Our 30 chosen ones are drawn from a variety of backgrounds and industries, but they all share the necessary traits that make them stand out in an increasingly crowded business world. And it will certainly be worth tracking their progress over the coming years.

Rob Hamilton
Age: 32
Company: Instant Offices Group
Focus: Online commercial property broker
Hamilton likens his business to the Expedia of commercial property, with clients able to book premises with vendors across the world. With more than 100,000 clients, ranging from sole traders to government departments, turnover is expected to hit £6.5m next year, with further growth expected due to expansion in the US and Asian markets.

Terry Hogan
Age: 35
Company: New-Car-Discount.com
Focus: Online car retailer
A car salesman by trade, Hogan realised that by buying in bulk to meet online orders, he could operate without traditional overheads. Since launching in 2002, he has capitalised web traffic alongside car sales through advertising and partnerships with the likes of the AA. His site attracts 120,000 users a month and turnover is expected to hit £24m this year.

Oliver Bishop
Age: 29
Company: Steak Media
Focus: Marketing
Bishop worked alongside 2005 Young Gun and brother Seb at Espotting (now Miva), before founding his search engine marketing firm last year. A fiercely competitive market has been attacked by Bishop, with up to £15m in billings projected. Bishop has assembled an enviable team, who will soon be housed in new London offices following expansion.

Nick Garlick
Age: 32
Company: Nebulas Security
Focus: IT Security
The increased threat of IT viral attacks has made the security software market particularly fierce, but Garlick’s Nebulas Security has managed to stand out from the crowd, amassing more than 200 high-profile clients. Focusing on the legal, retail and telecoms sectors, Garlick plays strongly on the fact his business is fresh and flexible, offering a unique hourly consultancy. This year’s turnover of more than £5m is set to reach £7.5m by 2007.

Anthony Cook
Age: 28
Company: Mobile Fun Ltd
Focus: Mobile phone retail
Operating in a congested market, Mobile Fun, which was set up by Cook in 2000, has benefited from the upsurge in online spending. The business now offers more than 5,000 mobile accessories and 100,000 downloads to consumers, with new offerings in the pipeline. Purely organic growth has seen last year’s turnover figure rise from £7m to £10m in 2006, with staff numbers swelling to 65.

Helen Stokes
Age: 34
Company: Morgan Hunt
Focus: Public sector recruitment
The sometimes slow-moving and red tape-strewn public sector is a challenge Stokes has approached with relish. By taking a long-term view and building the Morgan Hunt Brand, rather than making quick profits, Stokes has taken on the big players impressively since the company’s creation in 2002. With 130 employees in offices in London, Birmingham and Manchester, Stokes has plans for further expansion and a projected £50m turnover to March 2007.

Harjeet Johal
Age: 26
Company: Underfivepounds.com
Focus: Online retail
The explosion of online retail has provided a number of niches and Johal has exploited a relatively simple one – selling clothing priced £5 or under. Sourcing products from China and India, Johal launched an effective marketing push following the website’s launch in 2004, fronted by Coronation Street actress Shobna Gulati. The Nottingham-based entrepreneur claims he’s “not panicked” by competition from high street stores such as Primark and New Look and a turnover of more than £5m for this year suggests his confidence is well placed.

Hasfa Abubacker
Age: 32
Company: Pitch TV
Focus: Retail television
After helping double margins while working as a buyer on a shopping channel, Abubacker saw the opportunity to better the efforts of US infomercials. She launched her own channel, Pitch TV last year, becoming the youngest person to ever do so in the sector. Having raised £2.5m through private investors, she bought the channel space from the Express Group, after initially, she says, “being laughed at – it’s a very male-dominated industry”. A second channel subsequently launched, and with growth of the wholesale side of the business, turnover should rise from £8m to £60m over the next five years.

Jo Chalker
Age: 35
Company: X Bar
Focus: Champagne/wine bars
A former chartered accountant, banker and headhunter, Chalker decided to take on the unenviable task of attracting demanding City drinkers with the launch of her champagne bars, called Dion. Having raised almost £1m for her first two bars, retaining three-quarters of the equity, around 2,000 workers from central London now visit Chalker’s urban oases every week. With plans to open a Canary Wharf bar, Chalker has projected turnover to rise from £3m to £6m within two years.

Suranga Chandratillake
Age: 28
Company: Blinkx TV
Focus: Search engines
Chandratillake admits he was amazed that Google initially focused only on web page searches, omitting a vital growth area – online videos. After raising £5m in funding, Chandratillake and his team developed intelligent software that would ‘listen’ and ‘watch’ real-time videos and pull them onto his search portal, Blinkx. The first content partner was Fox News, with deals ranging from MTV to Playboy being signed since. Through offices in Cambridge and San Francisco, Blinkx is set to forge further significant partnerships in 2007, with search numbers set to triple by the end of the year.

William Berry
Age: 30
Company: AccomodationForStudents.com
Focus: Online property finder for students
From a germ of an idea when he was a student, Berry has established ccomodationForStudents.com as one of the most sophisticated property search sites on the internet. His speedy domination of the niche has secured 10,000 landlords for a £5 fee, effectively blocking off competition. Berry has been keeping himself busy with other interests, too – he recently sold debt advisors Thomas Charles for £12.5m and has a group turnover of £4.5m.

Russell Lux
Age: 29
Company: Luxtech
Focus: IT and telephony support
Lux has come a long way from fly-posting people’s cars in order to publicise his business. Four years on, Luxtech boasts an impressive array of clients, following a combination of organic and acquisition-based growth. With a substantial purchase planned over the next year, Lux aims to boost turnover from £4.4m to £25m within 18 months.

Zef Eisenberg
Age: 33
Company: Maximuscle
Focus: Sports nutrition
Eisenberg sees Maximuscle as an all-round training and nutrition education service for his customers. The Watford-based business has a number of high-profile clients, ranging from the England cricket team to the RFU. Turnover stands at an impressive £21m.

Jeremy Bygrave
Age: 32
Company: Mediaburst
Focus: SMS provider
A difficult year has resulted in an impressive re-alignment by serial entrepreneur Bygrave. As a result of regulatory changes, Mediaburst was forced to focus solely on business messaging, rather than premium rate competitions that provided 80% of revenues. He admits the business had also become “fat”, so he set about streamlining and refocusing, thereby keeping Mediaburst afloat and increasing margins. Growth will be further boosted through partnerships with the likes of O2. A £2.5m turnover is forecast for 2007.

Simon Mansell
Age: 27
Company: TBG
Focus: Digital marketing
When your own line manager asks to be demoted rather than manage you, it’s pretty obvious you should be your own boss. Mansell realised this and, despite establishing his digital marketing firm TBG during the dot com crash in 2001, has achieved 40% year-on-year growth, resulting in a £10m turnover. Crediting the capture of clients, such as American Express, to excellent in-house training, Mansell has targeted companies needing clever direct marketing to great effect. US expansion is planned over the next year.

Sean Fergusson
Age: 34
Company: Brandedmedia
Focus: Fulfilment
In less than three years, Fergusson’s CD and DVD multimedia duplication house has become a dominant player in the fulfilment market, with an impressive array of clients. Plans are underway to expand into the US where, according to Fergusson, there is “six times the market but just four times the competition.” Already established in Sweden, Brandedmedia stands out from the crowd by ‘hand-holding’ clients through the entire process of creating, packaging and storing media. Turnover of £3.2m this year is set to hit £6m in 2007.

Paul King
Age: 35
Company: G2 Recruitment
Focus: Recruitment
King and co-founders Simon Gillings and James Gorfin started this Bristol-based business in Gorfin’s house in 2004. G2 has attracted a wide base of FTSE-listed companies, although no one client accounts for more than 4% of business. Staff turnover is extremely low, unlike its monetary equivalent, which is projected to hit £11m this year through organic growth.

Ben Grant
Age: 26
Company: aDDirect
Focus: Advertising
Grant secured £2m of venture capital funding to finance his mirrored advertising venture and has made a first year turnover of £3m. The product has been licensed globally and another round of funding, this time worth £3m, will help expansion into the US this year, garnering an anticipated £20m turnover.

David Springall
Age: 32
Company: YoSpace
Focus: Mobile applications
Founded in 1999 with Tim Sewell, the long-awaited uptake of 3G mobiles and consumer-generated content has seen Yospace finally deliver its promise. Delivering content for the likes of Vodafone, Orange, 3 and Emap – as well its own products such as LookAtMe! – an impressive 100% growth is predicted for 2007. Springall and Sewell have built a 28-strong team and have amassed a turnover of £2.8m this year.

Pepita Diamand
Age: 34
Company: Wrapit
Focus: Online retail
Diamand simply calls her business “the best wedding giftlist service in Britain”. It’s easy to see why. The virtual department store and 14 showrooms across the UK will draw in an estimated 200,000 users by the end of the year, boosting turnover to £7.5m from last year’s £5m figure. Canadian-born Diamand raised £2.5m to launch the business in 2000 and has enjoyed growth of 75% a year since 2002 and a recent contract win with Fenwick’s.

Martin Hunt
Age: 16
Company: Hunt For It
Focus: Online auctions
Taking on the might of eBay would appear to be daunting enough, let alone if you were just 16-years-old. Hunt, however, has business acumen in his blood – his father Rikki was a prominent entrepreneur. Hunt charges a percentage of sale fee only, with customers able to bid via mobile phones. Barely a year old, Hunt For It already claims to be the fifth largest auction site in the world commanding a £2m turnover.

Jonathan Evans
Age: 25
Company: Martinez & Partners
Focus: Insurance
Evans is a man with a plan. Having bought Martinez & Partners, he set out to increase earnings seven-fold within 10 years before listing the company. He’s already well on his way – turnover is projected at £15m, with 50% growth since the takeover last year. His strategy is to become a quality niche operator – construction and commodity trader firms were targeted due to a lack of a bespoke service in the industry.

James Layfield
Age: 32
Company: The Lounge
Focus: Marketing for 18 to 30-year-olds
Layfield ran Richard Branson’s D3 and realised that there was another way of understanding the youth market than, as he says, “wearing swanky jeans and getting a trendy haircut”. Consequently, with Sarah Gill, he created The Lounge, an experiential marketing company for companies wanting to reach the 18-30 age group. With Virgin as his first client, it wasn’t long before the likes of Microsoft and Samsung signed up, helping Layfield generate a £1.5m turnover. Just a year into its creation, Layfield is looking to apply the same concept to a PR firm.

Cary Marsh
Age: 34
Company: Mydeo
Focus: Multimedia
It was while her partner Iain Millar was building a website for their baby Cameron that Marsh realised how easy and cost-effective it was to host personal videos online. Pitched as a more private, ownership-retained alternative to YouTube, Marsh and Millar successfully pitched MyDeo to Microsoft, meaning that the service is the European hosting option on the software giant’s Moviemaker product. A year in, growth stands at 20% per month, with 100,000 users expected worldwide by November. Marsh says that reports of a takeover by Microsoft are just “rumours”. Watch this space!

Russell Taylor
Age: 29
Company: Grafton House
Focus: Bar and restaurant
Working for Gordon Ramsay can be a baptism of fire for anyone hoping to succeed in the restaurant industry, but Taylor survived the abrasive chef to launch Grafton House with Quentin Dawson last year. Having run bars since university, Taylor’s venture serves up locally sourced, organic produce. Turnover already stands at an impressive £1.3m, with further opportunities being sought.

Cristina Domecq
Age: 29
Company: SpinVox
Focus: Mobile services
Spanish-born Domecq exploited a simple idea – turning voicemails into texts. Through a distribution deal with Carphone Warehouse, The Link and 3, SpinVox now has 120,000 users, with six languages now available. It’s Domecq’s third business and she has raised £25m in investment, while holding onto a majority share. SpinVox is expected to float on the LSE in 2007 and has aggressive overseas growth plans.

Ben Drury
Age: 30
Company: 7 Digital
Focus: Music and video downloads
A former head of music at BT, Drury led the acquisition and subsequent sale of Dotmusic to Yahoo, Founded two years ago, 7 digital’s indiestore.com offers unsigned bands the chance to showcase and sell their music, with sales counting towards the UK and US charts, More than 680 bands signed up within the first 48 hours, with video and other downloads onto different formats offered by Drury before iTunes got there. With a market share of more than HMV and Virgin combined, Drury secured exclusive download deals with Xfactor and Live8, and is now looking to gain a foothold in the European market, starting with Germany

Simon Tate
Age: 29
Company: Kew Health & Beauty
Focus: Cosmetics
Fresh out of university, Tate was made managing director of family business Wallace Manufacturing Chemists after his father’s death. Six years later and, having increased sales 50% across 90 countries, Tate created Kew Health & Beauty in 2004 with Dominic McVey. Under Tate’s stewardship, the business has seen turnover rise from £2.9m last year to £5m by the end of 2006. Growth is set to be further spurred by partner deals, signed in the US, Australia and the UAE

Jennie Johnson
Age: 34
Company: Kids Allowed
Focus: Childcare
Perplexed by the inflexible nature of many nurseries, Johnson decided it was high time she set up her own, Kids Allowed, which incorporates a myriad of services, such as after-school and holiday care for under 10s, dry cleaning and laundry. Johnson secured £5m in funding from a property developer, who built the two purpose-made Kids-Allowed centres last year, generating a £827,000 turnover. Funding is place for further nine centres in the North West, each set to generate £1.2m a year

Barry Houlihan
Age: 34
Company: Mobile Interactive Group
Focus: Multimedia mobile services
Houlihan carries around a notebook in which he jots down his business ideas. As his two-year-old Mobile Interactive Group made £21m this year, it would well be worth peering over his shoulder. Founded from a division of O2, Houlihan puts his company’s success down to the core staff he took with him and the speed with which they develop mobile-based technology. Deals with ITV, Freemantle and Celador are in place, and he admits that pacing the company’s growth has been like “holding onto a wild horse”