Lord Young, Dr Ben Medlock, and Melanie Eusebe MBE back Startups Awards 2018

If you haven’t entered the Startups Awards 2018 yet then you’ve now got more reasons to, three reasons in fact, with a series of high-profile judges just announced that you can get your business in front of.

We can confirm that Lord Young, founder of Young Associates, The Start Up Loans Company and former enterprise advisor to the prime minister, will be joining the Startups Awards panel to help identify the country’s most outstanding new businesses.

Lord Young will be judging entries alongside Dr Ben Medlock; the founder of intelligent keyboard app SwiftKey which was acquired by Microsoft in 2015 for a rumoured $250m, and Melanie Eusebe MBE; the inspiring serial entrepreneur behind the esteemed Black British Business Awards.

And the trio are in good company.

They join the 2018 judging panel which boasts names such as Zoopla founder Alex Chesterman OBE, Mumsnet co-founder Justine Roberts MBE, Innocent Drinks and JamJar Investments co-founder Jon Wright, Founders Pledge community director Ben Clifford, Shalini Khemka of E2Echange, and awards host Oli Barrett MBE.

You can view the full list of Startups Awards 2018 judges here.

Established in 2003 by Startups.co.uk, the Startups Awards is the longest running awards of its kind celebrating the UK’s best and brightest new businesses launched in the last four years.

With support from headline sponsor The Start Up Loans Company and sponsors AXA Business Insurance, GoDaddy, haysmacintyre and Oracle NetSuite, this year’s Awards is set to be bigger than ever before.

This year, there are new awards categories for start-ups to enter including Side Hustle of the Year, Family Business of the Year, and the Best Place to Work award, alongside established accolades such as Young Entrepreneur of the Year and the Women in Business Award.

While, in a Startups Awards first, there are two inaugural awards categories which start-up supporters, as opposed to start-ups, can enter: Start-Up Community Catalyst of the Year and Growth Business Enabler of the Year.

Along with endorsement from an expert judging panel, the benefits of entering the Startups Awards 2018 include an increased business profile, national and local press coverage, a boost to staff morale and industry recognition – the awards is industry-renowned.

Startups’ president and awards judge Titus Sharpe, co-founder of MVF, the company behind the Startups Awards, commented:

“We’re rightly proud of the Startups Awards for recognising the best of UK entrepreneurial talent.

“Each year we unearth a whole set of innovative, disruptive new businesses and entrepreneurs that continue to make people sit up and pay attention to the start-up market.”

Startups Awards 2018 entries close at midnight on Friday 14 September. Submit your entry here.