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Having recently celebrated its birthday, the founders of online marketing agency Steak Media point out that they have grown from “three guys and one desk” to “three offices in three countries” – all within three years. The company’s initial product, Data Patrol, crawls the web and produces an extensive report on users’ digital footprint, advising on potentially harmful information and how it should be dealt with.Ħ. Steak Media – Oliver Bishop, Duncan Parry, Julian Walker Garlik is a move away from banking and taps into the concern over our digital identities. They were among the founding members of Egg plc, the internet bank that floated on the stock exchange for a market cap of £1.6bn. If you see what we’ve achieved, compared to similar companies, they have more money than us, but the reason we can compete is the people.” “Our staff are the ones who drive the company. Hailed as one of the Guardian’s top ten dotcoms to watch, the site’s user numbers have quadrupled since September – an unprecedented rate of growth which, says Papafloratos, is down to his staff. As long as our lenders aren’t affected negatively, there’s no real need for us to worry,” he says.Ĥ. – Sokratis Papafloratos, Walid Al Saqqafįrustrated by their limited knowledge of London’s social scene, Sokratis and Walid came up with the idea of, a social networking site for people who actually go out, in 2005. “The credit crunch means the banks’ appetite to lend is diminished, which is great for us.

“When you’re involved in something as serious as people’s money, it’s difficult.” Giles says the recession is proving to be a ‘great opportunity’ for the business. Giles, the company’s current UK managing director, says building up trust with customers is essential. The world’s first online peer-to-peer lending and borrowing marketplace was launched in 2005. That worked quite well for us,” says Alistair. “All of a sudden two guys with an idea and a good business plan were perceived as senior people in a £300m company with all of the things banks look for to be comfortable that what you’re doing is appropriate. The pair quickly discovered that without a large amount of collateral, banks would refuse them, so they teamed up with tech giant Morse, who agreed to incubate them. When Alistair and Steve decided to launch Monitise, a system which allows its users to access their bank through their mobile phone, they had problems getting it off the ground.

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Serial entrepreneur John Paleomylites is ever the ambitious business owner: “There’s still plenty more growth that we are on target to achieve,” he says.Ģ. Monitise – Alistair Lukies, Steve Atkinson February saw BTQ crowned the fastest-growing site on the web, with monthly figures for unique visitors growing by 1,165% – beating Facebook, which came second with a measly 781%. Launched in 2005, and winner of the 2006 Startups Awards, price comparison site continues to plough, behemoth-like, past its competitors.

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