74. Growth Intelligence

Founder: Thomas Gatten
Founded: January 2011 (launched June 2012)
Website: www.growthintel.com

Business intelligence veteran Thomas Gatten’s start-up Growth Intelligence offers a software-driven solution that, put simply, could put an end to telemarketing calls forever. The company gathers the data footprints of millions of firms across the UK – taking into account “weird and wonderful” metrics such as email traffic, desk space, road traffic and ad spend – and then uses machine learning to automatically predict which firms are likely to buy from other firms, representing a hugely valuable service for marketing and sales departments everywhere.

Large financial institutions including Lloyds and Barclays are already on board, alongside telecommunications giant BT and a host of small firms. Growth Intelligence’s analytics service has potential value for almost any business, and Gatten plans to quickly scale up operations in 2014 as it expands from financial services into telecoms, technology and professional services. Through this, Growth Intelligence expects a year of big growth in both staff and revenue – with such an obviously valuable proposition; it is hard to see why not.