Young entrepreneurs: Ben Corrigan and Jonny Plein, Pouch

Names: Ben Corrigan and Jonny Plein
Company: Pouch
Ages: Both 25
Website: www.joinpouch.com

Online shopping can be frustrating, particularly if you’re a savvy shopper with a penchant for a discount.

We’ve all been there when we’re about to pay for our online goods and are then prompted to enter a voucher code. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to save money, we leave the site to trawl the more sketchy side of the web for a a code but, often, we can’t find anything that works – wasting time and distracting from our intended purchase.

This is where London-born 25-year-olds Ben Corrigan and Jonny Plein come in. Corrigan and Plein are the young entrepreneurs behind Pouch – a free browser extension launched in September 2016 which finds and displays active voucher codes for the website you’re browsing.

Having gained a place on the prestigious MassChallenge UK accelerator – where Pouch was named among the top 20 start-ups on the programme – Corrigan and Plein recently raised £100,000 investment to help fuel their mission of streamlining online shopping.

Already, the extension is used by 3,000 UK retailers and, given the duo’s track records in business, the future looks promising for Pouch.

Corrigan has a history of making enterprises out of e-commerce having run an eBay business selling e-books and turnkey websites at the age of 14. Always looking to innovate, he launched his first official company Bid2Eat at 18.

Plein was also just 18 when he hit his first business milestone, becoming the director of a social enterprise that sought to improve the lives of disadvantaged careers.

Corrigan later became partnerships manager at Startups 100-listed Yieldify then senior vice president at Nordic Markets while Plein travelled and studied in China before joining the Ernst & Young Corporate Finance Graduate Scheme where he qualified as a chartered accountant.

Having left their jobs to pursue their start-up venture, Corrigan and Plein aim to grow Pouch into a global, “multifaceted technology business with a range of products that make online shopping seamless for consumers”.

With a burgeoning client list and and projected turnover of £750,000 for 2017, we see no reason as to why these enterprising young entrepreneurs won’t achieve this goal.