Tim Armoo, Ambrose Cooke and Mitchell Fasanya: Fanbytes

Tim Armoo, 23, Ambrose Cooke, 24 and Mitchell Fasanya, 22
Company: Fanbytes
Web: fanbytes.co.uk

Few other start-ups are leveraging the power of Generation Z quite like Fanbytes.

The company’s proposition is simple: to propagate clients’ adverts via a network of ‘influencers’, essentially the most fashionable young people on social media sites Snapchat and Instagram.

Founders Tim Armoo, Ambrose Cooke and Mitchell Fasanya have built up a roster of over 1,000 influencers, many of them in their early teens, and pay them to share clients’ material with their legions of followers.

The videos are embedded in the influencers’ Snapchat and Instagram stories using Fanbytes’ technology, ensuring the message gets across quickly and seamlessly without denting the influencers’ credibility.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the business is its selection system. The founders have developed a ‘Fanbytes Score’, harnessing a system Cooke designed for his dissertation at Imperial College (achieving a first), which factors in metrics such as views, completion rates and open rates.

Fasanya built the technology using the same data analytics and skills that he’d used when building an old company which he founded and sold at 19 years old.

Like the Google algorithm, the system goes beyond core numbers and gauges their true value, identifying the coolest of the cool with forensic accuracy.

Those identified by this brilliant system can earn some serious pocket money. One of the influencers, aged just 17, picked up £5,000 in a single month – which makes us feel rather stupid for toiling away in shops and pub kitchens for beer money during our own teenage years.

The business model also proved rather lucrative for the founders themselves. They’ve already secured clients including Apple Music, Universal and Warner Bros. Now they want to crack America, and invest in new formats like augmented reality advertising.

With Snapchat and Instagram receiving nearly 600 million users every day, advertisers are belatedly realising the potential of this enormous market, packed with trend-savvy young people.

Yet the Fanbytes founders have got in there early and planted their flag.

Like their influencers, they are very much ahead of the curve – one to watch indeed!