17. Gate One

Founders: Tim Phillips, Simon Dennis, David Holliday and Alex McEvoy
Founded: June 2013
Website: www.gateone.co.uk

The global business consulting industry is one of the most top-heavy in the world, with the ‘Big Four’ consultancies (Deloitte, PwC, Ernst & Young and KPMG) collectively exerting a virtual monopoly on the market. Taking on the giants of this entrenched industry by starting a small challenger firm is certainly a risky business, but Gate One’s founders, a team of ex-Big Four employees themselves, feel they have struck upon a winning formula.

Gate One provides its clients with a unique ‘ripple effect’ service; assembling a team of consultants with expert knowledge of an entire project’s lifecycle, these are transplanted into firms to work side-by-side with their clients as they collectively face the challenge of dramatic change in an organisation. And it’s not only the clients which receive above-and-beyond care, either; the consultants themselves participate in an internal ‘incubator model’ in which they are given the opportunity to progress their entrepreneurial ideas in exchange for equity. With four high-profile clients already on board and more on the horizon, the founders confidently expect the firm to double in size across 2014 as they continue their aim of revolutionising the world of management consulting.