges from US private equity firm Benchmark Capital to the online dating business, uDate.com to music business NetBeat. The thread, says Wosskow, is that all clients hail from the “new economy.” This little agency has a bit more oomph than most: already W&D have forged partnerships in the US. The best test of a PR firm is to ask journalists what they reckon. On that, Mantra scores heavily.

Food and drink
Adam Balon, Richard Reed and John Wright, Innocent
Here’s a novel way to decide whether to start your own company. Messrs Balon, Reed and Wright (ex-Cambridge University friends turned promising young executives) set up stall at the Fulham Jazz Festival in the summer of 1998 with a big sign above their crushed-fruit drink stand, which read: “Do you think we should give up our jobs to make these smoothies?” The yes bin filled. Today, armed with a chunk of private investment, Innocent’s fruit and veg concoctions are in 840 outlets nationwide and winning fans galore. Next stop Europe. Britain’s answer to Ben & Jerry? “Long-term we’re not just a juice company,” says Reed. “We’re in the business of luxurious health products, from drinks to health spas - anything that makes you feel good.”

Technology
Gary Bracey, Digimask
“Our business is personalisation in virtual environments,” says Gary Bracey. Eh? Let’s put it another way. Take a picture or two of someone and turn it into a fully animated, 3D image that is realistic from any angle. For Bracey, the obvious use of this kind of technology was computer and video games. After all, his past 16 years had been in that sector. It was on that premise that he was able to bring in industry guru Ian Hetherington as a non-executive chairman and land some £5m from Tech Capital, an investment vehicle of the Barclay brothers for his company, Digimask. But other applications quickly became apparent - opticians, clothing, cosmetics - “anything that uses your personal form,” says Bracey. Richmond-based Digimask doesn’t launch until January but Bracey is bullish. “This will be massive,” he promises.

Media
Adrian Sington and Jeffrey O’Rourke, esubstance
Imagine - if you can - that you are in charge of the web presence of a FTSE-250 company. You want some really good content for your site. You don’t want, or don’t have the money in your budget for, a team of editors to drum up lots of original material. How much better it would be if you could just hook up with publishing companies and all their books. Two drawbacks: that requires endless discussions about rights, and you need to know about all the available products. Enter esubstance. Founded by Adrian Sington and Jeffrey O’Rourke, esubstance is setting out to be the leading syndicator of book content on the web. With a hotshot team assembled from companies such as HarperCollins, MacMillans, Arthur Andersen and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, and backing to the tune of £8m (led by 3i and only raised in June), esubstance is cutting plenty of deals with the aforesaid FTSE-250 companies. Hey, and profitability is seriously on the agenda, too.

Internet
Nabil and Omar Shabka, Schoolmaster.net
An internet business with real promise - the eight different revenue streams help. Schoolmaster.net is essentially a private intranet for the education system. In other words, pupils at schools across the UK can surf, chat, browse in safety - no dallying on porn sites; no ugly marketeers flogging their wares to the innocent wee things. The cosmopolitan Shabkas - US-educated, Egyptian father - have already tied up deals with UK local education authorities. Now they’re looking abroad. “We have been approached to deploy Schoolmaster on a national basis for a whole country,” says Nabil. “Our aim for 2001 is to be the biggest - undisputed - educational community around the world.” Watch them fly.

Media
Richard Jacobs, NetFM
Internet radio: the first incarnation. Ex-Talk Radio producer Richard Jacobs has money in the bank (from private investors); technology in the pipeline (official launch date is February). Now he’s got to convince the world. NetFM is a hybrid of radio, TV, internet, streaming and shopping channels. Jacobs calls it “new radio.” Users log on via their PC and can listen to NetFM’s 24-hour broadcasts even while working on other applications. But here’s the clever bit: if you hear a song you like, or an advert takes your fancy, you can click directly through to the seller (and NetFM takes a cut). Acquiring listeners won’t be easy, but 27-year-old Jacobs appears to be ahead of the game.

Mobile
Steve O’Donnell and James Ryan, Message Central
Steve O’Donnell realised there was an opportunity in the wireless market when his son borrowed his mobile phone and spent a fortune on text messaging. Bingo. What about the B2B sector, thought O’Donnell. Take a nursing agency. A client phones up with criteria for a nurse, such as skills and location. The agency digs through its database and phones each nurse individually. With Message Central’s solution, each suitable nurse is text-messaged. It’s quicker for clients and saves the agency time and money. Message Central also works with PDAs, pagers, computerised voice messages, GPRS, WAP and 3G mobiles. Its 15 Bermondsey-based employees work with a fast-growing client list of 30 companies. Message Central, founded in February this year, will close on £1m venture capital at the end of this month and expects to be profitable by March 2001. What makes it different? “Our speed. We implemented solutions for one client in two to three days when our competitors had estimated two to three months. Mind you,” says O’Donnell, “our guys stayed up all night.”

Technology
Martin Lawrence, Cambridge Optical Sciences
Suffolk-based Cambridge Optical Sciences is raising money to produce several super-gizmos for the telecoms world. The most notable is a 100GHz serial comms link, which provides very high bandwidth communications on existing fibre networks to speed up internet links. COS is the only UK company to have produced such a beast. Says Lawrence: “A massive global market awaits our product, but we’re still seeking the right partner.”

Internet
Dominic Richards and Henrietta Morrison, Queercompany
“We’re not a ghetto site, we’re about people who are open-minded,” says Dominic Richards, co-founder of Queercompany. com, the web site aimed at the British gay and lesbian community. In April, the company raised £3.5m from Norwegian venture capitalist Smedvig. And Queercompany had a staggering 4.5 million hits in two weeks after its November launch. Impressive numbers in a dot-com-sceptical world. Queercompany aims for 75,000 subscribers by the end of 2000 and to be the first pan-European gay web site. Revenue streams are the usual advertising, financial services and e-commerce, but aimed at the lucrative “pink pound” customer that “a lot of blue-chip companies want to access - but not next to dodgy 0898 numbers in magazines.”

Services
David Steven and John Pollock, Riverpath
In the pleasing Dorset market town of Wimborne Minster, big issues are being thrashed out. And we mean big. River Path, a three-year-old “knowledge consultancy,” is rapidly making its mark with some of the world’s leading institutions and some pretty hefty corporations, with its mix of think-tankery, management consultancy and creative development work. Global governance, HIV/AIDS, innovation within large companies - it’s all meat and drink to founders David Steven and John Pollock and their eight colleagues. There’s good money to be made from fierce thinking and high levels of concentration; this consultancy is one that is growing its profits faster than its turnover. And David Steven is reckoning on a 50 per cent increase in turnover for the coming year.

Legal services
Daniel O’Connell, Kerman & Co
Chances are that quite a few of our 50 to Watchers will be tempted by offers from larger companies. In which case, call in Daniel O’Connell. The law firm that he co-founded, Kerman & Co, has carved out a very tidy business in advising entrepreneurs on selling out. That’s the bedrock. There are other areas of the practice that are doing very nicely, thank you, such as helping e-commerce ventures with fund-raising as well as the nitty-gritty contractual stuff. Look out early next year for companyincorporation.co.uk, a site that will allow you to do things such as draft shareholder agreements online.

Technology
Robin Burton, Tony Richardson and Rachel Al-Habib, Tactus
Security meets the internet. Founded by Richardson, David Edwards and Dr Malek Ladki, Tactus’s software brings real-time monitoring to security and alarm systems. So if intruders trip your security systems, out go the e-mails. Nothing unique in that, you say. But the Caretaker system is also WAP-enabled, so that you can check your property - and even confront the villains - wherever you are. “Police won’t attend an event unless it’s verified,” says Richardson. Caretaker could fill that gap. The trio made their pile pioneering pre-paid phones in the UK with Aethos. Tactus has definite international potential.

Technology
Adrian McKeon, Infoshare
It’s what Adrian McKeon describes as the “dirty data” problem confronting many organisations. Most client/vendor data is held in product-specific databases with little integration across the different distribution channels - call centres, branches, the internet. Each function will have its contact point with the customer and work independently. The result is that only 17 per cent of data integration projects deliver on expectations. The majority under-perform due to lack of understanding of the source data. Hence Infoshare. Its automated software cleans and matches data. It quantifies the dirty data problem, automates the solution, and exploits audit trails for data maintenance. It fits any technology infrastructure.

Established in 1996, Infoshare has over 60 public-sector clients including the Home Office. In 2001 McKeon reckons that it will confirm its position as a key back-office component of e-government and develop its M&A business (banking, insurance, pharmaceuticals). Expansion into the US is on the cards within three years. And it’s another candidate for a market listing in the same time-frame.

Food and drink
David Wood, Somerset Farm Direct
Farmer David Wood set up Somerset Farm Direct when he realised that by selling his lambs to the local abattoir, which then sold them on to the supermarket, he was missing a trick (and a lot of margin). And the big retailers weren’t hanging the meat, which meant the consumer was getting a second-rate product. With his wife and sons, Wood produced a catalogue in September 1999, selling meat direct - and sold out.Now firmly online, it has 1,700 customers, mainly in the south-east of England. “We don’t take it off the shelf, we take it out of a field,” says 56-year-old Wood. After slaughter and hanging, delivery takes about a fortnight. Turnover is about £250,000 and Wood has moved into game and poultry. Future plans involve setting up its own abattoir and packing plant. All Wood’s meat is Farm-Assured (“one step down from organic”). And customers can track down the exact parentage, age and diet of the lamb they buy - and even receive a photo of the furry little thing. Nice.

Technology
Dr Duncan Billson, Dig-ePrint
High-street photo stores are desperate for low-cost digital minilab printers, which currently cost £80,000. They want to soak up the huge new market in developing digital images brought in on customers’ PC and digital camera memory cards. Dr Duncan Billson, a lecturer in engineering at Warwick University, who has discovered a way of producing digital printers at a tenth of the current price, has started Dig-ePrint to commercialise the technology. The prototype (developed with Integrated Global Images) should be ready by mid-2001. Potential? Yowza.

There are over 5,000 mini-labs, one-hour photo-processing centres and copy shops in the UK and over 200,000 worldwide. Global photographic markets are valued at over $70bn, and by 2002 there will be 20 million digital cameras in use.

Media
Rolfe Swinton and Christian Strain, Article 27
Set up in October 1999 by these two former-Boston college friends, this company will really start to take off when the broadband network and TV finally converge. For the moment, though, Swinton and Strain are concentrating on current technologies: the internet and wireless devices, plus TV. So what does Article 27 do? It provides films, clips, video and music to video-on-demand services and web sites. “Video-on-demand will revolutionise the way we watch films,” says Swinton. “It will have the same impact that VHS had on take-home videos.” They’re not the only ones who think that. Article 27 has some pretty heavyweight backing - an impressive £7m from US VC legends GeoCapital and Draper Richards. Remember, you saw them here first.

Technology
Ian Muirhead, Terahertz Photonics
In a market that’s set to expand from current levels of £5bn to £25bn by 2004, it would be hard to go far wrong. “It’s a hot space right now,” says Muirhead. “Especially in Scottish universities.” Terahertz started out as an optical coating service set up by two professors at Heriot Watt University. Realising how vast the potential market could be, they decided to spin out the company. Having recently received £3m from Scottish Equity Partners and ADDPartners (another of our “50 to watch” this year), Terahertz is already looking to raise second round funding mid-2001 to the tune of £20m to £30m.

PR & marketing
Jane Howard and Debra Lewis, Republic
In the increasingly global world of PR, privately-owned Republic stands out. It thrives on being able to choose who it wants to work with and on “not having others telling us what to do,” says Howard. “We set up in 1997 because we wanted to do PR better than we’d seen it done before.” In a business that relies so much on having and retaining good people, that has meant spending a lot of effort motivating staff and “making them want to be great at their jobs.” It seems to have worked - Republic has been shortlisted for the Investors in People award. The firm also has an impressive number of international clients - Seagram, Kodak and Jarvis, to name a few. “We’ve done it by being a member of an international network. It just shows that you don’t have to be a huge player to get international clients.”

Food and drink
Jeremy Salvesen, Groovy Chocolate
The irrepressible Jeremy Salvesen is the undisputed king of Scottish chocolate. The boss of Duncans of Scotland, which produces the Independence Bar - “Chunkier than William Wallace’s thighs, smoother than Robert the Bruce’s patter, big enough to satisfy the most Rampant Lion” - Salvesen’s latest venture is Groovy Chocolate (www.groovychocolate.com). Only a month old, it’s the world’s first chocolate printing company. Instead of sending a Christmas card to your friends (or clients), why not send them a chocolate bar with their photo on it? Salvesen is applying for patents over his chocolate printing process and, jokes apart, Groovy Chocolate could be a world-beater.

Media
Malcolm Bradley, SuperScreen
Worldwide events are becoming ever more common - whether it’s a Madonna concert, an IT conference or a religious festival. Enter SuperScreen and its, erm, super screens.

“Madonna or Manchester United can only be in one place at one time,” says MD Malcolm Bradley, “but our screens can be set up anywhere in the world.” Add localised advertising to the events and you’ll find that the world’s media companies begin to drool.

Manufacturing
Giles Peacock, David Gray and Graham Johnson, G-Plas
In an unusual sector for a start-up these days, G-Plas makes and supplies PVC and PVC-PE to the packaging industry - “anywhere you see blister packaging,” says Peacock. “We saw that 85 per cent of the market was being supplied on long lead times and inflexibly by overseas manufacturers. We wanted to change that.” Its business is mainly in the UK, but it has started exporting to Ireland and Europe. And, with £500,000 backing from 3i for further expansion, 2001 should be good for G-Plas.

Media
Makinder Suri, Channel East
As television stations multiply, an increasing number seem to serve narrower and narrower niches. So it’s worth keeping tabs on Channel East, the Middlessex-based station that sets out to provide a broad range of content for the Asian population not just in Britain but also in continental Europe. It’s also distinctive for generating much of its own original programmes - check it out on Astra Digital Channel 688.

Food and drink
Daniel Gill, Dine Catering
“I’m the world’s worst employee,” says Gill. “I’m far too opinionated and bolshy.” Well, it’s as good a reason as any to set up a business. That, and the fact that until Dine Catering set up in Leeds in 1998, Gill felt that there weren’t any quality caterers in the north of England. He started by buying up a sandwich operation - now called Hoppy’s - that had a turnover of around £80,000. That’s doing fine. But he’s also established part of the business that does more upmarket parties, called Dine, plus a cheaper off-shoot called Dine Simply.

“Our philosophy, whether it’s sandwiches or a whole party, is that people want quality. If they get quality, they will pay a little extra for it,” says Gill. And, so far, he’s been right. In the past, even the major banks used to pay around £20 a head for a special-occasion meal; now, they’re prepared to pay Dine up to £50 “because they know it’s going to be done properly - and it’s still good value for money.” Dine is looking at a £400,000 turnover for this coming financial year. And Gill says he’s pretty booked up for 2001. Future plans include expanding the consultancy business and opening up in London, Edinburgh and Manchester.

Technology
Wendy Tan and David Stephens, Moonfruit
It could all have gone horribly wrong for Moonfruit. Originally an online service enabling “the little man on the street” to set up his own web site, it relied on advertising revenue. The business was set up in August 1999 - the start of the dot-com craziness. Then, we all know what happened earlier this year. With any lesser management, Moonfruit could have gone the way of Boo et al. But no. “We’d always intended to shift the business model anyway,” says Tan. “It’s just that we had to do it a little earlier than planned. We had to turn on a sixpence and change from being a retail business to a technology products business. And we had to shed and recruit a whole load of new staff.” Tough, but it was worth it. Now, Moonfruit licenses its multimedia software to large media companies, broadband and ISPs and had a number of deals in the pipeline. It has just opened up in Germany, has its eye on France and looks set to storm the US.

Technology
Damini Kumar, The Non-Drip Teapot Company
This one does exactly what it says on the tin - and more. It was while studying industrial design at South Bank University that Kumar came up with the idea. Throughout her degree, tutors had joked about designing a teapot that didn’t drip because so many had tried it and never got it to work. Not one to pass up a challenge, Kumar decided to make that her final-year project. And by jove, she did it - beating even a university professor who has spent 20 years and £100,000 on trying to do the same thing. Now, it looks as though a couple of tableware manufacturers are going to make them under licence. We could even see them in the shops as early as next year - and they won’t cost the earth. “I didn’t want it to be a premium product,” says Kumar. “I wanted it to go into mass-production.” But wait, there will be more. The dripless spout design can be applied to anything that pours. “You could use it on watering cans, petrol pumps, laboratory jars. It can be made with any material and it’s cheap to manufacture.” Kumar also says she’s got a couple of other designs up her sleeve - but she’s keeping schtum about what they are.

Media
Jonathan Turpin, Fish4
It’s been a good year for Fish4. Following a big marketing push, this online classified ads business has pipped Reed and StepStone to the number one recruitment site post for the last three months. Other parts of the business are the homes and cars areas of the site - also listed in the top five sites by visitor traffic. And you’ll be hearing a lot more from the Fish4 team next year. Why? More marketing for a start. But look out too, for Fish4 on interactive TV and SMS mobile messaging services.

Food and drink
Steven Evans, Mustard Entertainment
Stephen Evans has built himself quite a reputation in the hospitality industry over the years, proving himself a highly effective manager at Forte and then at Whitbread. Now he’s leading a new venture, Mustard Entertainment Restaurants, with the backing of Phildrew Ventures. Evans and his high-powered management team kicked off with the acquisition of Brannigan’s, the under-performing late-night bars operation that belonged to First Leisure. What marks Evans out is his distinctive management style: he and his senior managers always carry with them “cutting the mustard” envelopes containing gift vouchers, which are publicly handed out on the spot to chefs, waiters - anybody who is doing something well. His people-oriented approach will be put to the test as Mustard expands in 2001. Restaurants will be opened within Brannigan’s outlets, and a major restaurant acquisition is being planned. If the markets are benign, expect this one to float.

Hospitality
Tim Ball and Scott Ritchie, TEMC
Tim Ball and Scott Ritchie first met looking after supermodels at the Grosvenor House Hotel. The final-year Hospitality Management and Business Studies students were on work placements and having helped on events at the top London hotel, decided that corporate hospitality was getting stale. So they launched The Event Management Company (TEMC) in 1998 and now have 53 clients, including Mercedes-Benz, AOL, and Samsung. The Bristol-based firm has five full-time and ten part-time employees, organises over 150 events annually and has expanded by 500 per cent in two years. Plans for next year? “Ideally we would like to grow by another 200 per cent,” says Ball.

Technology
Richard Bennett, Pixago
Waiting for the convergence between TV and internet? Pixago is one of the companies working behind the scenes to make it happen. Currently building a worldwide network with Cisco, it has developed the technology and the know-how to help companies create on-demand TV channels. “We’re a digital archive and distribution company,” explains Bennett. “We give companies the web program so they can make it happen and then we manage the video-on-demand distribution.” Seeded initially by Bennett himself (he’s been involved in e-commerce for a staggering 12 years), Pixago received £600,000 first-round funding from Ideashub and is now on the hunt for second-round investment.

Transport
Andrew Riley, Mathew Hassell and Helen Goodwin, Burgundy Global
A taxi firm, one to watch? But Riley, Hassell and Goodwin have global domination on their minds - a worldwide network of executive car companies. Of course, it’s all powered by the internet: executive in Madrid wants collecting when evening flight arrives in Munich; PA in Spain goes to Burgundy site, logs in, books and pays online; Mr Busy arrives, greeted by pukka local car company, whoosh, hotel, no worries about paying in local currency. Hassell calls it a “global transportation solution”, with Burgundy sitting at the middle building the brand, operating the software and vetting the licensees. Ex-merchant banker Riley and self-confessed super-salesman Hassell have big plans. “We want to be the first people to take a UK chauffeur business public,” says Hassell. And why not indeed?

Technology
Robert Ames, The Data Company
They don’t sound exciting, but “storage service providers” could be the next big thing. And Ames’ Hampshire-based The Data Company is among the first in the UK. It’s all rather complex stuff, but basically SSPs store and handle the vast amounts of data being churned out by companies. If you need more capacity, turn the dial up for more gigabytes. “We’re the fifth utility service,” says Ames. He and Dr Martin Lyster plan to build eight storage data centres in the UK in 2001; 60 worldwide within five years. Already armed with private investment and a tie-up with Hewlett-Packard, a new round of funding should close soon. The global market for data storage is reckoned to be worth $11bn by 2003. Could be big news.

Technology
Andrew Nicholson, CertainTee
Will Andrew Nicholson’s determined efforts pay off? This sports scientist has developed a state-of-the-art golf swing analysis system. CertainTee (www.certaintee.com) gives pros a high-speed, 3D video system with which to depress their amateur clients. The kit is expensive (around £20,000 a shout) but Nicholson is raising money so that he can rent it to golf clubs. Get the ball rolling, and the market is huge: 100 million people worldwide play golf occasionally. Most of us need radical improving.

Private equity

Jim Martin, Maisy Ng and Sebastian de Lafond, ADD Partners A new kid on the venture capital block, ADD Partners was formed at the back end of 1999 by Jim Martin, Maisy Ng and Sebastian de Lafond. Ng: “I’ve always had an entrepreneurial streak in me, and I decided I wanted to do something different. We thought it would be great to set up a VC company where we could put something in practice that would really help young technology companies grow. Things like being hands-on, understanding the businesses in which the companies operate and being able to understand technology route maps and how the markets will evolve.” The three have impressive, and varied, track records. Martin spent 13 years with 3i, where he was in charge of European technology investments. Ng came from Singaporean VC Vertex, though has spent most of the recent past in Europe, where her investments included Brokat Infosystems and Atlantech Technologies. Lafond was head of European technology investment banking for Montgomery Securities. The complementary skill-set helped ADD raised a 150m maiden fund. Looks like a winner.

Mobile
Mark Lundstrom, Ripcord Systems
Ex-rocket scientist (yes, really) and serial entrepreneur Lundstrom has raised big money ($15.6m) from Softbank UK Ventures for a wireless business with real potential and real revenues. Ripcord, which has just launched its technology to a couple of blue-chip customers, “provides a single platform that allows an enterprise to connect through to all of its information sources.” In English, that means that your salespeople can get access to all your company’s information (sales records, calendars, fleet management, enterprise systems...) all from one web-enabled mobile device. Ripcord already has offices in London and Seattle. In 2001 it tackles Tokyo.

Private equity
Rod Schwartz, Catalyst
A different sort of name for a different sort of venture capitalist. Catalyst is the brainchild of Rod Schwartz, who was ranked as the US’s top financial services analyst while at Lehman Brothers. Schwartz: “We looked at European financial services and decided it was woefully out of date and things were going to change. There were too many companies making too much money and adding too little value.” Schwartz got support (and $20m) from ING, Kempen and Credit Suisse, as part of a larger fund. In November 1998, he recruited Alice Chapman, a top performer from 3i. While many VCs claim sector specialisation, Catalyst’s dedicated financial services focus is unusual and likely to pay dividends. It’s early days, but Schwartz says a first exit, generating a 100 per cent return in a year, is “imminent.” Schwartz is aiming high: “Our role is to help financial revolutionaries succeed and deliver products that are cheaper, faster and better. We’ll help them undermine the competitors who’ve been giving consumers a poor deal.”

Manufacturing
Edward Douglas-Miller, Remarkable
Okay, so what’s so special about a company that makes pencils? Plenty, actually. “We set up the company to demonstrate that it was possible to make products out of waste materials and we wanted to show that recycling could be commercially viable,” says Douglas-Miller. Established in 1996, Remarkable started out by making pencils out of recycled plastic cups (we use four billion of these cups in the UK each year). It now makes all sorts of stationery from materials such as milk cartons and the UK’s favourite item, the traffic cone.

Having concentrated on the corporate and education markets, Remarkable goods are now stocked in WH Smith. It also manufactures all the World Wildlife Fund’s paper. Oh, and there’s the web site, which Douglas-Miller describes as an “information portal for recycling and environmental issues.” All with just ten staff. So what’s for next year? Expansion into Europe.

Internet
Franck Jeannin, LinkGuard
Your editor was on his way to a weekend conference in Cannes when the marketing honcho at LinkGuard called. “I gather you are going to France on Friday,” she started. “You should meet our CEO, Franck.” Impressive. I didn’t know my diary was public property. LinkGuard is a young company with a keen radar. Anyone who’s ever used the internet will be familiar with the frustration of broken links - web pages that have moved and don’t allow you to connect to them anymore. Jeannin and co (Dell is a partner) are building a 40-terabyte (that’s super big, apparently) map of the web that can tell you if your site dimensions have changed and visitors are being deterred. Big-name investors put in £5m this summer.

Internet
Henry Stewart Learnfish
Riding the e-learning wave. Learnfish.com has created an online training centre designed for “anyone who can use a mouse and a keyboard” (it is, we’ve tried it). Delegates’ progress can be tracked by employers and there are clever features such as online chat. Profitable since launch in November 1999, Learnfish has attracted 450 registered users. Plans for expansion include customised corporate online training centres and an increase in users to 3,000 by the end of next year. Turnover in the first six months was £226,000 and an IPO under parent company Happy Computers is being considered - just not yet.

Technology
Matthew McKennirey, Conclusive Logic
Anyone who manages to make the internet secure is bound to be onto a winner. And it looks like Conclusive could well do it. “Sure, we’ve already got encryption,” explains McKennirey, “but that’s done from machine to machine. The technology we’ve developed encrypts data for individuals rather than machines, so you can actually tell who you’re doing business with or communicating with.” Don’t ask us how (it’s all very high-tech) but it can also provide proof of any communication or transaction - something that’s becoming increasingly important with the growth in e-commerce, e-banking and file-sharing over the internet. Currently in talks with Reuters and Cap Gemini for a project with the MoD, Conclusive’s technology has almost endless applications. And, what’s more, it’s a UK technology company with huge ambitions in the US. “We’re concentrating on the US market first,” says McKennirey. “By the end of next year, we should have at least 12 US companies using our technology.”

Technology
George Baker, Vivao
Even if you haven’t heard of Vivao, you may well have used its services. Set up in 1997, it delivers e-mail, voicemail, calendaring, fax and SMS messages to its customers - ISPs and mobile phone operators, which then put their own brand on the service. With £12m in second-round funding from the likes of 3i earlier this year - “I signed the deal while at my wedding,” says Baker - the company is set to expand into southern Europe and increase its operations in central and northern Europe over the coming year.

Arts

Mark Godfrey and Abigail Morris, Soho Theatre and Writers’ Centre We’ve made a bit of an exception to our criteria for these guys, but we think they deserve special treatment. Six years ago, the Soho Theatre Company was five people with £25,000 looking for a home. Since March it’s been housed in a brand new £11m building in the heart of Soho on the site of what once was a synagogue (in fact, it was the venue for our “50 to watch” photo shoot). Impressive. But we also like what they’re doing. The theatre only holds 250 people so it can put on new, experimental drama. “We’re not a commercial theatre,” explains Godfrey. “If you have a much larger theatre, that dictates what you put on. You can’t be as innovative.” Running costs for the theatre are paid for by the large bar and restaurant space in the building, “which means that any sponsorship we get can go directly to the productions.”

Design
Dana Armstrong, InspireRD
The name stands for Inspired Retail Design. That gives all the clues. Dana Armstrong is probably the only designer to sit on the board of a major FTSE company - at Asda - where she came up with the market hall design for the giant retailer’s superstores. Today at Yorkshire-based InspireRD, Armstrong is plotting to indoctrinate Britain’s corporates with design thinking. “The only joy you feel when you buy a house or a car is when you actually get your hands on the thing,” she observes. “The actual ‘retail’ experience is usually miserable. There are too many inefficient retailing experiences out there - such as banking.” Hear, hear.

Business services
Vincent Wang, Nexus
“We’re not a property company,” says Wang. Funny, we thought you rented office space. “Yes, we do. But with a difference.” And the difference starts right from the business model. “We’re not in this to invest in assets. Our equity is in our tenants, so we’re a cash flow business,” he explains. “To make that work, we have to give our tenants what they want.” And, Wang reckons, what they want is space to interact and meet people. Space with soul. Okay, it’s serviced offices, but the emphasis on quality rather than uniformity. Yet it’s more than an upmarket Regus. With two buildings in the City, Nexus is due to open another space in London’s West End in January. Wang describes this as a “hybrid between a business centre and a dry lease - it’s a ready-to-go option for companies that have grown too large to be in a serviced office.” Tenants pay an all-in charge for the space, plus any furniture they need, but can move out with just three months’ notice. Wang is currently looking for up to £50m in second-round finance and plans to expand in the UK and across Europe.

internet
Owen Lamont, Gem
What got Owen Lamont thinking was when he e-mailed Microsoft with his discovery that the word “internet” didn’t appear on the spellcheck of Word 97. He got no reply. Then he tried to e-mail his e-bank, of which he was a customer. After four weeks of pounding them with e-mails, he had to resort to the phone. The mobile phone company was worse; they “didn’t do e-mail.” The research proved his hunch: it’s estimated that one-thirds of all e-mails go unanswered. But the volume of e-mails being sent to companies by its customers is going to rise inexorably. So Lamont and his colleagues have set up GEM - “the global e-mail company.” They have raised £7m in a private placement and have received some generous grant funding. This Belfast-based company looks set to be one of Ulster’s big success stories of the decade.

Financial services

Steven Scott, David Calder, Mark Phillips and Torquil MacNaughton, Penta Capital Eschewing the current technology focus, Penta is a private equity firm looking for investments in solid companies with quaint concepts such revenue and profitability.Set up in late 1999 by a group of five executives who left Royal Bank Development Capital, the private equity arm of Royal Bank of Scotland (co-founder Rod Begbie left at the turn of the year). It was a case of practising what you preach. Scott: “Anyone who’s in venture capital for a living, backs management teams for a living, must at some point think: ‘God, I’d love to do this myself’.” Penta raised £100m from Bank of Scotland and Old Mutual, giving it enough capital to compete with more established players. It’s already invested in Scottish IT consultancy Maclaren Consulting and Irish record management software company Datacare. The group wants to be more than a private equity firm. Phillips: “Success throws up opportunities. Our original objective was to get a fund, but then you become aware of opportunities you can string alongside that. Our ambition is to grow a business, not just one fund manager.”

biotech
Evolutec
A weird one. After a spell of being in the doldrums, Biotechnology is attracting some pretty big money once more. We picked one to illustrate this renewed trend. Evolutec has just secured £2.7m venture backing from the likes of 3i. Says CEO Clive Bennett: Evolutec is researching the proteins present in the saliva of blood-sucking arthropods as a source of new drugs to treat conjunctivitis and asthma. Mmmm. Got that?

What happened next: Last year’s 50
So we’re not perfect. One of our tips for 2000, Ready2, coined a new line in understatement when it announced in November that it was going into “hibernation.” Roughly translated, that means that it’s got rid of almost all its staff and wound up the business. To be fair to the founders of the fashion site, Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine, the market did turn viciously against internet companies from April 2000, rendering further fund-raising almost impossible. But Ready2’s lack of significant revenues didn’t help, either.

Not all Net businesses are suffering. Online art gallery Eyestorm, only launched in December last year, raised a breathtaking $14.2m in third-round funding in October this year (including a personal injection from pioneer of online broking, Charles Schwab). “The classiest art site on the web,” said Esquire (just in case you didn’t believe us). Next stop: Asia.

Two of last year’s 50 have hit mega-heights. The imminent flotation of software business, Riversoft, should value it at almost £300m (although initial estimates reckoned it could be up to £400m). Riversoft identifies network problems for internet companies. And it has revenues - £2.9m for the nine months to September 2000.

There was another £300m flotation worth watching. Tony Sullman took his personal injury claims company, Claims Direct, onto the stockmarket in July this year. Shares did take a bit of a hammering in November when the company announced a £5m provision to clients, but profit margins and long-term potential still look very strong. Kymata emerged as one of the UK’s hottest science-based companies when it secured $72m in March this year from a syndicate of top-dog investors. The worldwide optical components market is forecast to hit $23bn by 2003, so Kymata will remain one to watch for a few years yet. Michael Walton changed the name of his web consultancy, Nvision, to Rubus this year. But it didn’t divert the upwards arrow.

Tim Weller and Graham Wellesley have been busy, too. Weller merged his publishing company with Timothy Benn Publishing and then, as we went to press, was on the verge of a £70m float. Wellesley, meanwhile, sold IFX, his “non-bank market-maker in spot and forward foreign exchange and over-the-counter currency options” (phew), to the football pools specialist Zetters Group for £20m. On the subject of betting, remember Orbis? The developer of online gambling software built the UK’s most sophisticated sports betting site this year. PA Sporting Life (a joint venture between the Press Association and Mirror Group) is the most popular sporting site outside the US, with over eight million page impressions per month. That’s what I call software.

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