Entrepreneurs

Masters of the opium trade: the fabulous wealth of the Sassoons

Just before I started to read this book I had been immersed in the letters written by Jewish merchants based in Cairo from the tenth to the 12th centuries describing the trade they conducted across the Indian Ocean all the way to the Malabar coast. These letters are written in a difficult cursive Hebrew script and in a Judaeo-Arabic dialect, so one needs greater expertise than I possess to read them in the original. It was therefore with what was almost a sense of dejà vu that I encountered Joseph Sassoon’s fascinating account of the rise and fall of the Sassoon family, from the beginning of the 19th century to

Innovators will lead the post-pandemic renaissance

So much has been changed by Covid. Science and entrepreneurship have combined brilliantly to mass-produce life-saving vaccines. Working from home, video communication and online retail have become the new normal — perhaps heralding a permanent shift that will leave office towers and city centres searching for new roles. And the responsibility of every business as a corporate citizen as well as a profit generator has come into focus as never before. In 2021 and beyond, innovators have a huge opportunity to make our lives better again. In bioscience and healthcare. In logistics, data analytics and every kind of digital technology. In sustainable housing, transport and agribusiness and all the ways

The antidote to virus panic is in the hands of entrepreneurs

‘It’s a ghost town,’ said the officer manning the body scanner at Manchester airport — Manchester, New Hampshire, that is, a city of some 112,000 citizens. I don’t know how many of them would normally be passing through its departure hall on a Sunday morning, but today there are no more than 50, plus me and a bottle of hand sanitiser to remind us why it’s so quiet. A spokesman for the global airline industry says carriers collectively foresee worst-case revenue shortfalls of $113 billion as a result of virus fears and travel restrictions, similar to what hit them after the 2008 financial crash. Flybe, already a sickly patient, is

2019 finalists lunch – Scotland & Northern Ireland

Another fine lunch and a particularly fine Edinburgh venue for our encounter with finalists for the Scotland & Northern Ireland region of The Spectator’s Economic Disruptor Awards 2019. We’re in the Register Club, inside the Edinburgh Grand Hotel on St Andrew’s Square – a building which happens to have been the headquarters of Royal Bank of Scotland before its chief executive Fred Goodwin commissioned an extravagant new campus on the city outskirts. Fred’s name will forever be associated with RBS’s 2008 collapse, and guess what: we’re lunching in a handsome room that actually used to be his office. So here we are discussing new frontiers of entrepreneurship in a setting

2019 finalists lunch – North West and Wales

Readers of my weekly ‘Any Other Business’ column know I occasionally find reason or excuse to slip a restaurant tip in amongst the financial commentary. In that spirit, let me start by saluting the venue for our encounter with North-West & Wales finalists for The Spectator’s Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards 2019. This was 20 Stories, a penthouse restaurant in Manchester’s Spinningfields district, which gave us everything we needed, including fine food, service that never cut across our conversation and a view that encouraged us to think in panoramic terms about the markets our entrants are seeking to disrupt. With us were regional guest judge Hugh Campbell — founder and

Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards 2019 – the regional finalists

We’re pleased to announce the regional finalists for The Spectator’s Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards 2019, sponsored by Julius Baer. We were delighted to receive some 50 per cent more entries this year — including many more from the regions outside London and the South. Business sectors represented range from fintech to funerals, and from ‘big data’ to dating. The full set of entries illuminates how entrepreneurs are addressing today’s pressing social and environmental issues, whether that be food waste and sustainable packaging, or the decline of town centres and the shortage of affordable housing, or the need for greater efficiencies in the NHS. When we launched the Economic

We could emerge from Brexit as a nation of born-again entrepreneurs – if we invest

Siemens’ UK HQ happens to be in Manchester, where I was glad to find contrary evidence last week that all is far from lost on the innovation front, at the Northern Tech Awards, presented in rock’n’roll style by the investment bank GP Bullhound. Here were 100 high-growth companies, ranging from the self-explanatory (-Parcel2Go, Pharmacy2U) to the baffling: I glazed over at ‘the intersection of Big Data and the Cloud’. Among winners with plainer purposes were Sheffield-based Twinkl, which sells online teaching materials for schools around the world, and Leeds-based Crisp Thinking, which provides rapid responses to adverse social media activity for companies and brands, again worldwide. But most interesting were

A drive to change lives

Welcome to The Spectator’s Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards 2019, sponsored by Julius Baer. We’re waiting to hear from entrepreneurs in every business sector across the UK who are eager to tell us how their products are bringing radical benefits to consumers in terms of price and choice. We’re looking for disruptors who can make an impact nationally and globally. Meanwhile, we’ll be presenting inspirational stories about the people behind the UK’s fastest-growing entrepreneurial ventures. In the first of the series, Martin Vander Weyer meets Virraj Jatania, whose low-cost banking app Pockit was the overall winner of our 2018 awards.  Virraj Jatania doesn’t need to be an entrepreneur. He’s

Forget the backstop. Business is doing what it does best: making decisions and investing

With 31 working days until negotiations time out, Theresa May has been selling her vision for post-Brexit Britain to businesses in Northern Ireland. The Prime Minister is hoping her visit will reaffirm the government’s commitment to thwarting any chance of a hard border and sell an agreement that Northern Ireland can get behind, all the while searching for the key to unlock the Westminster stalemate. Those addressed by May – a business community in Northern Ireland that has endured years of uncertainty on the future of trade with their neighbours – has thus far been drowned out by the political noise. Yet while our politicians talk, businesses in Ireland have

Tough choices and worthy winners in a dazzling field

Mail Rail — the venue for the grand finale of The Spectator’s Economic Disruptor Awards, sponsored by Julius Baer — is the former terminus of the driverless underground London Post Office Railway that shuttled mail between London’s major sorting offices from 1927 until 2003. A fine example of the disruptive technology of its era, it had a Doctor Who ambience that made it the perfect setting to celebrate the entrepreneurial creativity showcased in this first year of our Disruptor Awards. The range of innovative business ideas presented to us from all over the country was dazzling: everything short of a better model of sonic screwdriver for the Doctor, you might

The winners of the Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards 2018 | 2 November 2018

Which UK companies are rewriting the rules and redefining their marketplaces? Earlier this year, The Spectator and Julius Baer launched the inaugural Economic Disruptor Awards to celebrate the most creative entrepreneurs in the UK. Over the past six months, over 100 nominations have been reviewed by our panel. Last night, we announced the winners at a gala dinner hosted by Andrew Neil, Chairman of The Spectator, and attended by over 120 guests from across the world of business. We are delighted to announce that the 2018 Economic Disruptor of the Year is Pockit – a low-cost, easy-access banking app aimed at helping Britain’s ‘unbanked’. Developed by the London-based group Concentric,

The winners of the Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards 2018

Which UK companies are rewriting the rules and redefining their marketplaces? Earlier this year, The Spectator and Julius Baer launched the inaugural Economic Disruptor Awards to celebrate the most creative entrepreneurs in the UK. Over the past six months, over 100 nominations have been reviewed by our panel. Last night, we announced the winners at a gala dinner hosted by Andrew Neil, Chairman of The Spectator, and attended by over 120 guests from across the world of business. We are delighted to announce that the 2018 Economic Disruptor of the Year is Pockit – a low-cost, easy-access banking app aimed at helping Britain’s ‘unbanked’. Pockit is billed as ‘a bank for

2018 finalists lunch – Midlands

Today we’re in the baronial setting of Hampton Manor Hotel in Warwickshire — a long iron shot from Birmingham Airport, but happily out of earshot of the fractious Tory Party conference up the road. We’re here to meet the Midlands regional finalists for The Spectator’s Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards: our host is Mark Embley, regional manager for our sponsor, the private bank Julius Baer, and our guests are Dr David Jehring, chief executive of Black Pear Software, Ian Firth, vice president for products at Speechmatics, and Steven Greenall, founder of Warwick Music Group. I’ve met or talked to some 16 of our 22 disruptor finalists so far, listened

2018 finalists lunch – London and The South

This week we gathered in the elegant dining room of our sponsor, the private bank Julius Baer, to meet the regional finalists from London and the South for The Spectator’s Economic Disruptor of the Year Award. Our host was David Durlacher, chief executive of Julius Baer International, and with him were Tracey Reddings, the bank’s head of front office, and half a dozen colleagues. Our guests represented seven of the ten regional finalists. Each was asked to talk informally, for five minutes, about their business’s potential for disruption and growth. Here’s some of what we learned. Carwow is an online platform that ‘takes the hassle out of new-car buying’ from

2018 finalists – Scotland and Northern Ireland

  Amiqus ID is an encrypted online system for client-onboarding and transaction checks, with the intention of tackling cyber risk and money laundering.   Avocet Infinite makes use of a ‘unique hydroponic system’ to produce fodder to grow ideal barley for cows.   See.Sense makes ACE, an award-winning smart bike light that uses advanced sensor technology to give cyclists more visibility on their ride.

2018 finalists – The North West and Wales

  AMPLYFI has created DataVoyant, which it claims is ‘the most advanced business intelligence and research tool in the world’.   Arctic Shores is developing pioneering psychometric assessments to help people and organisations make better career and personnel decisions.   Evergreen Life’s NHS-approved app enables people to own and take control of their own health data, managing and sharing information on allergies, conditions and fitness, while also allowing users to order repeat prescriptions, book appointments with their GP and check test results.

2018 finalists – The Midlands

  Black Pear’s principle activity is software research and development in the healthcare sector. Its greatest innovation has been the use of the public cloud to create an electronic ‘Shared Plan’ for patients.   Speechmatics has recently developed a unique AI-powered framework called ‘The Automatic Linguist’, which uses machine-learning to ‘build’ any language in the world in a matter of days.   Warwick Music Group has created a range of musical instruments for children from plastic. The plastic designs are typically more portable, more durable and cheaper than traditional instruments.

2018 finalists – London and The South

  Carwow is a comparison website that aims to facilitate car sales in the smoothest way possible.   Echo is an app designed to make NHS prescriptions more efficient. Users download the app, select their GP, and input what repeat medication they need.   Hectare is aiming to reinvent farm trading by bringing the sales of livestock and cereals online via its pioneering websites SellMy Livestock and Graindex.   Movem allows letting agents to check a tenant’s identity, income and rent in seconds, replacing a significant chunk of the letting process without any human administration.   Onedox is an app designed to be your digital PA. Users add their bills

A nation of original thinkers

Let’s remind ourselves what we mean by ‘disruptor’. A truly disruptive business revolutionises its marketplace by delivering radical improvements in choice, price and accessibility. A disruptor may be a boffin or a bold lateral thinker: Henry Ford did not invent the motorcar any more than Airbnb invented the ‘homestay’, but both created systems that made the product cheaper and more available than ever before — and both count as great disruptors. But these days ‘disruptor’ status is claimed by all manner of ventures. So in choosing our shortlist for the Award sponsored by Julius Baer, we had to sort the original from the derivative and distinguish those that are already