Innovative Business of the Year 2017

Start-up name: Flight Club
Founders: Steve Moore and Paul Barham
Started in: December 2014
Based in: London
Business description: Darts activity bar

While a few pints down the local boozer can certainly lead you anywhere, for Steve Moore and Paul Barham, their simple pub chat has turned into a rather successful start-up.

Watching a group of mates play an exciting game of darts while drinking in Devon, the pair began to wonder why the game hadn’t taken off in the numerous activity bars scattered across London.

Like any good entrepreneurs, they decided to step up to the oche themselves and launch Flight Club – a sports activity bar that focuses on darts – in December 2014.

Taking the traditional game of darts and ‘supercharging it’, Flight Club, featured among the top 10 companies in the Startups 100, offers parties, offices and stag dos a range of multiplayer games or ‘social darts’ all served with food and drink inside its various activity bars.

With an emphasis on friendly competition, Flight Club’s state-of-the-art gameplayer tech ensures a level playing field with multiple throw lines, meaning even a complete beginner could win on the day.

Opening in Shoreditch in 2015, followed by Bloomsbury last April, Flight Club Chicago is set to open its doors in Spring 2018, with plans already in place for launches in Manchester, Bristol, Oslo, Melbourne and Hong Kong.

Having welcomed over 400,000 guests through its London doors to date, who have thrown over 26 million darts since launch, Flight Club has also already increased its headcount from 70 to 170.

While the judges definitely felt that Flight Club hit the spot, they were also impressed by Spoon Guru – an online platform that provides shoppers with advice and information on dietary requirements and allergies – and habito – an artificial intelligence-based digital mortgage advisor – named Highly-Commended and Commended respectively.