Colin Wilkinson and the Three Sixty Entertainment team achieved the near impossible. They raised £2.75m in the toughest economic climate in decades - from 58 angel investors. They brought Peter Pan to life in Kensington Gardens. And they out-sold the West-End big guns. Now they're going global.

What's the concept?
To brilliantly re-imagine classic children’s text as shows for an adult as well as family audience, and to launch these shows in the UK as a springboard to tour them internationally, in colossal, purpose-designed tented-pavillions.

Why's it unique?
We are using technology that no-one has used before on a truly inspiring scale (e.g. for the Peter Pan show we built a 400 square mile virtual model of London, then flew a virtual helicopter over the city ‘filming’ it with a 360 camera. We sent these files to Pixar who rendered them into extraordinary and ravishing detail. We project these videos onto the walls around the audience (360 degree) on a surface three times the area of an IMAX screen. It’s pretty mind-blowing.

Where are you now?
We launched Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens in 2009 and were fortunate enough to have enjoyed the second highest ticket sales in the West-End this season. We made £5.5m in the first 16 weeks of trading with very high profit margins. We will be showing at the O2 for six weeks at Christmas – and then starting a US tour in San Francisco in Spring 2010, then cloning the show for the Asia-Pacific market at the end of 2010.

Where will you be in two years (ideally)?
We will have at least six or seven clone shows of Peter Pan around the world – and have launched our next show in London. Turnover £35m plus.

Who's backed you?
58 business angels.

How much did you get?
£2.75m.

When did you raise it?
From Jan – April 2009.

How long before the cheque cleared?
Four months.

What did it teach you?
That where I look is where I go. We raised the money in the midst of the worst recession in financial markets in two generations (and we did it in half the time you’d normally expect a fundraising to take). But we were so confident of the proposition that we did not spend energy worrying. It sounds trite, but we focused instead on what we could do – and on searching out and presenting all of the hard data we could find that supported the business case; generating stories that we could use to create a positive, buying frame of mind in our prospective investors.

How has investment improved the business?
We were a start-up and would never have got off the ground without the cash.

Tell us something that will help another entrepreneur keep their investor happy.
In your information memorandum: 1. Make sure that all of the assumptions that build the business case are individually listed so that you can: 2. Present compelling, independent evidence that proves these assumptions are valid. This gives investors the confidence that your level of unstoppable enthusiasm is not a form of madness (or wishful thinking), but a genuine cast-iron, feet-on-the-ground conviction.
Know all your numbers and the key levers that create the difference between success and failure of the business. Be willing to flex the numbers around these ‘levers’ to show how a different outcome for each of these effects the bottom line.
Be sensible with the valuation of your business. Any avid viewer of Dragons’ Den knows how little credibility you get if you over-value your nascent company.
Finally, give every prospective investor a damned good listening to.

Why should we keep an eye on you?
Watch 360 go from strength to strength. We sold more tickets in London than Mama Mia over the summer – if we can replicate this success in different territories then we have the makings of a truly global phenomenon.
We are also finalists in the 2009 UK Startup Business of the Year award, and Innovative Business of the Year Award, sponsored by Visa. Watch this space.

What’s the difference between a travel agent and an estate agent? Answer: Estate agents are still on every high street.

But presenter of Property Snakes & Ladders and serial property developer Sarah Beeny would love to change that too and can’t believe the internet hasn’t cut more of them out.

“Estate agents are archaic in outlook,” the mainstay of Channel 4's property programming rails. “It’s very frustrating that you have to use an enforced go-between. I don’t understand why. For £300,000 it’s not unusual to have 2-3% plus VAT. For what?”

The solution: www.tepilo.com - Tepilo being the castle of her father’s story-telling imagination when Beeny was a child. Beeny, who also fronts a dating site called www.mysinglefriend.com is determined to make a pest of herself to the estate agency fraternity. Not only has she created a site that enables punters to put their houses up for sale and market them, she’s made the service completely free.

But what about valuing a property? Surely estate agents have their own version of ‘The Knowledge’. Nope. “They make a ‘guess’. Look at Globrix, Zoopla and the Land Registry,” she advises.

The only difference is estate agents have much of the information stored in their heads, but look at what’s been sold and what’s on the market and it’s not hard to put a price on bricks and mortar.

Beeny is prepared to admit that some estate agents are “fantastic” but clearly enjoys being primed to upset the vast majority, saying one or two high up in the industry have said they hope Tepilo doesn’t work. “I personally can’t understand why estate agents haven’t done it themselves. I find it really pathetic. If you’re not good enough to deal with the competition, get better.”

"If you paid £500 to £600 it would probably be value for money with the photos, the websites etcetera. But when it’s thousands, you’re talking about the price of a kitchen or a holiday in the Seychelles. You’re paying for a glamourous shop and cars with the name on their livery.”

Tepilo.com aims to be an improvement on the clunky portals that house estate agents’ inventory, with Beeny citing Rightmove.com and Findaproperty.com as “fairly poor, clunky, difficult”. For someone who claims she “wouldn’t spend evenings browsing – ever”, she seems to have a fair idea of what she wants.

The site has been built with web development agency Codegent though, so all the fancy architecture’s down to them. There’s great use of Google’s Streetview and Maps technology, the ability to upload numerous high quality photos, a floor plan and an ‘in a nutshell’ view featuring local school catchment areas and travel connections. Compared to other property sites it’s slick. Vendors are also able to complete the sale negotiation via the site, helping to take emotion out of an often fraught process. Users are, however, understandably required to use solicitors for the usual legal requirements.

The joint venture means Beeny’s start-up costs have remained low, with Codegent working for equity, a rare move, but one it was prepared to take knowing Beeny’s celebrity and reputation in the property market could make the site a major player fast.

Codegent’s team has not been disappointed. The reputation of Sarah Beeny has been enough to open doors at Google and Moneysupermarket, Brent Hoberman’s interior design play MyDeco.com and others. Plus it claimed its first sale, a £250,000 property in July, a matter of weeks after going live and boasts that it has more than 2,000 properties already uploaded.

The question is, if it’s free, how will Beeny monetise it? “Revenue’s not the intention now. There’s nothing sneaky; it’s completely free. At some point we may have to monetise it and plan on doing it through sponsorship and maybe charging people £20 to upload. If it works maybe the consumer would be happy to pay for it.” Let's be honest, if it works there's no doubt £20 would represent value for money.

Keep it simple. Stick to what you know. Two pieces of advice almost any start-up could do with hearing before they embark on a life of entrepreneurship. Anoushka Caro’s obviously been paying attention. The former executive assistant was made redundant last year having worked very successfully in the field of lifestyle management for close to 10 years.

“There was a downturn in the fortunes of the company I was working for and it was largely a political move on the part of the CEO as he was asking everyone else to make cuts. He said I had it in me and should start something and I could see it was an amazing opportunity to bite the bullet and work for myself,” she recalls, adding: “You don’t need the next ‘big idea’.”

She recognised two key points. “In the current climate people do not want overheads of staff. Secondly, I knew there were a lot of entrepreneurs out there needing a temporary or part-time PA.” Her business, www.ineedapanow.com was born.

Offering a service that promised part-time, temporary, no-strings access to the same experienced PA whenever the client needed them was Caro’s proposition. And it’s proving popular. Basing herself in One Alfred Place, the private members’ club heavily associated with entrepreneurs, gave her the perfect platform to build a client-base. “My clients tend to be entrepreneurs. They don’t have an office and need someone around for one or two hours a day. It’s very difficult to find someone who’s willing to work for that kind of time.”

In addition, she has higher profile clients who already have a PA, but need someone for the ‘overflow’ of personal needs, such as stage-managing children’s parties, organising holidays, and gift buying. It’s opened her company up to UK business people who have relocated to Dubai and the US and need a reliable assistant back home. Clients buy packets of time – with Caro charging £35 for an hour, £330 for 10 hours or £1,200 for a 40 hour block. Some clients choose to book more. She takes a 30% margin from the hours accrued by each of her PAs.

The beauty is the model is flexible for both the client and for her team of PAs, all of whom have quit corporate life to start families, but still want to work. “I specifically work with PAs I know and trust and the way technology is today you don’t need a PA in the office. They all have BlackBerrys and laptops so can work remotely.”

A third piece of advice a start-up should adhere to is to identify a USP – that doesn’t mean be entirely unique, but something – or things – that differentiates one business from others in the same space. Providing dedicated PAs rather than a switchboard was one, ensuring her PA always meets the family and children is a third. Clients buying into the flexible aspect – and understanding it works both ways is another, although evenings and weekends are never ruled out.

She already has around 15 clients using the service and plans to continue growing organically in line with demand. “If we become too big you lose the personalized touch and it becomes a bigger business model.” Saying that, she says the company may swell to 40 or 100 PAs at some point in the future if the demand is there. “It’s chugging along nicely and I’ll deal with that dilemma if and when it arrives.”

Launching a recruitment website in the middle of a downturn when unemployment levels are likely to reach record highs: Brave or stupid? On cursory inspection, certainly not the latter, but can it stand out in a crowd?

While jobs are scarce, interest in finding them is higher than ever, particularly among the generation of graduates likely to be disenfranchised by the effects of recession. That's where Brave New Talent claims to come in. The creation of 25-year-old Lucian Tarnowski, www.bravenewtalent.com promises a social networking platform to connect talent with employers of choice.

In layman's terms the idea is that the world's top talent will create a second, more professional, profile or 'CV' via Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and other social network applications. Using the apps users can create 'talent pools' under the banner of the large blue-chips and other companies they'd be interested in working for - and from there beautiful relationships should form.

Employers reach Generation Y through their medium of choice, have the opportunity to sift talent before they apply, and can communicate and ultimately hire more appropriate candidates without paying exorbitant recruitment fees. Candidates get the opportunity to put themselves on the recruiter's radar, audition, build a relationship and learn more about the business they want to join, before making the leap.

"People jump into bed with employers, but a one night stand doesn't always lead to marriage," points out Tarnowski. "Brave New Talent reverses the typical recruitment process. It's not the top down campus recruitment or job board push. It's not spamming. Instead it's interaction, not interruption." This is key, he adds, as even those companies in recruitment using social media are still taking a top down approach, which is why he believes it's not working for anybody.

It's very early days and sounds a grand plan, but the portents of success appear good. Tarnowski has already been pulling up trees. Accenture, Barclays Capital, Deloitte, ASDA, Abbey and BP among others are signed up employers and more than 3,000 talented individuals are using the site. The global leadership and talent initiative called One Young World (http://apps.facebook.com/oywcandidates/), which has Kofi Annan, Bob Geldof and Archbishop Desmond Tutu as councillors, is using Brave New Talent social network integration to source 1,500 future leaders from 192 countries.

And whatever you've heard about getting hold of loans via the Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) scheme, you might need to reappraise. Not only did Brave New Talent get a loan of £102,500, it happened to be the second company in the country to secure one. In addition, the business raised £122,500 from private investors, including serial entrepreneur Ben Way. And Tarnowski estimates he's had £250,000 of sweat equity out of a experienced team with decades of experience in branding and technology platform building.

Tarnowski knows there's competition in the space, but is comfortable that the likes of Wikijob.co.uk and RateMyPlacement.co.uk are taking a different approach. And, to date, Facebook, LinkedIn, NewsCorp and Monster are not moving to compete directly. April was the company's first profitable month. All of this will no doubt help secure the targeted £750,000 in two tranches from investors, helping to finance an enlarged team. "If we consistently generate revenue we'll soon be open to VC funding." It would seem there may have been a reason Tarnowski's siblings nicknamed him 'Moneyman' as a child.

What do billionaires Warren Buffett, Donald Trump, Lakshmi Mittal’s son and British businessman Tim Lacey have in common? The answer: all attended Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Not bad pedigree.

So will Lacey be joining them on the World’s Rich Lists? Be fair; he’s only just started UR7s.com a web portal for the sport of Rugby Sevens designed to do for Sevens what Twenty 20 has done for cricket.

His path to entrepreneurialism is an interesting one. As a teenager Lacey played for Guinness Premiership side Gloucester. An horrific skiing accident put paid to a promising career. He hyper-extended the knee, snapping four ligaments which left him with a rebuilt joint and chronic arthritis.

Leaving rugby he went into investment banking at UBS and spent four and a half years there. He quit the City for the jungle of Borneo and a youth development programme run by Raleigh International. While there he discovered a remote hill overlooking the Indian Ocean where one day he’ll build a lodge. Inspired, he returned to the UK and applied for business school at Wharton. While in the US he consulted for the NBA, CBS Sportsline and the Philadelphia Eagles NFL team. Having rediscovered his passion for rugby through coaching his focus turned to the hidden potential of Sevens and the UR7s concept was forged.

Much development later, UR7s.com is a leading news, information and media provider in the space. A quick Google search of ‘rugby sevens’ yields a first page result along with the official site of the Rugby World Cup Sevens and the International Rugby Board’s (IRB) site.

Lacey hopes to build the community in a way neither of the aforementioned sites attempt to. He plans to develop a platform for the management of tournaments, as well as the teams and players within the sport. And he wants the site to be at the forefront of Sevens-related sports tourism, with Dubai, Argentina and Hong Kong having previously hosted World Cups. Revenues will come from advertising, sponsorship and e-commerce in the main, he says. There are more than 1,000 disparate tournaments globally (200 on UR7s), with hundreds of teams all paying team fees of $200 - $400. Lacey would like to provide an automated system to facilitate payment online, with UR7s taking an administration fee. There’s also branded merchandising potential and the likelihood of going for media rights for a TV channel. It’s even a sport that captures the imagination in the US by virtue of the pace and high-scoring nature of the game.

Pretty ambitious stuff for a start-up. But the site, built with a chunk of the substantial loan secured against his house, is doing it justice so far and the community must come first. In addition to great content he has an advisory board containing former England Sevens captain Simon Amor, veteran rugby commentator and former Harlequins and England scrum half Nigel Starmer-Smith, plus names from academia, US sports-related businesses, and the former England Sevens manager and owner of sportswear brand Samurai. He also has three employees – a marketer, a business development specialist and an editor. “We’ve got a number of brands waiting to get into bed with us, including some big players.” he says. “It’s a good time to start a business – providing you can remain sustainable pre-revenue.”

The next few months will be crucial, with private investment likely to supplement the pot. For now, the lodge in Borneo will have to wait.

The use of videos on company homepages has risen almost as quickly as the availability of broadband itself; literally everybody's at it. There's arguably plenty of space left for a clever newcomer to make videos more 'usable', which is where Quick.tv comes in. Launching in coming weeks, co-founder Nick Bell describes it as "a service to allow users to make their videos interactive, it allows you to upload videos and add features, click on hotspots, move on to other websites..." While similar features have appeared on youtube in recent months, Bell assures me that these are merely a 'primitive example'. "It’s a professional service for professional users, for brands to utilise their output- we’re about more than a dog on a skateboard", he insists.

In short, everything from allowing users to find out more about certain aspects of the clip, to the prospect of real monetisation exploitation of online videos are possible. And investors seem to share Bell’s optimism. The Tyneside-based business was set up with £60,000 of investment from NorthStar Equity Investors’ proof of concept fund together with £850,000 from other investors. There’s also been funding from Business Link, the North East England Investment Centre, various angels and the management team as well. All in all, £1.2m has been raised. Revenue-wise, companies wanting to ability to upload customisable video (using Quick TV as an app or tool, rather as an alternative destination) will sign up to a subscription-based model: Pay X per month for a set amount of streams, and if you go over that cap, you’ll pay a little more, a la mobile phones.

Launching the business with Todd Yeadon in November 2007, he says they "saw the power of video but it seemed sort of static – everything else was so interactive. From the early days of the web when people would just upload a whole brochure, things have changed." And between Bell, who launched a string of internet companies from his teenage years onwards, to Yeadon, a man who’s worked in licensing across the music industry for years, they at least appear to have the background for success. For Bell’s pitch to a Techcrunch crowd at Christmas, click here: www.jonathanmacdonald.com