
Click here to nominate for the 2017 Future 50 awards
Business: Hire Space
Sector: Events
Year founded: 2013
Future 50 class: 2016
Traditionally, the venue booking industry has relied on offline media. Hire Space aims to simplify the process, and has 5,000 venues across the UK listed on its online platform. The platform is backed by Karen Hanton, founder of dotcom success story TopTable.com, and is used by brands including Facebook, Google and Instagram to source spaces for events and launches. Venues include Tate Modern, the Olympic Velodrome and Hampton Court Palace, and the platform offers recommendations on the newest event suppliers, including caterers, entertainment and production companies. Co-founder Edward Poland told us: “In the past 12 months we’ve completed a successful crowdfunding campaign with fantastic buy-in from the events industry, and strengthened our relationships with key event suppliers and venues. We’ve also grown the team and moved to a brand new office. “In 2017 we’re launching EventLAB, our first live event for senior events organisers. The event focuses on disruption and learning in the event industry, with masterclasses from leading events influencers and a ‘best in show’ of venues and suppliers. It’ll become a regular fixture in the UK events calendar in the years to come.”Business: Clifton Asset Management
Sector: Funding
Year founded: 1986
Future 50 class: 2015
Click here to nominate for the 2017 Future 50 awards
Business: Hubble
Sector: Property
Year founded: 2014
Future 50 class: 2016
Hubble is an online marketplace that seeks to match up people that need office space with people that have office space. It covers co-working, shared and private office spaces. “Over the last year, Hubble has gone from strength to strength. We have now become the largest online marketplace for finding and renting office space in London. We’ve also increased space available on our platform for businesses – up to 1,500 buildings and 15,000 desks,” said Hubble’s Varun Bhanot revealed to Real Business. “In addition, we’ve moved beyond just helping startups to now helping all types of larger businesses including SMEs, agencies and consultancies across creative and professional service industries. Recent companies we’ve helped find space include Monzo Bank, Jaguar Land Rover and Etsy.”Business: HonestBrew
Sector: Food and drink
Year founded: 2012
Future 50 class: 2016
HonestBrew makes and sells its own beer, and in addition to this it hosts its own online supermarket of craft beers. It also offers a subscription package, and gift boxes of different craft beers in its online shop.Business: Paythru
Sector: Payments
Year founded: 2009
Future 50 class: 2014
Paythru aims to make the mobile handset the payment device of choice, both for consumers and merchants. Its payments infrastructure operates across retail, food service, collections and parking. “So much has changed for Paythru in the last 3 years. The business has now established a foothold in a select number of vertical markets. We have launched a ticketless mobile parking solution with our partner, Parkeon, which combines the use of ANPR technology with seamless secure payment methods,” said Keith Brown, MD at the company. “We are looking forward to rolling out the solution to other sites in the UK and Europe. We are working with major partners to provide solutions in the food and beverage sector, that enhance infrastructure and software capabilities in Smart Cities and Buildings (including Stadia). “It is the debt collection sector in particular where Paythru has made a significant breakthrough by providing a highly effective mobile and online collection solution to several of the top players in this market. We continue to develop this solution and plan to roll it out extensively through the collections and recoveries sector including insurance brokers and credit providers.”Business: Chaser
Sector: Financial services
Year founded: 2013
Future 50 class: 2015
Chaser aims to transform how businesses carry out credit control. It’s software provides the tools to automate chasing customers to pay their invoices. Chaser uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide insights about which customers to grant credit to and how best to chase up customers to pay their invoices. David Tuck, founder and CEO, said: “It has been a fantastic year for us. We were incredibly proud that Xero, identified by Forbes as the World’s Most Innovative Growth Company in 2014 and 2015, named Chaser their App Partner of the Year for 2016 from among their ecosystem of 550+ integration partners. “We’re proud to be helping 1,000s of businesses across the globe transform their credit control. We are growing fast. We are barely touching the surface of the power that machine learning and artificial intelligence has to transform the outcomes businesses achieve from their credit control. We are really excited to continue to innovate and deliver more and more value to our customers in 2017.”Click here to nominate for the 2017 Future 50 awards
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