Inspiring Stories - enterprising young brits

Inspiring Story: Red Button Design

Amanda Jones and James Brown are the co-founders of Red Button Design, an award winning design house developing products for the Aid and Humanitarian markets.

Inspiring Story: Roger Hind

Being told off by his mother for forgetting to bring the washing in before it rained was the incentive for Roger Hind to develop the Rotamate two years ago.

Inspiring Story: Gareth Harca

At 21, Gareth Harca identified two gaps in the market that he filled with his companies InstaHedge and RentaHedge. Two companies? Isn't that hedging your bets?

Inspiring Story: Lotty Cunningham

Lotty Cunningham set up dance and drama company, Streetz Ahead after noticing that there were very few activities in her local area for young people to take part in during their free time.

Inspiring Story: Dean Rhodes Brandon

Dean Rhodes Brandon, who is deaf, set up yourlocalcinema.com to help the 5 million people in the UK with hearing or visual impairments who enjoy going to the cinema.

Inspiring Story: Jane Campbell

Civil engineer Jane Campbell changed the way her whole company, MWH, records and presents what it does. She was a finalist in 2006's Enterprising Young Brits awards.

Inspiring Story: Loic O’Connell

Finalist in the Innovation at Work category of 2006's Enterprising Young Brits awards, Loic. His idea to make shopping simpler was so successful, it was picked up by every Tescos store and earned Loic a promotion.

Inspiring Story: Sophia Kyriacou

Sophia Kyriacou, a project manager at Camelot, the operator of the National Lottery, came up with a groundbreaking scratch card design while at home at the weekend watching TV.

Inspiring Story: James Baderman

James' ideas took him from runner at ?What If! to setting up and managing the Footprint project, which drives social innovation. He won the Innovation at Work category of 2006's Enterprising Young Brits.

Inspiring Story: Steph Cutler

Steph Cutler was working as a fashion designer when her sight began to deteriorate, inspiring her to set up Image Intelligence.

Inspiring Story: Blue Ventures

Blue Ventures is a pioneering marine conservation and development organisation, set up by Alasdair Harris and based in London and Madagascar.

Inspiring Story: Simon Fairway

Simon was working in the charity sector when he decided that images of Africa ought to come from a local perspective, as well as providing employment and training opportunities for people who lived there.

Inspiring Story: Rowland Egege and Baljeet Singh

Pro Active Sports aims to reduce health inequalities in young people by promoting physical activity and sports to primary school children who do not have a dedicated PE teacher.

Inspiring Story: Edwin Bartlett

Ed Bartlett used his passion for gaming to create a unique opportunitity for advertisers: to "engage new worlds" with in-game advertising.

Inspiring Story: Oliver Mennell and Nicola Elliott

Oliver and Nicola set up Natural Magic in 2005 as a new high-end organic beauty brand using all natural ingredients. After one month online, Selfridges wanted to stock Natural Magic candles; after six months both partners had quit their day jobs in private equities and media, to focus on the venture.

Inspiring Story: Matthew McNeill

Matt McNeill set up Sign-Up.to in 2004, an email and mobile marketing solution which is now one of the world’s leading self-service tools for permission-based marketing.

Inspiring Story: Jerome Touze and Peter Ward

Jerome Touze (right) and Peter Ward established travel social networking site Where Are You Now? (WAYN) in September 2002. WAYN helps travellers stay in touch with their friends but also publishes reviews of hotels, restaurants and tourist sites.

Inspiring Story: James Taylor

James Taylor was inspired to set up SportStars in 2005 when he realised there were no sports coaching facilities available for young people in his area of South Wales.

Inspiring Story: Oliver Bishop

Having been named as one of the top ’30 under 30’ in 2004 by Media Week for co-founding search marketing agency Espotting, it was obvious Ollie Bishop was on to great things.

Inspiring Story: Paul Thomas and Henry Braithwaite

Two school-friends invested their life savings to set up a business. In just three years the workforce increased from two, to over 85 full time employees.