27. Playfire

Founders: Kieran O’Neill, Seb Hayes, Ben Phillips
Website: www.playfire.com

The idea for Playfire came about after observing online behaviour on a previous games reviews venture, PSU.com, founded by the same entrepreneurial trio. Noticing people put information about their favourite games and online friends in their forum signatures, Kieran, Seb and Ben decided to build a site to connect gamers from all over the world. Playfire is the resulting social network. Aimed at console gamers, it tracks the games played, compares scores with friends and recommends new games.

With eight full-time employees, the company also sells games via the site and collects a share of the revenue. The company secured $2.1m in November 2009 which it’s using to expand its development team.