66. Whalar

Founders: James Street and Neil Waller
Founded: March 2016
Website: whalar.com

Influencer marketing is fast-becoming the ultimate growth hack for businesses but connecting with influencers and convincing them to share high-quality, relevant posts to engage a target audience isn’t easy.

This is where Whalar comes in.

An official marketing partner of Instagram and Facebook, London-based Whalar makes the process of connecting brands to content creators with influence on Instagram a “whole lot easier”.

Backed by Sir John Hegarty, one of the most respected names in the advertising space, Whalar is essentially a matchmaking service for brands and online influencers. It has built a search algorithm which enables it to identify the best influencers to work with a brand – much like a dating site would match two people with similar interests and personalities.

The platform enables brands to collaborate with thousands of influencers at the same time to produce unique user-generated content and it then measures the results of every campaign, which are shared with the brand.

As the brainchild of James Street and Neil Waller, the Young Guns who founded Startups 100-listed travel site MyDestination.com, Whalar has all the ingredients for start-up success.

Combined with experienced founders and a team of 15 staff, the business has attracted big-name clients such as Pepsi, Warner Bros, and former Startups 100 alumni Deliveroo and PROPERCORN, and is now looking at international expansion with office launches in America proposed for later this year. A Series A funding round is in the pipeline to support these plans.

As their second business to gain a Startups 100 ranking, could a third Startups 100 business be on the cards for Street and Waller? Possibly! – The pair reveal that as “serious entrepreneurs, eventually we would like to hand over the reigns. The fun for us is in starting and executing the vision”.