51. Vidsy

Founders: Gerard Keeley, Alex Morris, and Archie Campbell
Founded: 2015
Website: www.vidsy.co

Vidsy’s co-founders all separately realised there was a gap in the advertising industry. Companies built to create content for TV were struggling to move into the new, digital age.

Archie Campbell had the epiphany while freelancing as a director of photography for the BBC, Gerard Keeley learned the hard way by setting up a failed start-up, and Alex Morris saw the potential of Facebook to build communities after setting up a student events company at university.

So the London-based team, none of whom had a direct background in advertising, decided to stake their claim.

After graduating from Founders Factory, they won Facebook’s Innovation Spotlight award for Creativity Around Video in 2017, and now Vidsy is The Financial Times’ 44th fastest growing company in 2020.

The company uses more than 7,000 vetted creators around the world to help brands from Unilever to PepsiCo usher in a new age of mobile-centric advertising.

Speaking to Startups in 2017, the Vidsy founders explained that they had seen an opportunity to make the world of advertising better, and taken it with both hands.

“We’re disrupting an industry that needs to change, allowing more creativity to come from existing sources,” they said.

“There’s just so many people able to challenge standard TVC ads with their mobile content.

“We also wanted to show that, as an agency, you don’t need a Cannes Lion before you can work with Fortune 500 companies.”

In just five years, Vidsy has managed to become an exclusive creative partner of basically any social network you can name, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, and Quibi.

With clear authority and clout in this ever-growing market, Vidsy’s success only looks likely to go one way – up.