Ones to watch
START-UP: MIND CANDY (ONLINE GAMES)
Mind Candy is the creation of Michael Acton Smith, 33, who in 1998 set up the e-commerce site Firebox, which now has a turnover of around £11m. ‘Our latest game is Moshi Monsters, which is like an online Tamagotchi. It’s aimed at 7- to 12-year-olds, who can adopt and care for a pet monster,’ says Smith. ‘Children are very technologically adept. They’re going online at four and five years old.’ Mind Candy’s Battersea office has about 20 employees working from an injection of venture capital worth about £5m. ‘We’re not profitable yet, but I’m confident. What’s happening now is fundamentally different to 2000, as there are so many more people online.’ Smith helped found the start-up club Second Chance Tuesday
START-UP: TEXPERTS (QUESTIONS ANSWERED)
Sarah McVittie, 30, and Thomas Roberts, 30, set up the company in 2003 as 82ask, and recently gained investment to give it new life as Texperts. It is based around the text-messaging of questions to experts, who come back with a rapid answer for £1.
It is valued at around £7.4m
BRIGHT STATION VENTURES (PROMOTES START-UPS)
The venture-capital company Bright Station Ventures, which funds and promotes start-up companies, was set up last year by Sháá Wasmund, 36, and Dan Wagner, 44, veterans of the first internet boom. Bright Station is currently backing Miomi (see panel on page 67) and Osoyou, a British shopping-cum-social network site launched last November
START-UP: DOPPLR (TRAVEL CLUB)
Dopplr, which has its headquarters in Helsinki and an office in Shoreditch, London, aims to create a kind of international travel club, with tips and networking shared between high-end travellers. ‘We’re trying to recreate the joy of travel, rather than the queues and grief,’ says Matt Biddulph, 32, who spearheads the UK operation with Matt Jones, 36. The company is funded by a mix of angel investments
START-UP: MOO (BUSINESS CARDS)
Launched in 2006, Moo was dreamt up by Richard Moross, 30, to add new life to the world of business cards. ‘They’re 300-year-old social tools that have survived all kinds of new technologies, and are still useful,’ he says. ‘Even when people have Facebook and several mobile phones, they still scribble down telephone numbers on pieces of paper.’ It’s an e-commerce-type business, but has linked up with Web 2.0 companies such as Flickr, the user-generated photography site, to allow personalised cards to be made. With offices in Clerkenwell, London, Moo has raised capital to about £2.5m. ‘We’ve had orders from many countries,’ says Moross. ‘I’m confident with the model. It is supplying a real business need’
START-UP: MIOMI (ONLINE TIMELINES)
Miomi is a ‘time-browsing’ site that aims to chronicle history by way of user-generated content. ‘It allows you to help create timelines,’ says the CEO, Jonny Crowe, 37. ‘An example might be 9/11. I know someone whose plane was grounded that day at JFK. So they could put an entry on Miomi, and add to the material about that day. We’re aiming to get the world’s memories online,’ he says, ‘so that public history is augmented by private history to become a vast memory bank.’ Miomi arose from the meeting of three German postgraduate students, Thomas Whitfield, Karlheinz Toni and Richard Schreiber. Miomi is supported by Microsoft and funded by Bright Station Ventures. It has offices in Covent Garden
START-UP: PPLPARTY (SOCIAL NETWORKING)
Calum Brannan began PPLparty at the age of 15 on the family PC. Setting up a board for about 5,000 nightclubbers in the Midlands, he started to make £700 a month. ‘It was a hobby that took over,’ says Brannan, now 19. With a bit of funding from an angel investor from London, he moved to an office in Coventry last year and now has five employees — a couple of whom are old enough to be his parents. PPLparty brings clubbers together in a social-network-style format — but recently Calum decided to open it up to anyone looking to network on the web. The site is being reborn as Youmeo.com on April 14