23. HeadBox

Founder: Andrew Needham
Founded: April 2015 (Launched October 2015)
Website: www.headbox.com

HeadBox, the online marketplace for inspiring underused spaces, has now racked up three appearances in the Startups 100 – this being its final – as it continues on its mission to “banish boring ‘go-to’ venues”.

Founded by Andrew Needham in 2015, HeadBox allows you to search and book over 5,000 unique spaces for meetings or events across the UK in cities such as London, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool.

Spaces include prestigious locations such as the ODEON Leicester square and the once hidden Masonic Temple in the Andaz Hotel – where Freemasons would attend their Lodge meetings – as well as your more typical conference and boardrooms, and bars and cocktail venues for evening entertainment.

What spawned this idea? Previously the founder and CEO of insight consultancy Face, Needham found that even large corporate clients with big networks such as Unilever, Nokia, and Coca Cola found it difficult to find “amazing spaces” at short notice.

For Needham, “the whole process was alarmingly out of date, too slow, very inefficient and incredibly time consuming”.

HeadBox simplifies this process with end-to-end booking and payments software, a dashboard that helps clients with budget control, and a dedicated account manager. And with HeadBox 3D, potential guests can take a virtual tour of the venue without leaving their desks.

Hosts are able to increase booking conversions, boost productivity and drive traffic via its two key traffic features: a booking and payment widget that can be embedded into their own website and a CRM dashboard to manage their pipeline of leads and enquiries.

In February 2018, HeadBox launched its social enterprise arm by entering into a partnership with homelessness charity St Mungo’s. This partnership means its corporate clients can now donate part of their commission rebate directly to the charity, while HeadBox helps the charity with its annual events and supplies volunteers from its team.

After raising £1.6m in October 2017 and having built a solid foundation of clients across the UK, HeadBox will now be turn its attentions to major European cities as it looks to reinvent the global events industry.