98. Nuji

Founders: Dean Frankhauser and Vincent Thome
Founded: November 2011
Website: www.nuji.com

As a teenager looking for new music on Amazon, co-founder Dean Fankhauser regularly used the social shopping element of the site, where users can view similar albums bought by shoppers when browsing a music page. It is this element that is essential to the Nuji concept – an online department store built around the twin concepts of personalisation and social shopping, rather than at the periphery. Users create personalised public wishlists from the site’s extensive catalogue (drawn from more than 40,000 retailers) and track similar lists from others, with an affiliate model offering them discounts on their favourite stores. It is a concept with enormous potential; the founders say they are receiving more than 20 emails a day from retailers wishing to work closer with the site and the company is growing at a hugely impressive 100% month-on-month. The duo have ambitious plans to grow the site into the largest department store on the Web.