The UK’s Youngest Entrepreneurs

Tazmin Lent founded Where You At in 2020, while she was studying at Oxford. ​Where You At (WYA) is a mobile app that uses Bluetooth technology and indoor mapping to help users locate and connect with friends in venues where traditional connectivity is limited, such as festivals, conferences, and theme parks.

The company received a patent in 2020 for its group locating and alerting system. Overall WYA has been through three rounds of funding. The most recent round was in March 2024, when the company secured £2.50m from Cambridge Angels, Cambridge Enterprise and STAR Capital Partnership.

Pimlico makes it easier to use blockchain technology by simplifying transactions and logins, so users don’t need to manage complicated crypto wallets or private keys. It was incorporated in 2023 by Kristof Gazso. Prior to establishing Pimlico, Kristof co-authored ERC-4337, a leading proposal aimed at enhancing Ethereum’s account system.

The company has been through two funding rounds, and whilst being only two years old, has already raised a total of £4.72m.

Invyted is an event management platform that helps businesses and influencers create, manage, and track professional events with automated invitations, RSVPs, and guest engagement tools.

Asti Wagner founded the company in 2022, after her own social media presence grew to the point where she needed to organise numerous PR and brand collaborations which was time-consuming and difficult. This is where the idea of Invyted came from.

The company has now secured £5.00m through one funding round.

Josh Benaron, a self-taught developer, founded Irys in 2021. Irys is a decentralised messaging and file transfer platform that allows users to have secure, scalable, and censorship-resistant communication using blockchain technology.

Since it was founded, the company has been through two rounds of equity funding; the first in May 2022, and the second in June 2024, raising £6.86m overall. The most recent investment came from a mix of mostly US-based investors, as well as Hong Kong-based Lemniscap.

Alyx van der Vorm, now 25, founded Clyx in ​2020 when she was just 20. Targeted primarily at women in their 20s, Clyx is a social networking app designed to help users build friendships through curated events and communities.

In its most recent equity funding round, Clyx raised £131k bringing up the company’s total raised to £9.34m.

Yoyo Chang Yao-Yun, a Taiwan-born British entrepreneur, is the Founder & CEO of Kody. While studying at Cambridge he launched Kody with high school classmates, raising $30m. A former aspiring investment banker, he began trading at 13, won a national competition in 2016, and used $500k of his profits to start Kody.

Kody, also known as KodyPay, is a mobile-based PoS software for businesses. The company has been through four rounds of funding, raising a total of £24.9m.

Jacob Nathan founded Epoch Biodesign in 2019 when he was just 18, dropping out of the University of Chicago to do so. Epoch Biodesign uses AI to develop an enzyme to aid in the bio-recycling of plastics.

Epoch Biodesign received its first grant in 2020 and since then has gone on to obtain 11 grants in total, equalling £3.85m. The company has also been through three funding rounds, raising a combined total of £26.2m in equity. The biotech company has also hit three of our ESG Signals: environmental accolades, green infrastructure & building, and our social impact accolades signal.

Aged 24, James Dacombe is the founder of CoMind. CoMind is a clinical diagnostics company that creates technology designed for human brain monitoring. This is to support the diagnosis and treatment of neurological conditions.

James Dacombe left high school at 16 to become a software engineer at a startup and then launched CoMind at just 17 years old. The Islington-based company has been through four funding rounds and raised a huge £31.0m, as well as receiving a £783k grant from Innovate UK. The company was founded in 2018 and received a patent within its first year of operation.