UKpreneur.co.uk » One to watch

The worlds greatest web designer…

Scott — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:23:26 +0000

David Geere is the worlds greatest web designer!

Why? Well apart from giving me free hosting and doing an excellent job on bringing UKpreneur out of the old ages his portfolio is just awesome and well worth a butchers!

Visit http://www.davidgeere.com/

Schoolboy runs £400,000 electronics empire from home

Scott — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 02:16:25 +0000

A mini-tycoon has set up an electronics empire with a turnover of nearly £400,000 a year – but he is a schoolboy of only 16.

Gary Cooper employs four people at his web firm GC’s PCs Ltd which he runs in between studying for his A-levels.

The young entrepreneur, from Benfleet, Essex, is a pupil sells mobile phones and gadgets, turning over £30,000 of sales a month.

Gary has even landed himself a four-figure advertising deal sponsoring the scoreboard at Southend United football ground.

Garry Adamson, director of commercial services at the club, said: ‘When you do business with Gary Cooper, the first thing you need to do is suspend disbelief.’

But the teenaged tycoon, named after a 1940s movie star by his film-fan mother, takes it all in his stride.

He said: ‘I don’t talk about business life at school. I just mix in with the rest of my class. I don’t find it frustrating to be running my own business one minute and sitting in the classroom the next.

‘I actually find it’s quite a good thing to switch off from business and know, while I’m at school, that someone else is in charge.’

The youngster pays himself just £500 a month, which he spends on normal teenage treats like chocolate, and likes to treat his friends to the odd meal.

But he hopes to save up for a speedboat in a year’s time.

He added: ‘I’ll cross the Channel and then some friends and I plan to take it down through the French waterways to the south of France.

A computer whizz, the teenager is able to operate the business between classes as he has set up a programme to run the site remotely, meaning he can access facts and sales figures any time.

He said: ‘I have a staff of four who look after the day-to-day running. I’ve boiled my own input down to very little.

‘That leaves me free to over see major items and move the company forward – and get my schoolwork done.

‘It helps me keep yo deadlines. I’m never late handing my homework in. It gives me a more mature approach to things and it means I can contribute more to class discussions.’

The teenager first started his enterprise at school at the tender age of 11, when he first got the bug for business.

The pupil of Southend High School for Boys said: ‘I was 11 and I wanted to make some proper money.

‘At the time, what everyone wanted was flashdisks. I found a supplier, bought in bulk, and sold them in school for £5 each.

‘I was clearing £20 a week for half an hour’s work.’

Gary then set up a website at 14, for just 50p, allowing him to reach a wider market and he made £800 in the first month of operation.

Two years on the company has has a six-figure turnover.

He said: ‘So I can say that in two years, I’ve built up a company with a six-figure turnover on the back of 50p.’

But the young businessman has no plans to give up school and concentrate on his empire and said he has never been tempted to ditch his four A-levels in economics, maths, geography and physics.

After that he hopes to go to Swansea to study a degree in economics.

The level-headed teen added: ‘I want to get my degree because if I ever go bust in business and I’ve got no qualifications, what will I do?’

Whizz-kid Gary said he has not been hit by the credit crunch and said the way he beats his rival retailers is by offering the most-wanted mobile phones online free of contracts, so they can be used on pay-as-you-go basis.

He has already sold to the USA, France, Australia, New Zealand and Norway, as well as here in the UK.

And he says his knack is in ‘finding the right suppliers’.

After his mother left home, leaving his father, who worked at York International air-conditioning factory and is now a gardener, to look after him and his two siblings, Gary said things were tight.

He said: ‘We weren’t the richest of families and I simply wanted more money. We often couldn’t afford a chocolate bar at the newsagents.

‘I wanted to do something that would let me buy that chocolate bar for myself.’ He added: ‘It was bad when mum left home.’

Not everything has been plane-sailing for the mini-manager – last Christmas Paypal froze his account losing him £20,000 and the company has been hit hard by a heavy theft of stock this month.

Gary himself has also had to undergo major operations on both his hips.

He is too young to be a company director, which is not possible until 18, so had to use someone else to take the formal title.

But the business is very much his and he will become managing director on his 18th birthday.

And by 35 he plans to be a full-time investor, putting money into the ideas of other young entrepreneurs, describing it as ‘a bit like the Prince’s Trust’.

He said: ‘My advice to anyone who wants to make a success of business is to take an opportunity when it comes and take risks.’

Bag lady

Scott — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 02:37:23 +0000

Pay attention. One day this story will be legend.

Jen Groover’s purse annoyed her. With stuff laying on top of stuff, nothing could be seen.

In a fit of pique, as they say, she yanked the dish rack out of her dishwasher and shoved it in her bag.

There was all her stuff, standing in plain view, in neat little compartments.

Of such moments is entrepreneurial history made.

In 2006, two years after her kitchen-appliance breakthrough, Groover launched Butler Bag. Not just a bag but a brand, Groover’s brainchild has been raising eyebrows in the accessories community. With 20 employees, Butler Bag is on target to do $15 million in sales this year.

Groover has spent as much time selling herself as she has hawking her handbags. She is, herself, the Butler Bag brand. Hers is the face on the Web site, hers the story that drives the enterprise.

“My story connects with people, my story is the American dream about the girl next door who saw a problem and did something about it,” she said. “People want to connect with the human side of a brand. They will have more loyalty to a brand that has a human side to it.”

China to leapfrog Britain in household wealth

Scott — Sat, 31 May 2008 03:03:59 +0000

Chinese households will have the third greatest spending power in the world within a decade, leapfrogging their British counterparts.

Barclays Wealth and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) ranked China’s total household sector spending power at number seven in 2007. The UK was ranked third.

But in a global forecast released today, Barclays and the EIU will say China’s booming economy will propel it to number three by 2017, just ahead of Britain at number four.

Although the figures are skewed because China is so populus, it is also noteworthy that India will join the Asian tiger in the top 10 as wealth continues to flow east. The US and Japan are forecast to remain at numbers one and two respectively for household wealth, but Australia will be forced out of the top 10 by India’s ascent.

“The most important development over the next decade, according to our research, is the rapid escalation of household wealth in the key emerging markets of China, India, Russia and Brazil,” said the EIU.

The index, based on the cumulative dollar net worth of all the households in each country, is also forecast to show a big rise in the number of millionaire households. Last year, seven countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the US and Britain – all had more than one million households worth more than $1m.

During the next decade they will be joined by five more – Spain, the Netherlands, Australia, Taiwan and South Korea.

China already has the densest concentration of millionaire households through Hong Kong, where 26.4pc of households are dollar millionaires. Hong Kong and Singapore are expected to still top the table in 2017.

Blyk: Reaches over 100 users

Scott — Fri, 16 May 2008 04:43:50 +0000

Blyk targets 16- to 24-year-olds with its free mobile phone service, which includes 217 texts and 43 minutes every month. In exchange, of course, they get advertising—up to 6 messages sent to their phones each day. Britain’s youth don’t seem to mind, though—Blyk reached that 100,000-member target six months ahead of schedule. Response rates to the ads in question have also achieved a whopping average of 29 percent—far surpassing the norm, which tends to hover in the single digits.

Shaun Gregory, Blyk’s UK CEO, explains: “Reaching 100,000 members is significant for advertisers because it gives them the opportunity to engage with a mass youth audience in a highly efficient and cost-effective way. In six months we have built up a deep knowledge of our member base, which now exceeds many established youth media players, and with over 7 million 16- to-24-year-old phone owners in the UK, there is huge potential for growth.”

Blyk will launch in the Netherlands in the second half of 2008, followed by other European markets after that. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs and Industrial and Financial Investments Company (IFIC) recently joined the company’s list of investors, which also includes Sofinnova Partners and a number of others. Free love, you’re on a roll!

www.blyk.com

One to watch: David Ulevitch, 26

Scott — Sun, 11 May 2008 02:23:45 +0000

Company: OpenDNS

Funding: $2 million from Cnet (CNET) Founder Halsey Minor

Ulevich wants to change the way you call up Web sites. So his company, OpenDNS, has come up with what it considers a faster, smarter, and more secure method for translating requested URLs into corresponding sites. It helps companies guard against phishing schemes and bar employees from calling up adult sites. In less than two years OpenDNS has amassed more than 4 million customers, including 10,000 schools. The company is profitable and generates sales by displaying ads with search results.

Advice: “There are always people who do well even in a slump,” says CEO Ulevich. “Focus on building great products for your customers and be flexible, because their needs may change. And free is certainly the right price.”

Ones to watch: Bret Taylor, 27, and Jim Norris, 26

Scott — Sat, 10 May 2008 04:11:32 +0000

Company: FriendFeed

Funding: $5 million in February 2008 from the two co-founders and Benchmark Capital

Taylor and Norris left Google (GOOG) last July to start FriendFeed, a startup that’s tackling the thorny issue of helping people organize the growing array of social networks and services they use. FriendFeed lets subscribers pull together on a single Web site everything their friends are doing on more than 30 sites. The duo, who met at Stanford, were part of the original team that developed Google Maps. Next up: Adding more filters to prevent information overload.

Advice: Says Taylor: “Getting things done is often more important than getting things right. When you are creating an entirely new product, getting things right without direct feedback from users is virtually impossible. The company that wins is the company that receives and responds to feedback the fastest. The best decision I have made so far is surrounding myself with smart people who think differently than I do.”

One to watch: Jia Shen, 28

Scott — Sat, 10 May 2008 02:01:29 +0000

Company: RockYou

Funding: About $15 million from Sequoia Capital, Partech International, and Lightspeed Venture Partners

RockYou co-founder Shen likes to boast about his company’s speed. RockYou makes software that helps Internet users add pizzazz to social network profile pages. Last year the company introduced Superwall, a feature that lets users post video and other content to friends’ pages, three days after dreaming it up, says Shen, Rock-You’s CTO. Now he’ll need to make sure that a hiring binge—which has doubled headcount, to 40, since November—won’t inhibit RockYou from keeping up with its better-funded rival, Slide. “You don’t want to lose that edge,” he says. Meantime, RockYou is lining up a new round of funding to stay sharp.

Advice: “We’ve never been extravagant in the way we spend money,” Shen says. “Every person we hire is for a specific use. When we bring a person in, we know we can bring in more unique users and more page views.”

One to watch: Matt Sanchez, 26

Scott — Fri, 09 May 2008 02:45:08 +0000

Company: VideoEgg

Funding: About $27 million from August Capital, First Round Capital, Maveron, WPP, and Focus Ventures

Co-founder and CEO Sanchez originally launched VideoEgg in 2005 as a Web-based video player capable of playing clips in a variety of formats and embedding them in Web sites. But it has evolved into an ad network that displays ads within the widget applications and services that have taken off on social networking sites. Facebook widget makers earned $1.5 million in revenue from ads placed in their applications by VideoEgg’s network over the course of five months last year. VideoEgg has also pioneered new advertising techniques. These include translucent ads laid over Web videos, and pricing models such as pay-per-engagement, which charges marketers only when users click, roll over, or otherwise interact with an ad.

Advice: “Downturns are often the best cycles for entrepreneurs looking to bring a new approach to market. Existing businesses look for efficiencies in tough times and create opportunities for disruptive models and innovative practices. At the earliest stage, your job is to find a fit in the market for your product, and you are growing revenue from a very small base. Even in a contracting market there should be a ton of room to grow.”

One to watch: Aaron Patzer, 27

Scott — Thu, 08 May 2008 02:29:25 +0000

Companies: Mint.com

Funding: $17.5 million from Benchmark Capital, Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital, and angels Ram Shriram, Ron Conway and former Intuit (INTU) executive Mark Goines

For six months, Patzer holed up alone in a room for 100 hours a week to write the code he hoped would result in a smarter alternative to Intuit’s Quicken. Two years on, he’s distributing the resulting product free through a startup named Mint.com, which has amassed more than 200,000 users—and is adding 10,000 new ones a week. Fans say it’s easier to use and does a better job categorizing expenses and flagging problem spending than competing software from Intuit and Microsoft (MSFT). “Quicken and [Microsoft's] Money are for bookkeeping enthusiasts,” Patzer says. In March, he raised $12 million, led by Benchmark, to help bring Mint’s message of simplicity to the masses.

Advice: “Recessions are great because they unlock the best people,” Patzer says. “If you’re well capitalized and can survive through the recession, it’s the best time to grow. You’ll have more access to more talent at a better price than you’ll ever have.”