Winners of 2009

 1st Place

Tom Latchford, founder of Raising IT

Tom Latchford, founder of Raising IT has been awarded Gold Award for UK Entrepreneur of the Year in WorldSkills UK 2009.

After graduating from Oxford, Tom worked as an E-Media Consultant at Action Planning and as a Partner at Bangstrom Consultants.

Raising IT Limited, helps organisations raise more money and awareness across web, mobile and social media. Raising IT is now providing serious service delivery platforms and websites to help streamline and scale organisations, for clients such as UNICEF, Dyslexia Action and Best Beginnings.

Tom is CEO of Raising IT and has attracted a highly successful team, who have started and scaled companies such as http://www.attenda.com/, http://www.biwtech.com/ and http://www.quickstartglobal.com/. 

2nd Place

Emma-Jayne Parkes and Viviane C. Jaeger, co-founders of Squid London.

Emma and Viviane have been awarded the Silver Award for UK Entrepreneur of the Year in WorldSkills UK.

SquidLondon is a forward thinking design team paving the way in future material technology, founded by two designers from the London College of Fashion. To date they have been sponsored by one of the world largest ink companies, come runners up of the Deutsche Bank Award in Fashion and Textile and participated as a finalist in the Big Leap Competition run by Striding Out.

SquidLondon see themselves as linking the gap between technology, science and design producing unique and new projects and ideas. The first innovative limited collection, comes in the form of an umbrella interacting with the rain, changing colour to create a walking piece of art. This is the first of many pipeline products waiting to break into the market.

3rd Place

Jessica van Zanten, founder of London Jewellery School  

Jessica has been awarded the Bronze Award for UK Entrepreneur of the Year in WorldSkills UK.

Jessica launched the Dulwich Jewellery School, a new jewellery training centre earlier this year. Following a successful start, she is now expanding the brand to other areas of London.  

Her passion for jewellery started out in 2005 by attending evening jewellery classes and she hasn't looked back ever since. She is now a fully trained jeweller and teacher in many areas of jewellery making and is working towards developing the school into a successful not-for profit jewellery organisation. 

The ten finalists received the following prize package:-

Business Coaching and Mentoring - The ten finalists participated in a 4 day bootcamp and one to one business coaching and mentoring support.

"As a start-up the most valuable asset is to be surrounded by clever professionals, specialists and like minded entrepreneurs. Striding Out definitely created this atmosphere for the Striding Out BootCamp in March 09. The support SquidLondon receives from Striding Out is incredible. One of the best experiences was The Big Leap BootCamp. It was loaded with practical advice which was immediately applied and every single contestant was fully motivated wanting to make the most of it. It was a professional, inspiring and fun atmosphere!" Emma-Jayne and Viviane, Squid London

 

"The Big Leap Bootcamp has been an invaluable experience, giving me access to business professionals that I would never have usually had the chance to meet. Everything from finance and law to marketing and networking was covered, and I feel 100% more confident about writing a successful business plan now.  Everyone at the bootcamp had very different business ideas, but we were able to help each other by giving support, feedback and advice to the others in the group. Liz Newton 

 The Big Leap Entrepreneurial Competition is run in partnership with UK Skills as part of WorldSkills UK.

The world's largest international skills competition aimed at young people. WorldSkills UK incorporates the UK's premier set of skills competitions for students, trainees and employees. Competitions are a great way to engage, inspire and motivate young people to work towards their personal aspirations.  http://www.worldskillsuk.org/

 Business in the Community is supporting our Big Leap contestants by providing specialist mentors to help them develop their business skills and acumen.

 

 

The Big Leap is also supported by the British Library, Business and IP Centre, who is provided the training venue and market research training for the participants.

 

 

The Big Leap Winners in 2008

1st Place - Amy Winters and Kseniya Zagorodnyuk, Founders of Couture Clubbing

Couture Clubbing creates clothes for high-end nightclubs and other glamorous red-carpet events. Unique couture pieces are created for special events including fashion galas, concerts and award ceremonies. They use fabrics that react to sound, light and atmosphere which are especially suited to entertainment. Amy and Kseniya have recently been shortlisted for the Channel 4Talent award and received £30,000 of R&D funding from the Technology Strategy Board.  

Striding Out gave us that essential (and inspiring) piece of training in what turned out to be a supportive environment. All the young entrepreneurs on the course had imagination, determination and energy but not necessarily a formal business background.  The interactive seminars, tasks and support network of the programme helped us transform a basic idea into what is now an investment-ready business. We are now working with primary technological companies and have even been featured on Sky News. Striding Out has offered entrepreneurs like us that vital push which turns ideas into business reality. 

Check out our interview with Amy Winters   

Future 100

  

Are you a successful and responsible entrepreneur?

Striving to improve the economy, environment and society?

At Striding Out every year we search for talented young entrepreneurs aged 18-35 who are demonstrating entrepreneurial flair and innovation in progressing a responsible business venture. TO FIND OUT MORE  CLICK HERE