Young entrepreneurs: Charlotte Pearce, Inkpact

Name: Charlotte Pearce
Company: Inkpact and OR
Age: 24
Website: www.inkpact.com

Motivational speaker, advisor to social enterprises, women in tech ambassador and director of a £50,000 fund to accelerate student start-ups, 24-year-old Charlotte Pearce wears many hats – and also runs two businesses.

Pearce caught the entrepreneurial bug while at school selling makeup and bags online before founding her first full-scale business Inkpact when she graduated from the University of Southampton. Her other business is OR, a consultancy for large corporates that uses innovation to solve their problems and inspire their teams. Inkpact helps businesses engage and retain their customers by sending personalised, branded, handwritten communications.

Pearce came up with the idea for the platform when she learnt that handwritten communication was becoming a powerful tool for businesses that wanted to stand out against its impersonal digital equivalent – the only problem was that most didn’t have the time or skill to do it.

The company’s technology enables businesses to send personalised communication at scale, with each notecard or letter then handwritten in fountain pen and ink by a writer from home. This more than 50-strong team of writers includes everyone from stay at home mothers to elderly people and the disadvantaged – offering an income source to those who might struggle to find or have time for full-time employment. With writers only requiring internet access and some calligraphy skills, Pearce plans to scale the business worldwide and create millions of jobs in the process.

Inkpact, which charges per letter or on a subscription basis, has so far raised a seed investment round of £150,000 and is reinvesting all its profits into building out its technology. For herself, Pearce hopes to use her success to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs of all ages. “It doesn’t matter if you are 15 or 50 you can start a business and follow your dreams”, she says.